Sentinel - Combat, Gimped Because of Poor Animation. + shared Massacre/BR Issue

[Munx]

Hi, I play both a 50 marauder and a 50 sentinel, as I keep playing what i mentioned in title becomes more and more obvious.

 

As you know the Gcd on bladerush is supposedly lower then that of Slash, How ever this is nullified by the fact that bladerush annimation is "messy"/Slow and laggy.

 

This is extremly noticeable when I pair up my Sentinels Blade rush versus my marauders Massacre, which does work properly, and has a neat and functional annimation, which means it is indeed quite a bit faster then vicious slash.

 

As those of you who play as carnage or combat know, speed is everything, it even shows in the design as Zen/Frenzy further lowers the gcd in ataru form, again here its noticeable that the massacre is considerably faster, while the blade rush is still about same speed as slash.

 

Also from my experience it seems when massacre is canceled you still get the damage from offhand, while for blade rush more often then not the offhand damage is lost, which also means a potential ataru proc is lost.

 

 

Other then this there are is a problem which both Massacre and Blade Rush share, It seems to bug out at times in such a fashion that they don't take into account your stats, meaning you can risk doing as low as 400 dmg normals and 1k dmg crits, despite your prim damage being 700-850 + 85% surge.

 

 

Anyone else with both classes noticed this, and have any else noticed the odd drops in the damage that these skills sometimes have ?

Edited February 3, 2012 by Munx

[nicolatron]

I usually play watchman, i tried combat for a few hours, and it indeed has a lot more animation crippling than watchman or focus, as you say blade rush has a tendency to don't fire in time, and it makes you loss a lot of GCDs, maybe it has to do with ataru proc animations, couse i think in abilites in general and not just blade rush fire up more realibility when not using ataru form, as blade rush procs automatically an ataru proc it's more apparent, it's outrageous to know that our "mirror" empire class don't have the same problems, couse i like combat, but it does not more damage than watchman and it has way less survavility. Besides animation problems and abilities not firing in time or taking 2 GCDs to work are too frustating for me.

[waywardstrider]

saying this i am not sure if using zen and blade rush in rapid succession kills the ataru strike procs. or it does proc but the animation for proc is not clearly shown. i have tried to use the combat log to check but having no luck finding/setting it up as i am kinda new to this game *just over a month*

[Crawelc]

Ataru does in fact proc on every hit with the Zen/spam combo. Animations are bad with the shorter gcd I agree.

[Veniras]

I agree ther animation for the extra Ataru attack gimps the move a bit, but I also am almost sure you still get the attack/proc without the animation showing if Zen/BRush-spamming

[Elear]

I agree ther animation for the extra Ataru attack gimps the move a bit, but I also am almost sure you still get the attack/proc without the animation showing if Zen/BRush-spamming

 

You do. It might be delayed, but it will land.There is slight possiblity that it reduces total amount of Ataru procs due to second hit landing together with something else that triggers Ataru, and certainly hit landing too late won't benefit from precision, but it all works both ways, and hit landing later may be more beneficial than one landing on time.

 

Also, keep in mind that orginal post is quite old, and since then there were lot of changes to this part of game(animations).

[Stealios]

and hit landing later may be more beneficial than one landing on time.

 

 

Please tell me how that is beneficial. I'm really curious

[HollowVamp]

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j124/slipcob/dpscombat.png

 

this is the dmg i do with combat, pretty pleased with it

[Elear]

Please tell me how that is beneficial. I'm really curious

 

Your burst damage gets small bit delayed, but it may result in increased spike damage - same principle as Project delay, just far less significant because hit that gets delayes is really small.

 

If you use Zen->Precision->BR spam, last BR offhand strike is likely to land after Precision. But if you used BR before Precision, offhand hit from that one will slip into precision, and if you use BS as finall skill before precision going down, there is no damage lost, only gained.

 

Both mainhand and offhand strikes can proc 'natural' Ataru, so with delayed hit you get reduced chance for damage right now(50% instead of 75%), and increased chance with next skill. Because there is forced Ataru proc anyway, you still get Combat Trance refreshed if it goes down, and delayed hit increases chances of proc and refresh at later time.

[Stealios]

Your burst damage gets small bit delayed, but it may result in increased spike damage - same principle as Project delay, just far less significant because hit that gets delayes is really small.

 

 

Thought burst & spike dmg came down to pretty much the same thing, a lot of dmg in short amount of time.

 

Now about the situation that you're describing with the BR before precision slash; You'll need to be insanely quick & lucky to have that happen. I'm guessing that 9 out of 10 times you won't be able to time it like that