How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

[Kabooa]

Oh right, they just nerfed it.

Art of War is a stronger AoE and Ruin 2 is a better weaving tool.

[BungleBear]

Art of War is a stronger AoE and Ruin 2 is a better weaving tool.

Yes.

Miasma II had 100 potency upfront damage plus a dot that ticked four times for 25 potency each. So 200 potency in total. Art of War has 160 potency upfront damage and no dot. A single cast of Miasma II out-damages a single cast of AoW after the dot has ticked three times. But you shouldn't compare single casts. In the time that it takes for the dot to tick, you could have cast three more AoW. If you were spamming Miasma II on a pack of mobs in a dungeon, for example, you were effectively getting only 100 potency per cast, compared to 160 potency per cast for AoW.

As weaving tools, Miasma II and (current) Ruin II have the same total potency, but Ruin II has the added advantages that (a) it can be used at range, and (b) the damage is all upfront.

Having said that, you might think that comparing potencies between expansions is misleading. There was general potency inflation in Shadowbringers, e.g. Broil II (240 pot) was replaced by Broil III (280 pot on release, 290 now). You might say that Miasma II potency was 83% of Broil II, whereas Ruin II is now only 69% of Broil III. Single weaving under Miasma II was clearly preferable to clipping Broil II, whereas single weaving under Ruin II is roughly comparable with clipping Broil III.

Still, I would say that overall, the combination of AoW and (buffed) R2 is an improvement on M2.

ETA: Even if we allow for potency inflation, AoW still comes out ahead of M2. Suppose that M2 was kept in ShB and the potency was increased comparably to Broil II/III. Then it would have around 120 potency upfront, compared to 160 for AoW.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes.

Miasma II had 100 potency upfront damage plus a dot that ticked four times for 25 potency each. So 200 potency in total. Art of War has 160 potency upfront damage and no dot. A single cast of Miasma II out-damages a single cast of AoW after the dot has ticked three times. But you shouldn't compare single casts. In the time that it takes for the dot to tick, you could have cast three more AoW. If you were spamming Miasma II on a pack of mobs in a dungeon, for example, you were effectively getting only 100 potency per cast, compared to 160 potency per cast for AoW.

If we're going to be that careful not to look at M2's max potency in isolation, are we not also going to look at how AoW was given in place of multiple DoTs and Bane?

[BungleBear]

If we're going to be that careful not to look at M2's max potency in isolation, are we not also going to look at how AoW was given in place of multiple DoTs and Bane?

Well, I was only addressing the one-to-one comparison between M2 and AoW. If you want to compare SCH's entire dungeon DPS toolkit between SB and ShB, that's another question. It might be interesting to math that out. But it would be tricky, because the SB calculation would depend on how long it takes the mobs to die, and perhaps also on the number of mobs (I vaguely recall that Bane had a falloff). AoW is giving you an extra 60 potency per mob per GCD, compared to M2. Would the dot potency from Bane and Shadowflare oughtweigh that deficit? I don't recall the details of these abilities well enough to answer that.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, I was only addressing the one-to-one comparison between M2 and AoW. If you want to compare SCH's entire dungeon DPS toolkit between SB and ShB, that's another question. It might be interesting to math that out. But it would be tricky, because the SB calculation would depend on how long it takes the mobs to die, and perhaps also on the number of mobs (I vaguely recall that Bane had a falloff). AoW is giving you an extra 60 potency per mob per GCD, compared to M2. Would the dot potency from Bane and Shadowflare oughtweigh that deficit? I don't recall the details of these abilities well enough to answer that.

Put simply, SCH outright melted mass-pull dungeon runs in StB, frequently outperforming DPS. Now? Nah.

Now, that capacity doesn't really matter to me, so long as it meets a decent parity. But the gameplay certainly feels worse for having reduced all that DoT-centric play with which Bane could so synergize in favor of slapping the ground repeatedly.

[BungleBear]

Put simply, SCH outright melted mass-pull dungeon runs in StB, frequently outperforming DPS. Now? Nah.

There's a website where you can fact-check this claim. If you look at the ranking of jobs for dungeon DPS, you'll see that SCH's position in the ranking is basically the same in both expansions.

[Shurrikhan]

There's a website where you can fact-check this claim. If you look at the ranking of jobs for dungeon DPS, you'll see that SCH's position in the ranking is basically the same in both expansions.

Sorry, I'd meant earlier to say just "mass pulls". Regardless...

(1) Take a look at how many mobs you can actually pull then and now (the densest pulls of StB were notably denser than ShB), or what portion of total damage done in a dungeon falls onto trash rather than bosses. As the portion of total damage increasing falls under such pulls, difference in AoE effective ppgcd has a larger effect on the overall, especially if the given pull falls under but near to a single churn of Bane. What was lost accounted for more ppgcd than the difference between Miasma II and AoW's initial potency. Optimized, SCH trucked, especially when it, in combination with range or LoS limitations on the gather itself, scarcely allowed else to set up:

(2) SCH's StB damage was absurdly easy to apply on the run, given Bane's spread radius and its propegating from the target, rather than from oneself (a limiting factor mid-gather, as any melee DPS will have seen when AoEing less than perfectly stacked mobs as they chase the tank).