Curse

Phades · May 29, 2006, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The +15/-1 sets are not favorable to use extensively with Second Wind. If you just sit on that focus and work the exhaustion, you'll net 15 energy every minute due to Second Wind and the increased energy capacity, but lose 20 energy per minute from the pip you gave up. Not exactly a good trade.

That can net you a little bit of energy with focus swapping - swap away your -pip stuff as soon as your Second Wind finishes to avoid losing the pip all the time - but in doing so you have to run a naturally higher exhaustion that keeps you from getting much use out of your baseline pips, and you 'lock yourself in a hole' from having to bottom out those foci to break even, so to speak. It's a nice effect for digging yourself out of a pip hole, but I would not base my strategy upon sitting on -pip foci.

The whole point is energy up front. I know where you are comming from given your explanation. I am not trying to make it sound like second wind is better than prodigy. There is too much to juggle with the skill, even without having to keep the exhaustion level perfectly tuned with the amount of casting you expet to do in a short time frame. I was just trying to give an example of how it can be used to maximise the energy up front effect for heavy short term casting. Its the exhastion mechanic that really forces the skill to be used like that. Sporadic casting of the skill makes it worse than even energy boon over time really, due to the low exhaustion energy gains versus time spent casting the spell.

Ensign · May 29, 2006, 08:36 PM // 20:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

Sporadic casting of the skill makes it worse than even energy boon over time really, due to the low exhaustion energy gains versus time spent casting the spell.

I don't think that's true. Assuming you have some sources of exhuastion around it should be trivial to get around twice as much out of a cast of Second Wind as a cast of Energy Boon. I.E., at 15 ES you're looking at an elementalist with 85 energy minimum - getting ~25 energy out of each cast of Second Wind at that point should be rather trivial. Energy Boon on the other hand is only going to net you 15 at that level, no matter what.

Boon is basically a horrendous pile of crap that no right-thinking person would ever use - Second Wind just has some non-obvious restrictions that keep it a bit below the established norms.

Peace,
-CxE

Phades · May 29, 2006, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I don't think that's true. Assuming you have some sources of exhuastion around it should be trivial to get around twice as much out of a cast of Second Wind as a cast of Energy Boon. I.E., at 15 ES you're looking at an elementalist with 85 energy minimum - getting ~25 energy out of each cast of Second Wind at that point should be rather trivial. Energy Boon on the other hand is only going to net you 15 at that level, no matter what.

To maintain that level of return you would be using second wind once every 28s approximatly. In essence, using it half as often as energy boon, regardless of the circumstance. Otherwise you travel the road of exhaustion capping the return and overal function due to the workable energy pool available. This is the fundamental problem with second wind. You can over use it for benefit in the short term, but you were refering towards long term gains initially.

I do agree that energy boon is a bad offering of blood imitation though.