Zealous leap should be no cost!

[NJoyTheSilence]

I no longer find this to be an issue, so am editing this. It was indeed a l2p issue. Edited January 16, 2012 by NJoyTheSilence

[NJoyTheSilence]

I came of a little too whiney in that last post. If they would fix the range of force sweep or the lag wz issuse, then it would be ok. The zealous leap being no cost would really make this spec worth it!

[mynimoe]

If im not mistaken Zealous leap is the leap is in the focus tree? I think it costs focus because IMO its meant to be a chasing skill since you have 2 leaps. I would personally use the leap that builds focus to approach a target and then if they run away you can pop the one that costs focus since by that point you should have focus built up.

[Aaramis]

Don't think of it as a "leap", per se, even though the animations show as such. It's a damaging move, and one that triggers your auto-crit Force Sweep.

 

Perfect for all those times an enemy knocks you back just outside of melee range, or when you finish off that lone elite off to the side, and are ready to jump into the middle of that pack of golds your party is working on a mere 10m away.

[MBirkhofer]

After leveling focus I have 2 complaints about zleap.

 

1. needs 15 range. It IS supposed to be a short range gap closer. Yet its 10 range means it completely fails at this. All those aoe knockbacks everyone has? put you OUTSIDE zleap range. that is unacceptable.

 

2. It needs to scale better. I'll need to spend some time figuring out the exact math on it.

But when I got it at level 20, it was considerably more core damage then blade storm. A good +80 more damage iirc at that level. Now, as I have gotten higher, I have noticed that damage variance get smaller and smaller, until now my blade storm hits harder then zleap.

This might just be force powers innately scaling better due to 100% mh/100%oh forcepower, vs zleaps 100%mh/30%oh. But if THAT is the case, then it only goes to show how screwed up we are as a DW class.

At level 20, its as a strong and viable damage move. At 40+, it no longer is. It doesn't get the +30% crit damage talent, and just isn't scaling in damage/focus well enough.

Edited December 29, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[EasymodeX]

This might just be force powers innately scaling better due to 100% mh/100%oh forcepower, vs zleaps 100%mh/30%oh.

 

That's not how it works.

 

Weapon strike abilities like ZL only use the mainhand damage for its calculations. The "30% oh" is a proc effect on the attack. When you use ZL, you have a "66%" (+ACC) chance of firing an additional, separate strike, to the tune of 30% (+talents) of of your offhand weapon damage.

 

Go fight a mob and watch the "flytext" carefully -- use a single strike ability like Slash several times and observe the white hits that pop up. You'll notice that a secondary lower-damage while hit pops up some of the time; that is your offhand swing. It's not factored into the base damage of Slash on the tooltip.

 

All told, it functions like a Blademaster/Mercenary from DAOC.

 

 

 

More specific to the discussion of ZL / Obliterate though:

 

- It needs a range increase. The 10m is ridiculous. It offers 0 horizontal movement advantage -- I may as well just step forward a half second and hit them.

 

- The animation needs to stop locking the player if it is used at short range. Currently, it seems like it pauses for the GCD. This means that if you use it on a moving target, you don't actually gain distance on them -- they will be out, or nearly out of melee range by the time you are able to move again. This is not an issue for Focus/Rage specs that have the talent for +40% run speed, but it is an issue for other specs that use an 11Focus/Rage subspec.

 

- The damage for all abilities on a cooldown need to be categorically better than spammables. It does basically the same damage as Slash/VS. Combined with its extremely limited utility, and 50% higher focus/rage cost, it's a bit dubious in general.

 

 

I would personally suggest a range increase to 20m. That would give it enough utility to justify its:

 

- Higher cost for the same damage.

- The fact that you have to spec for it, and specifically sacrifice your 31 point ability in another spec if you are subspecing to ZL/Obliterate.

[MBirkhofer]

the damage is included in the tooltip and assumes 100% offhand hit rate. which is of course, not true.

 

But for example, my numbers at 41.

zleap with both weapons.

814-960

offhand lists as 47-71 damage.

Remove offhand

zleap lists as 728-841.

 

(mainhand damage goes down 11 due to +STR on offhand)

 

119 damage difference. 11ish is due to str.

Leaving 108 damage. This is the 71 damage offhand value, magnified by skill%. Skills scale a as %, they are not flat values.

 

 

Given the offhand miss rate, the tooltip of any "will attack with both weapons" skill is thus overstating actual damage.

 

And that is not even considering my real statement. slash/bladestorm simply scale better.

When you get zleap it is actaully viable as a damage move on its own. This falls apart later as it does not scale as well as others. And even worse, it does not get the force power talent benefits, nor the -focus of slash.

 

Its sole purpose is to proc 100% crit on force sweep late game. (which you are running a 50%+ force crit rate as it is...)

Edited December 29, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[EasymodeX]

the damage is included in the tooltip and assumes 100% offhand hit rate. which is of course, not true.

119 damage difference. 11ish is due to str.

Leaving 108 damage. This is the 71 damage offhand value, magnified by skill%. Skills scale a as %, they are not flat values.

 

Ah, ok my bad then. Didn't look at it closely enough. Sidenote: the 108 is average(71,47) * 1.85 (coefficient for ZL).

 

 

And that is not even considering my real statement. slash/bladestorm simply scale better.

 

Something odd is going on then, because Slash is supposed to have a lower coefficient (1.54).

 

I'm not concerned about the Bladestorm part because that should intuitively scale better since it's on a cooldown and costs more base rage.

[MBirkhofer]

well, 2 focus slash, and 15% crit, and 6% damage.

didnt mean to suggest that it was actually hitting harder per hit, but instead due to 2 focus cost with focused slash,a nd that +15% crit rate, it is more damage/focus efficient.

to the point, where zleap is no longer a damage efficient move. Its a dps loss, unless I am using it to buff sweep crit.

[EasymodeX]

Well that goes without saying.

 

ZL is obviously supposed to be useful for the actual leap part (and/or deeper synergy with the autocrit Sweep). The core issue is that it's not. Mostly because the range is terrible, but the rage cost and generally neutral damage isn't helping.