Curse

Klance · Dec 27, 2010, 12:22 PM // 12:22

How so, assuming you used 5 of those attack skills and flourish that's 6 slots gone already.

Assuming you want to MAX your damage, then the remaining two slots must be split between an IAS (or candy/cons, but noone would seriously use candy in random PvE), Asuran Scan, or AoHM.

Furthermore if you do choose to max your damage (going with asuran scan, AoHM and cons/candy for IAS), then necessarily you must drop SY rendering you strictly worse than a sin wielding a scythe or a ZV dervish.

I also believe that simply spamming MORE attacks in a shorter period of time via mystic sweep, eremite's attack and protector's strike would do more total damage than using the attack skills you listed solely on the basis of the effects of buffing via SoH, AoHM and asuran scan. I'll do the numbers later.

Hugh Manatee · Dec 27, 2010, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Not sure why we're talking scythes in a hammer topic... But there is an interesting trick you can do with flourish with a hammer, take Club of a Thousand Bears, Crushing Blow, Belly Smash and another hammer KD, flourish and do it again every 8 seconds. Thats about it for flourish's bag of tricks. If you're skills recharge in about 6 seconds or less, or are adrenal based or you have other energy based skills, or cost 10e or more flourish isn't that great.

WE is better and more flexible then flourish, Flourish only boosts your damage every 8 seconds, you can get really good numbers twice in a row, but then you're lamed for awhile. It's also pointless compared to WE if your skills recharge fast like power attack does. It's energy gain just barely powers itself and the attack skills it recharged, not much room for extras. WE can constantly pump energy for faster recharging skills that do as much damage as any longer recharging skills, and fuel extraneous skills like scan, AoHM ect. in between attacks. Also with WE you can use stuff like body blow or whirling attack and still get a benefit(try body blow with a scythe, it's sick...).

What these guys are saying is with Power attack>Mystic>eremites(or prot strike) by the time you've gone through the chain once, power attack is just lighting up again, and by the time power attack connects again(assuming anything is left alive at this point) the other 2 are ready to go. So thats 3 +30ish damage skills in a row that will be recharged by the time you need the next one, flourish can't keep up with that rate of attack since it takes 8 seconds to recharge and 1 sec to cast and ideally you want to hit it when as many of your attack skills are recharging as possible.

You only need those 3 to kill most stuff in pve, not 5(maybe throw in wild blow if you're fighting something that warrants stance removal but even then you rarely need to spam it, and if you did, like vs shiro even flourish wouldn't be able to spam it fast enough), and if you did try and use flourish with the 5 skills listed half of them would be recharged before you get to the end of the chain to flourish since they have recharges in the neighborhood of 3-4 seconds.

Now all that said, I encourage yall to try out auspicious blow. It returns 7-8 energy about every 3 swings, you can have some great fun with it and e-smash or magehunter strike.