(Primal) Malefic Crush thoughts and info

Desdi - Sanctuary · March 2014

As you all know by now, the latest expansion has brought upon new changes in the game that includes an update to skills for all classes.

In this thread I'll be reviewing the new Malefic Crush skill which is an upgrade to..you guessed it...Malefic Crush. A lot of you probably know about this skill already but I wanted to leave a review on these forums like I've done with the previous skills.

This will be my final review, I won't make one for Stunning Blow as it doesn't get anything special other than increased damage and the ability to always hit. No new animation for it or new effects. A clear no-brainer upgrade.

For reference, here are the other reviews:
Redstone Venomworm
Grudge Strike
Dark Taboo

Here are a few discussions related to the skill:
Malefic Crush question
Malefic Crush not good

Video.
Malefic Crush animation and tests.

Skill descriptions.
Malefic Crush

Requires Fox Form
Range 5 Meters
Mana ??
Channel 0.2 seconds
Cast 1.8 seconds
Cooldown 180.0 seconds
Weapon Unarmed, Magic instrument

Requisite Cultivation Master of Harmony
Deliver a crushing blow to all enemies within
10 Meters. Deals base physical damage plus 9303,
and burns their souls for 9 seconds, consuming
1800 Mana. Has a chance to stun targets for 2
seconds; the stun chance is between 50% and 90%,
depending on your Soulforce. Never misses.
You are immune to damage while channeling.

Costs 1 Spark.

Sage version increases the stun chance by 10%.
Demon version burns 2400 Mana.

Malefic Crush

Requires Fox Form
Range　Melee
Mana　390.0
Channel　2.0　seconds
Cast　1.3　seconds
Cooldown　30.0　seconds
Weapon　Unarmed, Magic Instruments

Required Cultivation　Master of Harmony
Deliver a crushing blow to all enemies within 8
meters. Deals base physical damage plus 7556, and
burns their souls for 3/9 seconds, consuming x Mana.

Costs 2 Sparks.

Sage version burns the target for 3 seconds, consuming 1800 Mana.
Demon version burns 2400 Mana.

Review.
Please keep in mind that this is my personal opinion/assessment and experimenting. I tried to be objective but it's still just what I think.

The skill description has a mistake, the effect is not stun but a paralyze.
Paralyze is the new status effect introduced in the New Horizons expansion. Paralyze negates anti-stuns and Purify proc weapons. You cannot Faith your way out of paralyze but you can prevent a paralyze with Faith, similarly to how you can resist Seal of God but not Faith out of it. If you paralyze a Psychic with Soul of Retaliation, the paralyze will be reflected back at you. Tidal Protection of Assassins can resist it.

The skill relies on Soulforce for the chance to proc, between 50% and 90%, 60% and 100% if Sage. With that in mind, don't expect to be impressed if your Soulforce is low. The skill is going to work best for those that have good Soulforce.

At 21968 Soulforce, my Malefic Crush proc'd 7 times out of 10 in a test. Due to the lengthy cooldown I didn't have the patience to do more tests.

New Malefic Crush costs only one spark but the cooldown is 180 seconds, in other words 3 minutes. It was probably a balancing factor due to the skill having a paralyze effect although arguably the coldown could have been a little shorter.
Despite this, the cooldown is not too bad when you consider situations like TW and NW when "time passes by really fast" due to the nature of those two. Just compare the skill to Feral Concentration which has a 3 minute cooldown too and you'll see what I mean.

The new Malefic Crush is faster than the old one; channel was 2 seconds and cast time was 1.3 seconds. The new one had its cast time increased to 1.8 but the channeling decreased to only 0.2. In total you're looking at 3.3 (old) and 2.0 (new).

The skill also had its radius increased from 8 meters to 10 meters. It does hit everything within 10 meters around you, even things behind you. It also has a 5 meter range, previously being melee.

The skill is teamwork oriented and works best in group PvP, probably mainly TW and NW. It's not a very good skill for 1v1 due to the short paralyze duration. It may or may not have uses in 1v1 but as I'm not a particular fan of 1v1s I'll not be trying it out anytime soon.

The mana drain is meh. I'm not sure if it makes a difference when most people have an MP charm anyway.

Reasons to upgrade to new Malefic Crush.
~You didn't use the old one anyway. If the old one had no uses for you, the new one may actually find its place on your hotkeys. It's an interesting PvP-oriented skill that brings something new to the table. It's worth trying it out at least.
~AOE Paralyze. Right now, Malefic Crush is the only known AOE paralyze skill that's available (if it's not then feel free to correct me) and it has potential uses in situations like TW (best way to take advantage of it because of the groups of players).

Reasons to keep old Malefic Crush.
~The cooldown is too long. If you use Malefic Crush on a regular basis (usually those who are HA/LA builds) you won't like the 3 minute cooldown.
~You just PvE. Frankly, there are a lot of options to stunlock monsters in PvE. You won't really need a 2 second paralyze so you can spare yourself the time needed to get 60 blood (and money if you never leveled it) and do something else instead. Besides, if you only PvE then chances are that you don't have high refines (high Soulforce) so the skill wouldn't proc as much.
No offence to anyone with good gear that only PvEs but the majority of players that have good gear are usually PvPers even if they just TW/NW.

In the end, is it really worth it? In my opinion it is because previously I never used Malefic Crush other than when I was goofing around in PvE. Now I actually have a reason to use it. Others may still find it useless but to me I think it has some uses and it's nice to try out new things.

X_volcano_y - Harshlands · March 2014

what is exactly "paralyse"?
unable to move? Imobilize?
unable to atk? seal?
unable to do anything? stun?

Desdi - Sanctuary · March 2014

You can read the discussion thread over paralyze here.

I thought it might have been clear from the video that paralyze makes you unable to move or use any skills as it forces the opponent into the "knock out" animation, similarly to how Bewitch forces the opponent into a different form.
It negates anti-stuns and the only counters are Faith before (using it after won't work), immunities (which resists everything anyway) or SoR if you're a Psychic and of course Tidal Protection. Here's a video of the skill's animation in various forms.

Classes that have paralyze as of now are Blademasters, Barbarians and us Venomancers.

helovesu · March 2014

Is it true, immune to damage while channelling? b:chuckle

Desdi - Sanctuary · March 2014

helovesu wrote: »

Is it true, immune to damage while channelling? b:chuckle

Yeah you can see the IG effect on you albeit no icon appears, like when you use a Pan Gu Essence. The duration is very short though because the channeling/cast is short too.

Marengo - Lost City · March 2014

Thanks for review.
I didn't know it had new paralyze effect O_o so, if the skill is aoe, paralyze can be applied to all targets you hit. Hm. This maybe... at least not completely useless in mass pvp. But 2 seconds... meh

Desdi - Sanctuary · March 2014

One thing you can't deny, it looks really funny when you AOE knock out a bunch of players b:chuckle I wish they would have made the paralyze at least 3 seconds, that's not too long to be gamebreaking but still better than 2 seconds.

Marengo - Lost City · March 2014

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

I wish they would have made the paralyze at least 3 seconds, that's not too long to be gamebreaking but still better than 2 seconds.

On the other hand demon human form stun lasted 2 seconds before big skills update, tho it costs no spark and 15 sec cd.
Well, I made up my mind and will go for this skill after I'm done with passives

Womansley - Sanctuary · March 2014

Thanks for the post Desdi, I was completely oblivious Malefic Crush had the paralyze effect. (I blame PWI's inaccurate text descriptions!) Guess I'll have to work toward this one.

Though actually I see the immune to damage effect as a bit dangerous. The thing is, given this new effect I can imagine Venos using some immune apoth or Feral to charge into a group of enemies to cast Malefic Crush buuuuut....wouldn't Malefic Crush overwrite their initial invuln? Just like you should never triple spark after IG or respawn with the NW immunity and do something to overwrite it.
That's my word of warning to all venos, to watch their immunity when using this. It's still very cool to have this paralyze affect especially in AOE, I'll definitely go for it.

Desdi - Sanctuary · March 2014

That's true, one will have to watch out for that. They could use it when the immunity is about to wear off but definitely not the best move to use when you've just used your immunity.

helovesu · March 2014

The success rate depends on our soulforce. It fits the best for the good refined venos

(Primal) Malefic Crush thoughts and info

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