Curse

neoflame · Nov 20, 2005, 05:43 PM // 17:43

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Originally Posted by White Designs

Expertise can make TF cheaper than Frenzy

No, it can't. Expertise reduces Frenzy's cost as well.

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Originally Posted by Morty

As far as 8dps being relevant... well, i'd say that a bow does about that much, at full marks.

Er.

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Shortbow hit's the target a little more than once every 2.65 seconds. Since I can't prove there's time in between attacks, however, I'll use that number.

Pretty sure it's 2.0 seconds.

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Max damage on a bow is 15-28. The average of that is 21.5. Let's say it's a couple points higher, due to critical hits, say 24.

Plus 20% customization bonus, plus 15% while health > 50% or something, +5 Vampiric, plus preparations...

Morty · Nov 20, 2005, 05:45 PM // 17:45

Who said anything about stacking? As far as I know, most monks dont use mend condition, they use ailment instead. As poison would be the only condition, I think that's very inefficient healing.

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Stacking conditions on them (especially weak conditions like poison) will only make the monk's heals more efficient.

That's not really true, it will make the healing from their condition removals more efficient, not their heal spells. As condition removal spells aren't really an efficient way to heal someone, I'm not worried.

Again, remember that we are'nt talking about multiple conditions.

Let's say:
I have no need for cripple
I use something other than blind to deal with warriors and rangers
I have no warriors that apply bleeding damage or deep wound
I have no fire eles
I have no reason to put weakness on anyone
Daze is unnecessary
and I have no necros spreading desease.

Now, just as a damage add to the ranger build, would monks be "happy" to waste 5 energy removing my poison? The most healing they could do is about 100 with whatever condition removal they use, and that's not really an efficient use of 5 energy, where healing is concerned. Of course, they could be using boon, but probably not.

Manfred · Nov 20, 2005, 06:05 PM // 18:05

Um, as a person who plays both prot and heal, let me let you in on a little secret: mend ailment is my last resort when you have a poisoner.
it's easy to heal through if you're a healer, and if i'm prot, i don't remove it so it can be reapplied, i cast aegis and guardian them up, THEN i remove it.
When you poison someone, i guardian and remove it, reapplication is thwarted 1/2 the time, and they get a nice 90 point heal+50% block rate for 6 seconds.

Morty · Nov 20, 2005, 07:04 PM // 19:04

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Originally Posted by neoflame

No, it can't. Expertise reduces Frenzy's cost as well.

Uh, no. That's completely wrong. Expertise only reduces ranger skills, so TF can get below the frenzy cost.

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Originally Posted by neoflame

Pretty sure it's 2.0 seconds.

That's the attack rate. I don't think it includes the flight time (.65 seconds)

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Originally Posted by neoflame

Plus 20% customization bonus, plus 15% while health > 50% or something, +5 Vampiric, plus preparations...

None of those are affected by the Marksmanship attribute, so they were irrelevant to my point. I was talking about the actual damage of the bow, which is governed by marksmanship. The rest is add-ons. If you want to make a more accurate comparison, you would count poison as added damage, and compare it to other components of your damage. One of those components is the base bow damage. Compared to other components... poison clearly does more than the +20% bonus, or the 15%, or vampiric. It also does about as much as kindle, probably more, because kindle get's reduced by armor.

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Originally Posted by Manfred

Um, as a person who plays both prot and heal, let me let you in on a little secret: mend ailment is my last resort when you have a poisoner. it's easy to heal through if you're a healer, and if i'm prot, i don't remove it so it can be reapplied, i cast aegis and guardian them up, THEN i remove it. When you poison someone, i guardian and remove it, reapplication is thwarted 1/2 the time, and they get a nice 90 point heal+50% block rate for 6 seconds.

Thank you, but...
Let's say you do that. Then what elite would be better than poison in that situation? Cripple would have the same problem as PA. Both quickshot and Punishing shot only do damage when they hit. So if I hit half the time with quickshot, I do half the damage.

So let's say I'm pluggin away with quickshot. On average, if the guy has 50% chance to block, then I have half the chance of hitting, so I do half as much of my potential damage. So I hit, then I dont hit, then I hit, then I dont hit, then I dont hit, then I hit, then I hit. And on and on and on.

Now, let's say I'm using poison arrow instead. I don't hit, I hit (HE BECOMES POISONED), I don't hit (BUT HE'S STILL POISONED), etc.

And whenever you remove it, I will probably get it back on within about 2 or 3 tries. which means that if you choose to waste your energy removing the poison, I still get to put it back on, just not as fast. Overall, however, I think during those times when you dont have the energy to remove the poison, or when you are healing someone else, the poison will do more than half of it's original damage, unlike quickshot or punishing shot.

Thus, while PA is hampered by that, it still comes out on top of other skills I might use instead.

Are there any ranger elites that would be better in this situation? I think I addressed the most popular ones.

rii · Nov 20, 2005, 08:25 PM // 20:25

It does affect frenzy. It affects a lot of warrior stuff, i.e. stances, shouts, attack skills, skills, and the like. At 14 expertise your frenzy costs 2 energy.

knives · Nov 20, 2005, 08:36 PM // 20:36

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Originally Posted by rii

It does affect frenzy. It affects a lot of warrior stuff, i.e. stances, shouts, attack skills, skills, and the like. At 14 expertise your frenzy costs 2 energy.

Quoted for truth. It also effects those mesmer stances like mantra of x.

Morty · Nov 20, 2005, 08:53 PM // 20:53

what the hell? Since when? That has definately changed since I looked at it. I just read the attribute description, how long has it been like this?

Age · Nov 20, 2005, 08:55 PM // 20:55

Yeah i wait to get this skill for my Ranger although when I play Monk or Warrior I really hate it.That is when I play in PvP in PvE it would be great skill to use.

rii · Nov 20, 2005, 09:37 PM // 21:37

Nope, its been like that for ages.... also affects necro skills, source of the lol-ishly good ca build: ranger toucher.

JR · Nov 20, 2005, 09:56 PM // 21:56

And has done since release, afaik. Which also resulted in the good old blackout ranger trend.

Poison Arrow is trash in PvP. If you want to spread poison, apply is a much better skill for it, and its not elite. There are FAR better elite skills that in you could take, be that your secondary or primary attribute.

As far as flag runners go:

Crippling shot + Apply Poion > Pin Down + Poison Arrow

neoflame · Nov 20, 2005, 10:57 PM // 22:57

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Originally Posted by Morty

Uh, no. That's completely wrong. Expertise only reduces ranger skills, so TF can get below the frenzy cost.

Please have a clue before you tell people they're "completely wrong".

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That's the attack rate. I don't think it includes the flight time (.65 seconds)

The attack cooldown doesn't care when the arrow hits; you will fire every 2 seconds by default with a shortbow, and therefore if the enemy doesn't move they will be struck every 2 seconds. Unless you're using Frenzy or TF. And you should be.

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None of those are affected by the Marksmanship attribute, so they were irrelevant to my point. I was talking about the actual damage of the bow, which is governed by marksmanship. The rest is add-ons. If you want to make a more accurate comparison, you would count poison as added damage, and compare it to other components of your damage. One of those components is the base bow damage. Compared to other components... poison clearly does more than the +20% bonus, or the 15%, or vampiric. It also does about as much as kindle, probably more, because kindle get's reduced by armor.

Then let's take Quickshot. Running QS will generally increase your overall attack rate by around 50%. This means it synergizes with any buffs you have (e.g. OoP, OoV, preparations, Vampiric.) Poison, in contrast, is 8 DPS irregardless of your other buffs.

Morty · Nov 20, 2005, 11:11 PM // 23:11

Seriously, I'm sure the ranger wasn't like that in beta. I haven't had any reason to look at it since. I never did understand the ranger touch build until now.

I've already discussed why I don't think quickshot is all that much better than poison arrow. Does anyone disagree with me on the points I made in that argument?

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The attack cooldown doesn't care when the arrow hits; you will fire every 2 seconds by default with a shortbow, and therefore if the enemy doesn't move they will be struck every 2 seconds. Unless you're using Frenzy or TF. And you should be.

I'll have to check it out, I always thought it looked like the character just stood there until the arrow hit. Even if that's correct, 8dps isnt nothing. It's not like that's the only damage I'd be doing.

Oh, and I tried it with frenzy. I think the double damage makes me too vulnerable to a warrior instaswitching and spiking me. Also, i had to give up the extra damage from conjure flame. Between those two things, I don't think frenzy outweighs TF.

entropy · Nov 21, 2005, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Why go after warriors. If you really need to go after them instead of kindle go R/Mo and use judges insight for the extra damage instead of kindle. Overall I believe its less damage but on high armor targets it equates to more. Quickshot is used because spike is the metagame. In PvP any good monk knows that spike is much much harder to protect against than degen.

Frenzy costs 2 energy at 13 expertise.
Tigers fury costs 5 energy at 13 expertise
frenzy is unnatributed
TFis based in Bm which makes it bad. They really need to move it into marksmanship.
Frenzy can be kept up
Tigers fury cannot
Frenzy you take double damage
Tigers fury locks all non-attack skills for 5 seconds

Frenzy wins in most of the situations so I would take it over TF. When using frenzy bring some other quick recharge stances to cancel it out.

Quickshot gives you a much higher dps than that miserly 8dps.
If you don't want to bring kindle or JI just bring RTW

Morty · Nov 21, 2005, 01:19 AM // 01:19

The metagame only matters because it tells me what most of my opponents will be playing. Just because spiking is popular right now, doesnt mean I have to spike.

Yes, I agree that statistically, Quickshot is superior. I just have a problem with a character that is so inflexible, being locked in. He cant pause to move around or consider target's without wasting his elite's potential. Overall, I've found that, for me, quickshot is more of a limitation than it's worth.

As far as frenzy goes... you were the one that said spike was popular right now. A good team would rip a frenzy ranger to shreds.

neoflame · Nov 21, 2005, 01:37 AM // 01:37

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Originally Posted by Morty

Seriously, I'm sure the ranger wasn't like that in beta. I haven't had any reason to look at it since. I never did understand the ranger touch build until now.

Obviously the ranger touch build isn't a reason to reexamine Expertise. In any case, I'm fairly sure that Expertise acted as it does now for at least the UAS betas.

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I've already discussed why I don't think quickshot is all that much better than poison arrow. Does anyone disagree with me on the points I made in that argument?

Even if only half of your shots hit, QS will still probably do more damage overall than PA.

jesh · Nov 21, 2005, 05:34 AM // 05:34

Last time I checked, 150 dps > 8 dps, but I may be wrong there.

JR · Nov 21, 2005, 06:21 AM // 06:21

A single monk running Mend Ailment makes your Poison Arrow nothing more than 5 energy taken off a monk. Yes you can spam it, but your not really doing anything usefull. As a monk I'm more than happy to let poison sit on someone for 10-20 seconds if I have more important things to deal with.

A spike from quickshot rangers is MUCH harder to heal through.

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The metagame only matters because it tells me what most of my opponents will be playing. Just because spiking is popular right now, doesnt mean I have to spike.

It's popular because it simply is the best way of dropping targets. The old metagame was energy denial, where healing was far less effective because your monks couldn't heal due to lack of energy. Energy Drain got the nerf bat (rightfull so, if not a bit too harshly). As such, the new metagame is spike, where healing is far less effective because your monks don't have TIME to heal against a good spike.

Morty · Nov 21, 2005, 08:07 PM // 20:07

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A single monk running Mend Ailment makes your Poison Arrow nothing more than 5 energy taken off a monk. Yes you can spam it, but your not really doing anything usefull. As a monk I'm more than happy to let poison sit on someone for 10-20 seconds if I have more important things to deal with.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Your first sentence implies that it is easily removed. The third says you wouldn't remove it (so I would do the full poison damage).

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A spike from quickshot rangers is MUCH harder to heal through.

I understand what you are trying to say, but I just wanted to point out that if you actually get some heals off, then ranger spike is actually quite easy to heal through (and save the target).

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Last time I checked, 150 dps > 8 dps, but I may be wrong there.

Um, ya. I have no idea what you are trying to say here. I see a vague reference to poison, perhaps (in the '8dps'), but what does 150dps?

M3lk0r · Nov 21, 2005, 08:34 PM // 20:34

Poison Arrow isint AS bad as some people may lead you to believe, but the fact is that there are simply better alternatives no matter what role you play currently (spike/dps/support). But dont let that stop you experimenting though

entropy · Nov 21, 2005, 08:47 PM // 20:47

a ranger spike hits for 150+ with my ranger.. Even if the poison sits on the person it won't matter. 8vs8 you have 3 monks and usually 2 heal, 1 prot or 2 prot+boon, and 1 infuser and things of that nature. With a prot+boon monks which are the best in 4vs4 means that poison is pretty pitiful and if a warrior deep wounds/bleeds me i get a 100+ point heal. If 3 monks can't stop a teammate dieing from poison not spike then they deserve to lose.
On a ranger spike team yes running frenzy ain great but as a standalone character maybe to supplement spikes it has its uses. Frenzy is only their to boost dps as spikes using dual+quick+savage have 1/4 second times so therefore they nullify the speed boost.