Steel Cyclone.....underwhelming?

[SofiyaGlaston]

It should do a lot more than 300 potency to make it worthwhile. Remember, to use it, you're dropping your survivability for the next 20 seconds or so. Honestly, in most cases, WARs still wouldn't want to use it even with massively high potency because we're not here for high potency attacks; we're here to tank. To really make it worthwhile, it needs to provide a survivability benefit. You could make it the AoE version of Inner Beast by having it provide 150% of damage dealt as heal (or, better yet, absorb shield) so that it's as efficient as IB on 2 targets but more efficient on anything more than 2 (it would still be better than IB on anything except for a single target because of the increased damage, though).

With basic math.. this is the most RIDICULOUS suggestion ever. SC has uses already. I for one, use it in pretty much every pull in WP speed runs. Clever use of cooldowns makes useful you just need to find the situation, like many other abilities.

Let's play with your idea a little bit. (P.S. I'm going to play around with averaged numbers based on a relic and darklight+ geared warrior)

Let's just imply that it gets the 150% heal. We'll use 4 targets for this point.
The average hit of a steel cyclone with just berserk active is ~350-400. For the sake of ease let's use 400.

400x4 = 1600
1.5(1600)=2400. Using 1 Steel Cyclone on a group of mobs that isn't even threatening is giving yourself a free Cure II crit from an equally geared White Mage. Redundant.

Lets use 7 mobs (the pull in WP between the room after the first boss and the next door).

400x7=2800
1.5(2800)=4200.

This is a little less redundant because you'll already be taking a lot of damage in this pull.. but when you can throw 2 of at any point in the fight for emergency heals.. either you're overhealing and wasting wrath or just making the whm overheal. OR you were already almost dead and used it properly (thumbs up). How about we add another cooldown into the mix. Internal Release. 30% for 15s. Let's say 1/3 of the hits crit (rounded down). You now have 5 hits and 2 crits. It'll look like this:

1.5(400x5)(600x2)=4800

A free 600 more healing for popping 1 short CD outside of the GCD.. quite strong. But now lets add 1 more cooldown.. for more overkill on how much this skill could heal. Bloodbath. 25% MORE raw healing on those hits.

0.25(400x5)(600x2)=800.
4800+800=5600.

That's over half of any warrior HP pool (and most of them could even have Thrill for Battle popped and still have that statement be true). in 1 GCD...And with infuriate you can throw another on the very next GCD. This isn't even putting in the extra damage you want the ability to do. Needless to say it doesn't need near as much love as you're suggesting. I personally think it's already relatively useful as is. Using it with Bloodbath during an AoE pull provides a lot of self healing and still pours some solid damage over the group (and has the built in defiance modifier of 2x enmity plus the healing agro). It's certainly not something to be spammed about, but with proper timing its still rather useful.

P.S. The idea of an AoE ability isn't to be as effective as the strongest single target ability when only 1 more mob is added. The golden number I've seen other games use for equal effectiveness is between 3-5. A fair suggestion for giving it a healing effect would be say.. 75% damage as healing? That way it's equal to IB on 4 mobs, and more efficient on 5 and greater without changing the damage modifier as we're "not here for high potency attacks"

P.P.S. Usage of Wrath attacks outside of being able to Infuriate the Wrath back immediately is generally not a great idea as is. So to use Steel Cyclone/Inner Beast at any point, you should be ready to Infuriate so you -don't- lose the Wrath benefit. The exceptions are of course emergency self-heals or the cases where healing is not needed and you want to pump out more damage.

[ChaozK]

In my eyes steel cyclone as a skill is used when you dont need healing, so for running trash, solely for the damage. The damage IS good. Its a 200 potency AOE, dedicated melee dps classes dont come even close to that (they average from 100-150), on a tank that is an extremely high number. The benefit is that you have that damage tool with using a resource that is easily replenished (wrath) instead of burning through your TP or MP with overpower or flash (which universally all strong AOEs do for all classes). Whats not to love?

In my eyes wrath as resource is something that you use up when you are in a comfortable position to not need extra healing and max out your dmg instead. IB is somewhat of an exception to that but dont forget that its a 300 potency attack as well.

[Kitru]

I for one, use it in pretty much every pull in WP speed runs. Clever use of cooldowns makes useful you just need to find the situation, like many other abilities.

You'll get more out of Unchained while you're spamming Overpower than you will out of using SC on those WP speed runs. Basic math will tell you that. It's 200 potency and ignores the 25% damage penalty of Defiance, which means that it's effectively 266.67 potency. Overpower is 120, so Steel Cyclone provides an extra 146.67 potency. Unchained lasts 20 seconds, which is 8 Overpowers, and nets you an extra 33% potency from each of your attacks thanks to the removal of the Defiance penalty, which adds up to an extra 316.8 potency (with the added bonus of it being "high enmity" potency). For WP, you get more than twice as much out of Unchained as you do Steel Cyclone, which is especially nice when you factor in how low tank DPS is compared to actual DPS and the higher enmity allows the BLMs, BRDs, and SMNs that tend to be brought along for WP speed runs to nuke harder and longer because they're not going to be enmity limited.

The problem with Steel Cyclone is that it doesn't really *have* any situations where it's really useful. For AoE damage/enmity, which is kind of what it's supposed to be there for, Unchained is way more effective because it's a buff to an ability that already does the job really well. If all that WAR had was Flash, there might be *some* usefulness, but, since WAR has Overpower, there's not really much point.

Let's play with your idea a little bit.

Your "play with it" is "let's tack on a bunch of 90 second CDs and see how screwed up we can make it". That's like talking about IB and only calculating with Berserk, IR, and critting to arrive at your "average" value. For the Wrath consumer abilities to actually be useful, they should be justified *outside* of a 20 second window every 90 seconds, which is half of the problem with IB.

Using 1 Steel Cyclone on a group of mobs that isn't even threatening is giving yourself a free Cure II crit from an equally geared White Mage. Redundant.

And using IB would give you half as much and I'm curious as to how you're somehow going to say that a Cure II crit from an equally geared WHM is somehow completely and utterly wasted. You're not supposed to use it while you're sitting at 90% hp. You use it when you're below the threshold of your healer being able to top you off with the next cast (which means that you're at 50% of max hp or so) at which point, even if your healer had a Cure II lined up, it would still be entirely useful.

Lets use 7 mobs

If you really wanted to throw math at my face, rather than acting as if all of your CDs are up at all times, you'd probably want to actually look at a *real* WP speed run pull, which is more likely to consist of 10-15 enemies at one time (more, if you're talking about pulling the beetles). Of course, by doing this, all you're doing is pointing out how AoE effects that aren't target limited become massively powerful when you increase group size, which is, you know, kind of self evident.

when you can throw 2 of at any point in the fight for emergency heals..

Unless you're somehow keeping up Berserk at all times, you're not going to be using these numbers as "emergency heals", which is a huge problem with factoring in IR and Berserk into these numbers. "Emergencies" are emergencies explicitly because you can't predict them. You can factor in Berserk + IR for using IB on one out of every 3-4 Mountain Busters because you *know* when that damage is coming because it's programmed. That's not emergency damage; that's burst damage. For an emergency, you're more likely to not have anything except for Wrath V up because it's an *emergency*.

Bloodbath. 25% MORE raw healing on those hits.

I'm still not entirely sure what bringing up Bloodbath has to do with anything. You can use Bloodbath *as it stands* with Steel Cyclone. You can do it with Overpower as well. Bloodbath isn't really a factor, especially since it's not like it's a proc that you have no control over when it's up. If you're worried about overheal, you could elect to *not* use it when you're going to be throwing out Steel Cyclone.

Needless to say it doesn't need near as much love as you're suggesting. I personally think it's already relatively useful as is.

And I've already shown that your "useful" is actually about half as useful as the other ability that WARs get that is designed explicitly for DPS rather than tanking that is considered by many to be largely redundant since damage isn't really a tank's actual job.

(and has the built in defiance modifier of 2x enmity plus the healing agro).

Self-healing generates no aggro and *everything* gets the Defiance enmity buff. Talking about the Defiance enmity buff is like talking about a person who's amazing because they breath air and eat food.

It's certainly not something to be spammed about, but with proper timing its still rather useful.

The only time it's going to be useful is when you don't need to be an efficient tank (since it consumes Wrath stacks) and you're out of TP (which is the only real "advantage" that it has over Overpower). The damage it provides over Overpower compared to what a DPS can throw out is negligible, especially when you factor in the whole "20 seconds between unless you really plan on burning Infuriate on this" (though, reading this, I would expect that you always assume that all of your CDs are up at all times, rather than, you know, when your CDs are up). The enmity it provides is effectively the same as what you'll get out of Overpower.

P.S. The idea of an AoE ability isn't to be as effective as the strongest single target ability when only 1 more mob is added. The golden number I've seen other games use for equal effectiveness is between 3-5. A fair suggestion for giving it a healing effect would be say.. 75% damage as healing? That way it's equal to IB on 4 mobs, and more efficient on 5 and greater without changing the damage modifier as we're "not here for high potency attacks"

Actually, if you look at the AoEs in ARR rather than just saying "well, this is what I feel about *other* games", AoE attacks become more efficient per GCD at 2 targets: Overpower has a potency of 120; the BB combo has an average potency of 210. 120 * 2 > 210. Go ahead and look to BLM, BRD, and everyone else with an AoE. It's exactly the same. AoEs provide better damage per GCD when you have more than one target. This is a pretty obvious design choice since the devs obviously designed the game around 1-3 target trash packs. If AoEs were only ever effective when you've had 4+ targets (which means a special case trash pack, like the super squishy beetles in WP, or pulling multiple packs at a time, which isn't really something they're going to design around), there wouldn't be much use to them; they would exist as abilities that just sit on your bar, waiting for some extremely marginal situations (like Holmgang and half of the Wrath abilities do now, which is what needs to be *fixed* about them).

P.P.S. Usage of Wrath attacks outside of being able to Infuriate the Wrath back immediately is generally not a great idea as is.

And this is one of the things that needs to be *fixed* about them. The Wrath abilities shouldn't exist as a series of abilities that all share the same 60 second cooldown. They should have *purpose* and use for situations outside of "well, the healer is dead" without needing to rely upon CDs. A tank should *want* to use Steel Cyclone and Inner Beast without having Infuriate up without hurting themself. If not, why not just put SC and IB on a 60 sec CD and be done with Infuriate completely. Have them apply a 60 sec debuff that causes them to apply a 15% reduction in healing received if you use them while the debuff is up. Infuriate should be a *benefit*, not a crutch that you have to rely upon to actually use half of the abilities your job provides. Improving SC and IB so that they serve a purpose outside of the confluence of a bunch of your CDs is exactly what needs to happen.

You're operating under the idea that the way they're used now is fine. They're not. The way they're used now is the problem with them. Change how they're used so that Infuriate allows you to use them back to back one per minute rather than just once per minute outright and improve those effects so that using them is actually justified when you don't have Berserk and Internal Release active and they'll actually *get* used, which is the point. They are *attacks* that should actually get *used*. They *shouldn't* be situational and conditional. They should have *purpose*. An ability that you can remove from your bar without ever noticing it's gone is an ability that needs to be revamped. Otherwise, it's just taking up space to make it look like you've actually got options when you really don't.

[SofiyaGlaston]

You're missing the point of my post and turning it into a "What's better for speed runs" and "vs Overpower" response. All I was doing was showing how overboard most of the people suggesting fixes for this skill are.

And to touch on "though, reading this, I would expect that you always assume that all of your CDs are up at all times, rather than, you know, when your CDs are up" I was doing the math BASED ON THE COOLDOWNS BEING ACTIVE. Of course they're all going to factor them in. and for most of the pulls in WP you will have Berserk active and only a couple more wont have Bloodbath. So.. covering that, you can throw all of those statements right out the window. Kitru, I see you all over these forums throwing contradictions and "my numbers are better" posts and tantruming any time someone says you aren't right... Might want to ease up on tossing idle insults a bit. (My thoughts go back to the Fracture thread where you were calling people clueless and other things of the like).

I'll continue this debate elsewhere with you if you'd like, but for now, let's stay on topic with possible tweaks to Steel Cyclone to make it more of a staple AoE skill instead of a minor use skill. (No. It's not useless.)

[Shinkyo]

I totally support that using wrath and dropping our heal buff should provide a benefit in terms of survivability. even in a WP speedrun, I'd rather provide breathing room for the Healer to cast Holy.
I think SC should have a shield benefit, that would give us more flexibility on how we mitigate damage on single vs multiple target. A High potency skill is not what WAR should be using wrath for. Plus we already have Unchained for extra damage.

Another option that could be interesting would be an AoE repel option with a short bind. It would give us some air and would fit the animation of the skill.

[Kitru]

You're missing the point of my post and turning it into a "What's better for speed runs" and "vs Overpower" response. All I was doing was showing how overboard most of the people suggesting fixes for this skill are.

You're the one that brought up the pulls in WP speed runs as the fundamental basis of measuring the value of my Steel Cyclone change rather than any situation in which the AoEs are actually balanced around (not to mention actually being ignorant of what AoEs are actually based around in ARR rather than other MMOs). You furthermore decided that they should be balanced around the presence of buffs that do not have anything approaching 100% uptime. Going off of your math, Inner Beast should be measured as a 2-2.4k heal every time that you use it, not just the times that you've got Berserk and Internal Release prepped and ready to use because, according to you, you've always got those up whenever you need to use any of your Wrath attacks in an emergency situation (keep in mind, even if you use the "only when you have Infuriate" logic for Wrath consumption, you're *still* not going to have Berserk up for every single one because it's a 60 sec CD compared to a 90 sec). On top of that, you would *never* need to use one of your Wrath abilities outside of the first 25 seconds of a massive pull because, you know, you start every fight with Berserk active but you completely and totally ignore your tank CDs that would fade around the same time as Berserk when you would actually need the big burst of survivability you'd get from spending from the Wrath stacks you just built up.

Your entire logic path is based upon a massively specific case and then claiming that the idea is absurd because it's "redundant" to get an extra Cure II crit during a substantial pull (when your healer is spam healing you in order to keep you from dropping as opposed to just providing maintenance), which is exactly what you'd get out of an IB crit (apparently *that* is redundant just as well).

Overall, you missed the entire point of *my* suggestion. Steel Cyclone sucks as does the entire Wrath consumption construct at the moment. Any use that you might concoct for it at the moment is less effective than just using other the stuff at your disposal. The damage it provides isn't enough to justify it and providing a marginally sized self heal on it would only provide any degree of usefulness to it when you're in one of the oversized pulls that the devs pretty obviously don't balance anything around (because, if they did, AoEs would be a helluva lot weaker).

The only Wrath consumption ability that is actually justified at the moment is Inner Beast because it actually provides a survivability benefit to offset the cost to your survivability, which just so happens to be the most important aspect of the tanking role, and IB still suffers from being inefficient outside of multiple conditionality and specific incoming damage levels. As it stands, Unchained is, for all intents and purposes, a marginally more efficient Blood For Blood and Steel Cyclone is just pointless.

My idea would cause Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone to perform the same function (burst self healing) with the distinction that Steel Cyclone is for any situation where you've got multiple targets and Inner Beast is for single targets, which, going off of the fact that they both consume Wrath, would suggest that they're *supposed* to be used as such. Basically, Steel Cyclone for trash and Inner Beast for bosses. The damage they provide is tertiary to the survivability benefits and secondary to the enmity afforded by said damage. If it doesn't have an additional enmity modifier, a high base potency simply exists to fulfill the same purpose as the additional enmity modifier with a bit of additional damage attached as a bonus.

let's stay on topic with possible tweaks to Steel Cyclone to make it more of a staple AoE skill instead of a minor use skill. (No. It's not useless.)

Let's go over it again: Steel Cyclone *is* useless because it is inferior to other options available to you. Saying that Steel Cyclone isn't useless is like saying that Savage Blade as an additional for WAR isn't useless.

In order for it to a staple rather than just a gimmick, a Wrath consuming ability needs to fulfill 3 qualities: it needs to provide a worthwhile survivability increase to offset the loss of Wrath stacks, it needs to fulfill a tactical niche that is not already fulfilled by *another* ability, and it needs to do all of this without having to rely upon CDs. The first is because WARs are *tanks* and survivability is the #1 concern. The second is because, if there is overlap, you're just giving them one ability to use instead of the other. The third is because having an ability rely upon a CD in order to be useful rather than to *augment* is creating an ability that is too conditional to be useful. The last is where we're getting the most disconnect and it is important because balancing an ability around having Berserk and Internal Release on whenever it is used would be like requiring Bloodbath to be up in order to use Thrill of Battle or Bulwark to be up to use Hallowed Ground. If an ability performs below the expected threshold just because a completely separate temporary effect isn't present, you're drastically diminishing the effect one or the other: you either don't use Berserk, save it for IB, and just take the hit to your damage and enmity or you use Berserk on CD and simply submit to the fact that you're going to end up with a terrible Inner Beast most of the time.

Synergy based upon temporary effects should be a *bonus* rather than a requirement. Based upon your logic, the synergistic combination should be what everything is balanced around. The devs should be *cognizant* of the combination, but only to prevent the synergy from providing *too much* of a bonus (which, given the fact that they're both percentage based increases to performance that have explicit caps based upon max hp, means that it's not really something that will really get out of hand). If you design something about having temporary effects with limited uptime active every time it's used, you're just saying that it simply shouldn't be used a vast majority of the time.

[SofiyaGlaston]

Blah blah blah

Continue prattling on as you do. There's no point arguing with someone that refuses to see what's been written for them.

[OmegaSinX]

Only time I use Steel Cyclone Is When Im over Geared. Looks Cool Tho. I hope its one of the "7" Things SE is considering of buffing. Only way I would use it in critical fights is if

A. It had AoE Pacification to all targets in range for 6 secs.
B. Make it Cost No Wrath and add enimity Multiplier. (Maybe AoE Combo from Overpower would be nce)
or
C. Boost Potency to 300 and give it a cool additional affect.

[Leiron]

Continue prattling on as you do. There's no point arguing with someone that refuses to see what's been written for them.

Translation: Arrgh you don't agree with me!? Ima make a snide remark then walk off like a champ!

Dude people aren't always going to agree.
I cannot see why anyone gets upset.

[SofiyaGlaston]

Translation: Arrgh you don't agree with me!? Ima make a snide remark then walk off like a champ!

Dude people aren't always going to agree.
I cannot see why anyone gets upset.

I'm not though. I'm walking away giving my reasons. If you'd go through the threads they frequent you'd understand my point.