Curse

reaper with no name · Nov 30, 2009, 10:17 PM // 22:17

This idea has been gestating in my head for a little while, and today I finally sat down and started doing the math.

The idea is this:

Vow of Strength
Symbolic Strike
For Great Justice
Some signets
And maybe AoHM

With FGJ, you should be able to spam SS every attack so long as you continuously hit 2 or more foes. And each time you'll do devasting damage.

For example, at 13 earth prayers and 13 scythe mastery, without AoHM, you'll deal 150 damage. And you're doing it to each foe you hit (not just the primary target). Most scythe builds owe a lot of their damage output to Asuran Scan, and as a result the damage against the secondary targets is not that impressive relative to the damage to the primary target. Not so in this case.

And if you use AoHM, with the same attributes, you would get 180 damage (would be more, but that's one less signet on the bar).

Against 100 AL targets, the results are 118 and 124, respectively. And again, only 13 scythe mastery and 13 earth prayers.

the primary weakness of the bar is the lack of IAS. However, that can be remedied with a red rock candy. Or, if necessary, you could slap an IAS on there at the cost of a signet. The damage is still very high.

Of course, with all the different attribute combinations and the calculations involved, there's no way I'd be able to list all the possible damage outputs of this particular build here (especially when you consider W/Ds, who can also use the build and have 3 attributes involved instead of 2). I did make an excel sheet that calculates them all, though, so I might post that later. Right now I need a break from all the math I just put myself through. @_@

zelgadissan · Nov 30, 2009, 10:52 PM // 22:52

Here's the biggest problem I see - there are three Dervish signets (Mystic Speed, Pious Light, Pious Restraint), all of which are pretty shit in PvE and one of which ruins VoS. There are four Warrior signets (Dolyak, Healing, Strength, Stamina), three of which are tied to Strength and all are pretty shit in PvE. Then there's the Res Signet, Sunspear Res Signet, Cap Sig, Lightbringer Sig, Sig of Infection (ruins VoS), Tryptophan Sig.

You're filling out your bar with completely useless skills - the only two of those I would ever want to bring for use would be one of the resurrections and Tryptophan, but I wouldn't want Tryptophan on a frontliner. I also wouldn't want to have to autoattack forever just to get your attack skill off when FGJ is down for over half of its recharge.

I'm sure you hit for hellacious damage whenever you do use SS, but convincing me it's worth it will be hard - particularly when you start taking out all the conditions from your team setup.

reaper with no name · Dec 01, 2009, 03:11 AM // 03:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelgadissan

Here's the biggest problem I see - there are three Dervish signets (Mystic Speed, Pious Light, Pious Restraint), all of which are pretty shit in PvE and one of which ruins VoS. There are four Warrior signets (Dolyak, Healing, Strength, Stamina), three of which are tied to Strength and all are pretty shit in PvE. Then there's the Res Signet, Sunspear Res Signet, Cap Sig, Lightbringer Sig, Sig of Infection (ruins VoS), Tryptophan Sig.

You're filling out your bar with completely useless skills - the only two of those I would ever want to bring for use would be one of the resurrections and Tryptophan, but I wouldn't want Tryptophan on a frontliner. I also wouldn't want to have to autoattack forever just to get your attack skill off when FGJ is down for over half of its recharge.

To be fair, it's not about the amount of skills you use to get a result, but how good the result is. If you have two builds that do the same thing, and one has fewer useful skills on the bar but still gets better numbers than the other, that doesn't change the fact that it's better.

Also, this build is supposed to shine when used to hit two or more foes. And FGJ lasts 2/3 of it's recharge, not 1/2.

Quote:

I'm sure you hit for hellacious damage whenever you do use SS, but convincing me it's worth it will be hard - particularly when you start taking out all the conditions from your team setup.

Fair enough. But keep in mind, the damage here for single targets almost meets what a zealous vow dervish can do, and for AoE targets it vastly exceeds it, as well as any other form of melee AoE short of HB+Whirlwind Attack+MoP. And I don't even know what it could do if you started putting buffs on it.

The downtime of FGJ, reliance on always hitting 2 or more targets, and the inability to use conditions are all significant drawbacks. But there's no denying that the damage is significant. Whether it's worth it or not...Well, that's up to you to decide.

Personally, I don't think I'll be using this build much, because I don't have a lot of rock candy and I don't like Drunken Master. But it's certainly very powerful. Though I am tempted to bring a version of it to RA and see what happens.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here's that excel sheet I promised:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A22L4E36

Some interesting trends I noticed:
The dervish is consistently better than the warrior at using this build if a consumable IAS is assumed. Otherwise, the warrior immediately becomes better because a dervish would have to spec to get a decent IAS. Well, unless you use Drunken Master.

Also, for warriors, it appears that 12 SM, 12 EP, and 3+2 Str is consistently better than other combinations (assuming no major or superior runes are involved; I didn't check that out).

Expherious · Dec 02, 2009, 04:17 AM // 04:17

I ran something similar in PvP I was hitting 300's and it was rather entertaining.

reaper with no name · Dec 04, 2009, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Yeah. I ended up giving in and bringing a variant of it into RA, and it's effectiveness ranged from low to very high depending on the team I was with and the team I was facing. Getting 100+ damage every 2nd attack is very nice.