Skill confusion

Bearleeable - Lost City · December 2014

I have no idea if I can begin to explain this well, but I'm getting very very confused by the way skills are defined. Can't seem to find a decent first, 2nd, 3rd, 4th type play style like you would use for simple pve mobs / boss's. Seems everything depends on everything else b:surrender
For example i'm trying to ascertain how in the world to create the fight bars, when the SB has so many TYPES of skills... for example..

short range aoe
long range aoe
moving skills
non-moving skills
thunder based ONLY
ice based ONLY
metal ONLY
water ONLY
thunder charge based
water charge based,
mix based
thunder based debuffs
water based debuffs

I've never had this much trouble with any class except the seeker. I play 4 class's on a pretty often basis, only 2.5 of which I feel I've mastered so there are macro's I've set up for all of them that I know I would/do use every time I play. I don't see any way to do that effectively with the SB. Can anyone help clear this old farts confusion? Are some skills useless above 59 ( like clerics pure heart )

Sylvae - Sanctuary · December 2014

Bearleeable - Lost City wrote: »

I have no idea if I can begin to explain this well, but I'm getting very very confused by the way skills are defined. Can't seem to find a decent first, 2nd, 3rd, 4th type play style like you would use for simple pve mobs / boss's. Seems everything depends on everything else b:surrender
For example i'm trying to ascertain how in the world to create the fight bars, when the SB has so many TYPES of skills... for example..
short range aoe

long range aoe

moving skills

non-moving skills

thunder based ONLY

ice based ONLY

metal ONLY

water ONLY

thunder charge based

water charge based,

mix based

thunder based debuffs

water based debuffs

I've never had this much trouble with any class except the seeker. I play 4 class's on a pretty often basis, only 2.5 of which I feel I've mastered so there are macro's I've set up for all of them that I know I would/do use every time I play. I don't see any way to do that effectively with the SB. Can anyone help clear this old farts confusion? Are some skills useless above 59 ( like clerics pure heart )

To be fair, Purehearted was useless from lvl 1. It worked nice, but a full mag cleric killed before being hit.

For stormbringer, max your first two main skills; they have 1 cd, and as such are your spam skills. Also max your next tier ones, they are your starters/hitters in between the spam. I usually stick with pure water using the stun and spam on macro with eruption for lazy killing, and the ele debuff with metal spam as a separate macro. Water is preferred, but if killing a water mob I switch to the other one.

Really after that, I'd recommend getting lvl 1 and leaving them there for your other non-passive skills. The buff max of course, but give yourself time to see which skills you find most useful. Because if you're doing single killing, there really isn't a reason to use any skill but the first four.

The later ones are meant to be the main complex part of the class. Each has benefits with X orb of Y type, and each one has a changeover skill that is ice but adds thunder (or thunder that adds ice). Also our 59s aren't all 2 spark like most; they are designed to be used with multiple 59s or chi using skills to create combos to cover the weaknesses of each one. We don't hit once, we hit them in many ways at once.

ZentDreigon - Raging Tide · December 2014

I can understand the trouble. Currently I'm working with this:

1 - Metal macro: Cloudburst, Sonic Boom
2 - Water Macro: Ice Bullet, Downburst
3 - All damage macro (basically the two above linked by Thundersnow)
4 - Moon Blade
5 - Call Lightning
6 - Electrostatic Discharge (might change to Snowstorm)
7 - Devouring Darkness (might change to Cumulonimbus)

F1 - Lunar Surge
F2 - Deafening Thunder
F3 - Thunderstrike
F4 - Frigid Thunder
F5 - Reaper Form
F6 - Lunar Swiftness

Other keys are for pots and items. High consuming chi skills and other ones I don't use often are above the single target ones. Occasional buffs are above the AoEs.

I'm using a configuration very similar to the one I use on wizard. Macros, strong kills, control, knockback are in the same places.

As I play by I change a bit, but this configuration has been working fine for my playstyle.

I would suggest trying to put skills with certain characteristics on places you are more used to press/click on other classes. This can facilitate, but will hardly fit for all.

Hope this helped a bit.

Sylvae - Sanctuary · December 2014

Here's a list of the two macros I use (preference to water since it gets channeling buff on use)

Both start the exact same way:
Repeat
Eruption (sage on mine, any works)
Reaper Form
Lunar Shadow

Then I finish them off with the element specific type. For my water damage it's:
Downburst
Ice Bullet
Downburst (likely not needed, but no harm in tossing it in)

Ice Bullet comes second, since it gives me a free shot, and the ice bullet acts as an interrupt usually. Gives longer before getting hit, though the -chan of the char will give differing results.

And against water mobs, I just tack on:
Cloudburst
Sonic Boom

Cloud comes first, to try to get the debuff on first hit. Will change position based on speed of kill, and distance traveling between kills.

AlysonRose - Heavens Tear · December 2014

This is what I'm working with currently

f1 Downburst
f2 Ice Bullet
f3 Frigid Thunder
f4 Thunderstrike
f5 Cloudburst
f6 Tidal Force
f7 Moonblade
f8 Lunar Surge

2nd row
Snowstorm
Cumulonimbus
Thundersnow
Call Lightning
Searing Moonlight
Supercell
Devouring Darkness
Electrostatic Discharge

1 hp pots
2 mp pots
3 open
4 Lunar Swiftness
5 Reaper Form
6 Lunar Blessing
7 open
8 fly
9 open

2nd row
Lunar Guidance
reserved for sacrifice skill
open
open
open
reserved for Master Li's Technique
Double (triple) spark
reserved for anti purge buff
reserved for increased range buff

3rd row
mount
pick up
attack
reserved for clone skill (prob swap with Darkness)
Churning Vortex
Avatar of the Storm
Climate Shift
reserved for chi regen skill

As you can see I don't have sonic boom, monsoon, or deafening thunder slotted. I don't use them, really haven;t leveled them other than sonic boom, and consider them redundant/inferior skills to their water based counterparts. Climate shift solves any problems with needing thunder charges which I rarely need. Mostly if I want to use physical damage with supercell on a mob or use nimbus for whatever reason. I hardly use nimbus.

When I get sage Sonic boom I might swap out Downburst for the chi generation but the channeling boost is pretty nice, plus I consistently have longer stuns and further knockback. Of course spamming buff gives ice charges and chi as well so its really preference.

Monsoon might be good if I were demon, and deafening thunder would be preferred in squads over Lunar Surge but I just avoid using it to annoy people. The same cannot be said of 90% of barbs in any rb squad ever lol.

Thundersnow is great to spam along with discharge and cloudburst in reaper form to kite things to death. Just stun the mob if you need to reverse direction and run past it the other way. Searing moonlight and vortex are rather flashy but pretty useless against mobs anyway.

Avatar of the storm is awesome. Snowstorm is okay, but chi is better used on pretty much any other skill. Moonblade is great, no reason not to use this whenever you can. Supercell is significantly more useful and interesting than Thicket or Red Tide ever were that is for sure.

I haven't seen any real reason to ever use call lightning over just keeping the 5 stacks of thundersnow on a mob. The spike damage is almost nonexistent, and since every new stack refreshes ALL stacks you only need to use it every few attacks to keep the dot going full strength.

Bearleeable - Lost City · December 2014

Thanks for all the replys... I'm shocked to see so many 9x+ already but I've not had time to do pv and had to stall for 2 days to try to let others catch up.
she's 72 now so I guess I'm not TOOOO far behind. I'll have to print these out and give'm a more careful look over. Appreciate the input.b:pleased

Tsukishi - Dreamweaver · December 2014

This class seems to focus on synergy alot in my opinion. probably why it seems like so much to take in at first.

i guess il share my set up for skills too xD ... personally i don't use any macros, i like to have everything laid out and easily accessable but thats mostly from playing RTS games for a long time I guess.

I use 4 skillbars stacked with f1,f2 etc on the bottom, number hotkeys above it and rows i mouse click to use the skills there. what i consider my primary skills all go on the number hotkeys

Mobile casting spells on hotkeys 1-3 and F1-F3
4- pick up
5- elctrostatic discharge
6- fly
7- lunar guidance
8 reaper form

f4 - supercell
f5 - undecided currently
f6- searing moonlight (subject to change)
f7- climate shift
f8- lunar surge

The thrid row from the top has my mount, pots, lunar blessing, devouring darkness, all-class pet, lunar shadow, Call lightning, tidal force and monsoon, and 1 open spot.

The top most row has spark + demon spark + all AOE organized with their opposite or complementing aoe next to each other

So total 3 open slots for things i aquire later or possible APO items. Its not completely set in stone yet so some things could get moved around but the idea is that I do have a system of sorts with how my skills are organized.

Skill confusion

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