Is befuddling mist woth leveling?

soarfree · December 2012

Hi,
I hope I'm not repeating a question that has been asked before. I read on the forum that befud mist is good for bosses and for increasing damage to an extent, but couldn't find if its affect works well on normal mobs. I have it leveled to 8 (60% decrease in accuracy) and it doesn't make mobs miss me or my pet at a higher rate. If I level it up to 10 will it start having a noticeable affect on mobs? (I'm pve so I'm not concerned about what it does to other players)
thx

Desdi - Sanctuary · December 2012

Well, if you have spare money and spirit it's not a bad skill to have around.
It's a short range AOE with a short cooldown so it can be spammed during AOEs if you drop to Fox Form to use Myriad Rainbow etc.

The accuracy reduction doesn't help much if you're AA build (naturally low evasion) but can still come in handy and if you're in Fox Form for whatever reason while waiting for the cooldown you can throw that in-between.

Not a must have but it's not a bad skill to have :P

Vitenka - Dreamweaver · December 2012

Wow, so dismissive.
Even as an arcane, this makes mobs miss quite a lot! It's great!

It does really quite high damage for such a quick channel/cast, it's an AOE, tanks like the small help it gives them.
The only downside I've found is that it seems to generate a disproportionate amount of hate. I've been able to steal aggro from the herc by using it since well before I got a decent weapon.

It's not a "Must have, you're completely failing at veno if you don't max it instantly" skill. But I'd put it right up there, just behind leech life and leech mana (not it's proper name, but you know the one I mean)

soarfree · December 2012

thanks for the replies

Vitenka, do you know what level you had the skill before you noticed it start to make mobs miss? It would be a really useful skill I could get it leveled high enough that mobs would miss me and/or my pet more often. I'm a LA veno, so I was hoping my dex would make the skill work better, but so far I don't notice an affect.

Desdi - Sanctuary · December 2012

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Wow, so dismissive.
Even as an arcane, this makes mobs miss quite a lot! It's great!

Well, I use it a lot and even have the Demon version of it. It was among the first skills I maxed even (by that I mean lvl11).
I guess I sounded like that though I personally like the skill but yeah, I don't consider it a priority unless you are LA/HA build and drop in fox form a lot more than an AA build venomancer probably does.

do you know what level you had the skill before you noticed it start to make mobs miss?

It mostly starts making a bigger difference at around lvl6 or so when the accuracy reduction is past 50%. By level 10 it has a 70% reduction. Most skills make a bigger difference by then anyhow.

MANray_ - Sanctuary · December 2012

b:lipcurl Personally I wouldn't recommend this skill, especially for arcane. Best case scenario, it gives you something to fill in for the foxform cooldown if you're using fox myriad or sage purge (at 2 sparks malefic crush is too costly for PvE use even if it deals somewhat decent damage, and too much of a specialist PvP skill for the overwhelming majority of venos) and really you'd be much better off using an antistun/feral combo on any emergency scenario. Nova and noxious really are a veno's most effective AoE skills, regardless of build, so it comes down to the caster form being much better for dealing with multiples, and if you want to combine damage reduction with hitting for some damage bramble hood does make for a better alternative.

Granted, you may be out of chi and in fox when things go south, but the effect is simply too short and unreliable for this to be of any use except in rare circumstances, especially as you will be relying in slow casting noxious if you choose to make a stand. If you're planning on an escape, the extra fox phys def should hold long enough on any scenario in which mist would make a difference, even if you're not using holy path. Now, as an arcane veno personally I only use leech and stunning blow when in fox form and not debuffing (amp/purge/myriad) or otherwise go for straight melee, and for a veno on the leveling curve I'd recommend nothing else really. As a sage I'll try to get my hands on soul degeneration but will not bother with anything else on the fox tree. LA fox venos are not skill spammers (although I'll admit beffudling mist comes in handy for them) and HA isn't really effective prior to high levels, so I wouldn't recommend investing on this at all while on the leveling curve, unless you're the rare melee fox type, and you're at the minimum level range in which investing on this is actually effective and cheaper than further upgrading your gears.

Womansley - Sanctuary · December 2012

You're probably better off saving this skill for later when you have coin and spirit to spare. It's main selling point for me is being a quick fox aoe that doesn't cost Chi and cools down quickly. There are 2 very specialized situations I would use this skill in:
1) Lots of elemental immune mobs you need to damage. Trial 7 comes to mind immediately, sadly trials are quite rare post-nw.
2) Lots of mobs you wish to damage but are in fox and don't wish to switch out for concerns like pdef or can't switch out due to something like cooldown. The DD isn't exceptional, it's just the best choice you have. I can see this happening in FCC, nix, or Delta. Regardless use of befuddling mist wont significantly affect a fight.
Well I responded with a caster's mindset. You can't really benefit from the accuracy debuff much due to your low evasion (you shouldn't be tanking as a caster anyway if you can avoid it). Also keep in mind a common end game pet called the herc loses all evasion with his self buff, so it wouldn't benefit a herc either. If you are LA or HA the debuff may work better but it is still extremely short lasting.

thumbs · December 2012

It does significant aoe damage and debuffs. That debuff helps the wizard (or you) in Rebirth. 9/10 venos are probably too lazy to use it and will downplay it's usefulness, but it's a great skill to have if you're not one of them.

MANray_ - Sanctuary · December 2012

thumbs wrote: »

It does significant aoe damage and debuffs. No, it doesn't. Mist works off base phys, and the added damage is lower than what even venomous gets unless you go sage. How you can consider this significant in objective terms is beyond me. Further a caster class is not ideally suited to tank the phys mobs the debuff would actually be useful for. Even if we don't consider the effect negligible it reduces the effectivity of bramble and other reflects, and aggro is a much more important consideration when discussing squads.That debuff helps the wizard (or you) in Rebirth.You mean in the universe in which you don't have a seeker vortex and rebirth is actually worth doing for anything other than culti, right? 9/10 venos are probably too lazy to use it and will downplay it's usefulness, but it's a great skill to have if you're not one of them.No, it isn't being lazy. As I explained earlier caster form is more efficient in terms of damage output when dealing with multiples, and for most scenarios noxious-nova-noxious will do. Beffudling mist is very much limited to a fill-in skill when using fox AoE (fox myriad) on longer fights. it's not that it's good but that it's basically your only option. I realize it's a gimmic of some insecure players to feel they really should have all skills fully maxed and be prepared to use them in whatsoever rare circumstance they may be needed. But efficient gameplay also means streamlining your options. There's alternatives to what you can do on the extra time you get on foxform's cooldown if it really is necessary to use fox myriad (and it just isn't that you ran out of ideas with your two caster AoEs on cooldown) myself I would use the time to assist members of the squad who may need to catch up, repositioning mobs that could be on inconvenient/dangerous locations or just healing my pet. And yes, I would do this instead of casting mist because the negligible damage/effect of this skill is not going to make any real difference on the fight at large, and because the really lazy thing to do would be to just cast a useles skill like a bird in order to fill a cooldown's time.

Good to see you dropping by, don't let the door hit you on the way out. b:bye

Vitenka - Dreamweaver · December 2012

Although thumbs is... ascerbic in this posting style... he's not wrong.

It's not MUCH damage, compared even to noxious (a little less than half, I'd say; though it depends on stats) but it is AOE, and if multiple mobs have gone for someone they shouldna oughta (or the healer is only barely keeping up) then the debuff helps.

Sure; often it'll be better to throw a lucky scarab or an ironwood at that pesky +defence or +life mob. But equally often it won't.

Unlike, say, malefic crush (which even that has some damn good uses; I just don't happen to ever be in a situation that uses it) fuddling mist has a prominent space on my hotbar.

(As a side-note: I also find myself using it a lot in less-stressed situations, such as BH79.)

I do wish I'd had a blinding-sand genie back when that combo worked. But even without it, it's a nifty skill.

Admittedly; it's probably my 16th niftiest skill. Plenty of other skills are easier to get to on my hotbars

But it's in the list.

MANray_ - Sanctuary · December 2012

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Although thumbs is... ascerbic in this posting style... he's not wrong.

It's not MUCH damage, compared even to noxious (a little less than half, I'd say; though it depends on stats) but it is AOE, and if multiple mobs have gone for someone they shouldna oughta (or the healer is only barely keeping up) then the debuff helps.

Sure; often it'll be better to throw a lucky scarab or an ironwood at that pesky +defence or +life mob. But equally often it won't.

Unlike, say, malefic crush (which even that has some damn good uses; I just don't happen to ever be in a situation that uses it) fuddling mist has a prominent space on my hotbar.

(As a side-note: I also find myself using it a lot in less-stressed situations, such as BH79.)

I do wish I'd had a blinding-sand genie back when that combo worked. But even without it, it's a nifty skill.

Admittedly; it's probably my 16th niftiest skill. Plenty of other skills are easier to get to on my hotbars But it's in the list.

b:lipcurl I'm not saying it doesn't have it's uses and if you like this skill all the more power to you. But it's far from necessary and to me something you'll only use rarely is not worth it. Myself, I would combo earthquake+hood if I'm trying to get mobs off someone and if that isn't enough, or I want to help my healer keep up, the seal from Nova seems like a much better alternative. Now, we could discuss hypotheticals but the thing is beffudling mist is a situational enough skill you'd have to go to ridiculously specific scenarios in order to make it the clear choice, and not just one of many options. And one lesson I've learned from NW is that when you only have a second or two to figure things out it's more effective to choose in between a couple of rough, less than ideal, but broad solutions than to have half a dozen choices only one of which will work, however perfectly suited each of these may be for any specific problem. But that's different skilling/playing styles, which doesn't make anyone lazy, and I trust this isn't what you think the troll was right about...

Veneir - Dreamweaver · December 2012

I find the skill to be my mainily used attack skill(along with leech- you know, all four of the first fox forme skills are about the same. Wallop's just used if the other ones are on cooldown or if I'm poking a caster mob, which spend to much of their time running anyway for the three seconds to come into use most of the time. They're /all/ specific application skills.)
But of course I'm also HA/mainily fox forme. And I'm also sage/have a bit more physical attack than magical attack. And I've been HA since level one and have alot of experience with it and blah blah blah. And parties adore that I'm in fox forme because I make everything do 'less damage'(LoS AoE of Befuddling cutting everything's accuracy; apparentily the 70% is really noticeable because party members confuse it with actually /lowering/ the amount of damage mobs do; that's the threaten debuff. But I did run FC with a sin a couple of times that if I didn't keep the mob groups befuddled he'd die, because those extra 'not getting hits' kept him alive and he'd get all

< at me if I couldn't keep up(and he died). Which made me think back to cleric days, woo~...) and apparentily I 'amp really fast' or- that's off topic. But I fill in more the role of a support debuffing veno than a 'DD with some debuffs veno' and keep like six debuffs on bosses, permanentily.
Anyway, when I was first leveling my scarabs at like... 82 xD I was experimenting with seeing how much damage all was compared to itself, yadda and was unhappy that I noticed a significant difference in that my pet was losing HP way faster than when I fight alongside if in fox forme- because I keep mobs' accuracy cut by 70% they miss a bunch, which just isn't a debuff venos have in human forme. So if you use it there is a difference (which is only magnified if you're in a group of mobs, back to the party people liking the buff thing.

As for everything else--if you don't have the specific build to be able to use befuddling--either to actually benefit from it yourself(HA or LA), be able to live while using it(AA/magic venos attacking in fox forme=lmao, sorry. x3), or deal much damage with it(sage melee mastery and sage befuddling, or a based on fox build), then it's probabily not that worth using/leveling(I'd still level it just to have it) (so probabily not worth leveling for like 94% of venos or something, going by the pulling a random number out of our tails technique). Not enough squads get fox venos to where they would miss it if it was gone, and if you tried to use it not in the build to effectiveily use it, you'd hate it lol.

I'd put a tl;dr here but I'm not going to because it'd totally defeat the purpose B|

MiniST - Sanctuary · December 2012

Used this skill before on bosses that was giving problems to the tank. No idea if it helped or not. However, after getting fossilized curse, this skill became pretty useless. Useless in PvP.

Pelli - Dreamweaver · December 2012

MiniST - Sanctuary wrote: »

Used this skill before on bosses that was giving problems to the tank. No idea if it helped or not. However, after getting fossilized curse, this skill became pretty useless. Useless in PvP.

Well, the fan aoe can handle a few mobs at the same time, if you have enough pdef to tank some mobs anyway, like some pulls in FC. But yeah, on single target, Fossilized Curse > Befuddling Mist.

Desdi - Sanctuary · December 2012

MiniST - Sanctuary wrote: »

Used this skill before on bosses that was giving problems to the tank. No idea if it helped or not. However, after getting fossilized curse, this skill became pretty useless. Useless in PvP.

I just got Fossilized Curse and tested it on both mobs and players (in duels). Instant love.

Befuddling Mist does seem useless next to it for me as well though it still has some AOE and PvE applications but that part has been covered in the thread already.

Is befuddling mist woth leveling?

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