Curse

Cathode_Reborn · Aug 21, 2007, 11:38 PM // 23:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moloch Vein

If the monsters "spread out" enough to lose effect while you are casting an area-wide hex spell you aren't casting it correctly.

If you played some HM, you wouldn't be saying that. It may be aoe, but it's only in an Adjacent range which is very small.

In normal mode before the nerf, enemies were too weak to make Reckless Haste worth casting because of it's 25 sec recharge. An ele can just nuke them dead in about 10 seconds making it a waste of a skill slot.

In hard mode, enemies have a permanant 33-50% speed buff so as soon as you aggro them, all the melee spreads out wildly as they attack your casters making it hard to hit them with an aoe spell untill they all settle on 1 target. Even before aggro, enemies arn't always bunched up. The main reason Searing Flames ele's are powerful is because SF hits in a Nearby range, which is pretty large. Adjacent-wide spells are often likely to hit only one target.

Str0b0 · Aug 22, 2007, 12:57 AM // 00:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moloch Vein

When the skill was 10e for 10 seconds, I thought "fine, I can live with that." Now it costs more than 1e per second to maintain, which is truly ridiculous, given that it's also been weakened. Let me remind you, this skill used to be 10e for 21 seconds. Now it's 15e for 12 and the miss chance is 2% lower in all PvE Curses builds. At the same time Soul Reaping has been severely weakened. It's been nerfed silly.

If the monsters "spread out" enough to lose effect while you are casting an area-wide hex spell you aren't casting it correctly.

I have switched Reckless for Enfeebling Blood in all builds now and I'm much happier.

Reckless is still viable. The 2% miss rate reduction is so negligible I'm suprised you even bothered to bring it up. I mean come on. SR is still very viable in PvE. Instead of tab, mash, tab, mash mentality which a lot of the weaker echo SS necro's were used to you now have to actually stagger your casts to make sure you have as many SR triggering deaths as humanly possible. In that vein proper introduction of Reckless haste in the right position in a mob of enemies can mean the difference between a really impressive mass kill that nets you almost no energy return and a masterful cascade of death that nets you a much more significant return on energy invested. I thought my SS was going to be screwed when they first started making the changes but then I figured out that with a little more thought and a little less stubborn insistence on playing it the way I had always played it that I adapted quite easily. My SS necro is still far and away a better and more effective damage dealer than 90% of ele nukers in this game based simply on proper curse distribution.

Moloch Vein · Aug 22, 2007, 07:07 AM // 07:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cathode_Reborn

If you played some HM, you wouldn't be saying that. It may be aoe, but it's only in an Adjacent range which is very small.

In normal mode before the nerf, enemies were too weak to make Reckless Haste worth casting because of it's 25 sec recharge. An ele can just nuke them dead in about 10 seconds making it a waste of a skill slot.

In hard mode, enemies have a permanant 33-50% speed buff so as soon as you aggro them, all the melee spreads out wildly as they attack your casters making it hard to hit them with an aoe spell untill they all settle on 1 target. Even before aggro, enemies arn't always bunched up. The main reason Searing Flames ele's are powerful is because SF hits in a Nearby range, which is pretty large. Adjacent-wide spells are often likely to hit only one target.

I have completed over 100 Hard Mode Deep runs, and an unspecified number of Hard Mode DoA runs. This is exactly the kind of areas where Reckless Haste used to be, and maybe even is, beneficial, even more so in NM, precisely because foes die fast and are controlled to aggro specific points.

In areas where this is not the case, the energy returns are generally much smaller. In areas where you have no fixed strategy and are simply moving around improvising, this skill has taken a very serious hit. For the more "casual" gamer the skill is near unusable.

Also the idea that Reckless Haste wasn't worth using in NM is odd. The IAS of the monsters in Hard Mode is capped thus they will not actually attack any faster while under Reckless Haste, which makes the skill entirely defensive in HM. In NM it certainly does speed up kills.

As I mentioned I have replaced Reckless Haste with Enfeebling Blood for all my commonly used builds. Let's take a look at what Enfeebling Blood does compared to Reckless Haste in Hard Mode The Deep.

RH: Range adjacent, duration 12 seconds.
EB: Range nearby, duration 21 seconds.

RH: Cost 15e, casting time 1s, Recharge 12 seconds.
EB: Cost 10e(+sac), casting time 2s, Recharge 5 seconds.

RH: No increased attack speed, Miss chance is 50%.
EB: No increased attack speed, damage from attacks is reduced by 66%.

RH: Does not affect casters in any meaningful way.
EB: Returns -1 on all attributes.

Fine if you want to bring both, though I can't understand how you get the energy to hex a group of foes with both echoed SS and Reckless and on top of that add Enfeebling Blood. However for many builds this isn't an option.

The notion that "an ele can just nuke <enemies> dead in about 10 seconds making it a waste of a skill slot" is a gross exaggeration. Also, I am very aware that a single SS necromancer will beat out a single SF ele in almost any PvE setting; that's not really what's discussed here.

Cathode_Reborn · Aug 22, 2007, 09:02 AM // 09:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moloch Vein

The notion that "an ele can just nuke <enemies> dead in about 10 seconds making it a waste of a skill slot" is a gross exaggeration. Also, I am very aware that a single SS necromancer will beat out a single SF ele in almost any PvE setting; that's not really what's discussed here.

Maybe an overexaggeration in some areas, but not all. I didn't start using Reckless in NM till after the so called nerf. Before the change, there was plenty of times where right after I cast it, the 2 SF heroes along with the rest of the party's damage are already wiping that group of mobs and only about a few secs later they're nearly dead, then you're stuck with a 25 sec recharge. I prefer the new Reckless Haste since it can still be kept up but has a shorter recharge allowing you to switch targets easier. For HM, I always used Enfeebling and Reckless defensively.....very energy intensive, but Sig of Lost Souls and a 2nd offhand set helped tons.