MAXIMIZE or EXTEND

[Mellkor]

meh, maximize for BB is a waste of spell points at end game. BB only tickles them even with the best DC you can have, so why bother. On the other hand, more DR is FAR more useful at end game. Drop maximize you naysayers! Once ya do ya wont go back!

Maximize is semi useful for mass cures, but I hardly ever use those in favor of mass heal and heal.



Maximize is great up until lev 18 or so, after that it is hardly used on a WF Lord of Blades.

[Kza]

Ok for flavor/rp reasons you can have ada body ofc. But a few points more dr and less jump/(balance) for gimping your bb and regular mass cures?

From my book ada are less important than extend/max.

So try get rid of that, but if you feel your robot looks too ugly now. ..... okok Your call :-)

[Beethoven]

It's tough call. You are trying to combine healing focus with a melee soul and offensive casting, you going to be lacking something somewhere.

I really don't see an easy answer to your dilemma outside of suggesting to play around with different feat combinations to see which fits your playstyle best.

My combat-soul doesn't carry Extend and I am feeling it. You put a high priority on melee that may not be a good choice though since it halves the duration of your buffs.

Some people run epic dq with what is called a spartan method where everyone gangs up in one spot when she is on the platform, and in that case you do not use mass heal, ...

Uhm, no? I run those regularly and I do use Mass Heal even with the Spartan method in eDQ. You just need to time it right. I usually cast Mass Heal just before she connect with the front lines. By the time I am done casting (with quicken on) people are down to ~40-50%, which the spell more than takes care off. I spam Mass Cures while Mass Heal is at cooldown to make sure folks are at full health when I cast the next mass Heal. As for eVoN6, most runs I can count on one hand how often I need to resort to Mass Cures.

meh, maximize for BB is a waste of spell points at end game. BB only tickles them even with the best DC

With all due respect - that's not entirely accurate. You are right that BBs are pretty much useless in epics if you run with a competent group. CC generally eliminates even the option to kite them through BBs and not even the strongest BB comes close in dps to a FB's auto-crit on held mobs.

However, on my combat-soul BBs hit for 250+ damage per tick and in excess of 500 damage on a crit. It hurts them just fine. I score similar numbers with Cometfall and even see the occasional mob go down with the trip effect, what makes it a good emergency spell still in epics. Granted, I mostly only use those spells when solo scroll/seal farming.

Of course, above requires to have a high enough DC on those spells for mobs to fail their saves every now and then and have access to an item to score crits. You neglect putting points into Wis and I agree with Mellkor; 125 damage (250 on crits) is going to but tickle an epic mob.

Epics are a special case anyway though. You frequently are better off laying into held mobs with a Dreamspitter or even Staff of Shadow on a secondary, especially on a secondary melee class. Epic boss fights I commonly find myself taking on the role as healer.

So, to conclude:

I find Empower, Maximize, ability to crit and DC far more significant than Extend for BBs. For example: it took me ~1-2 blade barriers to kill a group of mobs in eDQ1. It takes me 2-3 blade barriers without extend. All depending on how much crit ticks I get.

Most significant feats for Mass Cures are Empower/Empower Healing and Maximize. Empower Healing for Heal/Mass Heal. I carry Empower instead of Empower Heal on my FvS though and I do just fine healing epic raids (whether DQ Spartan method, Chrono or EV6).

Lack of Extend will, however, greatly effect your melee dps as you either end up fighting without buffs on or have to stop swinging to recast them more frequently.

You probably will have to prioritize and live with the fact you won't be able to fit everything in. Dropping Adamantine is not a bad suggestion either; as several people already pointed out, it's only 2 points of DR you loose. I kept it on mine but will fully admit aesthetics are part of the reason.

[Aegnore]

I dropped MAXIMIZE and I'm not missing it..
btw im using Sirgog's "Soul Survivor" Build.

I tried running few amrath quests and noticed that the adamantine feat works great.... the continuous 2-4 dmg of orthons in normal went down to 0-2..

I think the extra 2DR is more felt when you're being mobbed by a lot of monsters when around 10 or more monsters are hitting you for around 2-4 damage (20-40) compared to 10 or more monsters hitting you for 0-2 (0-20) - just a very rough example (dont flame me )

I didn't have problems with balance and jump either since i have points invested on it...

I didnt take empower, even during my cleric past life - based on my experience Emp Heal is much more useful in a melee-oriented Healer build... especially at end game since it affects all your cures + heals

so based on my runs... I find EXTEND more useful than MAXIMIZE, and 15DR helps.

[Eladiun]

What content are you primarily running?

[Aegnore]

What content are you primarily running?

Right now.. a couple of raids, epics and amrath quests

[aristarchus1000]

I think that (aesthetics aside) you will generally want both maximize and extend. I have both on my WF FvS 20 and am happy with it.

That said, I honestly don't use maximize all that much. When I do use it, for solo bb farming, it's quite nice.

Furthermore, since building my Lit2 greatsword, I find that I really don't need BB all that much even when solo farming. I imagine those people who have built an eSOS will feel even stronger that way, which makes maximize even less useful.

On the other hand, I really doubt 2 DR is really going to make-or-break anything. Anything you can do with 15 DR you can do with 13 DR, and vice-versa. That's the equivalent of one Heal scroll out of 50+ hits. Once you are doing epics or raids, most things hit for 50+ damage, and not that frequently. Solo Elite Sins of Attrition is the only quest where I felt the DR might make a significant difference, given the number of Orthons shooting at you for 10-15 damage, but I didn't have a problem soloing it at 10 DR, much less 13, and that doesn't reflect the norm anyway.

Empowered Healing... I feel like there is a new thread about this weekly. I've spent several months on a favored soul without empowered healing at 20, and several months playing a favored soul with EH at 20. I use Mass Heal all the time with both characters after experimenting for while. In the end, I find EH useful and powerful, but probably not necessary for most content. I think it allows for more margin-of-error in healing content like EDQ2 and EVON6. A vast majority of end-game content has random aggro or bosses with cleaving attacks, so it's useful for routine epic questing as well, especially when some characters have 800+ hitpoints.