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Demon Blazing Scarab?
Desdi - Sanctuary
Posts: 8,680 Arc User
A couple of days ago a Demon Blazing Scarab fell into my hands. I wasn't thinking of learning it but then I thought that I didn't pay for it on the first place so why not? (I do know that I need to pay coins/spirit to learn it)
I tried to do a research for it but I couldn't find the answers I was looking for so I'm wondering...
1)In the description it says that the duration is reduced by 6 seconds which means it becomes 24 seconds instead of 30. Is this really the way it is? If yes, isn't that a disadvantage instead of a better upgrade the demon skill is supposed to offer?
2) Is it worth learning at all? I know that the damage will be increased but is that increased damage worth it?
Thank you in advance for your replies b:thanks
I tried to do a research for it but I couldn't find the answers I was looking for so I'm wondering...
1)In the description it says that the duration is reduced by 6 seconds which means it becomes 24 seconds instead of 30. Is this really the way it is? If yes, isn't that a disadvantage instead of a better upgrade the demon skill is supposed to offer?
2) Is it worth learning at all? I know that the damage will be increased but is that increased damage worth it?
Thank you in advance for your replies b:thanks
Post edited by Desdi - Sanctuary on
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Comments
It's a better spike of damage (as are most of the demon skills).
There's no reason to not learn it, I guess; but it's hardly the best skill in the world.
i dont really use this skill often enough to say that its worth BUYING the book, but hey if i got it for free, id use it lol.
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I was confused by the description and ecatomb's was just like the game's. I thought they just decreased the duration and made it take less overall damage. Silly b:chuckle
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The catch is that the DOT portion of the damage is not multiplied by damage amplifiers (it does benefit from mdef debuffs at the time it was cast). So if your group is regularly piling on lots of damage amps, Venomous can be better to fill the gap between the Ironwood and Lucky.
I mostly use it to time when to re-apply Sage Ironwood (20 sec duration). Ironwood, Blazing, and when Blazing's cooldown is up I know I need to reapply Ironwood. But that won't matter to you since you're Demon.
How can you say it's third best damage? It doesn't take weapon into account like other skills. As refines/ imbues go up: the other skills do to.
I have the sage version, but rarely find a use for it as it does very little damage and the DOT is almost pointless on [?] which is most of what we're grinding / using on eventually.
Demon Frost says hi.
Demon Frost got messed up in the Spark train and should better say goodbye b:shutupb:shockedb:surrender
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While it's technically high damage, once you consider the chi cost... it isn't. That 100 chi cost to use the skill really reduces the damage you get out of it when you take into consideration the damage the chi gets you in sparks.
its like the same problem on my wiz with crown of the flame but basically does much more damage than those spells with 100% weapon and less than those with 300% weapon description
That's if you're using it in pvp though, in which case you're using it for the secondary effect and not the damage. The context was clearly referring to the damage output from the skill, not any other use it may have.
So called "skill" on this game depends a lot on knowing when to use any given attack. I use Blazing a lot, it is especially good for situations when it is convenient to let a pet handle a mob on its own or necessary to be careful with aggro.
And leveling skills really is one of the better ways to increase your damage output.
1.00 Frost
1.02 Lucky
1.00 Ironwood
0.92 Blazing
0.76 Noxious
0.73 Venomous
Using the chi to 1-spark and casting Lucky will get you more damage (instantly too) than using it on Frost. The extra damage from all the other spells you cast afterward just buries Frost even further. Here are the same figures using Sage versions of all spells, veno in the low-90s:
1.00 Frost
0.93 Ironwood
0.88 Lucky
0.87 Blazing
0.69 Venomous
0.69 Noxious
While Frost appears to hold up pretty well at first glance, bear in mind that this metric attributes the entirety of the DOT's damage to just the cast time of the spell. In the 9 sec it takes for Frost's DOT to complete, you could spam out 3-5 more spells while still under the effect of the spark. Each spell cast gains about 0.165 from 1-sparking, so it only takes 3 casts of Venomous or 2 casts of the higher damage spells for 1-sparking to exceed the damage you'd get from using the spark to cast Frost.
I should mention that this is for a heavy build. Sparking is a multiplier for equipment damage in addition to magic, so the higher your magic, the less relative benefit there is from sparking. In other words, Frost for a pure mag build should do better than the above figures show. If a pure mag build can give me their matk unsparked and 1-sparked, their channeling, and equipment attack totals, I can toss it into my spreadsheet and give you pure mag figures.
Nevertheless, my recommendation remains unchanged. Leave Frost at level 1 unless you need the slow effect for some reason. The only use I've heard of for the L10 version of Frost is when you're spam-healing against a boss and have enough time to squeeze out a non-heal now and then. Since you're building up free chi from the heals and don't have time to spark, Frost can be a good way to use the chi for extra damage. Demon venos may wish to get the Demon version for the freeze.
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I certainly will not make it any sort of priority but having the option available may not be so bad, especially considering the limited use of many other skills for a caster veno. The foxform curses (other than Amp) are practically useless until you can get Sage Soul Degeneration. So, while i certainly would not make it a priority over skills with even specialized uses i may consider leveling it through 8x. I'm very strongly on the side that skills you will only use rarely should be maxed since it is precisely on those ocassions that you want whatever you're using to be effective. Skills i don't use at all (such as Wallop and Befuddling) i don't bother placing on my tool bar, which i do try to keep as streamlined as posible (only hotkeys and an extra bar). Since i recently figured how to save some space by eliminating Venomous and Ironwood (which are the opening skills to both my macros) and have already accounted for sufficient room for 79 skills i can certainly afford to experiment a bit, and Frost may just be able to deliver on some rare scenarios.
Why do you do that? You know that Venomous is only 100% weapon damage and also leave out that it has longer cast time than Noxious. (as -ch gears go up: Noxious improves) You then throw in the "typical gear" clause for a fall back when I was clearly indicating that it has diminishing value as gears are improved. In other words: It may not pay for itself by the time it loses value.
We should also consider the chi gained from sage venomous or the wood debuff from demon that won't help that fire DoT at all. To further consider it's value, we should look at how frequently it can be used in a fight as well as how frequently it would be wasted or have it's duration interrupted.
In practice, I see how much lighter it hits initially and I see how little it does over time. (More like less than 3k dmg for DoT while other spells hit initially for almost 3k more).
If I had to do it again, I don't know if I'd get sage blazing scarab.
Also, I should point out that Venomous always has a shorter cast time than Noxious. Channeling reduces Noxious (2.5 sec) by a greater amount than Venomous (1.5 sec), but since both are reduced by the same percentage it's never enough to make Noxious faster.
Chi gain from Sage Venomous averages out to 10 per cast. Chi gain from Blazing is 15 (20?) per cast. So on average you'll gain more chi casting Blazing instead of Venomous. And the OP was Demon anyway.
The wood debuff from Demon Venomous not helping the fire DOT is a really good point.
Yes. The very first thing I typed in my first post on this topic was "If the DOT lasts the full duration".
I got tired of trying to guess how much damage my spells were doing on average by watching the damage numbers in the game. So I started calculating them.
My weapon is only a +10 TT99, and pretty easy to obtain lately. Anyone that gets L11 Blazing is already close to getting some long term gear worth refining to +10. My contention is that Blazing may not be worth getting for that short period of time that it might benefit. Putting the coin into an earlier weapon refine and spirit into a genie would likely be wiser.
No, Noxious has .8s cast time while venomous has a full 1. Their DPS will not be synchronous as -ch goes up.
Yet again you leave out critical information. The chi gained occasionally from sage venomous is in addition to what it provides normally and:
If skill lasts 30s and ticks 1 per sec, then multiply 30*tick? Even on metal mobs it appears I'm losing dps by using sage blazing.
0 sparks - 8343-8453, 8398 average
1 spark - 11205-11353, 11279 average
2 sparks - 14067-14253, 14160 average
3 sparks - 21222-21503, 21362.5 average
Assuming I calculated these correct I come to
Unsparked frost vs 1 sparked others
1.29 Ironwood
1.20 Noxious
1.00 Frost
0.99 Lucky
0.96 Blazing
0.90 Venomous
Though I am comparing sage versions of skills there. If you compare triple sparks it's even more against frost. Infact, I'll do it right now:
3.15 Ironwood
2.61 Noxious
1.96 Lucky
1.87 Venomous
1.48 Blazing
1.00 Frost
That means a single triple sparked IW does more damage than three casts of frost scarab (and does it faster), in addition to the extra 5-7 skills you get to use during the triple spark.
For 99.9999% of people out there this is true, but at 80% channeling their channel+cast times become equal. So with an 81%+ channeling setup Noxious is actually the faster skill. As far as PWE servers go though, that setup is still theoretical, and is going to be out of reach of just about everyone for a long time to come since it basically requires a full set of 12% channel gear in addition to a few other items.
I think you messed your numbers up here. Venomous gives 10 chi normally, but under sage there's a 20% chance to gain 30 additional chi. So the average chi is actually 16 per cast (10+30*.2). Blazing gives 20. Not that this really matters for a demon comparison, but there you go.
Oh and since it was brought up, you can apply that same logic about the wood debuff to frost just as well as it can be applied to blazing. Though it doesn't hurt frost quite as badly.
Ticks are every 3 seconds. How long the metal mob lives will determine if blazing is worth it for you or not. I only use blazing in two situations, bosses and eden card boss runs, those are the only times that I run into mobs which live long enough for me to gain damage with it, and in eden's case that's more because I'm solo and they're wood mobs than it being a place where blazing really shines. You can apply the same logic to solo Abaddon runs as well. But again, that's sage... I don't think there's any situation for a demon where blazing is worth using due to the wood debuff.
If it's every 3 seconds, then it's much worse than I previously thought. I also do Eden card boss runs and mobs tend to last about half the duration Blazing would take, and there's also the trouble of figuring out when to use it in a string like s.soul degen -> s.amp -> s.ironwood -> s Noxious -> s.Lucky -> s.venomous. My guess is that demon would have a similar dilemma since by the time you'd want to use it: the mob would be half dead. I understand that not everyone kills as quickly but this is what they may face in the future.
There's a possibility it may be useful if you aggro two mobs with Herc, and put the DoT on the one getting just reflect dmg, but not sure I'd even use it for that.
You have to get over 80% channeling before that becomes a factor. I think it's safe to say that unless they release some new items, 99.999% of the playerbase will never attain that. Again, I'm writing my replies to be useful and relevant to the bulk of the players out there. And for them, Noxious will never be faster than Venomous.
Are these DPS or DPC (damage per cast)? The high placement of Noxious makes me think it's DPC. Nothing wrong with that, it's a valid metric, but really only useful for opening spells and 1- or 2-shot kills. In terms of DPS, I get:
1.00 Frost
0.97 Ironwood
0.93 Lucky
0.91 Blazing
0.80 Noxious
0.75 Venomous
But the cast time for Lucky and Frost are the same, so we should be getting the same ratio of the two. The formula I have are (Sage versions):
Frost = wood_mastery*(matk+watk+5135) + 0.8*5135
Lucky = wood_mastery*(matk+watk+4320)
Blazing = wood_mastery*matk + 6427
wood_mastery = 1.25 (Sage)
If these are also DPC, something's wrong. All spells are 100% matk + x00% watk + fixed. Sparking only affects matk, so all spells gain the same amount of damage per cast from sparking. e.g. If Blazing gains 0.54 from triple sparking (goes from 0.96 to 1.48), then Ironwood must also gain 0.54 from triple sparking (goes from 1.29 to 1.83).
Thanks. I could've sworn when I tested it it only gave 30 chi when it triggered, but I just tested it again and it does indeed give 40. Average gain is still less than Blazing. (Also, I'm going to have to do some frequency tests on it at some point. It took me 18 casts before it triggered once, which is way longer than you would expect with a 20% trigger rate.)
Right. Even as a timing mechanism for re-casting Sage Ironwood, it's unnecessary on regular mobs since they don't live long enough to need Ironwood recast.
I've generally found this to be a bad idea. The DOT damage can cause you to pull aggro, which is not a pleasant thing when your herc is busy attacking another mob and the squad is counting on the herc to hold aggro on that mob.
You're acting as if people refine to +10 all at once.
Are you just trolling? Channeling isn't their only difference.
I figure if you're going to cast it for chi anyway, who not do double the damage in less time. If coin and spirit are such a concern for you at your level, then wait till after you get your gear. Eventually you'll have enough extra to train it and you'll be happy you did.
Then what, pray tell are the other differences between venomous and Noxious that might affect their overall DPS? I'm still trying to figure out what your point is. Your whole reason for posting seems to be to try to find something, anything, I say which might be even slightly wrong, no matter how marginal or rare the circumstances.
Using Brael's 483 mag with your TT99 weapon refined to +10 with two 134 matk rings, I calcluate the transition point where Noxious bumps Blazing out of the #3 DPS spell slot to be at 67% channeling. Any less than that and your time is better spent casting Blazing than Noxious (same assumptions as before - single target, mob lives long enough for DOT to last full duration).
If you're still arguing the OP's situation (Demon Blazing), I already said the wood resist debuff on Demon Venomous was a very good point you made. With 483 mag, 36% channel, and your +10 TT99, it will make Noxious more effective than Blazing if the mob has more than 24% wood resist. With Brael's weapon which has approx 3/4 the weapon attack of yours, the transition is at 26% wood resist. So the effect of improved weapon attack and refine is comparatively rather small.
I was going by dpc. Thinking about it though, I probably should have gone with dps as blazing whether it's sage or demon is only going to be used during long fights. For general situations though, I think dpc is a more accurate number as soloing normal mobs or doing things such as bh's with a squad both result in very fast kills against all but bosses.
I found my error, it was modifying weapon damage and magic attack. So skills without weapon damage like blazing were getting less benefit and ironwood was getting a huge one.
There's still a 1.15% chance of that happening. For what it's worth, I just got 3 casts in a row with the bonus chi. I've never tested it to be certain it's a 20% chance, but it's always felt right to me.
30 ticks 1 second apart and 10 ticks 3 seconds apart are more or less the same thing. The only real difference is in how big of a number you see. Which usually drives home the point of how much damage you're losing to resists. On this Celestial Eido Hare at the beginning of Eden my blazing hits for 468 a tick. Since it should hit for 739 it means I'm losing 36.67% of my damage to resists. Of course, since a hare is a non elemental mob it means I'm losing that percentage on my wood nukes too.
Secondary mobs are where blazing will give you some benefit. I tested blazing against some individual mobs since I'm doing Eden right now. Since they're solo it means amp and soul degeneration on each one.
Celestial Rhinodrake - 3 ticks
Heavenly Oddfoot - 5 ticks
Heavenly Rhinorex - 3 ticks
Celestial Sting - 5 ticks (interestingly stunning blow didn't change the number of ticks, I was certain I would get more ticks without it)
Celestial Antelope - 3 ticks
All of these were with 0 crits in the fight. A crit was worth around -1 tick. My casting pattern was fox, SD, amp, stunning blow (antelopes and stings only), fox, blazing, ironwood, then venomous to finish the fight. I stayed away from lucky due to the aggro, and the fact it would make stings/antelopes run again.
I stopped at Stone Brain so I didn't get to the Dranites to test them but from the pattern I would say 6 ticks based on them being wood mobs, and slightly more durable than the stings which died 1 second or so before the next tick in every test.
Against Increased life/defense/magic resist mobs you'll get a few more ticks as well. I didn't run into too many of those this run so my testing there is limited but what I can say is an increased magic resist Celestial Eido Hare took 109 per tick compared to 468 for a normal one (both were before I started counting total ticks). An increased defense Celestial Rhinodrake took 9 ticks before dying. I could have ended that fight faster but when I took aggro I backed off to let my pet take it again (ended up tanking from ticks 3 to 8). I also fought two increased defense Celestial Antelopes, on the first I messed up like against the Rhinodrake and overaggroed and blazing lasted 8 ticks. On the second I held back a little more and blazing went for 6 ticks.
It certainly has that use, on the second mob you're not getting SD+amp so you can expect something that gets 3 ticks to instead take 5 and something that takes 5 to take 8. So if you're fighting two 3 tick mobs you're going to get 8 ticks of blazing on that second mob, or a 3+5 you'll get the full 10 on the second mob. The problem is, I think that atleast in Eden you won't use it much in practice (I realize there are other spots, but since I brought up Eden as somewhere that I get some use out of it due to the high number of wood mobs, I might as well stick with it) because there just aren't that many sets of mobs where it's beneficial.
I did fight one set which was a sting+oddfoot and blazing wore off the oddfoot at about half life (I killed the sting first). But I'm not really sold on fighting multiples at once being effective.
So taking all this data. We know from blazings damage that I have a 36.67% resist rate and that with an Eido Hare's resists I should have a 39.82% resist rate. So, mobs are resisting 3.15% less than they should, due to the 14 levels I have on them.
So taking this data the resist rates of the other mobs would be:
Converting fire resist rates to damage/tick and multiplying by how many ticks blazing was generating on each type of mob we come up with:
Now, calculating my average venomous/iw/blazing damage per cast factoring in resists and adding in the dot damage from blazing you get
There's still a little damage from IW not accounted for due to the defense buff but this is close enough. It basically shows that against wood mobs you'll get a little more damage if you cast blazing as your first spell once you're back in human form and if you do decide to fight two at once (I think it's a bad idea myself when you can avoid it), reflect damage will keep the mob on your herc, and blazing on that second mob will get you quite a bit more additional damage
Edit: The above chart actually isn't right. I forgot to include amp damage. I'll just add it in since the other data is still useful.
That gives blazing a pretty minor benefit even against wood mobs, and that's using normal amp not sage. Throw in sage amp and even against wood mobs, venomous comes out to more damage. The only real benefit is against multiples.
It's not trivial at all. The game has been out over 2 years and leveling to 99 only takes a small fraction of that. Blazing's benefit would only last a fraction of it as well.
http://www.ecatomb.net/pwi/skillpwi.php
Are you basing that on your build which isn't typical? What about something like:
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=9520a9d904dd0082
-except the actual mag on that is 564 and the matk: 11464-12820 ch is -54%
That's -48% channel reduction. The -channel gems decrease by 3% each. The +crit arrow works only for bows.
It's possible to get -3% channel through nirvana archangel leggings and -3% for wearing a pair of archangel items (would suggest sleeves + boots). rank 6 magic sword decreases channel by 10%. still unsure about rank 9 though. If the venomancer weapon is a wand then there's 20% chance to craft with 10% channel reduction. If it's a pataka the channel reduction in not avaiable.
The build you follow is a lot better to wizards than venos as there are plenty of powerful spells with disgustingly long channel but short cast time.
Concerning the argument cast vs. channel there are spells which allow immense DPS increase by equipping -channel items but some either allow minimal change or no change at all. Venomous allows up to 33% channel reduction while blazing, ironwood and lucky scarab will achieve the highest possible DPS with -47% channel and noxious can only match cast time with -68% channel reduction which is nearly impossible to get. The comparison is easier to understand with wizard spells though. Gush has 1s channel and 1s cast so there's absolutely no way to increase its DPS through channel reduction. Stone Rain has 2s channel and 1.4s cast, allowing 30% channel reduction, which makes the spell a lot better. Demon Divine Pyrogram has 1s cast but 2.5s channel (sage and lvl10 versions come with 3s channel) so with 60% channel reduction it's possible to gain massive DPS. The main problem with channel reduction is that cooldown time forces the player to switch to other spells which don't work as nicely with channel reduction. So no matter how good (or bad) are noxious, blazing or lucky scarab, venomous is still the primary attack for a Venomancer.
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