Sorcery's attacks worth getting?

[Galaxy Brain]

Hey all! I noticed that the Arcane bolt can do containment damage in the more info tab, as can potentially Enflame (and if you have them immobilized in a pack it could do a good chunk of damage?)

 

Does anyone have any experience with these attacks on a controller, and are they worth using while leveling up for a bit more damage? 

 

Thanks!

[Coyote]

Arcane Bolt is a good attack, and you can also put a good amount of Procs in it for extra damage. It also takes Force Feedback for builds that are looking for more Recharge.

[Maxzero]

18 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Hey all! I noticed that the Arcane bolt can do containment damage in the more info tab, as can potentially Enflame (and if you have them immobilized in a pack it could do a good chunk of damage?)

 

Does anyone have any experience with these attacks on a controller, and are they worth using while leveling up for a bit more damage? 

 

Thanks!

 

For builds that lack attacks it is.

 

My preferred slotting is Thunder Strike Acc/Dam, Acc/Dam/End, Dam/End, Gladiator Toxic Proc, Explosive Strike Proc, Force Feedback +recharge proc. You can boost the 3 Thudnerstrikes to +5 if your a feeling rich. I take no recharge since that sort of defeats the purpose of putting procs in there. Especially if you have a lot of global recharge.

[SeraphimKensai]

Arcane bolt definitely can help for low level exemplaring through content or solo stuff with your containment where using all your AoEs is pointless.

[Galaxy Brain]

Thanks everyone! Was eyeballing it for my dark/dark.

 

As for enflame, is that worth taking as well?

[Galaxy Brain]

Is that the DPA of the attacks?

[Moka]

I took enflame as a "may as well" damage power on my time/DP defender.

[Coyote]

I use the same slotting as Maxzero, and it's the reason why I suggest Arcane Bolt. Because it has a longer cycle time (recharge and animation) than single-target Immobilizes, it will gain more damage from each proc IO.

If you do NOT plan to put multiple procs in it, or do not have a great reason to take it for the FF, then as 5099y_74c05 says, it's not a great attack statistically. It's solid but not better than that, but it's a very good user of procs.

I use it on my Ill/Storm, since squeezing out extra recharge via the FF proc is useful to a build that wants perma-PA but doesn't have +Recharge in the secondary. It's also useful for my Earth/Cold. My Dark/Dark is not taking it, nor is the Grav/Traps.

[Mercurias]

I used it for leveling. The attacks are solid, and can be slotted to be effective for builds low on damage. 

[Redlynne]

3 hours ago, Moka said:

I took enflame as a "may as well" damage power

How is that working out for you?

I've honestly been curious about how to best employ and slot Enflame as a possible way to achieve clever use of game mechanics results.

 

3 hours ago, Moka said:

on my time/DP defender.

There seem to be "a lot of those" cropping up in these forums for some reason ...

 

No no, don't tell me.  I'll figure out why eventually ...

[Coyote]

Take your time ;)

[Coyote]

To get back to procs in Arcane Bolt, I figure the average damage of a proc in Arcane Bolt if AB has no recharge slotting as:
37 damage for a normal 3.5 PPM proc
73 for a purple 4.5 PPM proc

For Stone Prison as a representative Immob, it's 24 and 48 damage, respectively.

[Moka]

1 hour ago, Redlynne said:

How is that working out for you?

I've honestly been curious about how to best employ and slot Enflame as a possible way to achieve clever use of game mechanics results.

 

There seem to be "a lot of those" cropping up in these forums for some reason ...

 

No no, don't tell me.  I'll figure out why eventually ...

I just liked the concept. There's nothing meta about it for me. 

[Maxzero]

 

Enflame is one of the most unusual powers in the game. 90 secon CD with a 5 second duration for each 'Flame pet' It summons 6 flame pets over the course of its duration. Each 'Flame pet' drops a damage pets every 0.5 seconds and over 5 seconds drops 5 patches. The total base damage of each Pet is around 46 damage on up to 5 targets. 276 base damage over the course of the ability.

 

Since they are pseudo pets charge should not affect there proc rates.

 

Target AoE IO set access. Seems to have decent proc rates, might be a good -res Devestation applier.

 

Hmmm some testing required.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Maxzero

[Bopper]

34 minutes ago, Maxzero said:

 

Enflame is one of the most unusual powers in the game. 90 secon CD with a 5 second duration for each 'Flame pet' It summons 6 flame pets over the course of its duration. Each 'Flame pet' drops a damage pets every 0.5 seconds and over 5 seconds drops 5 patches. The total base damage of each Pet is around 46 damage on up to 5 targets. 276 base damage over the course of the ability.

 

Since they are pseudo pets charge should not affect there proc rates.

 

Target AoE IO set access. Seems to have decent proc rates, might be a good -res Devestation applier.

 

Hmmm some testing required.

Coincidentally enough, I did this exact testing tonight. I can tell you that when casting Enflame, it acts as a long click power, so basically any proc in it will fire (I did not slot recharge in my test and I don't know the radius of the pet, so I won't pretend to speak for all situations, but given the 90 second base recharge it is likely you'll hit 90% probability with all your procs on first cast).

 

After my cast of Enflame hits, it proceeds to summon 5 more patches. These patches seems to act more inline with pseudopets (so no...your procs won't all fire again with each summon). I typically was seeing 1-2 more procs over the duration of the power, which is decent, but not a game changer in my opinion.

[Maxzero]

7 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Coincidentally enough, I did this exact testing tonight. I can tell you that when casting Enflame, it acts as a long click power, so basically any proc in it will fire (I did not slot recharge in my test and I don't know the radius of the pet, so I won't pretend to speak for all situations, but given the 90 second base recharge it is likely you'll hit 90% probability with all your procs on first cast).

 

After my cast of Enflame hits, it proceeds to summon 5 more patches. These patches seems to act more inline with pseudopets (so no...your procs won't all fire again with each summon). I typically was seeing 1-2 more procs over the duration of the power, which is decent, but not a game changer in my opinion.

 

When you say 1 to 2 more procs is that with several procs in the power or just 1? I am thinking of it as a continual -res applier so I am looking at single proc uptime.

[Bopper]

15 minutes ago, Maxzero said:

 

When you say 1 to 2 more procs is that with several procs in the power or just 1? I am thinking of it as a continual -res applier so I am looking at single proc uptime.

I slotted the power with 6 procs: Ragnorak, Positron, Javelin Volley, Frozen Blast, Overwhelming Force,  and Annihilation. On first cast, all (or almost all) of these procs hit. So you have a nice start to your attack as the target has been hit with 2 damage procs, now has a -12.5% resistance debuff for 10 seconds , is knocked on his butt, and will be immobilized in his own damage patch (which gets the resistance debuff). So yeah, a very nice start.

 

After this point, the procs hit at the regularity you would expect for a 15-18 second pseudopet patch. For each proc in the power, I tend to see it fire one or two more times, again, very nice.

 

Honestly, given the uptime of the power, the fact it does decent damage with a relatively short cast time (~2.25 sec), it definitely has some great utility. Personally, I would say the damage and res debuff procs are musts, but the knockdown and immobilizes can be swapped out for damage enhancing.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Bopper

[Maxzero]

2 minutes ago, Bopper said:

I slotted the power with 6 procs: Ragnorak, Positron, Javelin Volley, Frozen Blast, Overwhelming Force,  and Annihilation. On first cast, all (or almost all) of these procs hit. So you have a nice start to your attack as the target has been hit with 2 damage procs, now has a -12.5% resistance debuff for 10 seconds , is knocked on his butt, and will be immobilized in his own damage patch (which gets the resistance debuff). So yeah, a very nice start.

 

After this point, the procs hit at the regularity you would expect for a 15-18 second pseudopet patch. For each proc in the power, I tend to see it fire one or two more times, again, very nice.

 

Honestly, given the uptime of the power, the fact it does decent damage with a relatively short cast time (~2-2.5 sec), it definitely has some great utility. Personally, I would say the damage and res debuff procs are musts, but the knockdown and immobilizes can be swapped out for damage enhancing.

 

Damn you! Where am I going to find slots for this!?

[Bopper]

2 minutes ago, Maxzero said:

 

Damn you! Where am I going to find slots for this!?

Haha, I ask myself the same thing everyday. Just think...we once had to choose Fitness as a pool power. I might give up on the Fighting pool. Just take Rune of Protection and use Concealment for my LotG mules and use Stealth as a half-assed Weave. But I don't know if I'm ready to go that far yet.

[Maxzero]

5 hours ago, Bopper said:

Haha, I ask myself the same thing everyday. Just think...we once had to choose Fitness as a pool power. I might give up on the Fighting pool. Just take Rune of Protection and use Concealment for my LotG mules and use Stealth as a half-assed Weave. But I don't know if I'm ready to go that far yet.

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Got lucky on the procs beat the pylon regen tick at 67-68 for a 65 sec kill and 717 DPS.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Maxzero

[Redlynne]

1 hour ago, Maxzero said:

Got lucky on the procs beat the pylon regen tick at 67-68 for a 65 sec kill and 717 DPS.

[Coyote]

Wow, I did not realize that Enflame is so good. Thanks for the info. Now I'll have to find a way to squeeze it into the build... and I hope that with 5 Ragnaroks and a -Res it'll still be good, as I need the Recharge bonus from the set.

[Maxzero]

30 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Wow, I did not realize that Enflame is so good. Thanks for the info. Now I'll have to find a way to squeeze it into the build... and I hope that with 5 Ragnaroks and a -Res it'll still be good, as I need the Recharge bonus from the set.

 

Honestly it like a Bonfire but in a much smaller area and no inbuilt KB. Its fine for Storm because enemies are running anyway (so why not set them on fire as well) but if you have a Immo of some kind it will do its best work.

 

Obviously talking about solo. In groups its just plain good.

 

One nice side benefit is if you exempt down (say to do the Posi 2 for WST) you actually have another good damaging ST target. Low levels on Controllers can feel very weak.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Maxzero

[Hjarki]

11 hours ago, Maxzero said:

Since they are pseudo pets charge should not affect there proc rates.

Recharge rate affects the proc rate of all click powers. The unanswered questions are:

• Is the power a click power? Some pseudo-pet powers act as toggles (which have click rates independent of recharge, based solely on activation time)
• Is recharge clamped before or after the calculation? Pets and pseudo-pets used to be able to take recharge bonuses. However, they applied a 0% recharge limit to pets to fix some problems. Normally, these limits are applied as the very last step. However, the code we've seen indicates that click powers are using the stored recharge values - even if those recharge values will later be clamped. This implies that slotting any recharge in a pet/pseudo-pet with click powers would reduce its proc rate. That being said, I'm not familiar enough with the code base to answer definitively.

[Maxzero]

5 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

Recharge rate affects the proc rate of all click powers. The unanswered questions are:

• Is the power a click power? Some pseudo-pet powers act as toggles (which have click rates independent of recharge, based solely on activation time)
• Is recharge clamped before or after the calculation? Pets and pseudo-pets used to be able to take recharge bonuses. However, they applied a 0% recharge limit to pets to fix some problems. Normally, these limits are applied as the very last step. However, the code we've seen indicates that click powers are using the stored recharge values - even if those recharge values will later be clamped. This implies that slotting any recharge in a pet/pseudo-pet with click powers would reduce its proc rate. That being said, I'm not familiar enough with the code base to answer definitively.

 

What I mean by that is once a power which summons a pseudo pet is activated any recharge you have no longer affects that pseudo pet. It has its own cast rates proc chances, etc. The same why any recharge you have slotted does not effect MM pets once they are summoned.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Maxzero