Does Swift Cast work on any skills?

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Oh, I agree that shadow flare should be used for damage! I was disagreeing with the notion that Shadow flare is effective mitigation, since any players that might pick up a tank could get the wrong impression. Namely, "Shadow flare up! I don't need CD- Why'd I go splat."

[Deus_ex_Machina]

Oh, I agree that shadow flare should be used for damage! I was disagreeing with the notion that Shadow flare is effective mitigation, since any players that might pick up a tank could get the wrong impression. Namely, "Shadow flare up! I don't need CD- Why'd I go splat."

your point is valid, I agree. But I would also like to point out, the best way to mitigate damage is killing off the source of said damage. In that term, it fulfill it job wonderfully

[Kaurie]

If we're talking trash mobs, 5% is insignificant. You can overstate the effectiveness, but it doesn't change the fact that awareness and foresight, the two absolute weakest tank cd's, mitigate more damage in their respective durations than SF's Slow does in two minutes. Awareness only needs to 'proc' once to completely overshadow any defensive benefits of the Slow, and the chance of being critted increases drastically the more mobs you have pummeling you. SF's slow is more window dressing than it is actual mitigation.

You have a pretty skewed idea on damage mitigation, but that's fine. It's unlikely we are going to play together, so I don't really need to concern myself with it.

For mathematics, let's say you pull a pack of 5 mobs that each do 10 damage per hit every 3 seconds. If 1 crit were to happen in 30 s (time of a shadowflare), you would have:

Damage mitigation from Awareness: 5 damage (prevent 1 crit and take regular damage instead), for a total of 500 damage taken
Damage mitigation from Shadowflare: 10 damage taken every 3.15 seconds, for a total of 9.5 hits (as things don't hit for half amounts, you'll only be hit 9 times). You'll receive 1 crit for 15 damage. Therefore, you receive 10 x 9 x 5 + 5 = 455 damage.

However, if you really want to count the 0.5 as damage taken, as over longer fights it will result in 19 instead of 20 hits, the math works to 480. It's also important to note that I used simplified numbers to make the math easier to understand. If my understanding is correct, mobs hit on the regular GCD of 2.5 seconds, not 3, and the slowed time is 2.625s.

Naturally, awareness can proc more times than that, but it also can not at all. This depends on how often the mobs are hitting critically.

The logical fallacy is that you don't choose between Awareness and Shadowflare. Shadowflare simply couples with your current damage mitigation and the scholars shields and the faeries heals.

[VanilleFang]

A flat 5% DPS decrease seems like a weird way to look at a slow, especially in a game tied to a 2.5 second global cooldown. Now I may not be super knowledgeable about how all this dps stuff works but if mobs are also tied to a 2.5 second cooldown...

Say you fight a mob that only uses instant abilities every 2.5 seconds, casting a 5% slow would delay its attacks to every 2.625 seconds. Taking these numbers, plus the duration of Shadow Flare(SF) you can sort of calculate dps. For the sake of this equation I'm going to say the mob deals 100 damage per attack.

@30 seconds, and 2.5 GCD, the mob would execute 12 attacks (30/2.5=12), and would inflict 1200 damage (12×100=1200). Which can then be calculated as 40 DPS (1200/30=40).

@30 seconds, and 2.625 GCD, the mob would execute 11 (rounded from 11.42~) attacks, inflicting 1100 damage, or 36.67 DPS.

36.67 is about an 8% decrease from 40. So you actually reduced the target's DPS by more than 5%.

But if the mob died at 29 seconds it would execute 11 attacks regardless if it was inflicted with SF or not. So the dps would not be any different, since in both cases the mob would inflict 1100 damage, or 37.93 DPS.

This is all napkin math and I'm actually work so I may be completely wrong, but slows are not the same as actual damage reduction.

[Seidaku]

Dont make them change it, if they add a check it will be instant like benediction. Instant in name only lol.

Cast benediction, check if player will be alive or not, 2 - 5 seconds later use ability on them.
Cast swift cast, check if spell is instant or not, 2 - 5 seconds later use the spell with swift cast.

It will be much worse if they actually fix it.

[VanilleFang]

snip

I don't really understand how you can say you take x amount of damage every y seconds when the mobs attack every 2.5 seconds, not every second. If you take damage every 2.5 seconds wouldn't the total amount of damage you take every 3 seconds be the same as the total damage you take every 4 seconds (up to a point)? Or am I just not understanding something here?

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Snip.

It's drastically overstating the actual effectiveness of the slow, yes. The point I was making is that SF shouldn't be considered mitigation because slow really doesn't have an appreciable effect at 5% over short fights. As I said earlier, trying to sell it as mitigation sends the wrong message, and the uninitiated might try think they can save cd's while SF is up only to be slammed in a split second, because slow doesn't actually lower the damage taken.

[VanilleFang]

It's drastically overstating the actual effectiveness of the slow, yes. The point I was making is that SF shouldn't be considered mitigation because slow really doesn't have an appreciable effect at 5% over short fights. As I said earlier, trying to sell it as mitigation sends the wrong message, and the uninitiated might try think they can save cd's while SF is up only to be slammed in a split second, because slow doesn't actually lower the damage taken.

That's why I think saying it "reduces DPS by 5%" is really weird. It's not like Disable that literally decreases the damage its target inflicts.

Yeah this is way of topic though. Opps. XD

[Kaurie]

A flat 5% DPS decrease seems like a weird way to look at a slow, especially in a game tied to a 2.5 second global cooldown. Now I may not be super knowledgeable about how all this dps stuff works but if mobs are also tied to a 2.5 second cooldown...

Say you fight a mob that only uses instant abilities every 2.5 seconds, casting a 5% slow would delay its attacks to every 2.625 seconds. Taking these numbers, plus the duration of Shadow Flare(SF) you can sort of calculate dps. For the sake of this equation I'm going to say the mob deals 100 damage per attack.

@30 seconds, and 2.5 GCD, the mob would execute 12 attacks (30/2.5=12), and would inflict 1200 damage (12×100=1200). Which can then be calculated as 40 DPS (1200/30=40).

@30 seconds, and 2.625 GCD, the mob would execute 11 (rounded from 11.42~) attacks, inflicting 1100 damage, or 36.67 DPS.

36.67 is about an 8% decrease from 40. So you actually reduced the target's DPS by more than 5%.

But if the mob died at 29 seconds it would execute 11 attacks regardless if it was inflicted with SF or not. So the dps would not be any different, since in both cases the mob would inflict 1100 damage, or 37.93 DPS.

This is all napkin math and I'm actually work so I may be completely wrong, but slows are not the same as actual damage reduction.

Indeed this is all correct, and something I alluded to above. I appreciate the other take on it to help make it clearer for others.

I should note that the total damage will be the same if they are both 11 attacks, but the speed at which that damage occurs is still slowed. This is quite valuable when DPSing.

I don't really understand how you can say you take x amount of damage every y seconds when the mobs attack every 2.5 seconds, not every second. If you take damage every 2.5 seconds wouldn't the total amount of damage you take every 3 seconds be the same as the total damage you take every 4 seconds (up to a point)? Or am I just not understanding something here?

I used per second, as generally the unit of measure for damage is DPS or damage per second.

It's drastically overstating the actual effectiveness of the slow, yes. The point I was making is that SF shouldn't be considered mitigation because slow really doesn't have an appreciable effect at 5% over short fights. As I said earlier, trying to sell it as mitigation sends the wrong message, and the uninitiated might try think they can save cd's while SF is up only to be slammed in a split second, because slow doesn't actually lower the damage taken.

There is nothing drastic about giving the precise amount of effectiveness. Shadowflare helps slow the damage to the tank. This is valuable and a form of mitigation. Saying that it does not mitigate 'sends the wrong message'.

If an uninitiated tried to save CD's with Shadowflare after reading our conversation, then they clearly need to re-read our conversation.

That's why I think saying it "reduces DPS by 5%" is really weird. It's not like Disable that literally decreases the damage its target inflicts.

Yeah this is way of topic though. Opps. XD

5% is actually slightly off. You're adding 5% to the lower half of the fraction (damage / second). So instead of (x/y) you have (x/(y*1.05), which works out to a 4.8% reduction in DPS.

[VanilleFang]

snip

Ah. Alright. Thank you for clarifying!