Bane of Warding

[Ruffinx]

<p>Is there any trick to getting the most out of this or is it as useless as it appears to be.  I've seen people claim that it helps against mobs that AOE (basically that the ward would apply to every person in the raid) but a review of my parses on ACT does not bear this out.</p>

[Estean1]

<p>I"m with you on this one.  I had heard this spell was so great. I used to have 5 points in it and it was one of the first debuffs I always casted in a fight.  But once i started looking at the raw numbers it was not doing nearly as well as I thought it should be.  I had a choice between that and spiritual circle and the circle beats this on the heal parse by a good margin, especially now that they changed it. </p><p>I still cast this on the mobs, but its pretty low on the totem pole for me. </p>

[Ceolus]

<p>In order to see a big Bane of Warding parse, the intervals between a mob's AoEs has to be shorter than the duration of the ward it has a chance to cast on people.</p><p>For example, aoe a hits 24 people and procs curse of shielding on 7 people. If an aoe b doesn't come before the procced ward expires, then it won't do any good. However, if aoe b comes 15 seconds after aoe a, the ward on the 7 people will absorb it and up your parse.</p><p>I haven't seen mega parses from it either, but really it's a nice spell. It may not make a big difference on your parse, but that's not what's important. Any chance to proc a 1k+ ward on even the tank alone is worth casting for.</p>

[Ruffinx]

<p>Thanks for the explanation Savne, that makes sense.  However, I disagree with this being a nice spell.  I'm not sure what the fix is, greater duration of the curse, greater ward amount or whatever, but I would consider this one of our two broken (or, if working as intended, poorly conceived in the first place) healing spells.  The other being our crystallized essence spell.  I think both spells could be improved with some thought.  The essence, for instance, could be received on the casting of a beneficial spell (say a 10% chance to receive one, procing 1.8 times a minute), then this could be a useful second group heal (especially if the amount of the heal was adjusted up a bit).</p>

[LygerT]

<p>i really only just use it when i'm out soloing for a little boost because the duration is much longer than regular wards.</p>

[Ceolus]

<p>Dunno..I've seen it do a good 8%. Anything helps, and I think it's worth casting with such a long duration on a short cast.</p><p>I do agree with a Crystallized Essence change. I don't see them both changing the way it procs AND the heal amount, otherwise, like you said, we would basically have a second group heal which only druids should have. If they change only the amount it heals for, I'm fine with bugging a DPS group member to keep trading them to me <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />.</p><p>I think someone on the defiler forums posted a few suggestions for a complete change in the way crystallized essences work. They were really good..will hunt them down and paste a link.</p><p>Edit: Here were some of the suggestions made from <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=424543">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=424543</a>:</p><p>-Instead of summoning the item to the kill-shotter, can just summon it to us, and we can stockpile them. Give them a cooldown time so we can't spam.</p><p>-Provide a temporary buff to dps or something</p><p>-Summons a crystal that gives 20% cast speed for 20 seconds or so</p><p>-Make it a Noxious spell reflection or a noxious based damage shield. And in keeping with the sacrificial healer idea, make each DoT tick eat away a bit of our health or power or something.</p>

[Kari]

<p>I kind of like Crystallized Essence. I thought it was useless most of the time I was leveling up, but at this point I have everyone that I group with regularly trained to have one on their hotbar and to cast it when their health gets low. It is a good save for a squishy and on rare occasions one of the dpsers manages to prevent a wipe with one.</p><p>Usually about 10 minutes into each group I would hit a macro telling them to look for the crystallized essence in their bags and put it on a hot bar. For people that didnt know what it is, I would link one (I can link it off my hotbar spot, even if it is empty). I do the same with the dollies that I get from the Blessing of the Prince.  People I group with regularly keep both on their hotbars all the time, but even pickups seem to like them once they are explained. I think the problem is we are just so rare that no one knows what they are.</p><p>Kari</p>

[Sedenten]

<p>Bane is one of the first debuffs I try to land on a raid mob.  I've had it do as little as 1% to as much as 12% of my total healing on an encounter.  In fights where the mob in question has a lot of melee rampage damage or several AE's it can be quite powerful.  I find that it does proc a fair amount on the tank usually, even if it's not showing up as a high percentage of my overall heals on them.  It's just an extra tool we have, and a nice passive one at that.</p><p>I usually don't pay too much attention to the percentage of my heals something is--I drill down in ACT and look at what kind of damage it is warding and who the primary recipients are.  Currently I find it absorbs at he high end close to 2k per proc.  What's not showing up on ACT are the procs that fire but never absorb anything after that.  Seeing as how we are a preventative class, I like to count even those instances since the wards are there in case and at no cost at all to me.</p>

[Tehom]

<p>It's not bad. It'll proc off some AEs (I think they have to be classified as physical types, or some such), and can absorb incidental damage or choker hits, and anything that slightly decreases the chance of people being one-shotted is worthwhile. You'll find it'll parse better in any fight in which shroud of armor (the ward on our mitigation buff) or spiritual shrine are significant sources of healing. In any case, its duration makes it always worth casting just to give the MT another chance at a stacking ward.</p>

[Rayche]

<p>I like it ok. I'm not real impressed with the numbers I see, but it does last a while.</p><p>I would however like to see it terminate with a heal if it hasn't been knocked off.</p>

[Marytaten]

<p>Terminating with a heal or an additonal ward at the end would be nice. But like other posters I cast this at the beginning. Well, for the fact that it is an extra tool. I find, though, that it procs more on some mobs than others.</p>