Power Drains - clear up a possible misconception?

[mwr]

<DIV>I heard it said in a thread about Despotic Mind (I think) that power drains don't work in PVE play, because mobs don't use power.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Is that, in fact, true?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I ask because I was killing some of those enchantery ghosts in the Wailing Caves, and they were constantly trying to mez me and the like. I stacked up my Gaze stun, Cerebral whicheveritis, and Lashing Gaze, all of which of course drain power, and once the mob's little blue bar was gone, it seemed to stop all spellcasting, preferring instead to die quietly inside my root.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So what's the deal? Does draining a mob's power work or not? How does this relate to Despotic Mind? Enquiring minds want to know.</DIV>

[badmn]

<STRONG><FONT face=Verdana color=#3366ff>Mobs use almost no power, so even at 450% of power used, it amouts to nothing more than 250-300 damage done. I haven't ever seen Cataclysmic mind hit for more than 350, ever. If you do the math in reverse, you can see that mobs use somewhere in the vicinity of 60-65 power to cast a spell, and they have hundreds of thousands of power to spend. Epics, supposedly, continue to cast after they are oop, but I've never drained a mob completely.</FONT></STRONG><p>Message Edited by badmnky on <span class=date_text>01-05-2007</span> <span class=time_text>02:20 PM</span>

[Korpo]

You can drain the power from a low level mob because they have so little power. You can even drain the power from a 60's heroic, but it takes a while. It does, generally, stop them from doing anything but auto attack.Raid mobs, however, aren't even worth trying. You used to be able to do things like drain Drayek and stop him from casting Ice Comet, but then they gave mobs eleventy billion point power pools that would take you five raids worth of enchanters to drain.Yes, the mind line causes damage when the mob uses power, but you won't kill anything with it. The lash line is much better, it's something like 1400 damage three times (five with AA) for the final version at M1. It's like a 7k nuke on a 20s recast if you're fighting caster/healer mobs. It will proc off mobs using CAs as well, but they don't use them all that often.<div></div>

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

Anything no-arrow or down arrow can be drained fairly quickly. Unless you are solo tho, and fighting something that heals or whatnot, it's easier to just kill them... power is drained about as quick as you can damage their health.Anything higher than no-arrow will have a large power pool and extra regen... epics get so much regen that their large power pool isn't even a problem.. its the fact that they regen is back so fast they could be at zero power and still use their abilities.The issue with power drains and the "mind" series, is that it would be far more useful if we could cause damage that way. Drain the power, and since the power is going away it causes 450% in damage. Would definately make both that spell and power drains in general far more useful.<div></div>

[Vydian]

<div><blockquote><hr>Raidi Sovin'faile wrote:Anything no-arrow or down arrow can be drained fairly quickly. Unless you are solo tho, and fighting something that heals or whatnot, it's easier to just kill them... power is drained about as quick as you can damage their health.Anything higher than no-arrow will have a large power pool and extra regen... epics get so much regen that their large power pool isn't even a problem.. its the fact that they regen is back so fast they could be at zero power and still use their abilities.The issue with power drains and the "mind" series, is that it would be far more useful if we could cause damage that way. Drain the power, and since the power is going away it causes 450% in damage. Would definately make both that spell and power drains in general far more useful.<div></div><hr></blockquote>This is what I'd love to see too for the Mind series, let it do damage anytime power is lost, whether it is used by the mob or lost in any other fashion. If need be, scale down the amount of damage if it becomes unbalanced, but right now it's not worth it to even cast.</div>

[Dalema]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> badmnky wrote:<BR> <STRONG><FONT face=Verdana color=#3366ff>Mobs use almost no power, so even at 450% of power used, it amouts to nothing more than 250-300 damage done. <FONT color=#ff0000>I haven't ever seen Cataclysmic mind hit for more than 350</FONT>, ever. If you do the math in reverse, you can see that mobs use somewhere in the vicinity of 60-65 power to cast a spell, and they have hundreds of thousands of power to spend. Epics, supposedly, continue to cast after they are oop, but I've never drained a mob completely.</FONT></STRONG> <P>Message Edited by badmnky on <SPAN class=date_text>01-05-2007</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>02:20 PM</SPAN><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><FONT color=#ff99cc>mine hit for 6k, but thats with tashiana and in pvp, sprint FTL!!<BR></FONT>

[Ulrick85]

Actually epic mobs are starting to use power. Have manage to get a few of the EOF epics down to 95% power and the really long fights I've seen at 80% power.

[Korpo]

Unfortunately they can still cast with 80% power <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><div></div>

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

Oh, epic mobs do use power, they always did. That's not the problem.Long ago, I was on a raid that was trying the "kill Alzid first, then kill Vyemm" trick. This was when he could bug out and not heal and then die. Problem was, he didn't bug out and we ended up fighting him for over <b>an hour and a half.</b>I'm not joking, seriously fought him for 90 minutes. He healed himself something like 250 times before we finally gave up and broke the encounter. Now THAT was an endurance fight, lol.In that duration, Alzid had burned through the entirety of his power. Thing is, he regenned so quickly that he STILL cast his abilties, if only a little slower than before. Power draining is <i>counterproductive</i> when used primarily... in the best situation, with a no arrow mob, you can bring it down to autoattack damage... instead of killing it outright faster anyways.<div></div>