Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

I've never found WoC useful on a monk. Monks are limited by energy way more than cast time or recharge, as opposed to mind blasters and most other offensive casters with GoLE.

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

I agree with about everything you said except Weapon of Quickening. This skill isn't close to being bad at all. It's a VERY good elite. It has 1 big weakness and it's the fact that Communing as a whole is garbage. The only other remotely interesting skills are Brutal Weapon, but it doesn't work with Aegis chain which is usually better to have than Brutal, and Vital Weapon which sadly you usually want to cast on the same targets you'd WoQ on so there isn't much point having both. Out of that maybe Pain... The defensive spirits are just useful if you're either a N/Rt or want to go with 14 Spawning which leaves you as a spirit spammer that won't have the energy to use WoQ anyway.

So basically you have to sacrifice some attribute points only for that, and usually a fair amount, which is why you don't really see it often. But the effect is in fact very very powerful and can't actually be replaced by anything else in the game unless your team can work under QZ. Being able to give OTHERS 33% faster recharge on spells is overall really powerful, especially because of the rounding. Basically it's:

2s recharge -> 1s recharge
4s recharge -> 3s recharge
5s recharge -> 3s recharge
7s recharge -> 5s recharge
8s recharge -> 5s recharge

after that it pretty much doesn't round in any way that matter. But 2s to 1s recharge, 5s to 3s and 8s to 5s can sometimes seriously buff some builds. Mind Blasters are especially powerful with WoQ as they get 1s recharge Mind Blast (which can allow greater than EProd energy gain when spammed) and can usually pack powerful AOEs that get a very good drop in recharge. Try a Mind Blaster with Mind Blast, Searing Heat, Teinai's Heat, Mark of Rodgort, Eruption, Deep Freeze and Fire Attune (attrib for Eruption and Deep Freeze don't really matter though usually i raise both to 9 so i can have 75 base AL with Prismatic) and then put WoQ on his back. There is such massive AOE raining on the other team, you can nearly keep Deep Freeze going all the time and you can blind a pack of melee quite often. Without WoQ, the recharge doesn't make the build nearly as efficient. Channeling Rt with WoQ on their back can make for very scary single target nukers too.

WoQ is a really interesting elite, what's holding it back is mostly being in Communing. Imo it's the only elite in the game atm that can make offensive casters viable as pressure char, because the massive drop in recharge of their spells which is often 40-50% at low recharge can make for very interesting builds. It's also quite versatile as you can use it on any caster, so say you're under pressure you can keep it on your LoD Monk so that he can LoD every 3s instead of every 5s, or against a hex heavy team you can use it on your Divert so that he can Divert every 3s (as energy allows ofc).

Originally Posted by Spura

Famine could add extra umph to Fear Me builds.

Originally Posted by Soulsmasher

For the life of me I cant find a build that would use Flourish, and farther back I saw Dwarven Battle Stance being useless?...!!! Everybody just once should play a Dwarven Hammer and go "play" with an elementalist and watch them struggle to get a spell off.

And Psychic Distraction useless? No, just no, it is one of the most annoying interrupts in the game, just think an unconditional interrupt at a large range cast instantly and then disables interrupted skill for a few seconds longer.

Originally Posted by Soulsmasher

For the life of me I cant find a build that would use Flourish

Originally Posted by Skuld

moebius strike > gimp critless 12 dm bar

Originally Posted by Onarik Amrak

Dragon Slash useless? pffft.