Practical application of CA Hail of Steel?

[TravisBick]

Hello fellow swashys.I recently hit 55 and was excited to find the CA for Hail of Steel on the broker for cheap and snapped it up. The art's description makes it appear to be awesome but when I tried to use it while soloing, I found it to be completely useless!I am wondering what are the best situations for its use and how other swashys have used it successfuly. And if it's even any good!

[Dakkon_10]

that combat art is useless ever since they changed it. It is way too slow. I use a bow now because I think it is way better suited for us, despite not being able to use the two CA arts we get for ranged. First off, when pulling mobs you only get 1 hit off with ranged before it gets too close, so it might as well be 1000 dmg from the bow (sometimes 2000 since wis line works with ranged) rather than the 200-500 dmg from throwing weapons. Further more, you go through ammo slower, saves you cash. And Finally, we are melee dps, so don't try to be a ranger and use your ranged for dps, it is MUCH better to melee in solo/groups/raiding so I would rather have a ranged weapon that has a long delay, so it can be jousted with melee.Sorry for being a bit off topic, but just throwing in my 2 cents.

[Keldo]

I use it to pull more than anything, very long range.  Don't actually get a hit off, but just using it on a mob and immediately cancelling it aggros em.

[MrDiz]

Useful on raids when there is an insane melee damage shield or when our so low on hp and the healers are busy with the tank. Lets you dps while staying alive. Never used it outside of raids tho.

[Franco2254]

Use this spell alot on raids when dealing with mobs that have alot of aoes or are doing crazy damage.

Message Edited by Franco2254 on 05-18-2006 07:16 AM

Message Edited by Franco2254 on 05-18-2006 07:20 AM

[Zygwen]

As others have stated, I use it for pulling and for raids. It has longer ranger than a Long Bow auto attack.

[Krontak]

If you've got constrain or impair (your case hangmans noose) at master, it will snare the npc enough to back up to max cast range and pull off 2-3 HOS's in time before the npc is in range of mele once again.  That's another 2k+ damage that can mean the diff between life-n-death for me at least.   Takes some practice but I use it quite often when I've exhausted all my other CA arts.  Use arctic blast (fridged blast at your level) too on your trip to max range.  Move out of HOS range (icon will become non selectable), wait for the npc to move towards u, once the HOS icon is highlightable, click it, get your attacks off, then click again once npc is in mele range.  Thats a total of 3k+ damage to the npc while your not taking any if the snare effect doesn't break on damage.

[Geero]

I dont' think HoS is all that bad...  I do agree that it's slow but range attacks do proc and HoS CA itself does quite bit of damage.  Not even close to our melee but with all the t7 AE raid mobs it isn't so bad.  Also since you are rooted, it immunes you from getting knocked around or getting feared.  Which I find it usefull time to time.

Message Edited by Geero on 05-18-2006 11:36 AM

[Dakkon_10]

Well if you choose the wisdom AA line and have double attacks maxed, then just plain auto-attack damage does more damage than HoS. Because you can proc double attack on ranged auto attack, but not on HoS.

[Geero]

Double attack doesn't proc but seems poison and ID does.

[Snarks]

bows are way better in t7 than a sheath + your CA's

[MrDiz]

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snarkteeth wrote:bows are way better in t7 than a sheath + your CA's

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This confirmed or just a feeling you have? If this is true then frankly something needs to be done about throwing weapons.

[Tarya]

Well I doubt we were ever meant to be there with the rangers with their bow damage. We are supposed (imo) to do more melee dmg and use ranged to get the mobs attention (ie pull) or stay out of crazy aoe (especially in HoF I think, where I occasionally use Hail of Steel). I gladly let my ranger friend to do the ranged damage :smileywink: MB

[MrDiz]

Yeah rangers should be ranged supreme, but that still doesnt mean that autoattack bow should be more viable than autoattack thrown weapon + CAs.

[Verit]

Hail of Steel is a very good CA.But not the main for a swash.I use it often in raid when i want to avoid AE, to avoid dmg shield (corsolander in lab), to do piercing dmg or to wait heal after i took a bad AE Its nice to have a CA u can use in a context, that change the swash gameplay a bit.For the better stat u can found on a bow, peeps are right, bows can have very nice stats or power/life.But theres is no prob when u can have a shortcut to swap the 2 items during a fight.

[SageGaspar]

I'm very interested in parsing high-end (just Grizz or whatever is fine) unmodified (no haste, no DPS) bow autoattack if we can swing that somehow. Just average DPS would be fine for calculations, over something like five or ten minutes, without procs.I read through the ranger board and tried to find something like this to no avail, though they seem to have a similar shaky idea that bow autoattack might be better than Stream of Arrows, their Hail of Steel equivalent. They also said it was working better now with missed shots maybe, so I guess maybe I'll try Hail of Steel again sometime and see how it stacks up.

[Luk]

just working on basic logic (ok, enough laughter, and you can get back on your chairs), no testing has gone into this and speculation is purely off my own observations.if a long bow is hitting for 1000 - 2000 damage on auto attack, thats all fine, but it has a 7 second delay, even at 100% haste, it is only going to fire ever 3.5 seconds, this equates to about 285 - 570 odd DPS.HoS fires every 2 seconds, at master with a raid mob fully debuffed, I hit for about 1600 - 1800, or 800-900 DPS.Thats a significant differece.Now if you factor in for a ranger that while they are using stream, they can not use other combat arts and therefore thats their only source of DPS, they may not like it, however when you are talking a swashy, we only have 1 other ranged CA, so maximising ranged DPS comes from using your throw, followed by HoS, then if you need to your throw again, this also gives a 30 second break for all your other recast timers to reset.

[Crono1321]

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Licit wrote:just working on basic logic (ok, enough laughter, and you can get back on your chairs), no testing has gone into this and speculation is purely off my own observations.if a long bow is hitting for 1000 - 2000 damage on auto attack, thats all fine, but it has a 7 second delay, even at 100% haste, it is only going to fire ever 3.5 seconds, this equates to about 285 - 570 odd DPS.HoS fires every 2 seconds, at master with a raid mob fully debuffed, I hit for about 1600 - 1800, or 800-900 DPS.Thats a significant differece.Now if you factor in for a ranger that while they are using stream, they can not use other combat arts and therefore thats their only source of DPS, they may not like it, however when you are talking a swashy, we only have 1 other ranged CA, so maximising ranged DPS comes from using your throw, followed by HoS, then if you need to your throw again, this also gives a 30 second break for all your other recast timers to reset.

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ding ding he wins!  HoS is better than an auto attack bow...not to mention if you miss on a bow its another 5-7 seconds before it fires again, whereas if you miss on a sheathe or HoS its only 2seconds.  Hail of Steel is pretty much group/raid only considering you have to be *ranged* to use *ranged* attacks...priceless on an AE raid mob though.

[Dakkon_10]

wrong. I can parse 1k using a bow auto-attack if my haste and dps mod are up, i can never do much damage at all with HoS. The reason is the wisdom line. Sure a bow does 1-2k every 3.5 sec and HoS does the same every 2, but if you add in double attacks it does 1.7k - 3.4k on most hits. You can't proc double attacks off of HoS, so it does way less damage.

[Crono1321]

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Dakkon_1007 wrote:wrong. I can parse 1k using a bow auto-attack if my haste and dps mod are up, i can never do much damage at all with HoS. The reason is the wisdom line. Sure a bow does 1-2k every 3.5 sec and HoS does the same every 2, but if you add in double attacks it does 1.7k - 3.4k on most hits. You can't proc double attacks off of HoS, so it does way less damage.

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Haste and dps mod = 36seconds?  1 minute?  Hail of steel  would be 1000-1500 every 2 seconds.  If you want to add in procs add in the poison you'll be proc'ing twice as much.  I still don't believe a bow does more damage than hail of steel...what scribed level do you have Alistar?  PS stop talking so much in chat channels  ps- also add in arctic throw you retain by staying with a sheathe and you proceed to be even farther in front of a bow.

Message Edited by Crono1321 on 05-21-2006 07:49 AM

[Dakkon_10]

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Crono1321 wrote:

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Dakkon_1007 wrote:wrong. I can parse 1k using abow auto-attack if my haste and dps mod are up, i can never do muchdamage at all with HoS. The reason is the wisdom line. Sure a bow does1-2k every 3.5 sec and HoS does the same every 2, but if you add indouble attacks it does 1.7k - 3.4k on most hits. You can't proc doubleattacks off of HoS, so it does way less damage.

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Hasteand dps mod = 36seconds?  1 minute?  Hail of steel would be 1000-1500 every 2 seconds.  If you want to add in procsadd in the poison you'll be proc'ing twice as much.  I still don'tbelieve a bow does more damage than hail of steel...what scribed leveldo you have Alistar?  PS stop talking so much in chatchannels  ps- also add in arctic throw you retain by staying with a sheathe and you proceed to be even farther in front of a bow.

Message Edited by Crono1321 on 05-21-2006 07:49 AM

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Did you pay any attention to what I wrote? I explained how I do more dps with a bow. But here, I'll explain it again just for you.1. Procs are normalized. You proc just as much with a bow as you do with HoS.2. Haste buffs do not make HoS attack faster since it is a casting time. The only thing that affects this is sailwind or bard casting haste.3. You can't use artic blast while using HoS...4. Auto-attack can proc double attacks, HoS can not. So If you hit every 3.5 sec with the bow (max haste) for 1000-2000 damage with 72% chance to double attack you will do MUCH more damage than 1000-1500 every 2 sec...I have the adept III of HoS because it was useful until it got nerfed, now I just see no point in using it.

[Crono1321]

I never said to use finesse or ruthless cunning while HoS is up.  I was noting that if you are relying on them to back up your argument for 1k dps on auto-attack, then it is invalid.  Something you can do for 36seconds/1min whereas a buff that can be maintained is not a fair comparison.  If bow-auto attack was 1000dps then there would be no need for combat arts.  And obviously I was referring to using Arctic throw inbetween HoS...don't treat me like I'm [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] thanks.

[Dakkon_10]

I never said I needed to use our Ruthless Cunning or Perfect Finesse to get our dps/haste up...My base haste is 30% and my base dps is 7%. When soloing I can bring my haste up to 94% easily with spurious bravado and imbued acrylia rings, and get my dps up to 30%.In a group it is simple to get dps mod up to and past 80% for the duration of the fight, so long as you group with the right people. But I would never care about using my bow in those situations. I am talking about raiding, where if your raid leader sets up the groups right you should be 100% dps and haste for the most of the fight. Perfect finesse / Ruthless Cunning is just overkill.

[SageGaspar]

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Crono1321 wrote:I never said to use finesse or ruthless cunning while HoS is up.  I was noting that if you are relying on them to back up your argument for 1k dps on auto-attack, then it is invalid.  Something you can do for 36seconds/1min whereas a buff that can be maintained is not a fair comparison.  If bow-auto attack was 1000dps then there would be no need for combat arts.  And obviously I was referring to using Arctic throw inbetween HoS...don't treat me like I'm [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] thanks.

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Unless you're fighting some reaaaal mean group stuff that's hiding out somewhere I've never seen, you're not going to be using HoS or a bow or anything ranged in a group or that much solo, either.Raids it's trivial to get 100% permahaste between bravado, ring proc, 15% item haste with FBSS, plus whatever buffs other people are dropping on you. DPS is harder especially if you're using a bow because you need CAs to proc your DPS, but in the right group that's not terribly hard either.And he's doing 1k DPS with other people crashing the mob's mitigation and buffs on him and everything like that. If you're in a situation where you can be posting 1k autoattack DPS, you're in a situation where you're going to be posting even more if you get in there with the mob. So if you're posting 1.2 or 1.4k normally and you can sit at range doing 1k damage, pick which is better, you doing more damage close range and actually applying the debuffs you're there for, or you sitting at long range doing some DPS.As to CAs being useless for other classes, they're still not, because a bow even fully hasted has a long enough delay that you can slip at least two CAs in between without delaying your autoattack hit.

[Foolsfolly]

Open with your cold throw for 1000+ dmg plus snare, then you should have time to get off 2 Hail of Steel attacks before the mobs gets to you, adding another 1000ish each. Once he gets to you mesmerize him and start sneaking, brazening and follow up with your back attacks and that should just about finish off any solo mob you can find without ever getting hit once.