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Avatar of War Set Bonus
kolatmaster
Member Posts: 3,111 Arc User
For a week or so I was using 2x Berserker's set and 2x Avatar of War set, to get the plus bonus to Crit Strike as opposed to either Set 4 bonus. Two days ago I got a pretty good deal on the remaining 2 pieces of the AoW set I needed, and after having saved a bit (wheeling and dealing as necessary!) I plopped them on and tested how Onslaught works out for me...
I must say I am pretty impressed, particularly in PvE as the bonus to Recovery really lowers my encounter power time, particularly in Boss fights. I am currently running Not So Fast, Come and Get It, and Indomitable Battle Strike as my encounter powers and WS/WMS (Instigator build) as my At-Wills.
I'll freely admit I have not played with the Berserker set 4 bonus, but just reading it and the ability to stack Onslaught with the AoW set ability I have noticed a marked improvement in my overall damage output.
What are others thoughts?
I must say I am pretty impressed, particularly in PvE as the bonus to Recovery really lowers my encounter power time, particularly in Boss fights. I am currently running Not So Fast, Come and Get It, and Indomitable Battle Strike as my encounter powers and WS/WMS (Instigator build) as my At-Wills.
I'll freely admit I have not played with the Berserker set 4 bonus, but just reading it and the ability to stack Onslaught with the AoW set ability I have noticed a marked improvement in my overall damage output.
What are others thoughts?
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I ran 4/4 AoW for about a week and I personally could not keep the set bonus up enough for me to consider it worthwhile. Keeping it up would require either obscene amounts of recovery (which the AoW set itself mostly rules out as a possibility), or just a lot of recovery and a very delicate timing of encounters. The latter would be very inflexible and would suffer greatly from any disturbances such as excessive movement or needing to revive a party member. The former would make it very difficult (if not impossible) to hit the soft caps of your other important stats such as arp. Since power is neigh-worthless to me and I can get almost as much recovery on my gear as I would from the proc if I just change a couple pieces around, I don't think 4/4 AoW is worth it.
For these reasons, I run 2/4 AoW and 2/4 Vigilant Warlord's for a slightly more recovery-focused build. I feel this is far more robust as it performs consistently no matter what horrible things may go wrong and avoids crit's extremely harsh DR. I've even lately been considering swapping out the AoW pieces for Bladestorm's for even more recovery, but I'm not sure losing over 1000 crit (3.6% for me) would be worth it since I'm already at the recovery soft cap.
From a qualitative standpoint, I feel the extra recovery on my gear lets me keep Slam up far more often. I've even occasionally hit Slam by accident just a few seconds after my previous Slam. It's also nice to see huge chunks of that daily bar fill up with every Roar or well-placed IDBS.
This is from a Destroyer perspective. I have no experience with Instigator so I can't speak for how effective (or ineffective) AoW 4set really is for your build. If you feel it works for you, that's great. Keep doing it.
However, I think your perceived benefit is mostly a result of the large (though brief) recovery bonus. If you have a relatively low amount (~1.5-2k or so) of recovery on your gear as you suggest in your post, I can certainly see that this would be the case. If you want to give it a try, replacing AoW chest/gloves with VW will give you 841 recovery at a loss of 713 crit and the set bonus. You can get 2/4 VW for less than 70k (at least on Mindflayer) so even if you don't end up liking it you're not out a ton of cash. I even have an extra chestpiece I could front you if you're on my server. I think it's worth a shot if you're up for it.
If I'm completely off base with my assumptions, I apologize. Set me straight if I got anything wrong.
Just a few notes on my build: I am over 3700 Crit w/o the 2 Set Beserker bonus, and my recovery w/Companion is currently mid 2500s range.
I'll take a look into that honestly, as losing the Crit would put be down to about 3k (which is right at the soft cap I believe) and jump my Recover to low 3ks... So it is worth testing!
Also I am on Beholder, though I appreciate the offer and when the Shards merge on June 20th, feel free to reach out to me to chat. Always willing to talk shop with someone who is insightful, mature, and friendly!
Not in the slightest!
Heh sorry what I was gunna say has been covered. The 4 set bonus is just to fickle to try to maintain and I also came to the same conclusion of 2 and 2 for my GWF. It provided much better returns over longer periods.
Alot of our encounter powers will have reduced cooldowns once the patch goes live. Will this make AoW 4 set bonus more desireable?
are you sure about that? 1350 power from the proc gives me a ~10% damage boost along with increasing bleed damage and the bonus power I get from slam, and there's no DR on power. Just how much recovery do you have?
I'll certainly be giving it a second shot to see if it works out, but I'm not very optimistic. Even if it is possible to hold the buff 100% of the time in some situations, I'm still not sure I will use it. The buff is just too short.
I'm using Roar, Restoring Strike, and IDBS. Each of these serves a vital purpose for me. Even if I could keep the stacks up 100% of the time just by dropping one of them for one of the skills you mentioned, a 10% damage bonus wouldn't be worth it to me. So until something changes or I learn something new, I'm sticking with these encounters.
Roar is the only one of the three I use that can consistently generate multiple stacks on demand. While it is certainly possible to do with IDBS, too many things can go wrong and can turn a hit you were sure would hit a bunch of mobs into hitting one or even zero mobs. When you add one or two CWs into the mix, it becomes even more difficult. Give one of those CWs a superiority complex and an affinity for schadenfreude and sometimes I just want to stop playing
Since stacks cannot be maintained reliably with my encounter setup in a sufficiently large set of realistic situations and changing my encounter setup would significantly hinder my effectiveness, I think you can guess where I'm going with this.
Keep in mind my goal is to have my character perform at a consistently high level (or at least as high as the current incarnation of the GWF can be expected to perform) in as many situations as possible. Having to maintain a stacking buff that only lasts 4 seconds just doesn't mesh well with that idea, no matter what the benefit for doing so is. If the world were perfect (hur hur) and I could just stand there and smack things, maybe it would be a more appealing choice. As it stands, I think I'll pass until they increase the duration of the buff or change the bonus altogether.
I have a little north of 3k recovery.
Again, if anyone has some information I'm not privy to that would make the bonus appealing, please let it be known. I love to be proven wrong.
I can maintain my AoW buff for 8s every 12s. Flourish > full cycle of sure strike > restoring strike (got buff) > full cycle of SS > Indomitable (8s of buff) > repeat. this can be much longer if you use knockdown / roar and have feat grants you 25% less cooldown of roar/knockdown.
You paid for it? I found my full set in chests, and I actually find Onslaught awesome.
either way its pissing me off.
Please adjust AoW set so it works correctly and does not require a degree in juggling.
Thanks in advance,
Warbane