Debuffs are a drain

[terzaghi]

Hi All, So these debuffs we have are quite taxing on my power bar (especially if you have more than 1 running at a time), and honestly I don't see them as having all that much of an effect.  What's everyone's opinions on which debuffs they like, and whether or not you have observed a benefit thaty outweighs the power cost. Thanks

Message Edited by terzaghi on 07-17-2006 08:10 AM

[vinterskugge]

I generally only use Kians unless we're fighting a tougher mob.

[Leaolil]

In groups:I only use Kian's Catastrophic Anthem on multi mob encounters.On named mobs or very tough mobs, I use Disheartening Discante and Demoralizing Processional.All other mobs just die too fast and the debuffs don't do much difference.In raids:We raid with 1-2 dirges and 1 troub, so we distribute debuffs.I usually use Disheartening Discante and Demoralizing Processional. They both help especially on multi mob encounters. But even on single mobs I have them up, since it reduces the stress of our healers.With those 2 buffs on, I usually skip Kian's Catastrophic Anthem because else I get out of power too fast.

Message Edited by Leaolil on 07-17-2006 05:57 PM

[Seddo]

Kian's is useless in raids. the dmg per tick if a joke compared to the hundreds of thousends health a raidboss has. but the other two debuffs really help at least a little. Kian's is only usefull for soloing and in grps.

[Zapdafi]

 

on a standard raid run i usually just use kian's too unless its a named raid mob. i know the damage output of kians really sucks but I keep hoping one day i might accidentally show up on the top 10 parse and kian's just might be the one to roll me over. also if its one of those with tons and tons of hp's, ill throw a debuff on to drop its agility and imagine i just speeded up our ability to kill it some.

on some mobs like cheldrak, ill dump everything i got and try and throw the kitchen sink at it if someone else hasnt thrown it yet. kians does drop wisdom which means a lowering of resists which cant be all that bad considering its all resists across the board. it benefits everyone and there are some situations where u try and get every advantage you can.

 

[Seddo]

Think about the powercost. When fighting bosses with huge HP like the emnity of fear in Lyceum you will run out of power in the middle of the fight when using all three debuffs even wih shards AND hearts. And when you have to drop one of the three (which is enough to keep enough power for the fight), kians should definitly be your first choice. -69 Wis on Adept III and some dmg is, in my eyes, worth less then decreasing the offensive abilties by about 5 lvls and dropping str and agi by more then 120.

[Sanju]

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Seddo wrote:Think about the powercost. When fighting bosses with huge HP like the emnity of fear in Lyceum you will run out of power in the middle of the fight when using all three debuffs even wih shards AND hearts. And when you have to drop one of the three (which is enough to keep enough power for the fight), kians should definitly be your first choice. -69 Wis on Adept III and some dmg is, in my eyes, worth less then decreasing the offensive abilties by about 5 lvls and dropping str and agi by more then 120.

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I don't remember the last time I ran out of power on a raid (unless I got hit with the mega power drain from Suffering (or is it Pain?)), and that's using any and all debuffs at will. (Of course, having an obscenely high total raid dps helps.) I use Kian's on everything, personally. Sure it doesn't hit hard, but it's "fire and forget" dps. It takes 1s to cast, and does pretty good damage if the fight lasts long enough for it to run its full course.As far as dropping the other debuffs ... do you raid with dirges or other troubs? If so there's no need for all of you to have Discante up (actually, on most fights there's no need for any of you to have it up). Let one of them run Discante instead.Also with Demoralizing, you're not decreasing the offensive abilities by 5 levels at all. That's pre-LU13 thinking, and doesn't work like that anymore. You're decreasing them by 21 (I think, at Master I) or whatever the actual number may be. It helps on Orange mobs (especially when stacked with other debuffs that do the same thing), but not so much on any other encounters.

[Seddo]

atm im usually the only bard in the raid, making it necesarry to run it. I also prefer seperating the debuffs to have them all running all the time, I personally just cant take all three at a time with only FT 14 to 18, least not for a whole bossfight.

[Jooneau]

The debuffs are useful for triggering Maestro procs on encounters quickly. I don't believe the "debuffs help against orange cons" theory. I can't remember any fight against orange cons where the debuffs mattered enough to be noticeable.

[Sanju]

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Jooneau wrote:I don't believe the "debuffs help against orange cons" theory. I can't remember any fight against orange cons where the debuffs mattered enough to be noticeable.

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Have you fought Chel'Drak?Have you fought Chel'Drak without anyone debuffing him?While the effect of our debuffs isn't as noticable as, say ... dispatch ... debuffs are critical on orange encounters. Saying you don't believe the "'debuffs help against orange cons' theory" is like saying you don't believe the "theory of gravity." Whether you believe it or not, if you drop a tennis ball it's still going to fall down.

[Ishbu]

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Jooneau wrote:I don't believe the "debuffs help against orange cons" theory. I can't remember any fight against orange cons where the debuffs mattered enough to be noticeable.

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Allow the DDT to interject here:If your in any type of leadership in your guild, you may consider stepping down. Debuffs are the single most important thing on an orange con encounter. Without them your looking at 2x the damage from the mob, with less than half the damage being delt. No debuffs = dead raid.

[Pins]

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Jooneau wrote:
The debuffs are useful for triggering Maestro procs on encounters quickly. I don't believe the "debuffs help against orange cons" theory. I can't remember any fight against orange cons where the debuffs mattered enough to be noticeable.

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Your post was good for a laugh.  Do you realize how much you would be destroyed if you didn't have Shaman/Dirge/Swashbuckler/Brigand(depending on what classes you have in the raid, Shamans both debuff Haste and DPS, Dirges do DPS, Swashies do DPS, and Brigands do Haste) that the mob would hit like a truck, and very fast.  Get those debuffs in and the mob hits like a car instead.  Sure most Stat debuffs don't do very much, but they still they're useful to put on specially an orange mob.  But seriously, if you have no debuffs on an orange-con epic, it will be impossible to beat it as it'll just hit too hard.

[vinterskugge]

This is a lost cause guys.  He won't hear a good word said about troubadors - in his other posts I think he's called pretty much every spell we have useless.  If we can do it, it's not worth doing.

[MystaSkrat]

I only came here because I was directed here!  Honestly, if debuffs in general didn't help, then a) why would classes even get debuffs? and b) why would said classes be what raid guilds are looking for a lot of the time?  There's a reason rogues are popular!

[Gaige]

Debuffs are the most important thing you can do to orange mobs.  Whenever we're fighting orange mobs the first thing I do is put my three big debuffs on (str/agi, atk speed, phys mit).  So not only is the mob hitting slower, for less damage - but our raid is also able to hit the mob harder.

If you combine all the debuffs in a raid it makes such a huge difference.

Sheesh.

[Seddo]

I cant say anything about debuffing an orange con, since I can hardly fight an orange con at lvl 70.... but to debuffs in general: There is no super uber debuff that absolutly weakens a mob .... it is always the sum of all debuffs. 2 from this class, 3 from that, 1 from the dwarf in the second row and it sums up to maybe a dozen of different debuffs lowering almost everything the mob has, and THAT weakens him really. The troubador is, like all other classes with debuffs, only contributing his very small part to the whole debuffing. The raid wont notice if one or two classes are missing and therefore maybe 2 or 3 different debuffs, but if like 5 or 6 are missing, the mobs will surly be a bit harder to kill. So actually a troub (or the troubs) should see that all there debuffs are running all the time, so it is just about if the troub has the ability to keep all three running permanently. If the anwer to that is no, the troub has to think "ok which one do I leave out?" ... and the choice does not matter much, only the choice that constantly running 2 debuffs rather then running 3 for 60% of the fight and then only 1 because of lack of power is the thing that counts. But still, its all relativ

[Ishbu]

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Seddo wrote:
I cant say anything about debuffing an orange con, since I can hardly fight an orange con at lvl 70.... but to debuffs in general: There is no super uber debuff that absolutly weakens a mob

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Ever hear of dispatch?

[scl]

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Gaige wrote:

Debuffs are the most important thing you can do to orange mobs.  Whenever we're fighting orange mobs the first thing I do is put my three big debuffs on (str/agi, atk speed, phys mit).  So not only is the mob hitting slower, for less damage - but our raid is also able to hit the mob harder.

If you combine all the debuffs in a raid it makes such a huge difference.

Sheesh.

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Gaige, or maybe Ishbu, I wonder if you have an answer for two questions I have. You say you use your STR/AGI debuff and I've got to be honest, I don't bother with it much. I want to know how much difference Discante makes, considering the other DPS and Avoidance debuffs that are going on. Also, we know that mobs can only have their DPS reduced by 50%, which is very easy to achieve by a raid. I want to know if debuffing a mobs STR decreases the mobs auto attack further than the 50% cap, or if it only affects the mobs CA's?How much STR/AGI to epic mobs have anyway? Do stat debuffs make that much differece, or are we better off just concentrating on DPS, Haste, resists, mitigation, avoidance?

[Ishbu]

I have no idea how much of a given stat a mob has, but if its anything like summoner pets, its going to be really high.  Considering they probably get some epic bonus and, for example, the conjuror mage pet has around 700 some int not counting group buffs. 

Str will decrease the mobs auto attack, not their combat arts.  Debuffing strength by a large amount will result in the mob doing significantly less per regular swing. 

I am not sure if there is a cap on how far stats can be debuffed, but I am going to guess there is not since they have stopped scaling the defiler line of spells that reduces all stats by 32%.  They probably felt that was enough for one single spell and wanted to leave room for other classes and their debuffs.

[Zapdafi]

 

hrmm, when i drop str items, i was pretty sure my CA damage went down. same with dropping my int, my DOT damage goes down.

[MystaSkrat]

Lowering a PCs STR lowers their CA damage... but it's a lot harder to tell when you can't examine it to see (on a mob).

[scl]

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Ishboozor wrote:

Str will decrease the mobs auto attack, not their combat arts. Debuffing strength by a large amount will result in the mob doing significantly less per regular swing.

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I was under the impression that lowering STR decreased auto attack and CA's. Although, since we can reach the 50% auto attack debuff with ease, I wondered if debuffing STR stacked on top of the dps debuffs in regards to auto attack.I'm pretty sure the AGI side of the debuff is useless anyway, especially if mobs have as much stats as Ishbu suggests.

[Zapdafi]

 

considering how many times i hit air when swinging at cheldrak or tarinax i'd say any sorta debuff against agi would help at this point, hehe but at least their mental doesnt seem to high on these two, i rarely have a debuff bounce, there are some like the mobs in labs that will resist me alot before i manage to get em to stick.

[vinterskugge]

As long as you land your snare first (which I have never had resisted by anything), debuffs should land just fine.

[scl]

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vinterskugge wrote:As long as you land your snare first (which I have never had resisted by anything), debuffs should land just fine.

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You know, now you mention it, the snare is the one thing I never have to worry about being resisted. I assume the Dirge one is the same as the Troub one, except we debuff disease with ours.I wonder why that never gets resisted.

[ShiroiOokami]

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scl wrote:

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vinterskugge wrote:

As long as you land your snare first (which I have never had resisted by anything), debuffs should land just fine.

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You know, now you mention it, the snare is the one thing I never have to worry about being resisted. I assume the Dirge one is the same as the Troub one, except we debuff disease with ours.I wonder why that never gets resisted.

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Having an alt brigand, dispatch/debillitate/rake and the two poison backstabs never get resisted either even against deep red con. The melee attack damage will miss, but the rest always lands. My guess is any CA with an extra affect always lands now. Supposedly I would guess our flank attack debuff and power drain would always land as well, if I ever missed those in the first place.As far as debuffing goes, I believe dev's posted back in the combat update that wisdom increases the chance for outright resists, beyond just improving resistances slightly. I always open with snare and kian's before anything else, especially against mobs with high mental resists, it helps other things land. OTOH, I only really debuff if I'm duoing or raiding (except snare, which ALWAYS goes up for the added damage for everything).Also, don't forget we have a sneak attack INT debuff, it's gotten a lot more use from me combined with bump. INT debuffing is really the only thing you can do to reduce spell damage after you've maxed your raid's/MT's resists.

[Zapdafi]

love being able to cast snare and the dbuffs while on the run too so can do it while jousting or getting into position

[Jooneau]

I like Zander's Choral as a debuff. I finally got around to getting this spell. It has the bonus of being a sword spell for HO's so I open with ranged stifle, HO starter, snare+mental debuff, and Zander's to get an enemy slightly damaged and debuffed for mental damage. Zander's is better than Discante, in my opinion.

[ShiroiOokami]

Except according to the Dirges, Zander's is still bugged for targets over level 50.