Curse

Stormlord Alex · Feb 29, 2008, 10:03 PM // 22:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rash

Look, I am probably a noob considering the total amount of time I played this game compared to you. But there is something I don't quite understand. Is Deep Wound that precious?

PvE mobs don't heal that well (specially if you go for their monks first) and on PvP games Monks can usually handle the 20% HP off. Now, I know Deep Wound also causes less benefit from healing but I think this is so small that you can't really persieve it. Honestly, I have never died because of DW and I don't consider myself a pro player. Why do you guys like it so much, if not for triggering other skills conditions that require Deep Wound?

Deep wound you throw on spikes when you're killing people. 20% hp is huge, on a PvP char that's 100 health off, and doing essentially another 100 damage in a spike will get kills, whereas that spike without DW wouldn't. The healing reduction on it is cute, but the 100 health loss is where it's at.

For PvE, skills that DW might as well say "you deal +100 damage" - essentially you do, given the speed you cleave through mobs.

Rash · Feb 29, 2008, 10:12 PM // 22:12

Thank you, Alex, for your explanation.

blue.rellik · Mar 01, 2008, 02:31 AM // 02:31

I would like to point out something. Deep wound can be an amazing condition when you use it right and you're packing a team with skills that can tear through mobs since it makes killing things a lot easier.

On the other hand it can be completely useless if you are a bad player. Throwing random deep wounds on enemies is only good if you're a good player, if you're not then it's completely useless since you wouldn't have killed the enemy in time and you just wasted your adrenaline. Deep wound won't make you a better player, good skillbars and experience will make you a good player

zling · Mar 01, 2008, 02:54 AM // 02:54

for the op, the main question is PvE or PvP.
for PvE the basic template for any Warrior is:
Elite attack skill
Attack skill
Attack skill/utility
Attack skill/utility
IAS
utility
utility
res

the most effective Axe bar for PvE is the Triple Chop bar. there are many variaties of it, all of them consist of:
Triple Chop
Cyclone Axe
Whirlind Attack
the rest is up to you, according to the template...

for PvP its even easier:
Eviscerate
Executioner's Strike
Agonizing/Distrupting Chop/Bull's Strike
Frenzy
Rush/other(depends on secondary)
Utility(Bull's Strike if you dont have it on your bar yet)
Utility(depends on secondary, most popular choices are: Shock, Rending Touch and Mending Touch)
Res Sig

as for the deep wound, in PvP its a must have as it basically gives you +100 to whatever damage you dealt with your attack. it also forces immidiate condition removal on your target. the main advantage is that its very flexible as it can be used both as pressure or spike...
in PvE however it's really a prefference. usually you'll have plenty of nukers/other AoE sources so mobs will die fast anyway, in which case deep wound isnt really neccessary... but its still nice if you bring it along. no right or wrong here...

blue.rellik · Mar 01, 2008, 03:15 AM // 03:15

I would like to point out that Triple Chop can possible be the most effective axe bar. It is not in concrete

Bobby2 · Mar 01, 2008, 08:07 AM // 08:07

Isn't Cleave, complemented by Whirldwind and Cyclone, a better PvE Elite than Triple Chop (no Executioner needed, add in Dismember for DW)?

**Marty Silverblade** · Mar 01, 2008, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Isn't Cleave, complemented by Whirldwind and Cyclone, a better PvE Elite than Triple Chop (no Executioner needed, add in Dismember for DW)?

Like all Triple Chop effectiveness debates, it all comes down to how many foes you can hit in each fight. Cleave will charge in 4 hits (lets say 4 seconds, assuming IAS), Triple Chop is used every 10 seconds. Hence, Cleave can be used 5 times in 20 seconds, but Triple Chop only twice. If you're consistently hitting alot of enemies, then Triple Chop makes up for it's slow recharge, otherwise you have a 10 second recharge Power Attack. Granted, Triple Chop has better +damage, it's only 9 points or so, and that may make a difference, but really, how many foes you hit makes more of a difference.

Bobby2 · Mar 01, 2008, 09:39 AM // 09:39

Ah. Let's not turn this into such a debate then. Rephrase!

I prefer Cleave over Triple Chop because it's always useful (and I think I got AoE covered between Whirlwind and Cyclone

)

Grammar · Mar 03, 2008, 12:57 AM // 00:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormlord Alex

For PvE, skills that DW might as well say "you deal +100 damage"

Yup, which is why Dismember is so ridiculously good in PvE with an adrenaline cost of only 5.

Dismember is the second best skill you can add to your axe bar for increasing dps in PvE, the best being Flail, of course.

blue.rellik · Mar 03, 2008, 03:26 AM // 03:26

Dismember is horridly overrated

Crom The Pale · Mar 03, 2008, 04:50 AM // 04:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by blue.rellik

Dismember is horridly overrated

Are you saying the skill is overrated or the Deep Wound condition is?

Any single target Axe build should have a skill that can deliver Deep wound, though I will admit its not as important in PvE as it is in PvP.

Bobby2 · Mar 03, 2008, 09:40 AM // 09:40

Might as well post mine too!

Flail - My axe is 15^Stance. Nuff said.

Cyclone
Whirlwind - These two make up my AoE 'spike'
Dismember
Cleave {E} - Cleave over Triple Chop because its better overall usefulness, minor spike
FGJ!
HealSig
Sunspear Rez Sig - obvious functions... either of these three may be replaced by SY! once my War hits lv20, any suggestions?

Axe should be at 12+1+1, of course, though I'm not sure yet of the Strength - Tactics split yet.

Thanks in advance!

blue.rellik · Mar 03, 2008, 10:08 AM // 10:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

Are you saying the skill is overrated or the Deep Wound condition is?

Any single target Axe build should have a skill that can deliver Deep wound, though I will admit its not as important in PvE as it is in PvP.

Dismember and a lesser extent, Deep Wound.

Bobby2 · Mar 03, 2008, 10:26 AM // 10:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by blue.rellik

Dismember and a lesser extent, Deep Wound.

Have you read the top post on this page at all? I haven't seen an explanation to back this crap up yet...

blue.rellik · Mar 03, 2008, 12:30 PM // 12:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Have you read the top post on this page at all? I haven't seen an explanation to back this crap up yet...

Okay, let me explain why I said what I said.

Conditions can be broken down is multiple ways though for my arguement, I'll be talking about ones that hampers them and those that hurts them.

Daze, blind, weakness and too a lesser extent cripple all hampers enemies in the sense that it stops them from effectively killing you. Daze wrecks casters, blind wrecks weapon users, weakness affects both but mainly weapon users and cripple affects melee enemies the most. These conditions mostly have a direct affect on the battle, that margonite sorcerer is invoking lightning a lot slower, that shiro'ken warrior is wailing on Mhenlo to no avail, it misses most of the time and those that do get through are but slaps compared to a normal attack. All enemies moving a lot slower means you can kite far easier and your front-liners can crit consistently and easily as they frenzy at the limping grawl ugdolyte.

The other conditions are conditions that have no noticiable affect, in essence you probably won't even notice them when you're fighting unless you look at their health bars or notice the visual affects around them. Bleeding/poison/disease/burning are all just variations of DPS while deep wound and cracked armour are both variations of making killing a target that much easier.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Generally speaking, hampering conditions won't directly making killing easier while the second group won't directly make surviving much easier.

Another way of looking at this is who these conditions affects and how much they affect. The hampering conditions typically shine brightly when they work but are completely useless in other situations, daze is only good on spell-users while blind is only good on weapon users, they're completely useless against the other, weakness works on everyone but is best against weapon users and even then it doesn't work against +damage sources. Cripple won't really work unless you're fighting kiters.
The other conditions have the benefit of being 'useful' on who you target but are balanced out with a weaker effect. The degen conditions work on nearly everything but are really just weaker forms of dps, cracked armour is best against high level enemies and front-liners and useless against squishes. Deep wound is on the complete other end of the spectrum from daze and blind, it can affect just about everything but has the disadvantage of absoutley no immediate battle-field presense.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I can go to the next part. Deep wound reduces life by 20%, up to 100 while reducing healing. Along with cracked armour (which I personally prefer to deep wound but that's irrelevant right now), it makes killing a target (notice how it's singular, more on that later) much easier, less life means it dies quicker and it gets healed less. Both are boons to dropping a target.

Now here are something to consider; deep wound can never kill a target, only drop it to 1 life at best (though then it wouldn't matter) and thus most skills that cause deep wound become useless unless they have a additional affect (gash and eviscerate has +damage, "Finish him!" gives cracked armour and damage etc etc). Of course you can simply say 'I kill mobs too fast' and that is most certainly a valid arguement, most deep wound sources last a decent amount of time, there should be more than enough time to finish off a foe (unless it's a super-boss like Rotscale or Shiro) and thus the source of deep wound is not wasted.

This brings me to my next point, deep wound does not make you a better player. Putting it on your bar will not make your bar good nor make you able to do non ursan/OB Flesh DoA HM runs. For you to take the most advantage out of it, it requires that your skillbar and to a lesser extent, your party work well. If you're a bad player with bad skills (flare spammers, prot-less monks, rangers with just attack skills etc etc) then the deep wound most likely would be wasted, your bad skills simply won't kill fast enough.
If you're a good player on the other hand then it helps you, a monster that could have taken 11 seconds to kill suddenly took 8 seconds to kill and so on. However this brings me to my next point, if your party was already able to relatively stomp through a bunch of monsters then the deep wound could have probably shaved only a few seconds, it's essientially wasted.

In the typically rare situations when your party and the group of enemy is thinned down to a few each side, if/when that happens thenn what you should do depends on the situation. If it's a few warriors wailing on your monks with a sole ranger trying to kill them then a deep wound typically wouldn't help much since your monk will most likely die before the warriors do. On the other hand if it was your warrior and monk against a mesmer then a deep wound would certainly be appreciated.

In the first situation, you would most certainly want a hampering condition like blind and maybe weakness/cripple, a '+100 damage' would have been useless.

This brings me onto my next part, dismember. My personal opinion is that dismember is a completely terrible skill (I also think Wounding Strike is pretty bad as well but that's for another time). Some are in love with it and think the buff to 5 adrenaline make it godly but I think otherwise. As mentioned earlier, spamming dismember is near pointless since all it does is refresh the deep wound (not needed 75% of the time), lower your adrenaline pool and give your normal auto-attack a strength bonus. It essientially became a dead skill.

Of course you could equally claim that you kill things so fast that it doesn't matter and that is valid but that has some downfalls. As I mentioned before, deep wound is best put on one target, dropping it then repeating on another target. Putting deep wound on all your enemies will have no immediate effect on the battle, your enemies will hit just as hard and cast just as quick and it'll be wasted if you can't follow through with the damage. If you want to spam deep wound without being completely pointless then you require the AoE firepower to drop everything quickly and the parties that focus on AoE the most are ones mainly comprising of eles and it's obvious that relying on eles killing things is highly inefficient, the deep wound probably just made killing things as quick as using paragons and warriors.

Well that's it basically, I have some more thoughts on the subject but these are my main ones. Hopefully someone was able to read through all that.

Bobby2 · Mar 03, 2008, 04:04 PM // 16:04

I actually did.

DW, as 100 pts of 'free damage' is always useful IMO. You mentioned a distinction of conditions; 'hampering' ones and disguised DPS.

Going along with that, I'd say DW is disguised DPS. When it comes to usefulness, I have but one simple argument: dead targets don't fight back at all. Might sound oversimplified, but I especially like the '-20% healing' part of it.

As a condition, DW has several up- and downsides. Yes, it can be removed, but on the other hand it acts as a cover for what some would consider more important conditions.

All in all, I've come to consider DW mandatory anytime I make a build that attempts to kill. It doesn't make me a good player... but it certainly makes for better builds. With respect.

Quote:

This brings me onto my next part, dismember. My personal opinion is that dismember is a completely terrible skill (I also think Wounding Strike is pretty bad as well but that's for another time). Some are in love with it and think the buff to 5 adrenaline make it godly but I think otherwise. As mentioned earlier, spamming dismember is near pointless since all it does is refresh the deep wound (not needed 75% of the time), lower your adrenaline pool and give your normal auto-attack a strength bonus. It essientially became a dead skill.

Spamming DW is stupid. Suddenly piling on immense pressure at a single target, then finishing him off is not stupid. A bar has 8 slots.

(read: Dismember-Cleave-hit-Cleave-hit-Cleave...)

EDIT: no-one has commented on my build yet

Crom The Pale · Mar 04, 2008, 12:38 AM // 00:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Might as well post mine too!

Flail - My axe is 15^Stance. Nuff said.

Cyclone
Whirlwind - These two make up my AoE 'spike'
Dismember
Cleave {E} - Cleave over Triple Chop because its better overall usefulness, minor spike
FGJ!
HealSig
Sunspear Rez Sig - obvious functions... either of these three may be replaced by SY! once my War hits lv20, any suggestions?

Axe should be at 12+1+1, of course, though I'm not sure yet of the Strength - Tactics split yet.

Thanks in advance!

The build is ok, but does have a problem as I see it. Your spliting your focus. 2 AoE attacks and 2 single target attacks. If your going for AoE dmg, go all the way! Use Triple chop and maybe /rit for splinter weapon. If you wish to have single target killing power then swap Cyclone for Exicutioners giving you a real spike, Dismeber + cleave + exicutioners. You could keep whirlwind for the odd time you want to deal aoe dmg and instantly recharge your adren.

As for the argument vs Deep Wound....

I do agree that Blind and Dazed are the two strongest of conditions, or at least the most annoying.

The instant 100dmg it affords + 20% reduced healing does pay off fast. Think of it this way, if your foe is bleeding how long does it take to lose 100hp? Or how about a war using Healing Signet and suffering the -40armor penalty and getting 20% less hp back from it? It really does add up to a very good means of killing a foe quickly.

Bobby2 · Mar 04, 2008, 02:40 PM // 14:40

I tried Triple Chop... must get to harder areas for it to become useful:

cuz right now Triple Chop - Whirlwind Attack causes mobs to scatter. NOT COOL

Savio · Mar 04, 2008, 03:31 PM // 15:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by blue.rellik

For you to take the most advantage out of it, it requires that your skillbar and to a lesser extent, your party work well.

Warriors, or any good build in general, require that your party work well.

Quote:

As I mentioned before, deep wound is best put on one target, dropping it then repeating on another target.

That's the most efficient way to play; you want to knock out the most problematic enemies as soon as you can. After that you can wipe out the rest of the monsters at your leisure.

Besides, it's not like warriors have a wide range of conditions they can inflict that would be more useful than DW.

h9dlb · Mar 04, 2008, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Go warrior / rit

My build is

+14 axe, +9 strength, +10 channeling

Triple Chop (+38 damage to adjacent foes)
executioner's strike (+38 damage)
Whirlwind Attack (+19 damage to adjacent foes)
counter attack (+23 damage, gives + 4 energy)
light of deldrimor (+64 holy damage to foes in area)
endure pain (+216 health for 14 seconds)
wielders strike (+35 lightening damge + additional 30 lightening damage when under a weapon spell)
splinter weapon (weapon spell next 4 attacks do 35 damage to 3 adjacent foes)

I use these skills with a +30hp axe of fortitude inscribed with "I have the power" (+5 energy)

Please feel free to critique the above build - I would welcome suggestions.