Curse

Katari · Feb 28, 2007, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Then you might as well not use that specific build. You're gimping the rest of his damage output to get one skill to work.

Adjacent range is small, mobs move around a lot, and heroes suck at positioning. Combine that with the redundancy of Anthem of Flame, and the 12 weapon mastery, and there are just better things you could be doing with a hero's skills.

Zinger314 · Mar 02, 2007, 05:09 AM // 05:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katari

Then you might as well not use that specific build. You're gimping the rest of his damage output to get one skill to work.

Adjacent range is small, mobs move around a lot, and heroes suck at positioning. Combine that with the redundancy of Anthem of Flame, and the 12 weapon mastery, and there are just better things you could be doing with a hero's skills.

The difference between 12 Weapon Mastery and 16 Weapon Mastery is 15%. Not major, especially when you maintain a party-wide 33% damage reduction.

Searing Flames, as said, is more effective with a ToF Tank, rather than less effective. The ToF Tank will keep the Burning, which will keep the 119 Damage proc off of SF constant. And a dead enemy is a good enemy.

The ToF Tank can enter melee as well as a Warrior: The only difference is that a Warrior has +20 AL to Physical. But...the 33% reduction from ToF kinda offsets that and "WY!"

Yes, the ToF Tank looks weaker than a Warrior, but it's much, much stronger.

(And yes, a dedicated Orders/Barrage type of build would be more effective in PvE. But that's an entire build. The ToF Tank is one person.)

Katari · Mar 02, 2007, 07:55 AM // 07:55

There are two situations here.

(1) You are using a hero. Heros suck at things like positioning and aiming Blazing Finale. Blazing Finale no matter what you do won't be optimized by any stretch of the imagination. What you're doing is making a paragon melee to bypass part of the positioning issue. I don't see why this is at all a good idea, Anthem of Flame will already start many things burrning, coincidently the called targets, which melee heroes stand next to anyways. In this case you are gimiping the damage by going melee, and using the 12spec weapon.

(2) This is a PC paragon. Since this is a team oriented build, it is safe to assume there is a warrior, or two, and maybe a dervish around. This is where you take note that Blazing Finale is "target ally" and use it on someone else. From there you can choose to melee or not, you don't gain anything from meleeing, but you loose weapon mastery if you do. There isn't a good reason to melee in this case.

It isn't a bad build, if you define a bad build as [Echo, Frenzy, Healing Signet, Mirror of Disenchantment, Empathy, Sever, Dismember]. Either you're reducing the damage of a hero to force it to be slightly more effective at using a decent skill on a build filled with redundancies, or you're needlessly using a lower spec weapon. In both cases you're lacking a deep wound skill for no good reason whatsoever.

You also can't compare directly to a warrior. Any good warrior has Flail, or some IAS, along with a deep wound skill, and still has skill slots for defense.

Govtmorgue · Mar 02, 2007, 09:24 AM // 09:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katari

There are two situations here.

(1) You are using a hero. Heros suck at things like positioning and aiming Blazing Finale. Blazing Finale no matter what you do won't be optimized by any stretch of the imagination. What you're doing is making a paragon melee to bypass part of the positioning issue. I don't see why this is at all a good idea, Anthem of Flame will already start many things burrning, coincidently the called targets, which melee heroes stand next to anyways. In this case you are gimiping the damage by going melee, and using the 12spec weapon.

(2) This is a PC paragon. Since this is a team oriented build, it is safe to assume there is a warrior, or two, and maybe a dervish around. This is where you take note that Blazing Finale is "target ally" and use it on someone else. From there you can choose to melee or not, you don't gain anything from meleeing, but you loose weapon mastery if you do. There isn't a good reason to melee in this case.

It isn't a bad build, if you define a bad build as [Echo, Frenzy, Healing Signet, Mirror of Disenchantment, Empathy, Sever, Dismember]. Either you're reducing the damage of a hero to force it to be slightly more effective at using a decent skill on a build filled with redundancies, or you're needlessly using a lower spec weapon. In both cases you're lacking a deep wound skill for no good reason whatsoever.

You also can't compare directly to a warrior. Any good warrior has Flail, or some IAS, along with a deep wound skill, and still has skill slots for defense.

Not that I, myself, have tested this Katari, but SIX pages of "Damn this build is good" can't be wrong, sorry to tell ya. Either you're not trying it yourself, or you are going solely on what you think are accurate numbers (which could of course be wrong, as numbers don't take into effect lag issues)

lorinton · Mar 02, 2007, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

The difference between 12 Weapon Mastery and 16 Weapon Mastery is 15%. Not major, especially when you maintain a party-wide 33% damage reduction.

I've never seen ToF provide 33% party wide damage reduction, even before the nerf. With the AI sending mobs scattering and running and chasing all over the place how can you keep all of them burning all of the time? My experience has been keeping half the opponents on fire is typical with a build dedicated to doing so.

JoeKnowMo · Mar 02, 2007, 11:59 PM // 23:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

The difference between 12 Weapon Mastery and 16 Weapon Mastery is 15%. Not major, especially when you maintain a party-wide 33% damage reduction.

It's not party-wide as others have pointed out. It's even less useful when Morgahn is going after a healer type.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

The ToF Tank can enter melee as well as a Warrior: The only difference is that a Warrior has +20 AL to Physical. But...the 33% reduction from ToF kinda offsets that and "WY!"

The warrior's additional 20 AL reduces physical dmg by 30% making them a better tank (not that tanking is as important as it used to be in pve, but since we're talking about it anyway). The 20 AL from WY! is truly party wide even when the war is chasing a healer. The 20 AL from WY! reduces party damage by 30% (except against armor ignoring spells) giving it the edge over ToF!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

Yes, the ToF Tank looks weaker than a Warrior, but it's much, much stronger.

I'm beginning to wonder. An axe war with apply poison using Cyclone, Trip chop, dismember, flail, and WY! is probably higher dps, higher armor, provides true party-wide dmg reduction, and doesn't have to pause to use AoF or BF.

Katari · Mar 03, 2007, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Govtmorgue

Not that I, myself, have tested this Katari, but SIX pages of "Damn this build is good" can't be wrong, sorry to tell ya. Either you're not trying it yourself, or you are going solely on what you think are accurate numbers (which could of course be wrong, as numbers don't take into effect lag issues)

PvE is full of mending wammos with 9 weapon mastery. That does not make mending good, nor does it make 9 weapon mastery a good idea.

I'm not saying Blazing Finale is a bad skill, I'm saying as a player controlled Paragon, there is no need to be the one using it in melee, and that it actually lowers damage output. Of course the build is still popular on heroes, which is why I also pointed out that heroes suck balls at positioning, and the very redundant nature of the build makes it an ineffective one on a hero. Not to mention that you're lowering the damage output of a hero just like you would be lowering the damage output of a player.

Spura · Mar 06, 2007, 02:20 PM // 14:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeKnowMo

The 20 AL from WY! reduces party damage by 30% (except against armor ignoring spells) giving it the edge over ToF!

Actually there quite a bit more of those. Attack skill bonus damage ignores armor and as I am currently going with my paragon through kurzick areas, the warden's Splinter Weapon ignores armor, as does Shove for instance that dredges use. (Btw don't you hate it when a skill gets buffed for pvp but also makes monsters that use it in pve way harder? Splinter weapon went from 1 attack to 5 and it hurts)

Priest Of Sin · Mar 09, 2007, 04:13 PM // 16:13

The paragon hero runs this VERY nicely. I ran a standard Triple Chop+Cyclone Axe build with Watch Yourself and Shield's Up, and we decimated mobs. They just can't handle massive armor+constant burning and AoE axe attacks.

But I had to equip my para hero with a zealous axe, even runed+attuned, he didn't QUITE have enough energy to keep it up for long. But that is really the only weakness to it (besides the standard anti-melee), and it complemented my Searing Flames hero VERY nicely.

A++

Darkpower Alchemist · Mar 17, 2007, 07:28 AM // 07:28

The nay-sayers aside, the build on Morgahn is solid, but better on a human who knows how to run it.

The Paragon, as I said before, isn't a warrior,and should not be considered to be its equal in any augmented circumstances.[skill=card]"They're on Fire!"[/skill] or [skill=card]"Watch Yourself!"[/skill] included, a warrior is capable of partially running this build effectively, or a hybrid build that does a similar effect.

Yet,the paragon does,however,accomplish its objective in this build to perfection.

It's good at what it does, but not a warrior replacement.

Katari · Mar 17, 2007, 05:25 PM // 17:25

A paragon is a ranged warrior. It has damage on par with a sword warrior, but at a range. Blazing Finale is target ally not target self. "They're On Fire!" is earshot range. Therefore they is no advantage to using a lower weapon mastery, since you gain no advantage by doing so.

There are other effective hero builds that don't involve gimping damage output, and that's only needed if you dislike manualy dirrecting Blazing Finale.

Of course the build proabably does acomplish its objective, however, you need to ask, "is that worth it?" If other builds can provide similar defense with a higher damage output, which one do you take? Not all builds are equal, and no matter how much "skill" someone has, how effective they are has something to do with how good their build is compaired to other builds.

Darkpower Alchemist · Mar 18, 2007, 04:55 AM // 04:55

Actually,Blazing Finale works on my Paragon all the time. I use it on myself,and it always works. Also,12 in axe mastery can kill just fine,imo.

You're dismissing the fact that the build works well, and that is the bottom line.It works.

Katari · Mar 18, 2007, 08:01 AM // 08:01

Axe at 12 will deal less damage than spear at 14+ Axe attacks at 12 will do less damage than spear attacks at 14+ Blazing works just as well on other players.

I could get through all of PvE with the following team build:
2x Monks, with P&H, who use breeze for primary healing
3x Flarespam eles
3x Mending wammos with 9 weapon mastery

It would "work" but see, the key issue is, does it "work" or could simple tweaks make the build more effective? Because "work" is a very very vague term, I could post all sorts of builds that "work" in PvE, but nobody cares, the ones that are the most effective are the ones people care about.

ss1986v2 · Mar 18, 2007, 09:50 AM // 09:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katari

Axe at 12 will deal less damage than spear at 14+ Axe attacks at 12 will do less damage than spear attacks at 14+

everything else i agree with, but i might argue a bit with this point. while a 14+ spear will deal more single target dmg than a 12 axe by far, the use of triple chop and cyclone axe add AoE dmg the a spear cant achieve. ill have to test it out later, but id think that if i was hitting just 2 enemies with those attacks, you would be boosting your dmg a bit. factoring in the a lucky triple chop or two, and i would think that over the long run, the dmg difference could be a bit negated. add to that the added adrenaline gain, and it starts to look even better.

if someone else wants to crunch the math (im burnt out, ill try tomorrow), but id like to see how the AoE dmg matches up with the higher single target dmg. still, i do run my para with a spear, but id like to see how the dmg and adren gain match up.

Morag D · Mar 21, 2007, 03:54 PM // 15:54

@ zinger

haven't had time to test it, but i think it sounds nice! Love to take some responsibility off the heavy-burdened shoulders of hard-working warriors...

no srsly, I don't think a paragon is off soooo much worse in close combat concerning defense than a warrior with riposte/deadly riposte... you can't keep that up all the time, either. and with 80 armor + 10 from zenturio + shield.... that's not that much difference, I think.

i'll test it for sure