Xecutive Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 Smoke Grenade: Throws a smoke grenade at your feet that releases a large cloud of smoke, causing nearby enemies to have their accuracy with ranged and melee attacks lowered by 20% for 18 seconds. Maybe i am not understanding the purpose of this talent but when in use it seems to little to nothing for me. I still get hit as often and the damage appears to be the same. Am I missing something here? Energy Blast: Fires a shot that deals 443 elemental damage and generates 1 energy cell. It deals fair damage and generates a cell but i don't really have cell issues since I weave hammer shots between most of my abilities. Even if I pop off 2-3 consuming abilities I am always at a very high recharge rate. It just seems to me that there should be something a little extra with this talent to warrant the point. Maybe it's just me though... what are your thoughts on the subject? There are other things in my mind that could use a little spicing up but these are the two major ones that stick out to me. On a side note, the straight defense stat doesn't seem to do too much while the shield/absorption stats yields a much higher defensive return. Why is that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VragonBral Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 1.Smoke Grenade. Well, yes. It doesn't appear to do much, as a lot of enemies have high accuracy and can only be brought down by about 20% of their accuracy. Overall though if your going against high Accuracy Opponents (PvE and PvP), it will reduce their damage. As they won't be taking defense away from you for going over the 100% accuracy rating. Overall though, it just gives that nice chance of enemies missing too. Great against Marauder's in my opinion. In PvE it seems to do little to me as well. 2.Energy Blast. I agree with you on this. It's utility is nice, but the delay on use, short range and rather low damage with no other utility. Along with the CD makes it rather useless to most Shield Spec's like me and you. Sidenote. Thats because its numbers allow you to completely dodge/avoid a attack. So if the point to ratio was better, everyone would be using it instead of Shield/Absorb. Right now Shield/Absorb is best for PvE, but not PvP. Meanwhile Defense is better for PvP, but still not that great. As it doesn't give much for what you put in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinvalar Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 Right now Shield/Absorb is best for PvE, but not PvP. Meanwhile Defense is better for PvP, but still not that great. As it doesn't give much for what you put in. Defense isn't helping you much in PVP either. It has the same drawback as shield/absorb in that you cannot dodge many of the more devastating attacks thrown at you in PVP (Tech/Force attacks). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VragonBral Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 (edited) Defense isn't helping you much in PVP either. It has the same drawback as shield/absorb in that you cannot dodge many of the more devastating attacks thrown at you in PVP (Tech/Force attacks). I said it's better for PVP, not BEST. You don't get much out of it, meanwhile shields is even lower on the totem poll. It goes like this: 3rd Place: Shields. 2nd Place: Defense Rating. 1st Place: Flat Mitigation. Flat Mitigation is BEST for PvP. I know of the drawbacks with Defense, and still think they should take it off BM, Champ and Centurian Gear. And just give us a different stat altogether. Since it relatively is only useful in PvE. P.S., were basically saying the same thing... Edited February 3, 2012 by VragonBral Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinvalar Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 Ahh, my mistake. I took your post to infer that Def has more widespread skill coverage in PvP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaigen Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 1. I do notice a big difference in incoming damage using Smoke Grenade when tanking multiple gold/silver mobs. At that point the number of incoming attacks is so high and deal so much damage that you can notice a drop in damage taken if you're paying attention. In PvP it's also useful for lowering enemies' ability to hit anyone and not just you, but you're not likely to be able to observe that directly. Against bosses it's less noticeable since they aren't using as many attacks and more of their attacks aren't affected by SG's debuff. 2. Using EB means having to use Hammer Shot less, which gives you more ability to burst at the beginning of a fight to gain aggro and makes it easier to keep your high damage secondary abilities (like Sticky Grenade and Pulse Cannon) on cooldown, resulting in a greater damage increase than you would expect. Considering boss battles can go on for a few minutes, EB can supply you with a lot of ammo over the course of a fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ururururu Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 I said it's better for PVP, not BEST. You don't get much out of it, meanwhile shields is even lower on the totem poll. It goes like this: 3rd Place: Shields. 2nd Place: Defense Rating. 1st Place: Flat Mitigation. Flat Mitigation is BEST for PvP. How did you come up with this? You realize we regenerate ammo on a shield? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinvalar Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 How did you come up with this? You realize we regenerate ammo on a shield? Yeah, we regenerate ammo on shielding, but on the few attacks that do allow shielding you're better off not taking the hit than you are reducing the damage of it by 40-50%. Many head-to-head fights don't allow for much time to take advantage of the 1-3 ammo you might proc anyhow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeromentor Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 From what I can tell, Smoke only works on RANGED and MELEE attacks. In other words, abilities not labelled TECH, FORCE or anything other than Ranged and Melee. That means that 20% decrease only affects certain abilities, and even then they are not used often (for a Vanguard those are Full Auto and Hammershot). So I dropped it for 4% more damage for stockstrike. I can't tell if it is a good enough trade off, but my other options were 1% more endurance, or 8% Ion Cell damage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayol Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 (edited) On a side note, the straight defense stat doesn't seem to do too much while the shield/absorption stats yields a much higher defensive return. Why is that? Defence is a chance to mitigate 100% of the incoming attack. Shielding is not. You also need to increase 2 stats for shield, so if the returns for those weren't a bit higher than defence, it would either make it undesirable or screw with the itemization values. That's my theory anyway. I'm currently sitting on 21% dodge, and really not that keen to replace all my mastercraft Veracity gear with Columi as I'm going to lose a crapload of defence. Still, probably worth it for higher threat generation and health pool. Edited February 5, 2012 by Mayol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjgriffin Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I said it's better for PVP, not BEST. You don't get much out of it, meanwhile shields is even lower on the totem poll. It goes like this: 3rd Place: Shields. 2nd Place: Defense Rating. 1st Place: Flat Mitigation. Flat Mitigation is BEST for PvP. I know of the drawbacks with Defense, and still think they should take it off BM, Champ and Centurian Gear. And just give us a different stat altogether. Since it relatively is only useful in PvE. P.S., were basically saying the same thing... Considering the current Dodge bug, I think Shield/Absorb is actually more valuable than people are giving it credit for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VragonBral Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Considering the current Dodge bug, I think Shield/Absorb is actually more valuable than people are giving it credit for. You mean the one where have a chance to stop doing one of your abilities when dodging? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gustomucho Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Smoke grenade is extremely useful during some encounters, I know during HM Foreman Crusher ' frenzy I pop the smoke grenade and it really helps me and the healers to remove some spike damage. I would say without defensive cooldown the frenzy is impossible to live through unless you have 2 healers dedicated to you. I cycle smoke nade (1min) with either my 300 defense relic or my reactive shield and the healers love me. 20% is a lot when you fight little but plentiful of mobs, also consider it is not only for you, when you see a big pack and lost aggro because of AoE, the nade also work for your teammates, honestly I love the nade. You have to be smart about it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xecutive Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Your help is much appreciated. Now lets get our animations fixed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VragonBral Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 (edited) How did you come up with this? You realize we regenerate ammo on a shield? What Kinv said. If you want to run all the numbers yourself. Go and do so. If you think its good to use shields to recover your Ammo in PvP. Then go ahead. I don't bother with it as I am very economical with my ammo. Also you can talk to some of the people over in the large PvP forums about this, and also refer to Taugrim's guide on it as well. There are many theorys on effectiveness. But fact is fact. I personally hate it myself, cause I would LOVE for shields to work in PvP more...its sad for me... Edited February 6, 2012 by VragonBral Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayol Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Smoke grenade is extremely useful during some encounters, I know during HM Foreman Crusher ' frenzy I pop the smoke grenade and it really helps me and the healers to remove some spike damage. I would say without defensive cooldown the frenzy is impossible to live through unless you have 2 healers dedicated to you. I cycle smoke nade (1min) with either my 300 defense relic or my reactive shield and the healers love me. 20% is a lot when you fight little but plentiful of mobs, also consider it is not only for you, when you see a big pack and lost aggro because of AoE, the nade also work for your teammates, honestly I love the nade. You have to be smart about it though. This. Think of your aoe dps, explosive surge + grenade in the middle of a pack will reduce their accuracy and damage before they run off (if they do). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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