Curse

Swift Thief · Feb 17, 2007, 01:11 AM // 01:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red_Dragon56

What do people here consider "useless" elite skills?
I hear [skill]Ether Prodigy[/skill] and [skill]life transfer[/skill] both I like alot, but I've had GW for 2 years and only 4 GvG experiences (I mostly just RA

)

So what are the "useless" elites in the game in terms of PvP?

Life Transfer - Doesn't deserve to be an elite (or at least have the recharge time buffed :P)

Ether Prodigy - Is a popular skill used in GvG for elementalists to spam heal party.

Kyune · Feb 17, 2007, 07:54 AM // 07:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Made in Ascalon

In terms of pvp?

15 energy is too expensive for the effect, especially now that it has a recharge of 5. There are tons of better choices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Used with Glyph of Lesser Energy I honestly think there might be some potential in this one. Need to play with it more though.

What about running this on a monk with Blessed Aura and an enchant-lengthening staff piece? The ~40-50% duration boost is nothing to sneeze at and it's got synergy with other prot-skills which could act as covers for either SoR or BA.

Thomas.knbk · Feb 17, 2007, 09:03 AM // 09:03

A 15 energy skill that you want to spam with only 3 pips of regen is definitely win.

suiraCLAW · Feb 17, 2007, 02:59 PM // 14:59

[skill]Shove[/skill]: Pointless to use. Compare it with Signet of Judgement (same activation time/recharge and same damage but SoJ is ranged, costs less and has no penalty)...

Skuld · Feb 17, 2007, 03:25 PM // 15:25

[skill]Shove[/skill] [skill]Crushing Blow[/skill] [skill]Hammer Bash[/skill] [skill]Thrill of Victory[/skill] [skill]Death's Charge[/skill] [skill]Healing Signet[/skill] [skill]Burst of Aggression[/skill] [skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

QQ's build (or similar). A warrior would have to go W/Mo, and would do less damage or have a worse Healing Signet by investing (or not) in Smiting and would lose the shadow step.

The ranged could even be a disadvantage, if you KD and they're kiting away with dash or something, they might be knocked down an aggro bubble or 2 away, making it impossible to trigger Crushing Blow.

Arkantos · Feb 17, 2007, 03:43 PM // 15:43

Shove isn't useless at all. Shove Hammers are becoming quite popular.

suiraCLAW · Feb 17, 2007, 05:25 PM // 17:25

To elaborate why Shove is , IMO, overshadowed by SoJ:

The advantages of SoJ are:
- No adrenaline loss (so you can charge adrenaline while spiking) + you can use flail/rush.
- Ranged, wich makes it a decent snare tool.
- It's a signet, thus no energy cost (overall, this just means that you can use Thrill of Victory more)
- Because it is ranged, you can use it as interrupt (for long skills)...
- AoE damage (not that great, but worth mentioning)
- Holy damage (again, not that great)
- No skill disable, thus the option to use frenzy + less risk overall.

The desadvantages of SoJ are:
- A shove warrior running 12+1+1 HM / 11+1 TAC / 6+1 STR would deal 18 damage more and would gain 15 points more health from Heal sig than a SoJ warrior running 12+1+1 HM / 9+1 TAC / 6+1 STR / 8 SMI.
- Fixed Secondary.
- You might get less attacks in before the KD ends (still, while testing I could always hit a crushing blow before the KD ended).

Shove is indeed not completely useless, but IMO there are better options.

Thom Bangalter · Feb 17, 2007, 08:21 PM // 20:21

SoJ is the new win.

Riotgear · Feb 18, 2007, 06:13 AM // 06:13

Maybe I'm an idiot, but why would you run Shove over, say, Earth Shaker or Devastating Hammer?

suiraCLAW · Feb 18, 2007, 10:03 AM // 10:03

Quote:

Maybe I'm an idiot, but why would you run Shove over, say, Earth Shaker or Devastating Hammer?

In some spike builds, the ability to get a KD+DW (from crushing blow) without adrenaline is quite usefull. Basically, the only reason (AFAIK) to bring shove is to get an "spike on demand". SoJ can do the same, but it gives IMHO more utility.

Offcourse, if your build isn't solely build for spiking (read: if you want to cause some pressure), devastating hammer and backbreaker are almost always better...

Guillaume De Sonoma · Feb 18, 2007, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Some one saying cleave is useless on the first page made me sad.

Thomas.knbk · Feb 18, 2007, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guillaume De Sonoma

Some one saying cleave is useless on the first page made me sad.

Well, give me one good reason to use it over [skill]eviscerate[/skill]

TheOneMephisto · Feb 18, 2007, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Well, give me one good reason to use it over [skill]eviscerate[/skill]

Dismember->cleave->crit chop. Very fast building spikes, you might be able to utilize that in a build designed for it. Dismember->cleave is basically a slightly stronger eviscerate that takes place over 2 hits, but also takes less adrenaline.

mikkel · Feb 18, 2007, 09:38 PM // 21:38

[skill]"Incoming!"[/skill]

Yeah.

Patccmoi · Feb 18, 2007, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Well, give me one good reason to use it over [skill]eviscerate[/skill]

Cleave is just more pressure than Eviscerate.

Eviscerate is better as part of an adrenal spike, because Evis-Exec is a very powerful spike and it only uses 2 skill slots for your spike skill leaving room for more utility (Shock, Bull's Strike, DBlow, etc.)

Cleave and Dismember will allow for more constant pressure and forcing the other monks to constantly be weary and watch out because you're in nearly constant 'spike mode'. If someone gets hit by Dismember-Cleave, they must be healed, and it can come very often. If you want to do a spike as powerful than Evis-Exec you'll have to add Crit Chop, which sacrifices a skill slot of utility for higher pressure.

I saw some good Cleave warriors before and the pressure was definitely higher as a whole than Evis-Exec war since the Evis nerf. Cleave does more or less the same +damage as Evis (like 2 less) but on half the recharge, and DW can be spammed with Dismember if you feel like it.

Cleave allows for a pressure build that is more similar to DSlashers than Evis warriors which are more versatile. Cleave is still inferior to DSlash pressure-wise, but has the advantage of having stronger and faster 3 hits spike if you use Crit Chop and has 1 extra room for utility compared to DSlash. It's kinda in-between the adrenal spike + utility of Evis and the low utility but maximum pressure of DSlash.

riojin · Feb 18, 2007, 09:49 PM // 21:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikkel

[skill]"Incoming!"[/skill]

Yeah.

usless now - awesome in 6 man HoH when your playing defensive and 2 paras are using it

Thomas.knbk · Feb 18, 2007, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Cleave is just more pressure than Eviscerate.

I disagree there. Evis/exe is a very strong spike, especially if you have 2 of them, that you can operate quite frequently. More frequently than the dismember/cleave/crit chop one because of your energy. (frenzy+cancel vs. frenzy+crit chop+cancel). Spikes, even though they might not be lethal, force their monks to use expensive preprots, and likely an infuse as well. This is a lot of pressure on them. Builds who use that sort of 'spike' in fact don't often score their kills through pure spiking, but because opposing monks are forced to keep targets below full health because they can't keep up with the pressure so the warriors can easily spike down targets at 60-70% of their health.

Patccmoi · Feb 18, 2007, 10:28 PM // 22:28

Assassin elites annoy me cause a lot would easily be good with just small tweaks but are kept useless. And also because despite what many seem to say, Assassins can easily make templates with a free elite slot. Assassin have all the killing power they need in their non-elites, and good utility elite could make Assassin much more valuable as part of balanced setup, but most of their utility elite are screwed up in one way or another.

Example:

[skill]Dark Apostasy[/skill] The effect is very good, yet much more counterable than Grenth (enchant removal or edenial and it'll end) which balances it, but the problem is that it's 2s cast time that you have to reuse constantly. And a sin being already a fairly high priority target, using a 2s enchant in their face all the time just asks to be interrupted. If it was lowered to 1s cast time, it'd make a strong pressure sin template.

[skill]Palm Strike[/skill] To compete with the Black offhands, it just needs to be better. The fact that there's an aftercast to it already makes it worse for a spike skill. Considering the damage is good though and quite hard to prevent, i think that it'd be fine if the recharge was dropped to 6s. Could make nice pressure with Critical Strike and be used with various duals having different utility depending on the situation.

[skill]Fox's Promise[/skill] When Expose Defenses exists, there's no reason for this elite to have a 'end if you fail to hit' condition. Would be good if it didn't.

[skill]Shattering Assault[/skill] The description makes it a very interesting elite. But it's god damn useless cause it's bugged and doesn't do its +damage unless you crit or something and even then it's like reduced by armor. At least the intention is good, it's just bugged.

[skill]Golden Skull Strike[/skill] Fairly spammable daze could've been nice, but assassins are meant to kill and without doing any +damage and being conditional on top (must be enchanted) this is just worse than Temple Strike. If they made it unconditional daze and something like +10..34..42 damage if enchanted, it'd be a good elite.

[skill]Shroud of Silence[/skill] Really interesting elite overall, balanced by the fact that you can't use a cover hex on him yourself, but screwed up because by fear of making it too good they made the downsides too big (can't use spells for 15s). Could be made a solid elite if they made it something like 'can't use spells for 10..5s, target can't use spells, shouts or chants for 3..9..10s' and reduce the recharge to 20-25s. If the downtime on spells wasn't so attrocious, it'd be a nice elite to run with a Deadly Arts sin possibly with Deadly Paradox to have it ready very often.

[skill]Siphon Strength[/skill] Really good effect for an elite hex with 10s cooldown, basically takes out the auto-attack damage from an attacker. Energy intensive though, so you need those crits to manage, but... they made it so crits only work on your target which is stupid cause your target should be the last guy you want to hit. Basically, if you shutdown someone with a hex, you shouldn't be trying to kill him, you should be trying to kill his allies while he's shutdown. What's the point of shutting down someone that you're killing anyway (except a monk obviously)? Reducing crit chance to +25% but making it work on all foes would make this elite MUCH more valuable.

[skill]Way of the Empty Palm[/skill] Mostly pointless atm, off-hand and duals don't take that much energy even spamming them, especially when Black Lotus Strike exists. It could be useful for sustained offense if they just made it all dagger attack skills, if possible even including thrown daggers (Crippling Dagger, Dancing Dagger, Disrupting Dagger). Would give some emanagement to Deadly Arts, and would allow to use more lead attack combos with something like Unsuspecting Strike that you could spam on recharge. It's a decent elite if you plan to use GPS to combo a lot, but honestly the golden line is just so bad compared to the black line that i dunno why you'd want to do that.

[skill]Hidden Caltrops[/skill] Could be nice if it had more aggressive stats since it adds damage to your combo. There's many way it could be made useful, for example making it 5/.25/5, or 5/1/8 but removing the while moving clause, or 10/1/10 but making it 'whenever target foe takes damage while moving...' instead of next time, which would force your target to stand still or get hurt bad (would possibly lower the damage a bit too, maybe to something like 5..41..53). It's not a -bad- elite, but it definitely lacks something, cause cripple isn't that interesting to sins when you have Siphon Speed available.

[skill]Shadow Meld[/skill] Totally pointless compared to AoD. It should be something like 5/.25/12, so that sins could use it constantly to teleport out of fight when focused or hurt similar to return, but being able to quickly go back in by releasing it once the other team focuses someone else. With the same stats as AoD, there's very very few situations where i could see this as more useful to AoD. Another option would be to give 33% block to it, which would fit with the 'Shadow Meld'.

And some skills would need a complete rework, like:

[skill]Wastrel's Collapse[/skill] This is just horrible. They shoud add something like : 'After 5 seconds, target foe is knocked down. If that foe uses a skill, this Hex ends prematurely and the skill takes an extra 15s to recharge'. Basically people decide wether they want to sacrifice a skill for 15s or get knocked. Atm it just does nothing.

[skill]Mark of Insecurity[/skill] Another elite that just does nothing. There's elites that just remove enchantments really efficiently and you can do the same with stances using Wild Blow or the like. There's absolutely no point to this hex. It should add some penalty when an enchantment or hex ends to be interesting, then it could be a nice 'counter' to RoF. It could be either damage, energy lost, getting knocked down (that might be too powerful), etc. But something must be added so it has some purpose.

[skill]Seeping Wound[/skill] Enduring Toxin is better. About any non-elite hex that causes degen is better. It's totally stupid and never got buffed, can't understand why after it was laughed at for so long. My suggestion on this one would be 2..10 damage per second (not degen) and applies Weakness for 3s every 3s when bleeding or poisoned (basically providing a constant cover condition for bleed or poison and an extra use for the elite than degen). It's already bad enough that the hex does absolutely nothing if they just remove the condition, it should be nastier when they don't and make it slightly harder to remove them too.

That's my take on 'useless' Assassin elites. I think that most of the others are ok in a team build designed to take advantage of them.

EDIT : About Cleave vs Evis, yes what you say is true, i never claimed that Evis-Exec is bad pressure, i just think that Cleave-Dismember is higher raw damage pressure. You can still Cleave-Dismember much more often. Not Cleave-Dismember-Crit Chop, but you only do that when your intent is to score the kill, as you said you don't expect to kill every time but more to make monks throw away expensive preprots and overheals (cause monks nearly always overheal on spikes. They're not gonna check if the spike will take the target to 10% or kill them and save the heal). Cleave-Dismember is enough damage to scare a monk into doing serious prot (it's around 40 damage less than Evis-Exec in the end, it's not THAT far below) because you take the guy low enough that a real spike would take him out. And you do it over and over and over, making them waste a lot of energy and making it harder to guess when your spike goes for the kill or not. Evis-Exec is stronger for adrenal spike, Cleave-Dismember for a mix of adrenal spike and just high pressure that aims at emptying monks of energy. And when monks can't heal anymore, Dismember-Cleave will finish targets more quickly just cause you can do it more often.

Riotgear · Feb 18, 2007, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Well, give me one good reason to use it over [skill]eviscerate[/skill]

A better challenge would be a reason to use it over [skill]Dragon Slash[/skill]

Patccmoi · Feb 18, 2007, 10:56 PM // 22:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

A better challenge would be a reason to use it over [skill]Dragon Slash[/skill]

Cleave has more room for utility and has a better adrenal spike.

Cleave build is inbetween Evis-Exec and DSlash. It's when you want higher pressure than Evis-Exec but still a little more utility than DSlash. If you want all-out adrenal spike with more utility, Evis-Exec is better, and if you want all-out damage pressure with little to no utility, DSlash is better.