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Questions about Electric Shot and Split the Sky
namikazepw
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 0 Arc User
These look like they'd be excellent skills, but the only information that I have is the flavor text associated with them. Why do none of the popular builds use these skills? Perhaps they've got bugs, or the stats aren't worthwhile, etc. Any input is appreciated.
Post edited by namikazepw on
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Split the Sky is a situational skill, but its usefulness can't be debated. A lot of people ignore its melee buff which increases your attack power by what appears to be 10% for 15 seconds. The decrease in defense is a bit of a drag, but if you're playing ranged then you're going to be just fine. The AoE requires you or an ally to be struck by an opponent while inside the area of effect to activate the damage, but if you're playing with a tank like a Guardian or Great Weapon then you will have strikes all over the place. It's still limited to 5 simultaneous strikes like most of our other AoE, but since the odds of 6 or more monsters all striking simultaneously are ridiculously low this shouldn't become an issue. If your running with a tank I strongly recommend using both variations of the skill. On the other hand if you're running with a ranged party (or your tank likes to kite in huge *** circles) you can still make excellent use of the damage buff, but you won't get much use out of the AoE since nobody's really going to be taking hits.
Electric shot, I wanted to like it. I couldn't, it just sucks for an archery/ranged build.
Otherwise others have covered it.
Just as a further note at the moment I'm testing Electric Shot (3/3 in a hybrid build) and I've just taken it back off my bar in favour of Aimed Shot. The character isn't level 60 yet (but has Ancient bow/blades from Lockbox) so I'm reserving judgement for when I have the combat feats more fully spec'd but right now I'm starting to feel it doesn't even fit in a Hybrid or Combat spec, we'll see what happens with a 15% damage boost in dungeons. But if the current trend holds I'll be dumping it.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
I've done a little parsing and even as a combat spec clear the ground is lacklustre. The damage just isn't there, even with twin blade storm. I find a split strike rapid combo burns mobs down faster. Of course, it could just be me.
in the lower levels its highly useful if you make an oops and get a crowd of weak mobs around you and the escape is on CD. Clear the ground is for clearing the ground of low health weak mobs when your surrounded as far as i can tell
If the sole purpose for Clear the Ground is really simply to clear out trash monsters from around the party or yourself then it's even more useless than we gave it credit for. Every time I use it ES/CtG screams starter skill. It's clunky, inaccurate, and completely lacking in effectiveness late-game or even when you pick it up. It almost feels like they originally designed Ranger to run like every other class (starts weak and gets stronger later), but decided to change it at the last minute and flipped the power pyramid and simply threw ES/CtG in the middle somewhere because they couldn't figure out where to put it.
For a hybrid stance, I'd probably not recommend using it. Same for a ranged. ES does have an AoE and makes it so you don't have to worry about aggro'ing extra groups. However, as others have said, I tend to match ES with aimed shot, will do my initial strike with aimed shot, switch to melee stance while it's charging and as soon as I hit, MR into the target to start the AoE with CtG.
Actually watching the tooltip damage numbers my feated throw caution was something around a 23.5% damage boost.
Also SPlit the sky has great synergy with correcting aim, as it never crits so it buffs up ur crit chance passively.
It is definetely a must for me in dungeons.
clear the ground is pretty crappy yeah, i never use it nowdays. the only use i see to it is as a setbonus/feat proccer due to its fast attack speed.... and even then ur probably better off just using rapid instead for its singletarget damage as uve got ur aoe sorted with split.
u mean for pvp... coz a geared up hr wont care for unmitigated dmg in pve as all his damage will be unmitigated through his arp.
I think you meant Blade Storm here; Twin-Blade works in Ranged as well as melee.
I like your theory, but I can't validate putting that much work into a single skill to make it viable. Like I said before if it had something else to make it worthwhile it would change my opinion, but to have to go all the way to capstone just to make it a viable dps skill is ridiculous. And even then there's just no damage to be had from it that another skill can't deliver three-fold. Unmitigated or no 500 damage is still only 500 damage, and when it's you versus a powerhouse great weapon fighter 500 damage is chump change when you don't have anything in the way of stuns to prevent him from slapping you back
As for that, the speed of CtG is where it becomes dangerous. I generally get standard 1k hits, 3k crits. The unmitigated happens often, due to how fast CtG does go off, can be done while in motion, lots of good things.
My standard skill bar is fox shift, boar rush, MR. So I actually have a counter prone. I prone, disrupting, fox shift, and I take a major chunk of HP out of GWFs. I've been able to kill them, even the threatening rush spammers. It's because it's constant damage.
So yes, blade storm, not twin blade, plus combat mastery, plus speed of CtG means a fairly decent damage output. It's AoE, so mixing it up in a crowd also can hammer multiple players at once. This is actually the setup that allows me to be a threat to perma-rogues. ITC is deflection, blade storm and CM can't be mitigated. It's AoE, so I don't have to have a target to start hitting and hurting them. As soon as I do hit them, I can pop boar's rush and prone them, leading into the combo that rips them apart.
... that's of course, if I'm not lazy and just keep CtG anyways.
I wouldn't use it against a boss or anything but against weak enemies es is pretty decent because you can use es then split much faster than you can rapid and split as it doesn't take much time to switch between the two and ctg is also very good at what es is good at just close up and faster.
Plus yeah split shot is better... better at attracting aggro on every monster in a 20 block radius and it does hit hard but with es you don't ever really have to worry about the aggro from using it.
But, again just because I like it doesn't mean you have to.