Bashing - arius vs. bleed/jinx vs. swiftcurse bleed

Xoatl

I tried looking this up in the past and there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus - which is fine if that's the case. It sounds like there was a hunting rebalancing which probably changed things a bit. Now that the change has settled for a while, is there a clear winner?

Searching suggested:
swiftcurse bleed - fastest but burns through WP hard. I have low crit so this might not be worth the WP drain for me right now, feels like almost 3% WP per mob (something like 20 curses per gnoll). Get tons of battlerage.
jinx/bleed - what I'm currently running, only a fraction of WP drain. Only a little slower than swiftcurse? But I hadn't optimized battlerage useage with swiftcurse.
arius - ignore shields, big hit, but eq based

I went nimble since i had assumed nimble + swiftcurse was the way to go. I'd guess I could improve my hunting a little more by using arius instead of breaking shields with battlerage and just letting the mob hit me instead. I'd additionally guess that these might get better/worse just based on how much WP/crit I have, so maybe swiftcurse will end up better once I've got a few 10s more of levels?

Cynlael

curse bleed/jinx bleed bleed is what I found to be better overall. Arius is only good (last I heard) if you don't give a rats ass about combat, and can go int spec+quick-witted. If you can get a diadem+int arties it might be worth it, but doubtful that it'll win out over curse/jinx still.

Amranu

DRAGONFORM

Mindshell

The swiftcurse defence reduces pve bleed damage. Don't put up your swiftcurse (or just expend it all) when going hunting. You will immediately notice how much faster jinx hunting is. Swiftcurse hunting with aelkesh attunement is a trap for new shaman players since you get used to hunting with swiftcurse up before transcendant curses and never realise how to maximise jinx when you get it. Arius hunting is not for the starter shaman, it peaks with arties allowing you to switch traits between nimble an quick-witted (grimoire) as well as 15% eq reduction (aldar). For your purposes, hunt with jinx and use arius when the target shields.

Shush @Amranu, he needs to get there first

Mathilda

I also noticed that curse-jinx bashing, with attuned Aelkesh (to counter the willpower drain of the 'curse bleed' half) or Daina (to up willpower regeneration), will make willpower drain a non-issue. Bash all day away!

Xoatl

Mindshell said:

The swiftcurse defence reduces pve bleed damage.

Wow. I had a bunch of stuff disabled while I was writing some triggers and thought that my jinx was doing a bit more damage for some unknown reason but assumed I was just nuts. In terms of maximizing jinx, I replace my next attack with jinx 2x bleed any time I see that 'your malign power blah blah line', is there anything else I should be doing?

I've been attuning just ri'shen since the tide critters hurt and I needed just a bit more healing to outpace them, just got mastery so I'll start putting up aelkesh if I'm going on extended bashathons.

Mathilda

Depending on your current con, Marak might be better because things like health sip, boar regen, etc. are based on max health (so, they heal more the higher your base health is).

Nazihk

Also mob damage is static and does not scale to player health at all, which makes raw health more valuable for PvE tanking.

Mindshell

Xoatl said:

Mindshell said:

The swiftcurse defence reduces pve bleed damage.

Wow. I had a bunch of stuff disabled while I was writing some triggers and thought that my jinx was doing a bit more damage for some unknown reason but assumed I was just nuts. In terms of maximizing jinx, I replace my next attack with jinx 2x bleed any time I see that 'your malign power blah blah line', is there anything else I should be doing?

I've been attuning just ri'shen since the tide critters hurt and I needed just a bit more healing to outpace them, just got mastery so I'll start putting up aelkesh if I'm going on extended bashathons.

You've got the sequence, it's just curse / jinx / curse / jinx / curse / jinx... shielded? Use arius and save your battlerage

Good attunements for hunting: marak(+1constitution), garon(cutting+blunt resist), ri'shen(+1hp regen), daina(willpower regen). The first two usually suffice unless you need the willpower, the current tide hunting has mixed damage types though, goblins spit is poison, shadows choke is asphyxiation; and is where ri'shen acts as a catchall. You'll find similar in various hunting zones depending on where you go after this tide is gone too.