Paladin weapon delays?

[Domino]

Hey guys!  I'm looking at improving the mastercrafted weapons a bit and I just wanted to check what kind of delays paladins like on 1H weapons?  I believe 3s is a pretty popular delay for fighter types and I'm planning to make that available, but would you want a longer delay option too?  If so is there one particular number that would be preferable - 4s? 5s?  Or doesn't really matter that much? 

[Boethius_Permafrost]

Many of the other fighter types don't have to worry about spell cast times.  Paladins want slow weapons with large crit ranges.  We need time to cast spells, and we have an achievement line for melee crits.  If I could pick a delay, it would probably be 5 seconds.

[Ruben]

<p>I am still trying to comprehend the longer delay desire. If someone would give me a quick lesson on why, I would greatly appreciate it.</p><p>I always thought that if your using a ca or spell and its time to auto attack that it skipped the auto attack. Seems I would do more damage with a faster weapon due to not waiting as long for timer to reach delay after finishing ca and spells.</p><p>I know I been playing a long time so forgive me, If my view seemed newbish hehe its why I was asking someone. I don't raid much at all, working all 9 crafters up to 80 keeps me busy and broke hehe.</p>

[Boethius_Permafrost]

Your attack is not skipped.  It is postponed until after you finish your spell.  If you have a long delay and are able to perform all your spells in between weapon attacks, you will still be able to execute your weapon attacks.A weapon with a fast delay will lose attack time waiting for you to finish a spell, especially if you have haste to lower the delay even more. 

[Ruben]

<cite>Enrico@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Your attack is not skipped.  It is postponed until after you finish your spell.  If you have a long delay and are able to perform all your spells in between weapon attacks, you will still be able to execute your weapon attacks.A weapon with a fast delay will lose attack time waiting for you to finish a spell, especially if you have haste to lower the delay even more.  </blockquote>Ok cool thanks Enrico, I appreciate the information.

[Alir]

I dont post very often, but I would prefer a weapon with 5 seconds on it as well.

[Latpow]

<p>Some other reasons...</p><p> a) A big inital hit will help you get firm aggro at the beginning of a fight</p><p>b) Due to critical hit mechanics, you get much more "bang" for the buck with a larger top end.    </p>

[Boethius_Permafrost]

<span class="postbody">re: "Due to critical hit mechanics"</span><span class="postbody">That is not a result of the delay.  </span><span class="postbody">It is only a coincidence that big weapons with long delays also had a bigger crit range, in itemization.</span>

[Arno24]

A 4.2 speed weapon would be ideal for a paladin asuming high haste mod, STR line end ability, and perfect casting order.

[Xalmat]

<cite>Enrico@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Many of the other fighter types don't have to worry about spell cast times. </blockquote>Not true. Take a Berserker for example. While most of their combat arts are in the 0.5 second cast range, mis-timing a combat art means you delay the auto-attack swing, and it cuts dramatically into DPS. Which means less aggro/dps for the Zerker. The problem compounds when you have a super-fast weapon with very high haste, making it to the point where casting a combat art can decrease overall DPS significantly.So I'd say 1 handed weapons in the 4-5 second range, and a large damage spread (for crits) are ideal.

[denmom]

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Enrico@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Many of the other fighter types don't have to worry about spell cast times. </blockquote>Not true. Take a Berserker for example. While most of their combat arts are in the 0.5 second cast range, mis-timing a combat art means you delay the auto-attack swing, and it cuts dramatically into DPS. Which means less aggro/dps for the Zerker. The problem compounds when you have a super-fast weapon with very high haste, making it to the point where casting a combat art can decrease overall DPS significantly.So I'd say 1 handed weapons in the 4-5 second range, and a large damage spread (for crits) are ideal.</blockquote>My guild's Zerker had to drop from the fast T8 crescent axe to the short sword because of this very same thing.  He was losing dps with how fast he was...his own haste plus the haste of the T8 cloak.

[Jrral]

<cite>Ruben@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I always thought that if your using a ca or spell and its time to auto attack that it skipped the auto attack. Seems I would do more damage with a faster weapon due to not waiting as long for timer to reach delay after finishing ca and spells.</p></blockquote>It doesn't skip the auto-attack, but it can only queue up one auto-attack. If an auto-attack will go off while you're running a CA or spell cast, it'll hold up and go off after you finish and recover. But it'll only queue up one. If your cast/use times span more than a single auto-attack (easily done with fast weapons and a lot of haste), you lose the additional attacks.What I've found is the best formula is to look at the casting or use times of the CAs/spells you normally use during a fight. Come up with a ballpark figure for the "normal" time. It'll be roughly an average, but if you've got 3-4 fast ones and 1 long-cast big hitter, you're probably better off basing the delay you want on the fast abilities and accepting the auto-attack loss on the big-hitter ability. Then factor in your normal haste, and select a weapon with a delay that'll give you a normal auto-attack cycle just about equal to or a hair less than your "normal' CA/spell use/cast time. That way you can hit a button, pause a moment for recovery and to let your auto-attack go off, hit the next button and not worry a lot about getting the timing exact. If you've got a parser like ACT, you can run an encounter and then look at the melee and non-melee parses to see whether you're getting just about 1:1 between then or are significantly short on melee attacks (indicating you're losing auto-attacks to CA use). The hard part's finding the right rhythm to give you maximum DPS, once you've found it it's fairly easy to keep to it.

[Meirril]

Yep, 5 delay sounds good. If you could combine that with str/int I think most of us here would like it. We have a lot of +wis gear, and a decent amount of +str, but I think we could use more +str and +int in a weapon.

[Rarlin]

<p>Call me an extremest but I'd personally like to see a weapon that are at the extreme range.</p><p>A 1H AND 2H weapon that has an extremely long delay (like 7-8 sec).</p><p>ESPECIALLY being a Paladin and having some spells that take a long time to cast (and subsequently get interrupted), this would help tremendously.  Also, I agree with +STR and +INT (mainly with 2H).</p>

[Tames]

<p>Firstly THANK YOU for coming here and asking our community <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /> <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>It is greatly appreciated! <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p><p>Paladins have AA for increased %Haste and +%Crits this means long swing weapons are great for us. We can speed up the hit speed and still get the crit bonuses for the big damage ratio's associated with slow weapons. </p><p>Assuming we can self haste with AA and gear procs etc to 100% that means a 5 sec weapon drops to 2.5 secs which gives us time to cast spells or CA in between.</p><p>So the longer delay, the better!</p>

[Domino]

Thanks all!  I think we'll be looking at 3s and 5s on one-handers and 6s on two handers.  Input much appreciated!  <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  And updates will be forthcoming in the tradeskill forum as things progress.