Bashing attack. Evileye Vs Decay.

Draen

Just looking for the universally accepted skill that Apostates bash with. I know Shamans use Bleed, and I'm told it's similar to Evileye Bleed. I know the Willpower drain on Deadeyes is pretty harsh, but I don't mind getting a Circlet of the Will if it would help with bashing.

having said that, is Decay still superior? (IF so, totally know what I'm going to try to push for during the next Classlead submission. Worked great in Imperian.)

Sena

Evileye bleed does almost no damage, it's worse than just punching things to death. Decay is what you should use.

Valaria

im curious how much of bleed does to a laughing lord of imps.

Stuneree

Sena is spot on there.

I think using Bleed does something like 1/4 of the damage. And I think that was BEFORE Trans Necromancy bashing got buffed.

Decay is better by a long shot. I guess if you wanted to switch things up, you could bleed once so you do some damage over time while you use decay. But that would still be essentially useless.

As an additional tip: Putrefaction, Demon Armour both work for denizen damage (I think). Also, almost every time I've died bashing could have probably been prevented by using Demon Apathy. Just a tip in case you weren't aware of those.

Alternatively, if you REALLY want to use Bleed instead of Decay, try whacking denizens with a wet noodle. It does more damage, and it's still unique.

Naverre

Stuneree said:

Decay is better by a long shot. I guess if you wanted to switch things up, you could bleed once so you do some damage over time while you use decay. But that would still be essentially useless.

Bleed curse and Evileye doesn't do DoT on denizens, just standard burst damage, AFAIK.

Herenicus

Bleed/Bleed at high levels produces a lot of cheap critical-hit fireworks. Not useful, though.

Razha

Why is it even an option then? I have similar curiosity about serpent camus/sumac vs garrote. 

Naverre

Camus used to be much better than garrote because camus' strength is static, and garrote depends on your skill level in Subterfuge. @Sena would know better than me the numbers, but it used to be that sumac was the best you could do for bashing for a loooong time, until camus, and then the long wait until trans subterfuge for decent garrotes (and from what I understand back to biting when higher level denizens started dodging your garrotes).

Now, garrote is not only available much sooner to young serpents, but seems to be better than sumac/camus. Camus is okay to use  as a hunting attack if your flay speed is too slow to deal with shields, since biting denizens ignores shields like it does adventurers. Basically, if it takes longer to flay than it does to bite, use bite. Even with silver fangs, though, camus' damage just isn't as good as garroting with a decent whip.

Sena

Presumably bleed is usable against denizens because evileye was practically a copy of curses, and curse bleed was usable against denizens. And then I guess it was nerfed for some reason, maybe so decay would be the main bashing attack for apostates, or maybe curse bleed was also that terrible back then and it was later buffed for shamans but not apostates.

Sumac/camus are occasionally useful because they never miss, go through shields, and don't require a whip. And as Naverre said, garrote used to take a lot more lessons to learn than camus, so newbie serpents would start out having only sumac, and then would often be advised to learn camus next since it would be faster than waiting for garrote (and you wanted to get away from sumac as fast as you could).

Antreus

@Sena - can fear still be used to move denizens out a room while hunting in PvE?

Addama

Oh my god stop necroing old threads.

Kuy

Addama said:

Oh my god stop necroing old threads.

Two months isn't really necroing old threads, given the general turn-over rate of our conversations pertaining to combat (including denizen combat) mechanics.

Sena

Antreus said:

@Sena - can fear still be used to move denizens out a room while hunting in PvE?

I don't think so.

Chiam

Why not ask an Apostate?
No, it doesn't, but Cowardice in Evileye does. More than half of the denizens that I know of is immune to it though.

Suladan

Razha said:

Why is it even an option then? I have similar curiosity about serpent camus/sumac vs garrote. 

Once upon a time, garrote was halfway up the skills in Subterfuge, so a newbie Serpent couldn't use it. Camus was also (and still is) fairly up there on the Venom skill ladder. So when starting out they'd have to bite with sumac.

A while ago an overhaul was done to all classes newbie bashing. Magi for example used to punch with stonefist until level 30 or something because firelash was farther up (and staff even farther) and they didn't have anything else. This was also before the no-brainer lesson package and when the credits you got each 5 levels was lower than it is now.

Since then sumac is basically obsolete - though I'm sure somebody could find a niche usage for it - as everybody from newbie to dragon-level serpent uses garrote to bash with.

Camus originally had (and still has) the advantage of never missing. So if you're bashing deathknights, garrote will miss fairly often unless you have an arte lash/whip (and even then it'll still miss infrequently). Biting never misses. Somewhat recently camus was also changed to go through denizen shields, so when they shield you don't have to flay you just switch to biting.

Arisha

Horrible, two-year necro I know. But given the circumstances, I will. My testing shows Evileyes Bleed being  superior to Necromancy Decay. I'm doing 12-13% with Decay against Great Rock cerberus, vs. 7-8%, with a recovery of 4s vs. 1.9s respectively. That's without Deadeyes, just standard Bleed.

Ryzeth

I believe the buff to Evileye bleed semi-recently made it more favourable, so that Apostates wouldn't have to have to trans a separate skill for bashing than they do for combat.

Van

I've been testing this haphazardly since I came back a few days ago.  Bleed is a legitimate bashing tool, now - at least in comparison to what it was the last time I had a good long stint of playing.  I'm still curious how bleed crits compare to a decay.  Bleed crits are so plentiful, but it still seems to take almost the same amount of time and mana to kill someone with decay as it does with deadeyes bleed.  

Szanthax

Given a less eq time and same mana/damage bleed  would  be  better

Minifie

Bleed/Bleed is definitely better if you are nimble and rolling the near 50% crit at dragon level, the more arties you have stacked to up crit the better bleed becomes. If you had both crit paragons I could see bleed/bleed being silly fast at killing, not serpent fast but still solid.

Asmodron

I do miss you evileye