Torpor and me

[Lance Berg]

I've become buddies with a couple of shaman in my guild, and we spent a
lot of time fighting in SF, as early on I convinced them that we could
take down Guardian Wurms with their slow, my tanking, and just about any
DPS help.

SF being a Hot Zone, its among the best exp on the combine server, not
only during the Kunark era, but even now, with Velious open.

Meanwhile, spells drop, far more often than in most zones. And early
on, Pearlescent Fragments for our clerics (although they all have their
pearls now, and in fact most pearls rot despite calling them out in OOC
to the zone)

Among the spells that drop is Torpor. Previously, in another guild, I'd
literally seen three Torpors drop in three weeks. But for some reason,
we had no luck with the thing ourselves.

Another guild group got one to drop about a week ago, and gave it to the
guild leader to hold; she'd announced she'd award it to the first shaman
to reach 60. This meant a friendly competition between my two shaman
friends, and it meant a lot of work for me, whenever either was on, if
there wasn't a raid, I was in SF with them and any other guildmates we
could scare up, trying to spawn GW's and kill them.

When both were on, well, then we all three grouped, despite the fact
that this meant neither was getting ahead in their race to 60.

Well a three days ago, Torpor finally dropped, while I was grouped with
the shaman who was falling behind in the race. We kept this a secret,
but got the guild leader to give him her copy as well, so the next day,
when we were all three grouped together again and the leading shaman
dinged 60 (an hour or so after I did), he was able to hand it to her
immediately as a surprise. She'd purchased Canni IV, and he'd been
handed it by a guildmate who got it as a drop.

We played around with torpor a bit, Canni IV and torpor are most
obviously a great mana regen combo, but it also lets a shaman tank a
slowed mob while her pet does the damage. Its a slow and a snare as
well as a HOT, but its vastly more efficient than SHeal, and if you need
lots of healing, you can Torpor and then chain Sheals.

From my experience with Torpors' little cousin Stupor, I knew about
most of this already. And from my experience as an SK, I had a pretty
good idea of what this might mean to me.

Normally, you avoid casting Torpor on a Main Tank, because the slow
drops his DPS down and that interferes with his ability to hold aggro.
Its use is reserved for down time and for casters and maybe for melee
who aren't actually tanking.

But an SK is a funny thing. For one thing, my DPS simply isn't all that
much, particularly in Combine gear. For another, literally half my DPS
comes from my much maligned skelly pet, from one round to another, he
outdamages me half the time. So, slow ME down, you only lose part of my
half of my DPS, the pet keeps working full bore, and you really haven't
lost all that much.

At the same time, Aggro, the principle reason MT's don't like torpor,
isn't so much, for me, a matter of my DPS as it is taunting, my spell
casting, and my procs.

The taunt button pops back up when it pops back up, regardless of
haste/slow.

Spell casting isn't affected by haste or slow either.

Proc rate, studies have shown, is independant of haste/slow; generally
if you proc, on average, ten times in five minutes, you'll do so whether
you are at nominal delay, wearing your haste gear, wearing gear and
buffed to the cap, geared buffed and bard overhasted... or Slowed. On
average, ten times in five minutes is ten times in five minutes no
matter what.

So I still proc just as often as ever, I can still cast same as ever,
and I still have taunt available as needed just as often as ever; Torpor
barely affects how well I can do the job of holding aggro at all.

Actually, the biggest problem with Torpor is the snare; its really
noticable, I move forward at a walk, and can barely back up at all. On
summoning mobs, this is a pain because from time to time, even though
I'm in melee range, they summon me anyway, pulling me forward to where
I'm no longer facing them; positioning so the rest of the team is behind
the mob becomes difficult. Normally, I'd just back up to get position
back under control, but now I have to turn, move forward slowly, then
spin back around. Thats a pain.

And if the mob runs and I don't have a good snare on them, they
sometimes can outrun me... I normally use Clinging Darkness as its cheap
and fast casting and sufficiently effective, but with Torpor, I found I
had to move up to Engulfing in order to be able to stay on the mob.
With sufficient force in the team, but no Clarity, I stick with
Clinging, and just sit down and let the team finish off the runner if
I'm Torpor'd.

Going from 59 to 60 as an SK didn't mean a lot; a lifetap thats 25%
bigger, a haste for my pet thats not as good as a real haste caster
could lay on (I'm spoiled by the mage Burnout line, which is always
better than any caster you group with is likely to be able to buff your
pet with) a debuffing DOT that doesn't seem to make a noticable effect
on combat any more than the previous ones did, and of course a bump in
HP and AC, but not one that is all that huge.

But bumping the Shamen up to 60 AND simultaneously giving them the rare
drop Torpor spells we'd been working on for weeks, that was huge.

First thing yesterday morning, that shaman and I got together in SF,
where I'd observed two GW's up. We duo'd them one after the other, with
a relatively brief pause in between while canni IV and Torpor brought
her mana back up quickly. We'd tried this before, at 58 and 59, and
failed miserably; mana would run out and even with canni III and me
blowing my whole bar on lifetaps we just didn't have enough healing to
keep me alive long enough for our relatively low DPS to do the job of
killing a GW. With Torpor and Canni IV in the kit bag, we were
finishing the fights with 50% or more in our mana pools.

Got to the raid, and found the other shaman had stayed online after I'd
finally had to leave for bed; he had his Torpor as well, and Focus to
boot; I was there a few days earlier when it had dropped off Lodizal.

The raid leader, though, did something that spoiled my Torpor dreams for
the day; he put both shaman in his group, and a cleric in mine.
Admittedly I was the nominal ST for the raid, but in practice I was
principle offtank. The cleric spent much of his time healing out of
group, much of my healing was accomplished by my own lifetaps, and by my
shaman friends throwing me a.... SHeal.

Yes, SHeal. Something I'd forgotten from my earlier years with Stupor;
these spells can be cast only on group members. Too much opportunity to
mess with people by slowing and snaring them, I guess.

So I never got one torpor the whole raid. Not even when I was
offtanking an add when we got jumped while rezzing a total raid wipe,
and the shaman were practically the only healers there with any mana.

Oh I still benefitted from it, in that with canni IV and torpor the
shaman had tons more mana than they would have otherwise.

But when it really looked like a wipe, being grouped with one would have
made all the difference; meanwhile, they were both in ONE group, and
Torpor doesn't stack, so even if they were using it on their tank, we
weren't getting the full benefit of having them both with the spell;
worse, he wasn't tanking anything, so if they were casting it on him,
they were reducing his main contribution, such as it was, which was his DPS.

Hopefully I can get this rectified in the future, because I'm pretty
sure I'm right about it being an ideal solution to the Offtank job and
insufficient clerics; I can do that job just fine with a shaman healer
even in an era where the famous Incomplete Heals don't exist yet.

Berg, 60 SK, Combine

[Schadenfreude]

Post by Lance Berg
Yes, SHeal. Something I'd forgotten from my earlier years with Stupor;

Stoicism.

[Lance Berg]

Post by Schadenfreude

Post by Lance Berg
Yes, SHeal. Something I'd forgotten from my earlier years with Stupor;

Stoicism.

Yeah, thats it, I couldn't remember the name. Stupor would have been a
better name in my opinion though, it resembles Torpor a lot more!

[Richard Carpenter]

Post by Lance Berg
Proc rate, studies have shown, is independant of haste/slow; generally
if you proc, on average, ten times in five minutes, you'll do so
whether you are at nominal delay, wearing your haste gear, wearing
gear and buffed to the cap, geared buffed and bard overhasted... or
Slowed. On average, ten times in five minutes is ten times in five
minutes no matter what.

Interesting. So proc rate is on its own "timer", so to speak, rather than
being evaluated each swing? Or, perhaps, proc rate is capped?

[Sean Kennedy]

Post by Richard Carpenter

Post by Lance Berg
Proc rate, studies have shown, is independant of haste/slow;
generally if you proc, on average, ten times in five minutes, you'll
do so whether you are at nominal delay, wearing your haste gear,
wearing gear and buffed to the cap, geared buffed and bard
overhasted... or Slowed. On average, ten times in five minutes is
ten times in five minutes no matter what.

Interesting. So proc rate is on its own "timer", so to speak, rather
than being evaluated each swing? Or, perhaps, proc rate is capped?

In WoW (where mechanics are a bit more transparent than in EQ) it's call
"procs per minute". IE, Seal of Command procs 7 times per minute
regardless of weapon speed (a fact that leads to blue weapons outdamaging
purple weapons because they have a slower speed - but I digress :) ).

My understanding from way back in EQ is that all procs there worked like
this - hence the reason AE groups would slow their warrior with the AE
proccing weapon (earthshaker? something like that) - the slower the
weapon, the higher the per-swing chance of a proc.

[Lance Berg]

Post by Richard Carpenter

Post by Lance Berg
Proc rate, studies have shown, is independant of haste/slow; generally
if you proc, on average, ten times in five minutes, you'll do so
whether you are at nominal delay, wearing your haste gear, wearing
gear and buffed to the cap, geared buffed and bard overhasted... or
Slowed. On average, ten times in five minutes is ten times in five
minutes no matter what.

Interesting. So proc rate is on its own "timer", so to speak, rather than
being evaluated each swing? Or, perhaps, proc rate is capped?

Its evaluated per swing, there is no cap, you can see several procs
fairly close together (I think there may be a minimum delay between
procs but I'm not sure about that one), or none at all for a while.

BUT

What you have instead is apparantly a chance of proc per swing that is
based on your current swing speed.

Say you have a weapon with a delay of 40, and a proc that tends to go
off once every 4 swings on average(25% chance of proc per swing). Get a
haste item and buff combo that gets you swinging every 2 seconds, the
chance of a proc per swing will drop to 12.5%. Get slowed to where
you're swinging once every 8 seconds, and your chance of proccing each
swing will actually raise to 50%.

I've heard of a strategy where an AOE proccing weapon weilder is
deliberately slowed (and takes off his Haste gear) in order to raise his
proc rate to 100%. I'm not sure how that benefits him, though,
actually, since proccing once a minute at 100% chance on his single
swing isn't, in the long run, any better than proccing usually once a
minute, sometimes twice, while swinging 20 times.

I can envision a strategy, though which relies on slow and removed haste
item to force an early proc of a Slow proccing weapon, then remove the
Slow with a cure disease and put the haste item back on to get DPS
online. Clumsy, but lacking a real slower in the group, it might be
worthwhile save for one problem... the plan relies on having a slow
caster to slow the proccing guy!

Perhaps there's some other proccing weapon which would be worth working
with to get a 100% chance of proc at the beginning of a fight. Tash,
maybe? Journeyman's walking stick or something like that. Shaman
slower could use this strategy to get a mob tashed with no enchanter in
the group.

The Workers Slegemallet, the infamous OT hammer can be a pain, if you
could raise its chance of proc to 100% on the first blow, you could use
it to gate out by hitting a mob you don't even want to fight, or at
least avoid those long annoying duels; one hit and you're gone.

I'll try to think of others. But the thing is, unless the proc rate is
pretty high, and the weapon delay already pretty low, getting the rate
up to 100% will probably take more slow than anyone has in their spell
book, almost certainly more slow than the relatively modest one provided
by Torpor.

Berg, 60 SK, Combine

[Adam Russell]

Post by Richard Carpenter

Post by Lance Berg
Proc rate, studies have shown, is independant of haste/slow; generally
if you proc, on average, ten times in five minutes, you'll do so
whether you are at nominal delay, wearing your haste gear, wearing
gear and buffed to the cap, geared buffed and bard overhasted... or
Slowed. On average, ten times in five minutes is ten times in five
minutes no matter what.

Interesting. So proc rate is on its own "timer", so to speak, rather than
being evaluated each swing? Or, perhaps, proc rate is capped?

Its evaluated per swing, there is no cap, you can see several procs fairly
close together (I think there may be a minimum delay between procs but I'm
not sure about that one), or none at all for a while.
BUT
What you have instead is apparantly a chance of proc per swing that is
based on your current swing speed.
Say you have a weapon with a delay of 40, and a proc that tends to go off
once every 4 swings on average(25% chance of proc per swing). Get a haste
item and buff combo that gets you swinging every 2 seconds, the chance of
a proc per swing will drop to 12.5%. Get slowed to where you're swinging
once every 8 seconds, and your chance of proccing each swing will actually
raise to 50%.
I've heard of a strategy where an AOE proccing weapon weilder is
deliberately slowed (and takes off his Haste gear) in order to raise his
proc rate to 100%. I'm not sure how that benefits him, though, actually,
since proccing once a minute at 100% chance on his single swing isn't, in
the long run, any better than proccing usually once a minute, sometimes
twice, while swinging 20 times.

If a weapon can proc on special attacks then it could be an advantage. In
your example the regular melee swing would be slowed to 1/min but the
special attack would remain on its own timer (say every 6 seconds?) and
would benefit from the increased proc rate.

[stanmann]

Post by Adam Russell
If a weapon can proc on special attacks then it could be an advantage. In
your example the regular melee swing would be slowed to 1/min but the
special attack would remain on its own timer (say every 6 seconds?) and
would benefit from the increased proc rate.

Exactly, Procs CAN occur on a rampage swing, note this may be something
that will be "nerfed". Hence generating a 100%+ proc rate, and
triggering the warriors rampage every attack disc="Shakerpaging"(using
earthshaker+rampage disc) and procing earthquake 50 or 100 times in a
few seconds=massive lag and apparently some serious xp. As a druid, I
can generate some pretty serious lag by casting earthquake on 20+
targets just once, so having it hit 50-100 targets multiple times in
one round =serious chance of zone crash.

StanMann

[Don Woods]

Post by stanmann

Post by Adam Russell
If a weapon can proc on special attacks then it could be an advantage. In
your example the regular melee swing would be slowed to 1/min but the
special attack would remain on its own timer (say every 6 seconds?) and
would benefit from the increased proc rate.

Exactly, Procs CAN occur on a rampage swing, note this may be something
that will be "nerfed". Hence generating a 100%+ proc rate, and
triggering the warriors rampage every attack disc="Shakerpaging"(using
earthshaker+rampage disc) and procing earthquake 50 or 100 times in a
few seconds=massive lag and apparently some serious xp. As a druid, I
can generate some pretty serious lag by casting earthquake on 20+
targets just once, so having it hit 50-100 targets multiple times in
one round =serious chance of zone crash.

Yup. Is warrior rampage an extra set of attacks? I thought I read
somewhere of a warrior using an autoriposte disc combined with slow
to get the Earthshaker to proc a zillion times, taking out most of a
zone worth of collected mobs (and dinging a couple times). Not a
tactic for the faint of heart!

-- Don.

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[Palindrome]

I thought I read somewhere of a warrior using an autoriposte disc
combined with slow to get the Earthshaker to proc a zillion
times, taking out most of a zone worth of collected mobs (and
dinging a couple times). Not a tactic for the faint of heart!

There was a player on my server recently, in /ooc, who was offering
"incredible xp, 5k per pull". I don't know if he had any takers!



Palindrome

[Lance Berg]

Post by Adam Russell

Post by Lance Berg
I've heard of a strategy where an AOE proccing weapon weilder is
deliberately slowed (and takes off his Haste gear) in order to raise his
proc rate to 100%. I'm not sure how that benefits him, though, actually,
since proccing once a minute at 100% chance on his single swing isn't, in
the long run, any better than proccing usually once a minute, sometimes
twice, while swinging 20 times.

If a weapon can proc on special attacks then it could be an advantage. In
your example the regular melee swing would be slowed to 1/min but the
special attack would remain on its own timer (say every 6 seconds?) and
would benefit from the increased proc rate.

Ah, now the light dawns; I didn't take this into account at all, of course
in my defense we don't have much by way of fancy disciplines on the
Combine server yet, no AA and only the discs found on the sole warrior
discipline tome vendor in Freeport. As an SK, this means I have
Fearless and Resistant.

I wouldn't be surprised if this got nerfed, but I also wouldn't be
surprised if it took them another five years to get around to it, since
it really doesn't seem to be used much; it was the high visiblity of
Team Gore manaburning kunark dragons in single group that got that one
hit with the nerf bat.

Berg, 60 SK, Combine

[Tony]

Post by Richard Carpenter

Post by Lance Berg
Proc rate, studies have shown, is independant of haste/slow; generally
if you proc, on average, ten times in five minutes, you'll do so
whether you are at nominal delay, wearing your haste gear, wearing
gear and buffed to the cap, geared buffed and bard overhasted... or
Slowed. On average, ten times in five minutes is ten times in five
minutes no matter what.

Interesting. So proc rate is on its own "timer", so to speak, rather than
being evaluated each swing? Or, perhaps, proc rate is capped?

The effect is that you proc, with max dex, twice per minute with your
primary hand and once per minute with your off-hand, assuming you have
no Combat Effects on your items and no AA affecting your proc rate.

Haste, swing rate, weapon speed, ATK rating have no effect. You will
basically proc 3 times per minute, twice on primary and once on off-hand.

However, since you can only proc on a swing (hit or miss doesn't matter
for PC's), your weapon speed and haste will have the effect of smoothing
out the proc rate or making it very lumpy.

How it's actually calculated in-game, I don't want to think about, but
the net result is 2ppm / 1ppm. If you purchase all 5 levels of Weapon
Affinity on a warrior that rises to 3ppm / 1.5ppm.