Sailwind: Agilty AA Level 5

[tawek]

<div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>A thread to give quick access to info about the AA skill <font color="#ccff00">Sailwind</font>.</div><div><div><div>For more general posts about the Agility branch, please use:</div><div><a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=33&message.id=10192&jump=true#M10192" target="_blank"><font color="#c8c1b5">http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=33&message.id=10192&jump=true#M10192</font></a></div><div>If I have time, I'll try to update this post with comments people post below.</div><div> </div></div></div><div>Level 5 in the Pirates/Agility branch for scouts (swashbucklers/brigands).As final skill, only has Rank 1:Power       None - never cast, always onCasting:    NoneRecovery: NoneRecast     : NoneDuration  : Always onRange       : SelfReduces recovery and casting times of caster by 25% (0.5->0.4)</div><div> </div><div><font color="#ccff00">Comments:</font></div><div>IMPORTANT NOTE:</div><div>This <font color="#ccff00">does not</font> reduce recast timers.  So, for example, in a long fight with an epic you'll still have to wait 30 seconds for the recast timer on our rear attack, Pillage.  In such a fight, you'll have better burst damage at the start, then you have to wait just as long for the skills to become available again.</div><p><strong>Confirmed</strong> we do not need a Rapier equipped in Primary for this skill.</p><div>Arguments in favor:</div><ol><li><font color="#ccff00">Burst damage can matter</font>.  If your group kills fast you'll be able to use more of your skills before it dies, especially if the wait between pulls is long enough to refresh your timers.  In some situations you may kill off part of an encounter as fast as possible, before the combined dps of the mobs outpace the healers ability to keep the tank alive</li><li><font color="#ccff00">Landing debuffs faster.</font>  In some situations, like raiding, this may be much more important than dps</li><li><font color="#ccff00">Mez, stun, and evac faster</font>.  Useful for saving healer from an add.  Until end-game our mez takes 2 seconds, with this it is 1.6.  And if in midst of another skill when add spotted, that skill will complete faster, as will its cool-down.  This may mean mezzing 0.7 seconds faster than before, which could be crucial</li><li><font color="#ccff00">Help tank get aggro faster</font>, if using aggro transfer on the main tank (assuming we don't actually grab it ourselves)</li><li><font color="#ccff00">Very slight increase in autoattack dps</font>.  If using 2 second skills like Swathe, as well as all our single target skills, the total cast-time is significant, and a 25% saving means we have extra seconds for other things like auto-attack, or debuffing</li></ol><p>Arguments against:</p><ol><li>A 25% reduction in cast times won't make enough difference.  Other AA branches/skills offer better for the points spent.  The exception may be PvP where fights are usually over quickly.</li><li>The reduction is slightly less than it appears.  The 25% less means a 2 second cast becomes 1.6 seconds, not 1.5.</li><li>Some extra time is gained from shorter cast times, but with finger-trouble and lag it will be less than 25%.  Reduced cool-down makes little difference, as it is only 0.5 seconds.</li><li>In protracted fights, the swashie should ration their power, being able to cram the more power-inefficient skills in will just mean running out of power.  And with dps and speed buffs, autoattack wiill probably be more effective than those skills</li></ol><p><font color="#ccff00">Questions:</font></p><ul><li>Can anyone confirm from testing, or from communication from SoE,  that we can autoattack during the 0.5 second cooldown period?</li></ul><p>(Thanks to all for feedback especally  <a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/view_profile?user.id=15941" target="_blank"><span>MaestroX</span></a> and <a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/view_profile?user.id=131776" target="_blank"><span>Mion da Peon</span></a>)</p><p>Message Edited by tawek21 on <span class="date_text">04-03-2006</span><span class="time_text">01:52 AM</span></p>

[MaestroX]

<div></div>This skill really is about burst damage.  It is not as usefull on a long raid mob, but in a group pulling a mob every minute or so, we can push all out debuff into the first 5 seconds of a fight and then move through our pallate of DPS choices while the debuffs are on.  We cool down at the end of the fight while DOT annd poison finish the mob and our timers are ready to do it again.  It is a bummer that it doesn't reduce our REUSE timers, but it is still very effective to "front-load" our good stuff and make the group DPS more effective.  Most of them still open with their big hitters, even though I have tried to get them to wait 5 seconds for me to debuff.

[Dragonfly28]

After fully realising what this spell does, i decided to respec. It is true that in a burst dps would increase, but I prefer the STR and INT lines now.Although i havent aquired enough AA's yet to see how the 50% increases in mob recast works with our MT timings.<span>Onaupu LynxL67 Swashbuckler/L64 TailorHeroes IncSplitpaw</span><div></div>

[tawek]

<div></div><div>Found a post by <a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/view_profile?user.id=95123" target="_blank"><span>Jaffa Tamarin</span></a> which seems to answer one of my questions:</div><div><a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=achievements&message.id=1046&query.id=0#M1046" target="_blank">http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=achievements&message.id=1046&query.id=0#M1046</a></div><div><font color="#ff00cc">...</font></div><div><font color="#ff00cc">The numbers are correct.  You are not reducing the spells cast time by x% (where a reduction by 100% would result in zero cast time), you are increasing the casting speed by x%.  Initially the casting speed is 1 spell/second.  If you increase the casting speed by x%, the time taken to cast one spell is 1/(1+x%) seconds.At rank 1, 12.5% faster, cast time is 1/(1+12.5%) = 1/1.125 = 0.88888.. rounded to 0.8 seconds.At rank 8, 100% faster, cast time is 1/(1+100%) = 1/2 = 0.5 seconds.</font></div><div><font color="#ff00cc">...</font></div><div> </div><div>Assuming Sailwind is the same, 25% faster means casting time = 1/1.25 = 0.8  (not 0.75).</div><div>Which means a 2 second skill will take 1.6 seconds.  Still nice, just not as nice as you might think.</div><div> </div><div>Would be nice if a swashie with Sailwind could confirm this.</div>

[Mion da Peon]

This skill is a level 5er so all 8 points are spent to get rank 1.Each CA takes 1 second to cast and recover from before another CA can begin. Sailwind reduces this time to ~.8 seconds (previous posters math was correct). Being under the influence of a templar's 100% faster cast and 33% faster recovery time I've experienced a cast time of .65 seconds which was pretty awesome. If these the %'s with sailwind were this much It'd be a viable choice right outside the VERY situational uses of PvP and Jousting.

[Rokjin]

<div></div><p>I did some math in regards to this, assuming the optimal situation for it's usage, where you are spamming every CA you got.. In the first burst, we'll use roughly 12-14 CAs, plus let's say a Swathe AOE. That takes approximately 15-17 seconds. Assuming you shave of 0.2 seconds off 11-13 of those, and another 0.5 seconds off of Swathe (cast + recovery reduction), that's approximately 3-4 seconds saved out of 15-17 or so.</p><p>So, roughly, it does come down to being able to whip out of a bunch of burst DPS 25% faster. Whether being able to cast CA's 25% faster is worth 8 points is another question all together, since we'll be waiting for recast timers most of the time after the first 15 seconds.</p><p> </p>

[tawek]

<div>I've just acquired this skill, and now am thinking about respeccing after I've played with it a bit longer.</div><div> </div><div>It will be hard to give up.  I'm sure the dps from some other branches will be higher, but casting your skills in 80% of the time is really noticeable.  It's like having a horse that gives you a 25% speed increase.  Losing it won't cripple you, but I'm sure it will feel like running through treacle.</div><div> </div><div>It's especially noticeable if, like me, you use our 2 second AOE stun line a lot.  The faster casting makes it easier to cast the AOE stun when the tank's hit points have just dropped alarmingly.  The faster casting may make all the difference, between stunning a group of mobs for 2 seconds, and the tank dying before your stun lands.  And a 2 second stun may be enough to allow the healers to catch up, or get back from a nasty lag spike.</div><div> </div><div>It's also noticeable on our 1.5 second mez, and on evac.</div><div> </div><div>How often will it save the group from a wipe?  Hard to say.  But apart from tangible benefits to the group, it is also *fun* to cast faster.  You feel like an *agile* swashbuckler, quicker on your feet than the average ... which makes sense with a skill based on the agility attribute <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></div><div> </div><div>Pity that the in-combat run speed, and flank-rear dps proc, don't bring the sort of benefits of their equivalent skills in the wisdom line.</div>