if your gonna try to tell me that spamming WOD at the end of a fight is doing less damage in 30 seconds that a warrior that has been slogging away for 10 minutes then you are either misinformed or doing something wrong.
ive played both and i can say without any embellishment that a SW with SDI drops BOMBS and can out damage a mob in the last 30 seconds at least double that of a tamer or a bushy that has been fighting that same mob for 10 minutes.
hell, in wraith form you can chain WOD and not even use any mana.
well ok, why dont we do this.
lets take away the need to have 5 people to do a circle..... IF you take away 50% of the mustard that the focus gives you.
there is nothing more disheartening then doing some EM event and having a SW roll up and spam WOD at the very end and get the treat off the mob after you spent 10 minutes beating the tar out of it.
or we can just nerf WOD, that would work too.
but then we wouldnt need a circle if we didnt have WOD or all the perks from it.... so its a catch 22 then, eh?
Actually, I am telling you, yes a decked out bushido user (not just a "warrior") can and does outdamage a Spellweaving character, and they can do it, the entire duration of the encounter. Each hit that bushido user is doing if geared correctly is happening at 1.25 (max swing speed) vs. a 4 second cast time of Word of Death. My SDI is nothing to write home about, but in Reaper Form and with an SDI book I'm landing for 680 points of damage with Word of Death, every 4 seconds. I've got a gargoyle bushido thrower, that's not even got a single GM skill let alone legendary that can AI and Lightning Strike for 181 as fast as I can hit my macros. And he never runs out of mana. I have talked to people that claim they hit for 240 as quickly as I hit for 181. The difference the garg thrower I got can do that straight into an encounter, provided I hitting perfection, and can do it the entire encounter and I didn't spend a second shouting for a focus. I just ran in and started killing. I would go and film this for you to see, but I am not subbing to this game to do so.
Here's an example pulled out of the Warrior forums here on Stratics. Also I don't know this guy and have never talked to them (as far as I know).
I got bored of my Sampire so I made this. So far solo'd Slasher, Rikktor & Serrado (whole spawns and champ). Soul Glaives are like AI'ing with a Crossbow 270 highest damage I've seen with it so far.
120 Throwing
120 Tactics
120 Bushido
120 Anatomy
100 Healing
70 Chivalry
40 Necro
30 SS (60)
119 Str
124 Dex
12 Int
90/80/70/70/75 (Fire & Energy need to be 75 to stay all 70's in Wraith Form, the excess just worked out that way with base resists), 60 DI, 37 LMC, 2 MR, 45 HCI, 30 HLD, 30 SS, 15 SSI, 5 Kinetic Eater, 21 Str, 26 Dex, 20 HP, 32 Stam, 30 Mana, Night Sight
Giving
140 Str/140 HP
150 Dex/182 Stam
12 Int/42 Mana
There's a few drawbacks, Throwing first swing misses bug 95% of the time, though I suppose it gives you time to honor things. Throwing weapons don't swing at what they say they do, they're slightly slower. No JOAT (hence the Necro/SS split - the SS still gives around 20s Curse Weapon). The Bushido is semi redundant but Momentum Strike is proving necessary for levelling spawns quickly. Also carrying a lot of consumables, pots, bandages, trap box, petals, apples, invis pots, teleport scrolls, Wraith Form regs (30), Curse Weapon regs (200), the Slasher took around 100 Pig Iron. The Mana is kinda low and Imbuing Mana Leech on Throwing weapons caps pretty low too, but I wanted max range and speed, when it falls below the AI spam level I've still got LS, so I'm still effectively getting more criticals than if I just used that.
There's a few upsides, no ammo, no need to enhance and possibly break weapons (like you would need to with Archery for the top speed), 1h so you can use pots, can frequently AI non stop. (I've done the Slasher on this with only 108 Throwing/70s Healing.)
So no, I don't think "it's a catch 22 eh". I don't think taking the focus requirement out of the game is what is needed, rather other ways of getting one added. Somebody in a thread I recently necro'd said they thought 100k was a bit steep for a focus, I don't think it is. I think 100k for a focus is rather reasonable, and I'd gladly fork it over in the morning or late at night to get a focus without having to stone off weaving and find 4 or 5 other people at 5:30 a.m. or 6 or whenever on like a Tuesday morning when I'm probably the only person awake in my time zone. Kinda makes you wonder "eh"?
-Also just did some quick calculator math. 680 every 4 seconds = 170 damage every second if broken down into Damage Per Second.
240 every 1.25 = 192 damage every second. The difference again, I know I'm gonna have to toss this out there if I don't now, is that 192 is happening the ENTIRE ENCOUNTER vs the last 25'ish%. And all one has to do is honor the target. Am I asking that bushido gets nerfed? Nope. Do I think it needs to? Nope. Did the bushido'r need to shout in general chat during prime time for even a split second to achieve his potential? Nope. Should he? Well I dunno, should he?
Alrighty, just went and looked on uoguide, and toyed around with the ssi calculator and we got 1.75 as the fastest possible speed a soul glaive can get to. If you're going just with weapon intensity and stamina added together. So 240 every 1.75 = 137.1428571428571. If we were doing the 270 in this example from the warrior posts seems to "cap" out at, we'd be doing 154.2857142857143 every second if this were all equated in a dps fashion. So during that last 25%ish point of a monster's life a spell weaver may actually do 16'ish points of damage more a second, but depending on whether the spellweaver is wraith form (if they even got it on the template they are running) you have to factor in they're going to have to meditate here and there, bringing down their dps, a fizzle from Word of Death enlarges the disparity in damage more so than a miss from somebody swing at 1.75. I mean I'm sure there's all kinds of variables and insanities I'm not accounting for, but It's 2:00 a.m., I'm admittedly not a rocket scientist and I'll mention again it is my rather seasoned and somewhat sleepy opinion that Spellweaving could use some nudging and love.
More now that I think about it, I solo alot on my mage/scribe/weaver; and it's not a just stand there and take it situation when you killing stygian dragon or medusa; but I both watched and duo'd medusa with a straight on sampire and a thrower just stand there the majority of the fight with medusa. Stygian yeah that's just nasty all around not many folks can just stand there on that guy. So in a solo situation again, sampire /thrower got the edge; and he didn't sit around in general begging for hours at a time in alot of cases to get there and be able to do it.
Random bushido/necro decimating Stygian, when I got more motivation to comb through a bajillion videos looking for a spellweaver that's put up a video of solo'ing Stygian I'll come back and put it in.
Random Bushido/Thrower owning the meow out of Slasher of Veils
in the comments he mention
s it's easier now to make better suits and and the fight is thusly easier.
I'm not asking for "balance", or even for any sins against fun committed in the name of "balance", I'm asking for various options to be added to the game to get a focus. I'd prefer it not include adding some random skill to the game altogether, but it could be that it relies on Focus (The Skill not the benefit of Arcane Circle) Meditation Item ID, Magery Mysticism, A warrior skill Tinkering anything they can dream up or just implement a cash system like is in place for Chivalry. Don't get started on Chivalry. Some people think a focus should be achieved by virtue of skill level only.. I'll go dig that up now that I've slept a little bit (don't worry still yammering around for a video that will show case the OP'dness of a spellweaver solo'ing stygian dragon or slasher of veils with the ease these guys do). And I got no idea why this text started changing colors.