Affliction Rate vs. Control (Luminary)

Macian

I picked up Luminary again, and went dexterous to focus more on limb damage. 

Ignoring limb damage for a moment, though... 

One thing that people forget Luminaries can do, in addition to ANGEL BATTLE (Affliction) (Target), is to turn on spiritwrack passively (e.g. like old school spiritwrack), and use ANGEL BATTLE (Affliction) to control what it hits with when it ticks next (it does not hide the affliction when this is done).

For dexterous, this allows you to run battle in this passive fashion, and hammer away with Facesmash (berserk + cures blindness) and slam (asthma + haemophilia) at a much faster rate (2.15 seconds). 

Anyone have thoughts on giving up the ability to throw out a triple affliction combo (battle+shield+chasten or battle+shield for facesmash/slam) in order to maximize the speed of these two attacks? You still have control of what angel hits with, it just may not line up perfectly with a shield combo, like it does when you use the active version.

Edit: edited to fix nonsensical sentences.

Stathan

Having not fought as lumi recently I can only comment on the thought of it.

Depending on how fast the tick is, because I don't know off the top of my head, you could possibly do that and line up ever third or fourth combo pretty effectively (just guessing based on the speed for the shield combo you posted) and make it a highly effective tactic against people. The only way to really find out I feel would be to test it and see it's effectiveness. 

I remember using old spiritwrack and being effective with it prior to angel battle. Chasten and so forth, as a Xorani prior to statpacks was effective enough to screw most people over. Could set up a double leg break into chasten and tfix with spiritwrack going the entire time and stick hellsight and then move into angel sap for absolve or just stick t-fix again and judge with 4 broken limbs. Granted, a lot of things have changed since then, and if you are min-maxing your offense then dex with a crown would be advised to make better use of your suggested setup

Haven

Question, did they fix Spiritwhack to be hidden when turned on? Because last I checked, regardless of whether or not you turn spiritwhack on or off, the affliction remains visible to the victim ever since affliction_view was introduced.

As to your question, running Angel Battle through spiritwhack or manually does not increase the skill's tick. It's still locked in at 5 seconds or so unless they've altered the skill since I last played or the skill has broken. As a Dexterous Luminary, you're still only as fast as your chasten and other EQ abilities regardless of your BAL skills. The problem, if anything, is our limb damage output. It is through the roof. Pretty overpowered against any class that cannot actively hinder and maintain a lethal offense in my opinion.

Here's a repost of Luminary skills and the numbers associated with them and what they do. I'd like to note that some skills have changed since I made this, particularly flare (no longer requires the target be aflame) and chasten (several new afflictions added to the pool). 

http://pastebin.com/MEGekrti

Macian

Haven said:

Question, did they fix Spiritwhack to be hidden when turned on? Because last I checked, regardless of whether or not you turn spiritwhack on or off, the affliction remains visible to the victim ever since affliction_view was introduced.

As to your question, running Angel Battle through spiritwhack or manually does not increase the skill's tick. It's still locked in at 5 seconds or so unless they've altered the skill since I last played or the skill has broken. As a Dexterous Luminary, you're still only as fast as your chasten and other EQ abilities regardless of your BAL skills. The problem, if anything, is our limb damage output. It is through the roof. Pretty overpowered against any class that cannot actively hinder and maintain a lethal offense in my opinion.

Here's a repost of Luminary skills and the numbers associated with them and what they do. I'd like to note that some skills have changed since I made this, particularly flare (no longer requires the target be aflame) and chasten (several new afflictions added to the pool). 

http://pastebin.com/MEGekrti

They haven't fixed the hidden piece. It still shows the aff with affliction view.

I guess I didn't do a great job  with my explanation, or you missed what I was getting at @haven...

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to call the different flavors of Spiritwrack: "Battle" for the active version where you choose when the target gets afflicted (the skill has a 5 second cooldown, as Haven said), and "Auto-Spiritwrack" where it ticks every 5 seconds passively (but where you can still control -what- it ticks with).

The fastest aff rate (without arties) you can get with strike+chasten is, as you said, 2.75 seconds - or 5.5 seconds for two attacks. This means that if you use battle+strike+chasten, battle is actually being used more slowly than its cooldown (5 seconds). Battle happens every second combo and the limiting factor is actually the speed of your strike+chasten combo, not the cooldown on battle.

battle+strike+chasten aff rate = (2/2.75) + (1/5.5) = 0.9 affs/second

The only way to change this is to mix in Facesmash/Slam every second round, bringing your balance times for your shield combos down below the cooldown of battle. By mixing up facesmash/strike every second round (while using battle), you'd get this:

aff rate = ((2/2.15) + (2/2.75))/2 + (1/5)  = 1.02 affs/second

(combo speed as a limiting factor goes away here, because facesmash/slam every second round and strike+chasten every other is 4.9 seconds balance for two rounds. Less than the Battle cooldown, which lets you use it as fast as possible.)

My though, and it's only an idea at this point, is to use Slam/Facesmash much more often and use Auto-Spiritwrack, which removes your combo speed as a limiting factor.

Hypothetically, if you were to use facesmash/slam 100% of the time, your affliction output using auto-spiritwrack would be this:

aff rate =  (2/2.15) + (1/5) = 1.13 affs/second

Obviously, 100% facesmash/slam is never going to happen - even with Auto-Spiritwrack, the affliction pool is too low. Realistically, it's going to be more like the second set of numbers I posted: 1.02 affs/second.

So, the question becomes: is giving up the ability to throw out three affs at exactly the same time worth the tradeoff of being able to burst three or so rounds of afflictions at a 10% faster rate (e.g. the third set of numbers I chose, if you used facesmash/slam a number of times in a row)

One other thing to think on: when fighting a class that hinders exceptionally well, is the fact that Auto-Spiritwrack will continue to fire, even if you are hindered, worth it?

Hopefully what I'm saying makes sense.

(If they ever fix the Spiritwrack bug, that would change things again)

Haven

@Macian: Ohhhhhh, gotcha.

Hrm... Maybe. I cannot help but feel the sacrifice for increased speed wouldn't be worth it because of how drastically you'd be limiting your affliction stacking pool. But I'd have to think on it some more.

Macian

I was playing with some numbers, and it seems like you have to mix in facesmash/slam 50% of the time to get a noticeable aff rate boost (as Dex). If you're going for a kelp/ginseng stack I think that mix is viable, given how highly people prioritize both blindness and ashtma. That scenario works just as well with battle as it does with auto-spiritwrack, though, because of how Slam and strike+chasten line up at4.9s. Slam seems to be the more desirable option at the start because neither aff is focusable..

One other thing to consider.Spiritwrack will start the angel auto-sapping if the target has all spiritwrack affs. Personally, I dont think that would happen often.