Riot Blade > Rage of Halone Needs Work - Some Ideas

[Ladon]

I'm seeing lots of how to use the combo, haven't really seen as to why. I'm not really following why anyone would spend 2000TP on the current combo considering the alternatives.

First there is Phalanx which seems like it should be the go to whenever it is up because it's damage to TP cost is incredibly efficient and it has a fast cooldown. Of course it requires a block to trigger so not always reliable but with a good string of blocks it can output a great DPS rate plus it's the opener for our best WS when it's up. It's so efficient though that even if you spam it you can still usually get to 1000 TP pretty quickly. 2000 of course takes even more time.

This brings me to my next point. Let's look at the combo for Riot Blade > Rage. The numbers are actually pretty terrible if you break it down. First to execute it on an enemy with a larger hit box which most bosses have, it takes about 2 seconds to actually run to the rear of it's hit box, the another 3 seconds in animation lock with Riot Blade. Assuming you are being a good tank you have to then run back, another 2 seconds then it's a 4 second animation lock for Rage. Total of 11 seconds to finish the combo. You can shave off 2 second if you don't care about positioning at the time so 9 seconds at best. All of this costs 2000 TP of course.

Now lets look at the other option of how to spend 2000 TP. Fast Blade > Savage Blade then Fast Blade > Flat Blade. Each has about 1 second of animation lock. so Fast Blade > Savage Blade, 2 seconds, 9 second cooldown (Fast Blade cooldown is already active when you are in Savage Blade animation lock) Fast Blade > Flat Blade 2 seconds. Total of 13 second execution time. Also these 4 WS will do about as much damage as Riot Blade > Rage will for 2 seconds more of execution time. You can also throw in Goring Blade for free as it's animation lock time it carried out during Fast Blade cooldown making the entire option superior in damage even if you don't apply the bleed component.

-So comparing the two options, TP to damage efficiency is about the same.
-Fast Blade option generates more enmity with Flat Blade in the mix.
-Riot Blade > Rage has a 1:33 cooldown where you can go right back into Fast Blade > Flat Blade after 10 seconds if you have TP. This means that for DPS races Fast Blade > Flat Blade simply destroys Riot Blade > Rage even if Flat Blade damage sucks because of it's short cooldown that matches Fast Blade. It's not even worth putting Riot Blade > Rage in because it costs twice as much TP and basically have the needed TP in half the time.

-Missing in Riot Blade > Rage can result in no damage and a loss of 2000TP or a ~50% reduction in damage then you have a very long cool down. Missing the Fast Blade combos means a ~58% (averaging missing Savage combo versus Flat) loss in damage and 1000TP and a 10 second cooldown or a ~35% (averaging missing Savage versus Flat) reduction in total damage if something else misses.

Also one thing to note that Rage damage suffers greatly on high physical resistant enemies due to it being a 5 fold attack and damage reduction being applied 5 times rather than once. This is a common RPG artifact.


So I'm trying to figure out why we'd ever use it in it's current state. Only two things I came up with were:

-For the physical damage debuff. How good is this? Has anyone tested it's effectiveness? It doesn't seem to land often on high dLVL enemies. I also suspect dLVL is going to have the same kind of effect on this debuff that it has on damage mitigation from defense. That is it's next to useless.

-For spike enmity. Seems like a really poor choice though as you have plenty of better tools for this and you aren't doing a very good job if you are sitting on 2000 TP just waiting for this kind of opportunity.


So my suggestions really have nothing to do with being able to pull of the combo better or not understanding how to use it. The current numbers simply do not add up. My suggested changes help make it a better option rather than make it 'easymode' or similar silly suggestion. What the changes help is:

1) Give it a superior cost to damage ratio of other options making it worth saving the TP for and putting into DPS chains when the skills are ready. That's in the TP reduction.
2) Reduce the required execution time by removing the back-hitting requirement. This alone can shave 2-4 seconds on it making it viable to throw into a DPS rotation in between Fast Blade cooldowns. This is the main goal here, not to make the combo any easier.
3) Better debuffs to give it an edge and to also help offer a unique tool for groups. It also helps offset the long cooldown time of the combo again making it a worthwhile option to our other abilities.


Hopefully this helps better explain my thinking as it seems many may have missed a lot of points I'm attempt to make and resolve.