Curse

Urcscumug · Apr 19, 2011, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Even with aftercast Flare still does more damage than Immolate. If Immolate had other benefits ok, but it doesn't. Why wouldn't you want more DPS?

Granted, in an ordinary build I'd take Immolate too, because in the heat of a battle with multiple opponents I prefer fire-and-forget spells, not spells I gotta mash once a second. But this is a gimmick situation.

Anyway, I tried a simple Earth build and it's possible to win the tournament with quite ordinar skills and a mediocre build.

I used dual attunement and Aura of Restoration for energy and HP, Armor of Earth and Sliver Armor for protection, Stone Daggers, Stoning and Ebon Hawk for damage. You can also try Ward of Stability instead of Sliver, although the opponents who do KD are quite few.

Won't work against opponents with excellent self-heal/prot, who use your damage against you (eg. Backfire), or who use more degen than you can heal with Aura, but that's a small part of them. Just gotta keep up your enchantments and wards and spam damage.

Mike Jack · Apr 20, 2011, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Time spent spamming flare is time spent not casting something better.

Urcscumug · Apr 20, 2011, 11:13 AM // 11:13

Come, now. And time spent eating soup is time spent not drinking tea. Thank you, I'll be here all week.

We were talking about Flare vs Immolate, not Flare vs everything else.

There's better skills than Flare out there. Immolate, for this particular solo quest, ain't one of them. It has lower DPS, wastes 2 out of the 5 seconds it takes to recharge, has no other useful side effects, and the "fire-and-forget" advantage over a spam skill doesn't apply in a gimmick solo quest.

About the only good thing Immolate has going over Flare is the fact it applies directly ie. is not a projectile, which can miss if the opponent moves. If the opponents were kiting like the Master of Healing does it would be a good trade-off. But they don't.

In other news, some more data about my mediocre build I described above. Here's how it did (haven't tested it against all possible opponents, obviously).

It failed against:
* Various, particularly Bison, when I neglected to upkeep my enchantments properly.
* Alesia (couldn't outdamage her heals, neither she mine, I suspect mostly because of Healing Hands).
* Kahmu (by a close margin; his self-heal and damage output turned out better than mine).
* Norgu (classical mistake, turned my own damage against me, before I noticed it was too late).
* any degeneration if sufficiently powerful to outdo self heals from Aura.

It defeated: Cynn, Eve, Ghostly Hero, Kisai, Little Thom, Lo Sha, Bison, Nika, Orion, Panaku, Talon Silverwing, Vekk, Xandra, Zehtuka, Zho. Generally, tiers 1-3 should be no problem. Tier 4-5 is more troublesome (well, some of them). Tier 6 ie. Bison is not a problem if you maintain enchantments and spam damage. Haven't met Palawa.

Jeydra · May 02, 2011, 11:38 AM // 11:38

Because in addition to Immolate, you can cast something else, e.g. in the time it takes to cast 3 Flares (1.75 * 3 = 5.25s) you could cast Immolate + Rodgort's Invocation (1.75s + 2.75s = 4.5s), which will be more damage than 3 Flares. Builds with Immolate will in general deal more DPS than builds with Flare, although in this particular case I don't see why you'd run Fire instead of Air. Or Earth instead of Air, for that matter. The build I posted earlier in the thread will kill all the people you mentioned ...

Urcscumug · May 16, 2011, 11:36 AM // 11:36

Ah, but, you see, Piippo's bar only had one Fire skill.

The rest were EotN PvE skills. So my point was, if you only take one Fire skill, I think you can do better than Immolate.

We got sidetracked arguing about Flare, but Flare's not even the issue. It was just an example of a very common skill that, in these particular circumstances, would be better than Immolate. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

As for the Earth build, that's an unrelated matter. I was attempting to test whether you can beat 2 out of 3 tournaments with run-of-the-mill skills which you can obtain immediately after you get access to a port town. And it turns out you can. Of course, given your choice of better skills, there's far better bars possible.

Xenomortis · May 16, 2011, 11:50 AM // 11:50

Mind Blast, EVAS and EVSS have cast times and hence conflict with Flare Spam, but hardly conflict with Immolate.
I don't really see why the bar has GoLE though, or EVSS.