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Mar 22, 2005, 04:24 PM // 16:24
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#41 |
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Lion's Arch Merchant
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Madison, WI
Profession: W/Mo
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I checked twice but maybe I still missed it.
I didn't see the change to HB making it do 100% but being {E}. That is a pretty big change for those using IW+HB or Flourish+HB for super damage.
Anyway, I know it's been discussed on the forums already, but it bears mentioning. Great job Rex, Matt |
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Mar 22, 2005, 04:24 PM // 16:24
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#42 | ||
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Death From Above
Join Date: Dec 2004
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I missed out on HB and other changes. HB has been discussed but, yeah, it was a change made probably specifically to address IW builds using it to gain effectively 200% damage on any target in range with extreme rapidity. For a non-IW build it's an okay skill now, I'm not sure if, as a Warrior you'd pass up Skull Crack, Battle Rage, Warrior's Endurance, Victory is Mine!, Flourish, and any good elite from your secondary for it, no questions asked. I'm not that big of a fan of having an attack elite when there are elites which offer a lot more flexibility and power but it can fit on a Sword Warrior's skill bar. It's not all that impressive, except in terms of doubling adrenal gain while giving some nice damage - but even then it's pretty expensive to spam over and over again for primary Warriors - because that 100% damage change only affects your weapon damage. The key to getting a lot of damage out of a Warrior isn't swinging a good weapon, that's part of it, sure, but it's stacking buffs, enchantments, preparations, and whatever else you can on top of that weapon damage. That's why people were fans of Conjures - which have also changed and are pretty much something to pass over now - they're cheap and effective ways of adding damage. That extra damage wasn't reduce to 75% by Hundred Blades. A well-made Warrior wasn't doing just 150% of their damage, they were doing 150% of their weapon damage and 200% of all their adds. Now it's 200% total, which is an increase but not all that much of one. For an IW Mes, though, it's a crushing blow. IW limits a character to just the damage from IW. You can't increase that damage by any means. If IW says it does 34 damage it does 34 damage (You can't decrease it with armor or evading techniques, either, so it's not all bad) you can't use Power Attack or Savage Slash or anything else to pump up your DPS. The only thing you can do is add more attacks. Either by increasing your attack rate, through things like Flurry, or by creating additional attacks, through things like Hundred Blades. HB nearly doubled your efficiency against a single target. Your DPS went from, at best 30odd, which isn't much to brag about, to close to 40 or 50, which is getting near to the better Warrior and Ranger outputs, *and* avoids a lot of the counter-measures to such builds. It was competitive with those builds and although I dislike that a secondary Warrior or non-Warrior has to get so gimmicky to get near a primary Warrior I don't dislike the idea of a secondary Warrior being as effective, it's that it's so hard and so rare that I disparage, not that it's possible. Now, HB was extremely good when you could get your enemies close together because it wasn't just 200% of your IW damage it was 200% of IW to anyone in range with a low recycle time. You could carve through packs of enemies as if they had Mark of Pain on because HB wouldn't decrease IW damage just as Power Attack wouldn't increase it. That had to go, apparently. And IW builds are much poorer off without it. Cyclone Axe has been mentioned as a replacement for HB and it would work to replace the AoE, sure, but that wasn't the point of HB. The point of HB was to increase their DPS against a single target, but that AoE damage made it too abusable, without HB it's not going to be easy to find a way to get close to enough damage out of such builds to make them threatening and the other problems inherint in an IW build become much more apparent. Honestly, I can't see running one in the near future. I'd much rather have seen them take off the AoE effect on HB or something like that, perhaps make Galrath Slash into an adrenal AoE attack - which would also circumvent IWs from using a skill, of course, and would solve the problem of having Galrath, Pure, and Final all nearly identical in the same skill line. I mentioned the Conjures earlier. Those were what made War/Ele and Ran/Ele playable, pretty much. They were central because they were the cheapest and longest lasting damage add and Warriors and Rangers don't have that much energy to throw around (Rangers less so, but they do have less energy and regeneration, for skills unaffected by Expertise they can't get too wacky.) and, of course, those characters could dabble in the other ele skills which weren't really suited to them, being too hard to cast and too expensive, for the most part, or, like Expertise/Marksmanship or Str/Weapon suck up a lot of AP as they only get better as their attributes progress. It was never a good combination because other professions offered War and Ran a lot more flexibility. Now, of course, Conjures only work if your weapon does the associated damage type. If you use Conjure Flame you only get the bonus with a Fiery weapon. You can swap out and use another weapon but you won't get that bonus until you hold the right type. As long as there are things like Zealous upgrades around on the same upgrade part as what gives you elemental typing then elemental damage is sub-par. The energy starved Warriors and Rangers are much better served by having the energy to use skills - especially those W/E and R/E who dabbled in other Elementalist skills - than by having those few extra points of damage. So, they'll avoid Conjures and, if they're smart, they'll avoid Elementalist altogether. There's other things I didn't mention. Let's see... Elementalist has several of the new Touch range skills. That's a nice change, too, as it's a way for such characters to get around Dazed or Backfire or whatever. They'd be nice for melee characters, like Warriors, but they're a bit too expensive. You have to be up close to use them so they either need to do a lot more damage or need to be discounted a bit to account for the fact that it's dangerous to use them. A lot of Elementalist damage ranges got tweaked. So did others. It's an interesting change. The overall effect seems to be a) to simplify progression to the nearest interger - something those of us who don't hold advanced math degrees can appreciate and b) to front load damage a bit and drop it on the back end while still keeping the average damage range about the same. For example, Executioner's Strike went from +1~32 damage to +10~34. In other words it went from 1+(2.58xAxe) to 10+(2xAxe). At 12, you won't notice much of a difference. At 0 you will as you'll do a lot more damage, which is good for lower-level characters. But the real change is as attributes progress. As you get past 12 and onto 14, 15, 16, and above, you get diminishing returns (Executioner's turns out to be a bad example as it's still roughly the same at 16) the net effect, then, is that scaling is less important. Lower-level characters do more damage, mostly, so they're more effective and it's easier to have your attributes lower. Yet, it's harder to pile on +att and get to insane damage levels. It's not perfect yet but it's a step in the right direction as you can get some insane damage out of, say, an Air Elementalist - enough to pop up damage balance warnings - when you can get to Air 18 or 20. Speaking of Air Ele, Thunderclap got a big hit with the foam bat. I wasn't keen on it before but I'm avoiding it now. The faster casting Wards are great. They were good before but now they're a lot harder to interrupt and a lot easier to get up when needed. They recharge faster, too, so you can keep them up if you move or as they run out a lot better. Ether Prodigy and Renewal both got much needed boosts. Ether Prodigy lasts longer now, meaning you get more energy. Damage on end and exhaustion is still too much of a double-hit, though. One or the other should go. And Renewal now gives you a bit of healing. Like Victory is Mine! the real point is the energy but that little bit of health (with 3 enchantments you'd get 51 health. Assuming you could cast a spell 10 times in the 10 seconds you'd get 510 health. Not bad, patently unrealistic, though, and hard to focus that healing to the point where it's most needed, on demand, which is where healing is best.) which hasn't changed but it's a bit nicer now. And, of course, Ice Spear, Stone Daggers, Lightning Javelin, and Flare are all still overly expensive, ineffective sources of damage. Get a Wand and get a Conjure, you'll be better off (Conjures are still great for Ele, if you're, say, a Fire ele you'll have a fire wand or staff probably. Conjuring with that is 10 energy every 60 seconds to get a decent amount of damage. Few ele should pass it up even though you can get it removed.). Moving on, Mesmer didn't get many changes. The big one's to Arcane Mimicry, which is just ripe for abuse now. It's a more specific version of Echo, in a party setting. Reportedly, despite the description it works on any elite, not just spell elites. So, you can get something like two Backbreakers on two War/Mes or two Signets of Judgement on two Mes/Mon and anything. Basically, if you're in a team, your Mes characters can now double up their elites. Or they can have two separate elites wihtout spending too many slots. Mantra of Recall got a flat duration. Not much of a change there as it wasn't going to last that long anyway. You use it, use another stance to cancel, get that energy, and then wait for it to recharge. Signet of Weariness got a bit more dangerous, draining more energy with AoE. Be nice on that War/Mes that's going to concentrate on disruption with Fear Me! although the recharge is a bit suboptimal. Oh well, that's what Mantra of Inscriptions or Mantra of Signets is for. Monk had some big changes, too. Like Freyas, I like the change to Divine Spirit. Monks like the low-cost energy skills. Before it only worked on 10 energy skills, which was poor, because it didn't reduce them a lot and a Monk wasn't going to be casting many high-energy skills. Now, it's a quick burst of cheaper energy skills that can help your regeneration as you're spamming heals. Not the best but Monk's weak on energy management overall, so I'll take it. Blessed Signet is much better now, too. It'll take twice as long to cast but it recharges twice as fast so you can net a lot more energy with it. You will, though, spend four times what you used to recasting it if you're doing it as often as you can but, again, weak energy management means take what you can get. Healing Touch is nice for a primary Monk now. With good Healing and good DF it's roughly a 120~150 heal or a lot more than the new Orision at a comparible cost. Since Heal Other is now spammable and heals for a good 180~200 and Orision's been reduced in effectiveness a bit, I'd drop Orison, take Heal Other, and use Healing Touch for self-healing. Heal Other's twice the cost but it's nearly twice as effective as a heal, too. Casts faster, too. Light of Dwayna take four seconds to cast now. That's low for a rez but it's still extremely costly and you'll probably never get more than a few allies in the same spot. Not without the enemy standing right over them waiting to tear you a new one when you stand around casting for four seconds. Necro now... Consume Corpse gives you energy now. Not a lot but it's quick enough to cast to spoil any minion master's casting, even with their lowered casting, so it's not a bad thing. Necrotic Traversal is similar but it'll poison enemies. They both teleport you to the targeted corpse though which can be a problem. Deathly Chill's recharge came down so you can spam it a lot more quickly now for a moderate amount of damage. Malign Intervention actually has some possibilities. 10 en is bearable and it's a minor version of Lingering Curse, neutering healing. It's not a bad thing to put on a focused target and, as a bonus, you'll get a havoc-wrecking minon when all's said and done, too, if you're lucky. Verata's Aura lasts forever now, probably longer than most minions will last, so it could be good. Verata's Sacrifice is now an effective way of keeping those minions alive a while longer, although you can't use it forever. And, of course, the casting and recharge came down on those minion summoning skills and they gained a few more levels on the high end. It all adds up to an overall boost to the effectiveness of a Death Necro, especially in terms of PvP. The underlying problem : the overall lack of corpses in quickly decided PvP matches and the harmful consequences of more than one Necro fighting over those corpses remains, though. Offering of Blood is interesting. It's elite but it's extremely quick now. It could be useful as a quick way of regenerating energy every 15 seconds. 10% health isn't too much of a barrier, either. I'm not entirely sure it's worth it, though. Vampiric Gaze got quicker to cast, too, although it's still pretty costly. 15 energy for, at best 50odd healing is something like 4 health per energy, which is atrocious. That's Mending levels of healing and Mending is something to avoid at all costs. Yeah, you get that much damage, too, but 15 energy for 50 damage is pretty poor, too. And, with a 5 second recharge you're spending nearly 3 energy every second to use it, which is 9 pips of degen. Warrior got a few nice new things, too. A few not so nice things, as well. Shield Bash lasts longer and, since it's not a stance, can be added on top of a defensive stance. It's still not very good, though, as it only lasts for one hit even as a normal skill. Warrior's Cunning went from being a great skill to being trash. Unless you know your opponent's using blocks and evasions it's useless. And, then, it's 10 energy with a 60 second recharge. Bleh, awful efficiency, awful effect. Disciplined Stance is nice because you'll no longer screw up your adrenal gain. It just ends when you use one but if you have high adrenal costing skills, that's not that much of a problem. That additional armor is a nice little boost, too. Shields Up is a lot better. I don't know if I'd actually *use* it but it no longer requires the rest of your team to carry around shields to take effect. And that dodge on both arrows and things like Water Trident can be good, although it's not enough to rely on, really. Pure Strike needed a change but, as I said, I still think it's too close to Galrath and Final. 5 energy every 8 seconds is about 2 pips of degeneration though. Unless you're heavily adrenal or are using something like Flouish you can't use that for long. Over in Ranger the new pet skills are intriguing although, as they eat up valuable real estate on your skill bar they're probably forgettable. +2~20 damage doesn't sound like very much given how little damage pets already cause, it's probably very hard to time the attacks to get that side effect, and, at the same time, you're costing your own character some power by further limiting their skills. I'd rather see such skills be innate to the pet. Maybe have a secondary skill bar when you have a pet or have each pet earn a set of, say, 4 skills, once each 5 levels, as they advance that you can use or their AI can use. But, it does give you a bit more control over your pet, which is nice. There's also the new Determined Shot. I think that's a pretty solid skill. If you can get it to miss consistently, of course. All the rituals, too, which is a column in and of itself, and well, you can tell why I started to do a quick little overview for a nice little column and wound up with something as big as a build review. Once I hit 10,000 words, I knew it was time to stop and get to editing...
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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. |
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Mar 23, 2005, 07:02 AM // 07:02
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#43 |
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Academy Page
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Alaska
Guild: Treacherous Empire [Te] (aka PANK)
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Out of curiosity -not that it would be all that effective- I was wondering if this would work to once again combine HB and Illusionary Weaponry.
First Player: Warrior/Mesmer Attributes: 12 Sword 12 Illusion 3 Strength or Inspiration Skills: -Hundred Blades -Arcane Mimicry -some energy regen like Energy Tap to net you 4 energy. (there's probably a better option but I'm too lazy to look) The rest doesn't matter Second Player: Mesmer/X or X/Mesmer Skills: -Illusionary Weaponry The rest doesn't matter I'm assuming the points your ally has into Illusion doesn't help you, so you need them yourself. If not have him get Illusion Magic to 12 instead. The warrior uses Arcane Mimicry on his ally to steal Illusionary Weaponry, then uses Energy Tap or somesuch to get enough to cast Illusionary Weaponry, after casting IW, use Hundred Blades. A lot of work and most definatly not worth it, just curious if it would work like I'm thinking and allow the combo again. --------------------------------------------- Nice recap on the Nature Rituals, I forgot about a lot of that. |
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Mar 23, 2005, 03:40 PM // 15:40
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#44 | ||
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Death From Above
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Quote:
You could do the same thing by having two IW take Arcane Mimicry and one take HB while the other takes IW and then use Mimicry to share with each other to complete their builds. AM is ripe for abusive things like that right now, I'd expect it to change at some point but you never know. The problem, though, is time. Mimicry lasts for 20 seconds. Yet it recharges for 60. To go back to my efficiency idea you only get 33% efficiency out of such a skill, so it'd better be worth it. Unless you only want to use HB in spurts it's not going to last long enough to really make that much of a difference, but you probably already knew that. For a Mes/Ran it has some possibilities because you'd be able to use Oath Shot or somethign to instantly recharge Mimicry and you could swipe HB from a Warrior teammate - It's unlinked, especially if you're using IW - but that seems like a lot of effort to go through for minimal gain to me. Quote:
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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. |
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Mar 24, 2005, 01:16 AM // 01:16
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#45 | |
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Beta Tester
Join Date: Jan 2005
Guild: Carebear Club
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Hopefully they'll standardize the way such skills work by release so you don't get abusive loopholes like this. |
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Apr 12, 2005, 04:17 AM // 04:17
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#46 |
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Death From Above
Join Date: Dec 2004
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The latest Spotlight is up and can be found here. Give it a look and you'll find it's rather appropriate I've cast *Restore Life* upon this thread.
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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. |
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Apr 12, 2005, 04:28 AM // 04:28
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#47 |
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Guest
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Arcane Mimicry-one of my favorite skills for breaking things. Use it while you still can in the event it gets changed!
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Apr 12, 2005, 07:28 AM // 07:28
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#48 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: wherever the winds take me
Profession: R/Mo
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Casting rebirth
hmm... considering I have not yet tried the monk as secondary to my ranger builds yet,and have been figuring how to get something that would help out in there, thank you for clearing a few things up on the rezz department.
Gives me a more attuned idea what my R/Mo will be using for PvE misadventures. Rebirth. Seems in the end this would suit my personal needs much more closely as it would allow me a bit more of a chance to save my adorable (cough..not so smart..cough) henchmen when they decide to charge off into that 40 monster posse. gracias.. for the info. 
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Apr 12, 2005, 09:57 AM // 09:57
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#49 |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Yeah Offering of blood is pretty nice. But still, I am looking for better energy management options.
On my current curses build I have 3 slots devoted to blood(or any other secondary attribute I would want to use). Currently I have: Life siphon(132 damage and healing over time isn't shabby) Well of Blood(this one rocks) Offering of Blood(I need energy badly) Now I have been thinking. If I go inspiration I do get nice energy management spells, though not much better than offering of blood. Or are they? I would also lose a nice, party helping, corpse spell. And life siphon does well when I spam it, as damage and as healing. Now another option would be: Victory is mine and conditions. This has many drawbacks. First I have to be at point blank range to some people, while offering of blood work whereever on map. Second I would need at least 4 conditions nearby to make this better energy source as offering of blood. Enfeebling blood is the only condition in curses line(ok aside from Chillblains). Do you think I can make this work? Saus rez doesn't rez you with 1 HP but rather 20% HP. Last edited by Spura; Apr 12, 2005 at 10:19 AM // 10:19.. |
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Apr 12, 2005, 04:26 PM // 16:26
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#50 |
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Guest
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Inpsiration has Power Drain and Channeling, both of which are better than Offering of Blood(elite status)
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Apr 13, 2005, 05:52 AM // 05:52
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#51 | |
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Death From Above
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Quote:
And, in any event, the next Spotlight's up now. Give it a look here.
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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. |
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Apr 13, 2005, 06:18 AM // 06:18
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#52 | |
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Banned
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Quote:
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Apr 13, 2005, 06:23 AM // 06:23
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#53 |
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Death From Above
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Weird. How'd that happen? Anyhow, #9, glyphs.
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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. |
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Apr 13, 2005, 07:18 AM // 07:18
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#54 | |
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Banned
Join Date: Feb 2005
Guild: The Einherjar
Profession: Mo/
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Quote:
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Apr 13, 2005, 12:39 PM // 12:39
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#55 | ||
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Quote:
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Apr 13, 2005, 04:17 PM // 16:17
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#56 |
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Munchking
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Russian Federation, Moscow
Guild: Ladder to Hell (ATM playing with Rus Corp)
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I think that Glyph of Lesser Energy may be much better than it was described in an article. It's possible to precast a glyph, and when battle already started cast a spell (that's +15 mana), use glyph that is already recharged, cast another spell (+10 mana), use glyph once again after 30 second recharge, cast a spell (+10 mana). That's +35 energy in a first ~40 seconds of battle or 2.625 pips of energy regeneration when it really counts.
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Apr 13, 2005, 04:57 PM // 16:57
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#57 | ||||
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Death From Above
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Quote:
Quote:
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GoE is powerful, sure, and you can put it to good use without spending any attribute points. But there are better elites even for what it does. Quote:
However, I don't think you can work it quite as well as you've stated it. Not without something messing with recharge times. GLE recharges in 30 seconds. But its duration is only 15 seconds, like all glyphs. It will only wait for you to cast a spell for 15 seconds. So, taking the zero point as, say, the 14th second, you cast that first spell and you still have 15 seconds to recharge. recast it, cast your next spell and wait 30 seconds again, repeat. That's 35 energy in just over 45 seconds (46.5 actually) or about .75 energy per second, just over 2 pips worth. It scales down after that. On the fourth cast it's 45 energy in 77.25 seconds or .58 energy per second. On the fifth it's 55 energy in 105 or .50 energy per second. On the sixth it's 65 in 138.75 or .47EPS. And so on. Over the long haul you get worse and worse returns. Of course, it works the other way, too. Consider just the first two casts there and you can save 25 energy in 16.75 seconds or 135 energy per second or between 4 and 5 pips worth. Works for GoE this way, too, of course, although less dramatically because the recharge and duration times synch up better. But the first two casts will net you 35 energy in 16.75 seconds or about 6 pips worth of energy. Long as you can get two 25 energy spells off in the span of those 16.75 seconds, of course. All that's discounting the initial cost of casting the first glyph, too, which is 5 energy you'll need to regenerate. Not a big deal if you're leading up to combat but during combat it's a factor. Unless you're a Ran/Ele - Expertise works on glyphs, too. So, yes, they do work rather well to preserve the already large energy advantage of an Elementalist, making Energy Storage and other energy increasing items better, for bursts of casting. Of course, for burst casting you run into the problem that they're increasing your casting time limiting the number of spells that actually do something you can pack into that time frame.
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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. |
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Apr 13, 2005, 04:59 PM // 16:59
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#58 |
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Guest
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Gotta take into account that GoE is only efficient with certain spells, and puts you in the mold to precast a set combination.
Energy Drain is always going to be "good" as it's just a straight energy steal. Sure energy drain requires you to spec in Inspiration, but who the hell wouldnt want to? |
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Apr 13, 2005, 06:03 PM // 18:03
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#59 | |
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Just Plain Fluffy
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Berkeley, CA
Guild: Idiot Savants
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Peace, -CxE
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Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience. |
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Apr 13, 2005, 11:49 PM // 23:49
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#60 |
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Beta Tester
Join Date: Jan 2005
Guild: Carebear Club
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Good article Saus. Just a couple of points. Due to its nature, Glyph of Concentration will be consumed on the next skill used (even on an instant attack skill for example), so it can't be pre-loaded as effectively asd the other glyphs.
Also, Expertise effects the cost of all Glyphs. So for an Expertise ranger, they'll cost about 2 energy instead of 5. |
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