Curse

Amy Awien · Jun 01, 2007, 10:36 AM // 10:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

Which is were Distracting Shot or Concussion Shot should come in. Sadly you will infact interrupt that Plague Touch 8 times in a row when really it makes no sodding difference if that enemy remains blind...

A repeated interrupt of the same skill would be more useful then distracting it. Casting it again and again will (a)use up their energy and (b)keeps them from doing anything more useful. Effectively a shutdown ...

Quote:

Targetted interrupts > C-Space interrupts all the time

What does C-Space stand for?

Anyway, the topic was preparations and that line in particular was about a possible use for Marksman Wager.

Sophitia Leafblade · Jun 01, 2007, 10:55 AM // 10:55

My veiws on the 15 preps there are:

Apply Poison - Highly used and is a good but costly skill

Barbed Arrows - An ok preperation, equivilent of Apply poison that gives less degen but also costs alot less.

Choking Gas - Also highly used although ive never used it myself

Disrupting Accuracy - Ive not really found a use for this, possibly has use on a keen arrow Assassin otherwise not much use.

Expert's Dexterity - A not so good elite needs a rework to make it more functional.

Glass Arrows - Also highly used and is quite a good prep.

Ignite Arrows - Highly used, great for AoE spiking

Incendiary Arrows - A great prep that although shortlived has amazing effects.

Kindle Arrows - Highly used, great for spiking

Marksman's Wager - Ive never used this with points in expertise theres really no need to use it (atleast in imo)

Melandru's Arrows - Is a great skill that owns most Casters.

Read the Wind - A great skill that helps interuptors no end, although could possibly be in need of a small buff.

Scavenger's Focus - A reasonably good prep imo although doesnt really deserve elite status as it is, needs a buff to make it more appealing when compared to other elites.

Seeking Arrows -High cost, low duration, and frequently never lasts full length due to kiting targets, needs a buff of some kind.

Trapper's Focus - A pretty good prep for trappers, although is overshadowed by better Elites. Needs some kind of buff.

Epinephrine · Jun 01, 2007, 11:47 AM // 11:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

As IA vs MW/SS goes... i meant even with MW hitting constantly you would still run out of energy if more than just you was hitting it with cold damage to cause interrupts. Especially at the rate some enemies spam skills.

No, I ran SS/MW and was able to keep energy topped up all the time, with the whole team interrupting the targets. In fact, I had both Spinal Shivers and Shivers of Dread on my bar, and had no issue keeping both of them up. Glint in HM was a cakewalk (well, Glint often is) and so on; worked fine.

God Apprentice · Jun 01, 2007, 11:51 AM // 11:51

C-Space means C and Spacebar. You use it to target the closest enemy. I never knew about that until 3 months ago.

Evilsod · Jun 01, 2007, 01:36 PM // 13:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

A repeated interrupt of the same skill would be more useful then distracting it. Casting it again and again will (a)use up their energy and (b)keeps them from doing anything more useful. Effectively a shutdown ...

Repeatadly interrupting a Plague Touch or a Life Siphon or a Deathly Swarm is next to useless. Simply sticking a distracting shot up there arse (or a savage/concussion/anything else that interrupts) will be more useful. It may keep them pre-occupied with spamming that skill instead of doing anything useful, but having to pay handsomely for that interrupt every single time, regardless of whether its any use or not isn't. Keep in mind i'm focusing on the comment of having more than 1 person with Icy. Interrupting that skill 5x in a row in quick succession even with MW you would have no hope of keeping up the energy to maintain it.

Quote:

What does C-Space stand for?

Attack nearest enemy. I was focusing more on the auto-attack of just standing there and sending out arrows hoping they interrupt something, the sorta thing that makes Disrupting Accuracy almost useless. I would trust a targetted/timed or even a spam interrupt over simply auto-attacking and hoping it does something, countless times i've missed 4 or 5 skills in a row due to them been done perfectly in between my arrows.

Quote:

No, I ran SS/MW and was able to keep energy topped up all the time

Again, why run SS/MW. Incendiary Arrows is the exact same thing it just interrupts actions too. You also don't need an Icy mod and you don't need to spend lots of energy actually casting SS in the first place. Why did you need that for Glint anyway... she was easy, even on HM with henchman, same tactic applies, get prot spirit up on the person she attacks (take no melee hench...) and interrupt Hibernation and shes easy. Rotscale on the other hand... you won't get very far with SS/MW there, he spams Deathly/Desecrate/FoC as much as possible without ever running low on energy. IA would still be more useful, the fight can go on for a long time and stopping to cast SS/SoD constantly won't make it any faster, specially if your dazed from Deafening Roar and get interrupted.

Experts Dexterity doesn't even deserve a mention. It makes you be able to spam skills more, which cost 3 times more than you'd like them to. Which makes you stop spamming to wait on energy regen, which completely defeats the point of the elite in the first place...

Ankkasika · Jun 01, 2007, 04:03 PM // 16:03

About Scavenger's Focus -it seems that it's balanced based on how it works for every weapon and is in Wilderness Survival, which also provides good defensive skills (compared to, say, conjures, which are in useless attributes for a melee attacker), and so gives the ability to change your usual self-heal attribute to WS for Scavenger.

In theory Scavenger could have been a powerful skill because of these things and how the bonus damage ignores armor, but it's weak damage, long casting time, conditionality and elite status make it pretty much useless. Assassins have Moebius Strike for similar, but more powerful pressure anyway, the energy cost is too high for Warriors and Dervishes attack too slowly for the bonus damage to be of any use. Paragons are the only profession that could get a little use out of this, but it's still not enough.

This skill either needs a buff to at least Conjure-level damage, or removal of the condition and some more bonus damage. Even then, it propably won't be used too much because of the cast time. Rangers will propably always see it as useless compared to Glass Arrows, unless it would start giving something radical like an attack speed boost for bows only.

Amy Awien · Jun 01, 2007, 11:30 PM // 23:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

Again, why run SS/MW. Incendiary Arrows is the exact same thing it just interrupts actions too.

With Spinal Shivers cold damage from other sources then your own (bow) attacks to interrupt the target as well. As you pointed out yourself, a 1.3~2 second interval between your bow-attacks leaves them a lot of room for skills to succeed.

Evilsod · Jun 02, 2007, 12:08 AM // 00:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

With Spinal Shivers cold damage from other sources then your own (bow) attacks to interrupt the target as well. As you pointed out yourself, a 1.3~2 second interval between your bow-attacks leaves them a lot of room for skills to succeed.

I know... C-space interrupting is poor in general. But as for that situation. You hit the target once every 1.3-2 seconds. Which means you interrupt them once every 1.3-2 seconds. Which means the fastest you can gain energy, is every 1.3-2 seconds. Of course this is if the enemy is spamming... but many do.

The scaling for Spinal Shivers, 0-11 Curses = 10-6 energy lost. Without screwing yourself over attribute wise thats probably gonna be 8 Curses giving you -7 energy per interrupt.
The scaling for Marksman's Wager, 0-14 Expertise 5-10 energy gained. At best you'll be gaining 2 energy each time you hit. 3 if you really dropped your Marksmanship low and use Major/Sup Expertise.

If its just you attacking, you've basically created Incendiary Arrows using 2 skills and elite slot. If theres more than you, say it interrupts a skill inbetween your arrows, you lose ~5 energy, plus the 10 energy it cost you to cast the spell in the first place. The more skills its interrupts, the more energy you lose and it happens alot faster than you can gain it back. Especially if for some reason the target isn't dead by the time MW wears off.

Incendiary Arrows interrupts actions, which includes regular attacks, for no extra cost and provides a constant burning (which any nearby SF ele will thank you or).

Neither are particularly great when compared to targetted interrupts or BHA, but IA is definatly better than SS/MW, it lets you change target more readily also.

Epinephrine · Jun 02, 2007, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

The scaling for Marksman's Wager, 0-14 Expertise 5-10 energy gained. At best you'll be gaining 2 energy each time you hit. 3 if you really dropped your Marksmanship low and use Major/Sup Expertise.

Ok - if you want to really discuss it, fine - oh and I didn't say I needed it for Glint, note I said Glint is actually normally easy; I was feeling experimental and lazy.

IA interrupts at best every one of your shots, is in Wilderness, forcing you to sacrifice attributes like crazy, and even at best (16 wilderness) gives 10 seconds of time with no interrupt - in fact you are interrupting at best thus 16/26 seconds of the time, landing maybe 8 interrupting shots in that time. If you run an IAS as well you might manage 11 shots in the time it's active at 16 Wilderness. I'm not sure what attribute spread you are thinking of for it, but assuming a high WS (say 10+4?) and good Marksmanship (12+1?) you could have your 8+1 expertise, and you'd get your IA 50% of the time or so (14 out of 26 seconds).

SS can be maintained full time, every hit by anyone dealing cold damage (read: every attacker) interrupts any skill used. With say 2 melee attackers and yourself this could easily be well over a hit per second, with a good design it could be a heck of a lot more. Using Winter and SS I creamed Varesh in hard mode Ruins of Morah in under 4 minutes (3:59, but that's still under 4 minutes). That's anecdotal, but to continue:

You don't gain "at best" 2 energy; you do much better than that, since it doesn't cost energy every hit (like Thunderclap does) but only on a skill interruption. I was gaining 9 per shot, and losing 7 or so every time someone interrupted the foe. Even when I got them to 50% health and began spamming my Needling Shot I was still gaining 7 energy per hit, excepting the ones that are interrupting. Assuming I hit every 1.33 seconds, and I have 3 pips of regen, with marksman's wager up I am generating 7.8 energy per second - allowing energy gain at up to an interrupt per second. Even when only hitting every 2 seconds it's still over 5 energy a second, so you can support an interrupt every 1.3 seconds or so. With winter down, elementalists and elemental weapons equipped I can count on maybe 3 hits a second on the foe, catching most skills - and few enemies will use skills faster than 1 per second for long. My energy didn't tend to dip much, and enemies get no skills off. As well, I didn't have to waste points in Wilderness.

So to compare - 3 or more hits per second interrupting every skill, all the time, versus a hit every 1.33 seconds, 60% of the time. One interrupts a lot more than the other. And the energy is just fine plucking away with Marksman's Wager up, since you don't really go through that much. And I didn't have to sacrifice Marksmanship - a 12/10/8 split allows 13 Expertise and 13 Marksmanship, or an 11/11/8 might allow 14/12/8 if you'd rather, gaining 10 energy per shot with Marksman's Wager up.

To be fair, MW has downtime as well, you get 18 seconds active and a total of 8 down, so you don't have full time energy gain - you have the huge regen for 18 seconds and then 8 seconds at your normal 3 pips, but since you'll likely be at full energy when the MW runs out you have 4 interrupts worth of energy stored up and gain enough for another one during that time, so only if the opponent uses 5 or more skills in the 8 seconds and gets them interrupted will you run into an issue - as soon as you get MW back up you are happily gaining your energy back. Even when you are reapplying your preparation or renewing the hex your allies are still interrupting the target, so you truly can have full time coverage. It's not perfect, but it does fuel a lot of interrupting. And if you run out of energy? That just means you've interrupted a heck of a lot of skills. The energy you bring in over the 26 seconds of the cycle is say 9 hits with the marksman's wager up and 9 energy per hit, with the 26 energy you gain through natural regeneration - 15 or so interrupts. That's better than you'd likely do with IA (since you only get 16 seconds or so, you get at most 11?) and more than you can manage with normal interrupts, plus you have pretty solid coverage, you're likely to hit 0.75 and even some 0.25 skills, which is less likely with other setups.

Evilsod · Jun 02, 2007, 12:50 AM // 00:50

Oh for the love of god i really don't care that much. Both suck. They're both based entirely on things hitting at the right time instead of actual interrupting. IA interrupts everything but you at least get some decent skills to go with it for the attributes you invest. Personally i had no problems running 9/15/12 Exp/WS/Marks. MW/SS just looks shit. You get stuck with 1 opponent, if you care that much about interrupting ONE foe bring a frigging Curses necro with it and bring a useful elite.

So what you might interrupt the odd skill, but at least BHA will give you near 100% spell coverage. If you suck that much that you can't interrupt something like Healing Signet or can't at least try and predict when an enemy is about to use a Touch Skill you don't deserve to be commenting on interrupting. I really don't see interrupt Wild Blow 5x in a row as vital. I'll just distract the first obvious 1 and move on.

Doesn't change the fact they're both still almost USELESS!

Epinephrine · Jun 02, 2007, 01:10 AM // 01:10

I love that when you are wrong you can just accuse the person of being an idiot.

BHA is a better choice unless there's condition removal, just as SS is bad if there's hex removal. It's not GvG, I'm not saying "OMG, you should bring these all the time!", just that it can be handy.

The example of Varesh Ossa in Hard Mode I think is a fine one - her nasty skills as the prophet are attacks (Frost Vortex and Earth Vortex) and are hard to interrupt with a savage shot. Do what you want, I don't care how you play, I'm just saying that there are times when some combos can be worth using.

When you come up with a statement like "IA is better" or explain that "At best you'll be gaining 2 energy each time you hit" you are simply wrong - IA has significant problems and you don't gain only 2 energy a hit. I refuted those points, so you imply that I suck and shouldn't comment on interrupting.

Ad hominem much? I never said it was better than BHA at dealing with casters in an area without condition removal, just that it is solid at some things. If you don't want to be corrected don't say dumb shit like "at best you'll be gaining 2 energy a hit" or "You'd be out of energy in seconds".

I'm not going to say that point interrupts aren't good, of course they are, and daze is great on casters if you can keep it on them, but in PvE you know what you are going to face, and there are times when you can do some fun, innovative things and have successes.

Dutch Masterr · Jun 02, 2007, 01:19 AM // 01:19

[skill]Seeking arrows[/skill]

I've never seen anyone use this skill....ever...

LifeInfusion · Jun 02, 2007, 01:37 AM // 01:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dutch Masterr

[skill]Seeking arrows[/skill]

I've never seen anyone use this skill....ever...

Arguments aside, Seeking arrows + practiced stance choking gas rangers were used in GvG/HoH to spike down the guild lords/ghostly hero if I remember correctly.

That with practiced stance or serpent's quickness (I don't remember) can keep it up often enough so that the target will be constantly hit even if guardian-ed or shield of deflection-ed...

Basically seeking arrows is for elimination of blocking from enchantments that can be spammed.

Epinephrine · Jun 02, 2007, 01:40 AM // 01:40

I could see using Seeking Arrows for an R-spike setup, though you lose out on preparation damage.

Evilsod · Jun 02, 2007, 01:29 PM // 13:29

So bring a curses necro who can actually maintain it without turning his entire skillbar into a 1 trick pony. I'm sure you can persuade an SS or an SV to bring it along.

And you are wrong, i wasn't wrong and i wasn't calling you an idiot. Both preps suck and have little to no use. SS/MW sure as hell isn't 1 of them. End of story. You can make them all look as good as you want in the right light, they still both suck.

Quote:

Arguments aside, Seeking arrows + practiced stance choking gas rangers were used in GvG/HoH to spike down the guild lords/ghostly hero if I remember correctly.

That with practiced stance or serpent's quickness (I don't remember) can keep it up often enough so that the target will be constantly hit even if guardian-ed or shield of deflection-ed...

Basically seeking arrows is for elimination of blocking from enchantments that can be spammed.

I remember that, it was used with Practiced Stance since Spirit Spammers were insanely common at the time and Weapon of Warding was almost always in a team to stop the Ghostly been interrupted when capping. Its weakness was still blind though since then the prep would end.

It could really use some sort of buff. The CG/Seeking phase seems to have ended and its really subpar now... even if its just a duration increase.

Bloodied Blade · Jun 02, 2007, 08:48 PM // 20:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dutch Masterr

[skill]Seeking arrows[/skill]

I've never seen anyone use this skill....ever...

ah...I see you're not familiar with the R/Rt vamp spike then. It's understandable, I've only ever seen it one time, maybe two (someone introduced me to it in HA, and while it is amazingly effective, it is also extremely limited).

The spike combines Seeking Arrows with Dual Shot and this little number:
[skill]Nightmare Weapon[/skill]

We killed a rit spike with it, but that's not really an accomplishment, rit spike gets destroyed the moment you take the time to kill off displacement and start interrupting.

Edit: As for the prep that I never see used, it has to be [skill]Expert's Dexterity[/skill]

XvArchonvX · Jun 02, 2007, 09:34 PM // 21:34

Tbh, it's really hard to find use for a lot of preps when you have [skill]Apply Poison[/skill] as an option...

Evilsod · Jun 02, 2007, 09:45 PM // 21:45

I'm sure someone posted a build for R/A using Experts Dexterity on the wiki discussion page. Although i really doubt it was all that decent.

Am I A Good Sin · Jun 12, 2007, 05:55 PM // 17:55

My favorite combo of damage is:
Ignite arrows + conjure flame + dual shot. Btw if anyone can find a way to keep a ranger using ele skills up then ignite arros can be over powered by adding mark of rodgort to it. AoE burning while using another skill. Like a ele SF with another skill.
Ignite arrows+ conjure flame + dual shot = AoE fire dmg that ignores evading and blocking. Yes I said it! Ignite arrows can be obstructed but still does damage to foes in the area. Can be blocked or evaded and will still do damage. You can be blind and the skill will still hit. I've ran and tested these theories and they all are true. On a warrior ill do about 80 dmg per dual shot. On a monk I think its about 120 + 50 AoE dmg all around.
Wonder if this would work...
Prepared shot
Ignite arrows
Conjure flame
Mark of rodgort
Dual shot
Troll ungruent
Stance of some kind
Res
Hmmmmmmm.. I just thought of this to.... oh well its a use for ignite arrows anyways to make it near an SF ele. I don't know how well that build will work though.

XvArchonvX · Jun 12, 2007, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Am I A Good Sin

Wonder if this would work...
Prepared shot
Ignite arrows
Conjure flame
Mark of rodgort
Dual shot
Troll ungruent
Stance of some kind
Res
Hmmmmmmm.. I just thought of this to.... oh well its a use for ignite arrows anyways to make it near an SF ele. I don't know how well that build will work though.

People have been running builds with Barrage + Conjure Flame + Mark of Rogdort + Glyph of Lesser Energy for a while which essentially does the same thing. While the AoE burning is nice and the build does some good damage in theory, it still doesn't out perform Searing Flames.