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Combat playstyle - please help
wizardlvl80
Member Posts: 519 Arc User
Hello guys!
I recently upgraded my Vorpal to perfect and made a pathfinder combat loadout. I have some issues while playing it thus I wanted to seek some advice from more experienced combat players.
Toon description:
1. I deal a lot of damage really fast but I'm really falling away with damage the longer the run takes. Is this how Combat works?
2. More or less I followed Sume's youtube guide to Combat HR. I really don't like using Bear trap so I swapped it for PG.
3. My single target damage is sad. Even tough I use CA with artifact boost, I can't do much single target damage. Boss fights are painful.
4. I run with Aspect of the Pack (at 3 points) with artifact boost. My 2nd one is Serpent. I don't know if I should use serpent, cause I rarely use range powers.
5. I'm super slow. I had this bonus from Trapper whenever I switched stances and now I lack of speed. Is there a solution?
6. Is Pathfinder really this good or Stormwarden is better for Combat?
7. My survivability as a Combat is really bad. Mostly because I'm almost all the time in melee. As a Trapper I never had this problem.
I think that Combat is pretty fun to play something else and I don't want to say it's bad because I think that I'm doing something wrong. My damage as a Trapper was significantly higher than as a Combat. I have amazing burst damage as Combat in ETOS or VT, but I'm much weaker in FBI or MSP during boss fights (cause I feel like a god during mob phases in MSP).
I will welcome any advice or criticism on my toon. I'm a really experienced Trapper but sad Combat. I've seen people doing great job with Combat and that's why I'm looking for advice.
I recently upgraded my Vorpal to perfect and made a pathfinder combat loadout. I have some issues while playing it thus I wanted to seek some advice from more experienced combat players.
Toon description:
- 13.7 HR with r12 bondings,
- Companions: Fire and Air archon, Siege master, Chicken (for defensive buff and speed boost), Paranoid delusion.
- With companion proc I get to 94% crit and about 57-60k power.
- Insignia bonuses: Assasin's Covenant, Protector's Camaraderie and Friendship, Gladiators Guile and I don't remember fifth.
- Encounters: I run all the time with Thorn Ward, Cordon and Longstriders.
- At-wills: Split strike and Careful Atttack.
- Weapon set: Orange Relic bow and purple Relic offhand.
- Artifact set: none, I'm using company neckpiece (+2 Dex and Wis), Dex belt and Wheel of Elem, Lantern, Lostmauth Horn and Eye of the Giant.
1. I deal a lot of damage really fast but I'm really falling away with damage the longer the run takes. Is this how Combat works?
2. More or less I followed Sume's youtube guide to Combat HR. I really don't like using Bear trap so I swapped it for PG.
3. My single target damage is sad. Even tough I use CA with artifact boost, I can't do much single target damage. Boss fights are painful.
4. I run with Aspect of the Pack (at 3 points) with artifact boost. My 2nd one is Serpent. I don't know if I should use serpent, cause I rarely use range powers.
5. I'm super slow. I had this bonus from Trapper whenever I switched stances and now I lack of speed. Is there a solution?
6. Is Pathfinder really this good or Stormwarden is better for Combat?
7. My survivability as a Combat is really bad. Mostly because I'm almost all the time in melee. As a Trapper I never had this problem.
I think that Combat is pretty fun to play something else and I don't want to say it's bad because I think that I'm doing something wrong. My damage as a Trapper was significantly higher than as a Combat. I have amazing burst damage as Combat in ETOS or VT, but I'm much weaker in FBI or MSP during boss fights (cause I feel like a god during mob phases in MSP).
I will welcome any advice or criticism on my toon. I'm a really experienced Trapper but sad Combat. I've seen people doing great job with Combat and that's why I'm looking for advice.
Post edited by wizardlvl80#5963 on
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Comments
Thorn strike -> Split strike x2/x3 -> Hit tab 2x for bonus damage after swtiching stances -> PG -> Split strike x2/x3 -> and so on.
On bosses I use Longstrider and Thorn Ward and open fight with Gushing Wound. Rest is basically the same.
Honestly, most trash mobs on anything easier than FBI melt before I get further into any sort of AoE rotation than PG+4xCtG/SS (depending on how grouped up they are). You could consider trying out Stormwarden for mobs and switching to PF for bosses, but it seems like bosses are where you think you're falling behind, which is strange.
Are you, perhaps, also over-valuing Thorn Strike on bosses, when multiple Encounters are coming off of cooldown soon? Thorn Strike does totally fine damage™, but its real value is its super low cooldown, which, among other things, means that you should always emphasize using other encounter powers over it, so that they will be off of cooldown faster.
For bosses, that priority should be Gushing Wounds >>>>>>> Plant Growth >>> Thorn Strike. GW's damage is absolutely absurd, and you want to use it as soon as it's off cooldown almost regardless of the repercussions on your blade hurricane uptime.
*this is a very loose approximation.
Also, is upgrading Vorpal to Trans necessary? I have it fully refined, but I don't know if Trans give us some significant bonus.
Water Archon is not helping your damage in the long run. The only way it is good would be if you were one shotting everything, but then it wouldn't really matter.
Your melee damage is from the OH only, so upgrading the MH first hurts a bit.
Vorpal isn't a great fit for Combat if you use Skirmisher's Gambit as Crit Severity has heavy diminishing returns. I am using Flaming which seems to do pretty well.
Combat is pretty much about AoE damage, so you are going to suffer on bosses. Have a trapper loadout if it bothers you but even if your damage suffers, Longstriders still helps the team a lot.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1230453/testing-weapons-enchantments/p1
The problem is that stacking Crit Severity gives less and less returns the higher you go and Combat has a built in perfect Vorpal in the form of Skirmisher's Gambit. Even without that, the redone weapon enchants outshine Vorpal for most classes.
You transposed Water for Air in the OP, which is why I made that comment.
Thanks!
From what I read he said that when we hit fast, Flaming jams. Aren't Combat attacks fast? I mean, I think that Split strike is a perfect candidate to jam Flaming enchantment.
EDIT: I really like how Flaming works, but forum says I think it looks like a hamster. Hmm.
Flaming will leave damage on the table because the DoT won't have a chance to tick before you're attacking it again w/ combat, and because it only wins over other enchants if you stack the DoT up to its max stacks and then switch targets, which will literally never happen. Trash mobs will die before mobs take any damage from the DoT, bosses will be eternally at the stack cap, effectively reducing the dmg from that enchant per hit, even if they eventually fix the "jamming."
The findings on Vorpal weren't nearly as dire as some people are acting like they are. Sure, it's not a 50% dmg increase. an 18.25% dmg increase is still hard to beat.
Fey is great, but it has trouble stacking with other instances of itself, and the ranged variants of most of your abilities will break it, putting it on CD and not giving you the buff. This can be mitigated by watching the cd like a hawk and making sure you initiate with abilities that will proc it correctly. Its optimal dmg increase over vorpal is pretty minimal, essentially amounting to only the extra %weapon damage hits from the enchant, which vorpal lacks. The debuff is a nice to have side effect too. *shrug* I am content sticking with vorpal and not having to worry about Cordon or StS or Thorn Ward breaking it for 20s.
Lightning enchant is overvalued right now. A stormwarden with it, standing in the middle of a group of mobs holding down Clear the Ground is a hilarious sight to behold and rivals a Steel Blitz GWF with melting trash mobs with lightning procs, but it's a pretty massive loss once boss time comes, and boss fights matter way more than melting trash mobs.
I wouldn't say that Combat is "all about AoE damage" at all. Super-competent GWFs and TRs are the only things that I have ever seen outdps me on single target bossfights outside of a 2000+ item level differential. I don't know what you're doing wrong if you're seeing the opposite, but focus on prioritizing using Gushing Wounds as often as possible. If you're PF, keep CA up but don't spam it ever, and use AotS so that its ticks give you buff stacks.
I adjust the number of left/right clicks between encounters depending on group comp / CDR buffs, but I try and equally space my encounters with at-wills, whether that's Encounter -> 2xSS or E -> 5xSS depends on the group. Either way, you should never have to go beyond 4 or 5xSS, and it's never worth skipping blade hurricane by using less than 2xSS*.
*the only exception: it's totally okay as Stormwarden to use Throw Caution -> PG or GW -> CtG or SS Spam on either AoEing down a pack of trash mobs or bursting down a tanky trash mob like a Dragon Cult Golem. This is, however, only not a loss if the mobs live for longer than 2s but less than 6s, so find your sweet spot.
Verrrrry confused.
I don't feel confident in analyzing the data on a class I know jack about. I'd prefer to let the people who know their class and its intricacies analyze the data.
Also is Aspect of the Seprent is reliable as Combat? I'm currently running Lone Wolf + Aspect of the Pack. Any ideas what can I switch Lone Wolf for? Any tip will be welcomed.
By the way - thanks to all of you guys for sharing the knowledge about Combat. I'm really dumb with it.
Apart from a few longstrider shots here and there I don't see the point of using ranged attacks.
It's also worth specifically calling out both that CA causes a shocking amount of lag in some situations, because it causes the server to have to run/check against timers for each other player for each of their hits against the target, and that the tooltip fails to specify that the triggered attack can trigger once per 1.5s per other player attacking the target. As outlined above, Serpent works well with Careful Attack. I use Lone Wolf a lot for solo content or when I know i'll end up tanking in instances, because squishing is worse than dealing less dmg.
Vorps is definitely the safe/reliable one, but read rjc9000's numbers yourself! they're a fantastic resource and just because I made a boring safe decision doesn't mean you should! Fey is definitely better if you can play around its bugs.
Easiest example: Blade Storm alone clears all of the adds on the end spider-lady boss of EToS whose name I have never bothered to learn despite killing her 4-10x/day for 6 months, which was previously sufficient reason to stay SW for her rather than switching to PF.
It benefits from all combat feats related to melee attacks,
except for blade hurricane.However, it has a weird iteraction with aspect of the serpent. It doesn't consume melee stacks but produces ranged stacks when possible. If you have one or more melee stacks it does nothing. If you have no stack or one ranged stack you get a ranged stack.
I have limited knowledge of trapper but this can probably be problematic.