Journals + Owlbear Cub synergy: huge (un)intended advantage?

kain · January 2020

Hello,

At first I was hesitant whether to post this in bug report or feedback section, but eventually decided to start a discussion here and see other people's stance on the issue.

As far as we all know, the Tales of Old event is not coming back anytime soon, which means that the artifacts are unobtainable for the time being. This alone leaves those who couldn't get them during the events (for various reasons) at a disadvantage I'm going to elaborate on here. But let's get to the point: I'm going to focus here on the bonus that you get once you equip any three journals, Lostmauth's Vengeance. This bonus triggers every time you perform a critical attack, dealing additional hit for weapon damage. Pretty trivial, isn't it? Weapon damage constitutes such a small fraction of your overall performance during a dungeon it's negligible. But there's one important thing about this tiny additional damage packet: its damage NEVER crits. This is very important here.

Now, let's take a look at Owlbear Cub companion power: it gives the companion's owner 10% chance to perform an additional hit that equals to (20-50, depending on the quality) % of the user's power when you DON'T CRIT.

Now, this alone might seem like a theorycrafting without giving any evidence of this happening, and asking for the nerf due to being salty, because I haven't got the artifacts when I could. So, here is the screenshot attached of the test performed with Lostmauth's set, which bonus behaves exactly like the one you get from equipping three journals:

https://imgur.com/a/6qNKNT7

So, as you can see, whenever you perform a critical hit, it triggers Lostmauth's Vengeance (as expected), and as a result, Lostmauth's Vengeancce procs owlbear. Now, is this intended behaviour?

But that's not everything. It's not a secret that tenebrous enchantments also proc owlbear, but did you know that owlbear can also be procced by a separate damage packet from Inherit Danger (the apprentices' spoils set)?

https://imgur.com/a/GYxPW3Z

It's also nothing new that owlbear's additional hit procs on tenebrous enchantment's additional damage hit, which procs from different sources of damage, even artifacts, like gond's anvil of creation:

https://imgur.com/a/H1BBglG

But I'm a bit off the topic; the main point of this thread/rant/whatever you call it, is to raise awareness about the advantage of players using three journals while being able to throw in another set composed of neck/belt/art slots AND using owlbear cub companion at the same time, which essentially has a chance of 10% to proc on every attack, and not just on a non-critical hit. Is this really working as intended, or a lucky synergy/bug?

darthpotater · January 2020

I think the norm is that procs doesnt activate other procs. I would like this to be intended because it opens lots of build options like the Briartwine armor enchant activating owlbear. There is a discussion about that too

https://arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/comment/13137538

sirkicha · January 2020

In my opinion, either the lostmauth bonus set from the journals should be removed completely, or the journals should be brought back to game for everyone, as the disparity between people using them and the rest of the community is worse than it seems at first look. It also gives too much power and hp compared to other artifacts.
And now lostmauth's set is useless and it's sad.

ecrana · January 2020

The question regarding the synergy with most of those interactions was already asked somewhere on the forums.

It was stated that it is WAI and not a bug by either a dev or qa (too lazy to find the thread).

Also, in the maintenance stream that ended a little while ago, Whiteside said ToO will be returning.

So any saltiness by players that don't have the journals can be laid to rest since they should have a shot at them again from the sounds of it.

wilbur626 · January 2020

kain#8743 said:

darthpotater said:
I think the norm is that procs doesnt activate other procs. I would like this to be intended because it opens lots of build options like the Briartwine armor enchant activating owlbear. There is a discussion about that too

https://arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/comment/13137538
Fair enough, more diversity is always welcome (unless one's a fan of copy-pasted characters), and I do 100% agree with you, however, the problem lies elsewhere. The utility of these artifacts being used as active on top of the bonus power and hp are large enough to compete with (or even outclass) 300 ilvl artifacts, but adding lostmauth's vengeance to it is kinda too much, given they're not obtainable anymore.

Anything non-meta, like the Briartwine + tenebrous + owlbear combined with gond's anvil tanks would be pretty awesome to see

Why gonds anvil ?

Link to my long time work in progress Briartwine + tenebrous + owlbear tank build :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-TivWhOiagxE9KCpGTqAXEm7fbrKp60-vWXUKKwfnAE/edit

apollo · January 2020

To have a better image I would also advice to include in your info the fact that OBC (and tenebrous for that matter since it too can proc from indirect damaging sources) have an internal cooldown and therefore you may deal 1 or several additional non crit hits per time period and they still wont proc OBC as often as one might think and therefore it's not a HUGE advantage as the title implies specially if we combine the ICD with the low 10% chance.

We also need to remember that it's a build option and like any other option, it has some advantages and disadvantages and so there is a risk/reward situation. It's not easy for most players to cap the needed stats (mod 18 is 85k) and still use the 3 storytelling artifacts for example. You lose power compared to using 3 x 3k power artifacts and OBC doesn't have the same effect for all classes and builds. We also need to remember that Story teller artifacts were not an easy task to obtain and having some extra small advantage compared to others is in order.

I won't go into more details, just didn't want OBC to be perceived as something broken that works for all and always. As far as the events go, they will cycle again and will give the opportunity to players to get said artifacts and use them if they choose so.

My 2 cents.

milehighxr · January 2020

STOP ASKING FOR THINGS TO BE NERFED WHEN YOU DIDN"T HAVE THE CHANCE TO GET IT OR CAN'T BENEFIT FROM IT.

This is how the game gets bad, or unenjoyable fo rpeople. I for one finally have my Paladin almost doing as much damage as a tank in mod 17, as he was doing in mod 15 as a healer, with all the boons up that point. He has finished undermountain, and I'll have to respec him when mod 18 drops on console as he has the extra boon point bug on him. I really don't want have to go thru a complete relearning curve of my toon because someone is whining that they missed out on an event.

Yes tales in a pain in the HAMSTER to complete, even harder to get 5 runs in one shot, each day. I attribute that to too many elitist snobs that are unwilling to give lower geared people a hand, or unwilling to listen to their healock and stay close together so they can be healed.

Find a good guild with a good group of folks willing to take you thru it when it comes around again. Elsewise find another way that you can benefit from artifact combos, and build to that. Don't ask nerfs to gear that people busted their keisters for less than 2 months after they completed them.

I personally applaud yer efforts in finding this new combo that people can build to to increase their damage. I for one will be trying it out myself to see what if any diff it makes to my current build.

milehighxr · January 2020

apollo#5199 said:
To have a better image I would also advice to include in your info the fact that OBC (and tenebrous for that matter since it too can proc from indirect damaging sources) have an internal cooldown and therefore you may deal 1 or several additional non crit hits per time period and they still wont proc OBC as often as one might think and therefore it's not a HUGE advantage as the title implies specially if we combine the ICD with the low 10% chance.

We also need to remember that it's a build option and like any other option, it has some advantages and disadvantages and so there is a risk/reward situation. It's not easy for most players to cap the needed stats (mod 18 is 85k) and still use the 3 storytelling artifacts for example. You lose power compared to using 3 x 3k power artifacts and OBC doesn't have the same effect for all classes and builds. We also need to remember that Story teller artifacts were not an easy task to obtain and having some extra small advantage compared to others is in order.

I won't go into more details, just didn't want OBC to be perceived as something broken that works for all and always. As far as the events go, they will cycle again and will give the opportunity to players to get said artifacts and use them if they choose so.

My 2 cents.

On my pally in Hellpit I have been running Blessed Wanderer, aura of vengeance, OBC(at blue), tenebrous r11, briatwine r8. I have gone back thru the log afterwards(since it is the only solo combat area available, and we don't have ACT on console) and I don't see OBC or tenebrous proccing hyper frequently. I have not tried that combo with 3 journals equipped, and I haven't looked close enough to see if the aura is proccing owlbear or not.

Journals + Owlbear Cub synergy: huge (un)intended advantage?

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