Debuffs Working?

[Bulzie]

At level 48, when I debuff a mob, I cast: Weakness - An impairment which decreases enemy strength. Brutal Intimidation - Impairs an opponent's Strength and Wisdom. Dooming Swarm - Deals Divine damage over a period of time to an opponent while lowering the opponent's Defense. Irritating swarm - Impairs the Offense and Agility of a group of opponents. So if all these stick, it should decrease Strength, Wisdom, Defense, Offense and Agility.  But I always wonder if they are really impairing the mob.  If they do stick and lower the appropriate stat, then we should expect this? : Strength - Mobs melee will hit for less dmg Wisdom - Mobs power pool will be reduced Defense - Mobs will get hit more often or for more dmg? Offense - Mobs will hit for less or for less dmg? Agility - Mobs will get hit more often So my 2 questions are: 1. Are those assumptions above correct? 2. Is there a good way to test the effectiviness of these debuffs?  I would like to not waste time and power casting some of these if it makes no or little difference.   <div></div>

[M2t]

<DIV>If you're talking about soloing, debuff it as much as possible. You'll know if they stick, because one you wont get the resist sound, and two your sos or other attacks will take it down quick. Im not saying they do more damage, but the dot's help. I could be misunderstanding your question, and I'm sorry if i totally just messed your ?. I use all those and totally buff myself for a fight and can pummel through mobs. Every spell does it's job, doesnt mean its the best to use =P </DIV>

[Gaellen]

Beastly and Dooming work, for sure.  When Beastly drops, the damage output of the mob is noticably higher.  When Dooming sticks, the mob gets hit a lot more often.  Noticable in raids, regular groups, and soloing.  To be honest I've not parsed or really watched for the others, just assuming they do.  <span>:smileywink:</span>

[Hirn]

They are all definately working for me. I especially notice when soloing or the MH of a group. As soon as I lose those debuffs the damage output of the enemy goes up.

[Goozman]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Bulzie wrote:<BR>At level 48, when I debuff a mob, I cast:<BR><BR>Weakness - An impairment which decreases enemy strength.<BR>Brutal Intimidation - Impairs an opponent's Strength and Wisdom.<BR>Dooming Swarm - Deals Divine damage over a period of time to an opponent while lowering the opponent's Defense.<BR>Irritating swarm - Impairs the Offense and Agility of a group of opponents.<BR><BR>So if all these stick, it should decrease Strength, Wisdom, Defense, Offense and Agility.  But I always wonder if they are really impairing the mob.  If they do stick and lower the appropriate stat, then we should expect this? :<BR><BR>Strength - Mobs melee will hit for less dmg<BR>Wisdom - Mobs power pool will be reduced - <FONT color=#6633ff>In the future mobs will lose spell avoidance</FONT><BR>Defense - <FONT color=#ff0000>Mobs will get hit more often</FONT> or for more dmg?<BR>Offense - Mobs will hit for less or <FONT color=#ff0000>for less dmg</FONT>?<BR>Agility - Mobs will get hit more often - <FONT color=#ff3300>Mobs will hit less often<BR></FONT> <BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>They work. The one I notice the most is Irritating Swarm. When I go solo blue stuff in Permafrost, I get the poop knocked out of me until I put IS up, there is such a significant difference, I can't even explain it to you.<BR>

[darkshm]

I uh believe they work, mostly 'cuz if they didn't I think someone who does lots of parsing and logging would have proven by now that they don't (I'm personally too lazy). <BR><BR> But for what it's worth, and if it makes you feel better I never notice a [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] thing when I debuff mobs. I too will toss everything I have on them, and in the end really I seem to be getting hit as often and as hard as far as I can tell - I never notice me hitting more often either, even if both irritating and dooming swarms (and and my master stinging swarm) are up. I dunno I just can never see a diff, I've been saying this for months but I just assume that they're working and I can't tell. I'm really looking foward to PvP dueling 'cuz we should REALLY be able to finally tell for sure then. As far as I can tell, no one's EVER managed to confirm if weakness and the intimidation line stack, or if dooming and stinging swarm stack either. Again w/ PvP dueling we'll finally find out...

[darkshm]

Oh if it makes you feel better Defilers are like... 80% debuffing machines. I can't tell if any of their debuffs stack either, at least the ones that overlap. At level 25 w/ my alt I have a debuff that decreases target's attack speed by 15%. I also have one that decreases it by 10%, and yet a third for 10% as well. Now for all I know, all three of these could produce either: -10% slowed ('cuz maybe I cast that one first and it doesn't get overwriten by the subsequently cast 15%<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> -35% slowed (all three stack perfectly) -15% slowed (the highest one takes precedence) -18.15% slowed (15% debuff, followed by a 10%er (which only increases the 15% by 10% or 1.5%<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />, followed by a 10%er (which only increases the 11.5% by 10% or 1.65%<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> You see my point. SOE needs to tell us htf this crap works! ><img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <BR> /rant<p><p>Message Edited by darkshmoo on <span class=date_text>07-26-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:59 PM</span>

[Bulzie]

I was fighting green ^^ molten fragments and I did notice a difference.  When I cast irritating swarm and brutal intimidation on them, i was barely getting hit.  When those spells wore off, my HP started to go down noticibly.  I did not test separately with only IS or BI as I usually cast both anyway.  So still need to see if its worth it to case Stinging swarm and weakness.  I think Dooming swarm is still good to case as well. <div></div>

[darkshm]

I *still* (50 + 27, 77 levels later) still can't tell worth a [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] if debuffs do anything. I'm sure they do, I just never notice a difference. To point out of course you absolutely can't use a couple fights as any sort of proof of anything. Anyway though I'm sure they work 'cuz if they didn't someone would have parsed it all out and been screaming that they were broken for months now... (and more power to 'em, 'cuz I wouldn't know otherwise). <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[furydruid]

My take on debuffs is that generally the fights are too quick to bother casting.  Longer fights, like Epics ... yeah, I can notice a difference.  But when I'm in an xp group and the fights are 20-30 seconds?  I just don't even have enough time to cast everything -- at least, not if the group expects me to heal too -- and notice any difference for it. The combat revamp is most likely going to be increasing the hit points of group mobs by a significant amount, which will in turn make debuffs suddenly important.  In the meantime, I'd stick with Dooming Swarm mostly as lowering the mobs defense by that many points is huge. <div></div>

[Sepp]

I don't know about weakness, but I have noticed a difference when using the other three debuffs. With the Intimidation line, you can actually see the mob's power pool go down by a higher percent each time they use an ability if you cast it on the pull than when you don't (only on fighter or priest mobs though). With the Swarm line, I have seen an increase in the percentage of my overall damage that comes from melee (this is the only one that is fairly subjective... even with a parser, no two fights are identical enough to know whether it is the act of casting the spell itself (keeping you from casting strike of storms as often, etc) or the debuff effect that causes the change in results). With Irritating Swarm, there is the most noticeable difference (I call it my invincibility debuff), as without it, you get pummelled by blue ^^ and with it, you can keep fully healed with nothing more than regen and an occasional feral salve. Granted, all our debuffs are geared towards melee, so they have very little use against mage mobs (43^^ warlock mobs can still kill me if they get lucky). If you pick your prey well, though, fury debuffs can make the difference between no downtime and high downtime.