Achaean Raves

Elisella

Nazihk said:

Puxi said:

Guys guys guys... The grass is always greener!

Nice Syndra! Great leading lately.

Except the grass really IS greener on Mhaldor's side.

Necromancy is better than Devotion, hands down, because it scales better with a group. Healing rite is great, sure, but it doesn't scale well at all. It's only really nice in 1v1/2v2 situations. Once you go past those numbers its benefit becomes increasingly irrelevant when it is compared against the incoming affliction rate.

On the other hand, shit like "soulspear providing ranged gravehands" and "gravehands not dropping on character death" don't have scaling issues and remain useful no matter what the numbers are. 

The skills aren't meant to be direct analogues and both have strengths and weaknesses. Trying to say that one is definitively better is silly.

For instance, consider the fact that any faction can banish Gravehands with a Bard, yet Rites require a Necromancer with essence to remove, one at a time.

Making the two skills mirror images of each other because one side gets an obviously cooler toy would be boring, and I'm reasonably sure nobody but Mhaldor wants Infernals running around vivisecting with 20+ strength thanks to Fury/Necro-inspiration.

Dunn

Man you wanna talk about scaling? Stacked Depthswalker in big groups. Fuck that.

Kiet

nerf dw

Alyxeri

What does strength have to do with vivisecting?

Antonius

Directly? Nothing, but Inspiration would make it much easier to reach the required strength for a guaranteed torso damage disembowel kill in the likely vivisect/disembowel fork.

Farrah

I consider needing a bard to dirge instead of a devotionist another advantage of gravehands.

Reyson

It's good to know that no matter what happens, I can tune in here and read the same conversation again and again, every few months. Forums are like a metronome. 

Lyrin

Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Gravehands and the east.

Atalkez

Asking for some consistency != asking for them to be direct analogs of one another.

Not requiring an enemy list, persisting through death, and have a niche class be the ‘counter’ are all advantages over Rites. Nazihk is right though, anyone looking objectively would agree that Necromancy is simply better than Devotion, except in small scale instances and very select scenarios.

A big complaint from Mhaldor is the decay time of hands. More than happy to give a bigger timer in exchange for the mechanics to be a bit more balanced when compared to their direct counterpart.

Distort shouldn’t persist through death either, but I’m pretty sure Distort fades quite a bit faster than Rites or Gravehands when the DW is out of the room.

Minifie

You can always convert and nab up some sweet necromancy, I sure as feck don't have it because DW > apostate and Runie > necro for my usages. I don't want either devo or necro, though, so for me it's a wash.

Atalkez

DW is godmode I agree. Even if Devo was boosted a ton, I’m not sure it’s touching DW for group superiority.

Farrah and I both were planning on Bloodsworn for that Crusade. Once we saw how many people were there, we both swapped within 30 seconds. Just so much better.

Aralaya

When in doubt, bring 5 DW

Minifie

Dwalker is just plain silly, any complaints about necro/devo is lost on the fact Dwalker, for the most part, can bring equally useful tools and incredible damage as well. We have 3 artied Dwalkers, 1 of which is Alrena with light arties, crixos and I holding solid amounts (I think Crixos has a few), and realistically alrena and I can just lolzerg someone down on our own in group conflicts, I've only done it once with her but I'd love to test it again. It's a class that just gets better the more you add (to about half your raid depending on size).

If anyone of the devo/necro users wanna talk about greener grass, it's over on Dwalker.

Dunn

It’s the simplicity with which you can gun out a shit ton of damage. Degen capstone (with and without shadow/attunement) hurts like hell and gets capped very quickly with no coordination needed beyond “target x”. 

Solnir

For the record, DW Distort lasts 60 seconds if the DW drops it and leaves. Haven't tested if you stay for part of the 10 minute in-room duration if it still lasts 60 seconds or has a reduced time.

Exelethril

3 dws hitting you with sens + timeloop (assuming prio) into degen capstone = ded. Then again, 3 of most classes hitting you = dead anyways

Atalkez

Yeah I don’t know if it’s overtuned in that area specifically.

Three dual wield cutting/blunt, occultists, monks, hell even Blademaster can belt out serious damage too.

Dunn

All you have to do is review deathsight after a large scale conflict. It’s mostly psychic damage kills a lot of the time. 

Antonius

One of the big things is that Depthswalker does a ton of damage even without speccing for strength. You don't even need to be particularly artefacted to be doing a ton of damage with the class because of the way things work. Might be worth having a per target cooldown on degeneration capstone so you don't get multiple procs per round.

I suspect I do more (or, at the very least, comparable) damage as dual cutting Paladin, but I also have eight more points of strength (24 as Paladin, 16 as Depthswalker). When what's essentially the equivalent of a strength-specced, but completely unartied, person is matching a strength-specced, fully artied person of another class, things are a little off.

Solnir

Antonius said:

Might be worth having a per target cooldown on degeneration capstone so you don't get multiple procs per round.

If this happens, please make the failed degen caps due to cooldown have a different 1p and 3p line.

Edit: Added the italics part

Aralaya

If you add a cool down to degen capstone, depending on how long it is, you're forcing people to use dictate, since it the cooldown is too long you won't be able to get them low enough for mutilate +tooros, which extremely simplifies defence against them.

Atalkez

Just need to make it so that only one person can get the capstone bonus at a time. A 1 second CD on capstone firing would keep it the way it is for 1v1, while reducing it in group.

That said, the class does do a lot of damage without any spec requirement, which is a fair point to make. 12 strength damage should be less than 16 strength damage imo.

Aegoth

I smell classleads

Antonius

Atalkez said:

Just need to make it so that only one person can get the capstone bonus at a time. A 1 second CD on capstone firing would keep it the way it is for 1v1, while reducing it in group.

That said, the class does do a lot of damage without any spec requirement, which is a fair point to make. 12 strength damage should be less than 16 strength damage imo.

I was thinking somewhere around 2 seconds. That should be short enough that it's not going to affect 1v1 (fastest attack speed for DW is ~2.1, I think), but also long enough that you're not going to get multiple DWs getting a proc per round of attacks if their balances happen to be staggered.

Aegoth said:

I smell classleads

Technically we're due for a round since it's Q1, but I think the last round was late and a lot of the approved classleads still haven't been implemented, so I really don't know when they'll be opening up. I will be adding this to my list of classleads to raise whenever that happens though.

Farrah

Is the capstone really an issue without attune? I thought the damage was toned down to be fairly reasonable without and in terms of ease of use it's no different than spamming kai choke or warp/hound. I don't necessarily mind only one capstone hit at a time, but that was literally the entire point of the attune req since only one DW can attune.

Str scaling is a good point.

Lenn

Atalkez said:

That said, the class does do a lot of damage without any artefact requirement, which is a fair point to make. Unartied damage should be less than artied damage imo.

Aralaya

Farrah said:

Is the capstone really an issue without attune? I thought the damage was toned down to be fairly reasonable without and in terms of ease of use it's no different than spamming kai choke or warp/hound. I don't necessarily mind only one capstone hit at a time, but that was literally the entire point of the attune req since only one DW can attune.

Str scaling is a good point.

Can you use the degen capstone of another DW?

Dunn

The capstone is literally just an effect that occurs if they have the affs that degeneration gives. It’s a smart afflicter. So yes, you will hit degeneration capstone regardless of who gave the afflictions below it. 

Aralaya

I derped hard. I meant Degen Attune

Farrah

Aralaya said:

I derped hard. I meant Degen Attune

No. The reason attune was made a requirement for the super hit was to reduce group stacking damage. One DW has the attune and only that DW does max damage. Could always just adjust those numbers more if it's an issue.