Spell focusing sash + Slayer Spellbook = Less damage per cast

[Cloak&Dagger]

The focusing items could be done without penalty or with allowing carry over from target to target, but really that's not what they are about.
They provide a tactical option where the cost, benefit, and time investment are all known and predictable quantities.

The benefits come from how its used instead of just that its used.

For weapons the addition of the property does not count against the imbuing weight. For the sash, the properties are comparable with most other chest slot items so that mages aren't forced to make a really large tradeoff in addition to the initial penalties.

Fighters aren't forced to use specials so they don't have to spend any mana while in the penalty stages. There's alot less risk there. Additionally that penalty stage duration is dependent on their swing speed and successful hit rate. 5 swings with a fast weapon, is about 6.25 seconds, 5 spells hitting with damage is a bit slower than that and there is the mana investment.

(DCI Sash is one of Corgul's 3 GUARANTEED drops not his artifact drops. So if you do him a few times chances are you'll get one. )


@Harlequin:

Your best use of the focus property on the weapon is to use regular hits to get the damage into positive.
Once you're in positive you'll start getting the increases and can start your specials. If you wait for your first major damage spike thats the time to fire off your heavy damage specials like AI(PvM ONLY) or Crushing blow. Also thats a good time to renew your concecrate/divine fury. Lightning strike crit is not predictable so it benefits a bit less from the combining with the property.

The important thing to remember is that a 20% bonus is proportional and stacking so the harder you hit, the bigger the bonus. If you're hitting for 30 you'll get a small bump to 36, but if you were hitting with a crushing blow you'd be hitting for 30(Base) +15(50% Crushing) then applying the 20% giving 54 instead of 30(Base) + 15(50%) + 6(20%) which would give you 51.

Considering I don't have high seas, and see no reason to pay for it, I guess the idea of corguls sash is out for me? But that is not exactly the point of everything I said in this thread so far. If you play normally you will have to take the sash off to be effective in every aspect of the game except when you are in a boss fight, and even then not many of the boss fights would you benefit from using this method. I have said, I believe in this thread, that I praise and admire you guys for your innovative thinking but still the benefit of using the sash is limited and not as tactical as you might think....same goes for weapons with focus, but the weapons I simply do not notice a gain in over all damage.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

As for artifacts since SA, if you cant find a powerful enough weapon, armour piece or jewel, you're probably not imbuing it right. The only thing introduced since SA more powerful than the capabilities of imbuing have been ship cannons and there's no way I'm making those hand held.

Depends how you measure that power. (although I would not really disagree with the statement you made)

Edit: Forgot to mention the complaint was that artifacts are useless....specially most weapons.

 

[Hunters' Moon]

As for artifacts since SA, if you cant find a powerful enough weapon, armour piece or jewel, you're probably not imbuing it right. The only thing introduced since SA more powerful than the capabilities of imbuing have been ship cannons and there's no way I'm making those hand held.

WoW has "dwarven hand-cannons" so why shouldn't we have them as well?

 

[Skrag]

@Skrag:
If there was no penalty what would be the reason for NOT using it?

Given that you gave it the same DCI as Corgul's Sash and there aren't many meaningful alternatives for that slot around, nothing. It's a badly under-itemized slot now that you guys have started putting stats there, so pretty much anything non-worthless is going to be must-have. So what?

Throw in a doublet or tunic or something (same slot) that converts all spell damage to cold damage (or whatever), maybe one with a little bit of LRC, maybe some with a few of those SA item properties nobody remembers. Suddenly there are viable reasons to potentially use or not use any of them, without any one in particular being especially powerful.

As it is, what reason is there for NOT using one... in boss fights? That's my point, there's no difference between the penalty and non-penalty version except that you wait until the boss is in position before putting on the penalty version.

Of course if you're playing a bushido character where you invest maybe 3 mana for a huge hci bonus, constantly stacking damage up to 100%, and the chance for a free armor ignore every swing, focusing weapons are probably not gonna help you all that much.

Listen, pretty much every PVM dexer in UO has both Bushido and Chivalry unless they're a kook content to nerf themselves for thematic reasons. If that crystal is meant for dexers without Bushido then it's good times, because I bet both of them are very happy with it.

Anyway, I've already run some numbers in a previous thread and if anything is overpowered in that combination it's Consecrate Weapon. With one spell you pretty much wipe your arse on the game's entire elemental damage/resist system.

If you want to diversify melee away from the current stranglehold of chiv/bush/necro sampires, then you need to give Bushido a "consecrate weapon" stance and have form-changing necro spells require Spirit Speak.

Then melee pretty much splits off into necro/bushido/ss sampires using the new stance plus Curse Weapon, and chiv/bushido paladins sticking with Evasion plus the usual Chivalry spells. The former uses Honor for it's big damage boost, with the drawback of having to hope they don't miss twice in a row, that the boss doesn't buff or take any damage first, etcetera. The latter uses Enemy of One, with the usual drawback of taking extra damage from other things.

Yeah Bushido remains ubiquitous, but with three skills (necro, bush, chiv) and two templates ONE of the three had to stay on both. And Bushido + either necro or chiv is a much less thematically odious mix than combining Necromancy and Chivalry on the same template. It's better than the one template with all three skills that we have now.

 

[WarUltima]

Wow I cant believe all the QQing.

Easy solution...
Do not use the Sash and throw away all the focus crystals you've farmed.
Leave these advanced items to more advanced players who can utilize them better.

Problem solved. You do not lose anything, and if you want the 5dci on the sash, buy em. These are guaranteed drop and I didnt have too much trouble buying them (for under 2m gp).

So you want the mods there are corgols sash. And who's stopping you from NOT to use these items?

 

[Skrag]

Wow, what a great and insightful post. Very useful.

 

[WarUltima]

Wow, what a great and insightful post. Very useful.

Indeed for people like you.

Thank you.

Sorry DEV didn't serve everything you wanted on a platinum platter covered in diamonds and scented.

Again glad you liked my suggestion. Thank you.

 

[Skrag]

What a dysfunctional traumatized little community we have going on here. Is there anything so useless or lame that some beaten wife of a poster won't come along and go "You killed 800 bosses and only got 1 item, and when you equipped that item it deleted your account and gave you herpes IRL? Well so what? What, you want everything on a silver platter?"

Probably not.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Skrag you have a seriously devoid view of games, you also take way to many liberties upon yourself. I won't argue if anyone should have bushido and chiv or not, but The point of the Developers post was stating that if all you did was use lightning strike so you could hit 45hci, then you are crippling the ability of the sash. He did not say anyone with bushido would be SoL. Considering any player worth time talking to will have 45hci or maybe at the lowest 40, your argument is void. Get a grip on reality buddy, and stop assuming everyone is the same as yourself.

 

[Skrag]

If I could go more than five minutes without some goon self-righteously telling me that...

* Expensive player-to-player transactions act as a gold faucet and increase inflation.
* Expensive player-to-player transactions act as a gold sink and decrease inflation.
* Ship combat costing more than it earns is awesome.
* Being able to search vendors without using a third-party goldselling website would take away the "fun" of shopping for hours on end.
* Killing a boss 20+ times and getting zero reward is great and perfectly balanced.
* Developers accidentally deleting town criers is cool because what am I, too lazy to buy a Sherry the Mouse statue?

...and other ridiculous crap, I'd have a much better attitude. But as it is, I'm generally shocked by the MMO masochism and all-around poor grasp of basic game design concepts on display around here.

Yes, you need to incentivize the things you want players to do with some kind of reward. I know YOU, generic argumentative know-nothing Stratics poster, don't care about loot at all and are just ever so morally superior because of that, but your personal quirks don't overrule basic design tenets.

Yes, if you design an item in such a way that "equip nothing" is a competetive alternative for that slot, people are going to complain that the item is crappy.

And yes, saying you designed an item for melee fighters EXCEPT for all the ones who use Bushido to get the hit chance increase and Perfection damage bonus? Yeah that pretty much merits a blank stare. Sorry.

 

[Skrag]

Also, look, I just need to state exactly how these sashes will be used.

You'll put one in your pack, minimize your paperdoll into that little box that says "character", kill all the trash monsters or whatever, then when you're ready to settle in and grind damage on the boss, you'll drop the sash on that little box to equip it. (Or just make a macro for it in UOA or whatever.)

The penalty isn't really a damage penalty. It isn't going to actually result in anyone doing less damage, because no one will actually USE it in situations where doing so is a penalty. They'll just take the damn thing off. The penalty is just a user interface tax, where you're forced to mess with putting it on and taking it off in order to optimize your damage.

If you don't want the sash to be useful in short fights then increase the ramp-up time and alter the damage in the bonus phase accordingly. This isn't "baw mages will do less damage sometimes" this is "baw mages have to click more to do optimal damage for no good reason".

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

If I could go more than five minutes without some goon self-righteously telling me that...

* Expensive player-to-player transactions act as a gold faucet and increase inflation.
* Expensive player-to-player transactions act as a gold sink and decrease inflation.
* Ship combat costing more than it earns is awesome.
* Being able to search vendors without using a third-party goldselling website would take away the "fun" of shopping for hours on end.
* Killing a boss 20+ times and getting zero reward is great and perfectly balanced.
* Developers accidentally deleting town criers is cool because what am I, too lazy to buy a Sherry the Mouse statue?

...and other ridiculous crap, I'd have a much better attitude. But as it is, I'm generally shocked by the MMO masochism and all-around poor grasp of basic game design concepts on display around here.

Yes, you need to incentivize the things you want players to do with some kind of reward. I know YOU, generic argumentative know-nothing Stratics poster, don't care about loot at all and are just ever so morally superior because of that, but your personal quirks don't overrule basic design tenets.

Yes, if you design an item in such a way that "equip nothing" is a competetive alternative for that slot, people are going to complain that the item is crappy.

And yes, saying you designed an item for melee fighters EXCEPT for all the ones who use Bushido to get the hit chance increase and Perfection damage bonus? Yeah that pretty much merits a blank stare. Sorry.

Ignoring all of the stuff you said before your last statement/paragraph, considering I have addressed it twice now, and you continue to prove my point about it.

Again it was not designed for everyone except those who use Bushido for the Perfection damage bonus, true it does not help much for those who "HAVE" to use Lightning strike just to land a hit, but then you take the liberty of saying "ANY ONE WHO PLAYS THIS GAME WILL USE BUSHIDO" then I will go on to say that, everyone has 45hci and using Lightning strike for the hci bonus is well...******** because you already have 45. If you use an argument and then change it, you are discredited, so which one is it? Does everyone do the same thing, or is every player different? Up until your various attacks in this thread I mostly agreed with you, did I not? I don't think the sash is very useful, hell even look at my post in direct response to Logrus. But again, in HIS example everyone who uses a melee character would benefit from his equation (I don't see the benefit personally...but I am not arguing its usefulness) But then you claim "everyone uses bushido and chiv" although he did not say either of those two were excluded, only people who cant hit a mongbat with out using lightning strike.

So again, which one is it? You can't hold both sides of an argument. Then again you did just claim in what I quoted that two sides of the same argument are not only both wrong, but both cause you to have a bad attitude, makes me wonder...are you a recluse?

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Also, look, I just need to state exactly how these sashes will be used.

You'll put one in your pack, minimize your paperdoll into that little box that says "character", kill all the trash monsters or whatever, then when you're ready to settle in and grind damage on the boss, you'll drop the sash on that little box to equip it. (Or just make a macro for it in UOA or whatever.)

The penalty isn't really a damage penalty. It isn't going to actually result in anyone doing less damage, because no one will actually USE it in situations where doing so is a penalty. They'll just take the damn thing off. The penalty is just a user interface tax, where you're forced to mess with putting it on and taking it off in order to optimize your damage.

See this is where I agree! it is just an annoyance. I praise them for the innovative thinking, but they still failed to produce anything worth even putting on.

 

[Harlequin]

@Harlequin:

Your best use of the focus property on the weapon is to use regular hits to get the damage into positive.
Once you're in positive you'll start getting the increases and can start your specials. If you wait for your first major damage spike thats the time to fire off your heavy damage specials like AI(PvM ONLY) or Crushing blow. Also thats a good time to renew your concecrate/divine fury. Lightning strike crit is not predictable so it benefits a bit less from the combining with the property.

The important thing to remember is that a 20% bonus is proportional and stacking so the harder you hit, the bigger the bonus. If you're hitting for 30 you'll get a small bump to 36, but if you were hitting with a crushing blow you'd be hitting for 30(Base) +15(50% Crushing) then applying the 20% giving 54 instead of 30(Base) + 15(50%) + 6(20%) which would give you 51.

Thx, will test more. Any chance of buffing the stats? Or reducing the penalty?

Would this be a good time to ask for blade weave to be changed to AI?

Just asking

 

[WarUltima]

Again my take on this is the 2 items in question are "advanced" item that can be situational but is indeed useful especially for more talented players. Or in your opinion those who dont mind the little equip/take off action to optimize their damage output.

I am seeing a net gain of HUGE bonus on my pvm SW Myst mages. The sash is godly when you can count a little bit. MA FB MA FB MA then WoDx15... The damage bonus is stunning when you use it right.

Only thing I have to say is that mages having to temporary sacrifice the sash slot to use it. Especially some of my mages runs Lt Sash in order to maintain 100lrc. But overall just annoyance.

I abosolutely love the focus crystal on my boss killing AI weapon on my sampire wammy. I drop into wrath form and LSx5 AIx15 again the resulting damage is STUNNING. Its like getting free 20% damage (or 16% overall?) over the cap which is what I am already at.

Heck all my sampires are using the sash for 5dci along, even if I have a hit spell weapon (usually only on my boss killing weapons) I KNOW i will still get more damage overall from the hit spells. Bosses dont die in 1 hit, they dont die in 5 hits, most of them take 100+ hits... with focus on weapon when I use it right, a boss that usually die in 100 hits I can easily drop the boss in less than 80 hits now. Again only if you know how to use them... and it amazes me how much people refuse to learn anything new.

Let me put in this way, even if the 5 penalty hits will make me LOSE -50 sdi or -300DI as long as over the entire cycle it will net me a 20% bonus over my current capped out damage output, I WILL be using it. It's not hard to spam LS 100000 times or toggling AI over and over, it could be challenging to some people keeping their # of hits on track without any on-screen indicator. Actually going from max damage bonus to the 1st penalty hit is very very noticeable and that's when I start counting 1 in my heart. BUT thats just me. You guys can all throw the crystals/sashes away or just give em to me. I will put them in better use.

 

[Skrag]

Ignoring all of the stuff you said before your last statement/paragraph, considering I have addressed it twice now, and you continue to prove my point about it.

Listen champ, I know you think you've actually managed to rebut something with all this whaargarble but the fact is you're barely coherent. I'm still trying to figure out WTF having a "devoid view" is supposed to mean.

Again it was not designed for everyone except those who use Bushido for the Perfection damage bonus,

Look again at what he said.

Of course if you're playing a bushido character where you invest maybe 3 mana for a huge hci bonus, constantly stacking damage up to 100%, and the chance for a free armor ignore every swing, focusing weapons are probably not gonna help you all that much.

He lists the Perfection damage bonus (which every single Bushido character uses) right in among the benefits of Lightning Strike. I don't see this imaginary distinction you're seeing, between Bushido characters who stack HCI on their gear (not many) and those who get it from Lightning Strike.

All I see is "If you're using a Bushido character who gets all that awesome Bushido stuff, then focus won't help you much!" And yeah, guess what Sampires and ABC archers have in common? Bushido and Chivalry. I mean by definition a focus weapon isn't good for mages, tamers, etcetera. If it's not good for Sampires or ABC archers either then who IS it for?

I did a quick lap around the three populated banks on Atlantic and opened maybe two dozen paperdolls. Number of focus sashes or weapons in evidence? A big fat zero.

I know people can own focus-related gear without banksitting in it, and I guess someone could have had a sash on under their robe, but as the new just-introduced hotness you'd think I would see at least ONE related item SOMEWHERE. I'll poke around Fel Yew later and look at their gear.

 

[Logrus]

It doesn't help a bushido based template very much because of how LS works.

The best damage rate you can hope for is landing a crit on EVERY single lightning strike or close to the damage of every single hit being an Armor ignore.
You can't predict the crit hit, so you cant choose to spend that crit hit when you have a 20% bonus rather than when you have a 50% penalty. Also since you're using LS on every single hit, including the penalty hits, you're not going to be saving the mana during the penalty stages that somone using all AI's, or crushing blows could choose to do. And since it only costs 3 mana you really don't care about saving the mana.
Hence a Bushido template would on average get the FLAT bonus provided by the item functionality which is a 120% damage penalty and a 210% damage bonus, which results in an overall 90% damage bonus. (of course you could get all your crits in the penalty stage and none in the bonus stage)

As a flat % rate optimizing with crushing blow over lightning strike you'd get a (315% total bonus) 225% overall bonus versus lighting strikes 90% overall bonus.


No matter what temp you play, as long as the fight lasts the duration of a cycle you'll average a 90% dmg bonus.

And since its spread out over the full duration of the effect or 20 hits a same swing every time or (LS) would get a 2.5% bonus per hit.

Optimized would be 225% over 20 hits for the duration of the effect is 11.25% which is more than 4x that of lightning strike on each hit.


On average all templates will do more damage, on average each hit has a small range of values for damage output. So on average everyone gets a bonus.
Of course if you're unlucky or the RNG hates you, you may find that LS puts most of your crits under penalty instead of bonus and so a bushido template relying ONLY on lightning strike is the only template with the possibility of doing the same thing over and over again and actually being less effective any other template would have to intentionally sabotage themselves.


So hopefully that clarifies why a LS bushido type may not find it as useful since it increases their dependence on the RNG and old lady luck.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Listen champ, I know you think you've actually managed to rebut something with all this whaargarble but the fact is you're barely coherent.

Wrong again.

As for everything else you said, Logrus just confirmed what I said. If you only use ls the sol.

 

[Smoot]

I see the usefulness in long spell casting fights, but dont quite get the effect for melee / archery in pvm. I guess because most of my pvm suits are at the damage cap one way or another? Like alot of people take chiv off sampires in favor of all elemental damage weapons because enemy of one is useless because it goes above the cap, giving no extra damage.

Also, although useful with specific templates / weapons, for a sampire under damage cap wouldnt the damage reduction / increase make damage output / health gained to inconsistent to reliably keep yourself alive? I mean, if you get hit for 50 points on the first hit, itll take you 5 hits just to get back to the healing effect you would get without the sash.

As others have said, this sash only seems good for characters using melee without high weapon damage output.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I see the usefulness in long spell casting fights, but dont quite get the effect for melee / archery in pvm. I guess because most of my pvm suits are at the damage cap one way or another? Like alot of people take chiv off sampires in favor of all elemental damage weapons because enemy of one is useless because it goes above the cap, giving no extra damage.

Also, although useful with specific templates / weapons, for a sampire under damage cap wouldnt the damage reduction / increase make damage output / health gained to inconsistent to reliably keep yourself alive? I mean, if you get hit for 50 points on the first hit, itll take you 5 hits just to get back to the healing effect you would get without the sash.

As others have said, this sash only seems good for characters using melee without high weapon damage output.

He said somewhere that the focus on weapons should go over the cap....also the sash is useless on melee types, not sure if you know that. need to use a focus gem on a weapon for it to work for melee.

 

[lucitus]

As for artifacts since SA, if you cant find a powerful enough weapon, armour piece or jewel, you're probably not imbuing it right. The only thing introduced since SA more powerful than the capabilities of imbuing have been ship cannons and there's no way I'm making those hand held.

Yes! But thats the problem why slaying a boss monster with thousands of hitpoints for a weapon which is really crap, compared to my imbued weapons, it is only a suggestion, it would make much more fun if you can use what you can get in a hunt!

 

[Smoot]

I see the usefulness in long spell casting fights, but dont quite get the effect for melee / archery in pvm. I guess because most of my pvm suits are at the damage cap one way or another? Like alot of people take chiv off sampires in favor of all elemental damage weapons because enemy of one is useless because it goes above the cap, giving no extra damage.

Also, although useful with specific templates / weapons, for a sampire under damage cap wouldnt the damage reduction / increase make damage output / health gained to inconsistent to reliably keep yourself alive? I mean, if you get hit for 50 points on the first hit, itll take you 5 hits just to get back to the healing effect you would get without the sash.

As others have said, this sash only seems good for characters using melee without high weapon damage output.

He said somewhere that the focus on weapons should go over the cap....also the sash is useless on melee types, not sure if you know that. need to use a focus gem on a weapon for it to work for melee.[/QUOTE]

Ahh ok, that was my initial thought, some of the posts led me to believe the sash affected special move damage, but i guess they were talking about the gem.

The title of the thread confused me when people started talking about melee

 

[Smoot]

As for artifacts since SA, if you cant find a powerful enough weapon, armour piece or jewel, you're probably not imbuing it right. The only thing introduced since SA more powerful than the capabilities of imbuing have been ship cannons and there's no way I'm making those hand held.

Yes! But thats the problem why slaying a boss monster with thousands of hitpoints for a weapon which is really crap, compared to my imbued weapons, it is only a suggestion, it would make much more fun if you can use what you can get in a hunt!

http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/212929-what-has-imbueing-done-magic-item-market.html#post1761102

My thoughts exactly, and theres the huge thread about it haha

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Ahh ok, that was my initial thought, some of the posts led me to believe the sash affected special move damage, but i guess they were talking about the gem.

The title of the thread confused me when people started talking about melee

Yea it does sound confusing, why I thought to try and clear it up.

 

[Logrus]

Yep its definitely a detour.

Though the items function in the same manner, a caster has more control than a fighter in choosing their damage output for a specific attack and so can take even more advantage.

Would some kind person please put the sash and gems on a vendor so I can buy some since I'm not gonna have much time to participate in the invasion from a player side.

 

[Skrag]

Yeah, yeah, it's a great item property. Maybe someday I'll see someone using it. There's still no one at the bank with it on display. Been sniffing around Yew Fel gate and haven't seen anyone using it there either.

It's another worthless post-Abyss item mod like "soul charge" and "resonance" that most people couldn't even tell you the function of.

 

[NuSair]

Spells Focus
-30 -24 -18 -12 -6 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 20 20 20 20 20
(Total)
- 90% / +210%

So, using a base 100 points of damage (just because it makes the math easy) you get

Damage change / running mod total
-30 / -30
-24 / -54
-18 / -72
-12 / -84
-6 / -90
0 / -90
2 / -88
4 / -84
6 / -78
8 / -70
10 / -60
12 / -48
14 / -34
16 / -18
18 / 0
20 / 20
20 / 40
20 / 60
20 / 80
20 / 100
20 / 120

So, at your 15th spell cast is when you break even. But here's the fun part. Even if you go through the next 5 spells and get the most total negatives (-90), overall you are still +30 in total damage. The breaking point is the 16th spell. Once you past that, this sash is always going to be a bonus.