vulnerability is too short on final strike

[Requiro]

The Vulnerability portion of Final Strike works the same as other Vulnerability effects, which is why the duration is as it is.

There's been some folks recently who are interested in learning more about Final Strike, so we'd like to explain this effect a bit more.

Unfortunately, we have discovered a bug with Final Strike post-today's-hotfix in that the initial AOE damage is not accurate. That said, in addition to Vulnerable, the benefit should be:

On-Hit: 2d6+1d6 per Ranger level
Additionally, if the target is at 50% health: 5d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 25% health: 25d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 10% health: 100d20 damage

This damage does not scale with Ranged Power.

Again, the On-Hit initial damage is not correct in either the Ranger or Elven Final Strike currently.

First: Thanks for description on this new ability.
Second: It is very poor designed ability.

Why?

Because it look great only on paper. You are caught on that trap as well:

Up to 130d20+22d6 is low, low damage as an AOE?

TO BE CLEAR: IT IS NOT 130d20+22d6 AOE DAMAGE ABILITY.

So what it is?

It's AOE ability that pretend to be mighty on paper. But is turn out poor when you go to the numbers (buged version is below terrible now):

For Pure 20 Ranger:

AOE Average damage: 3,9 per second per mob (70dmg per hit every 18 second). This is true AOE ability. Poor because of low damage, and depends on Ranger Levels.

The rest of this ability is only when you meet proper circumstances. AOE ability should be used against multiple targets, thus you must wait for proper timing, looking at multiple HP mobs bar to get ANY advantage. If you are persistent to do so, you can have additional benefits:

Quite reasonable: For mobs below 50% - additional average 50 damage per mob (or 2,77 DPS increase)
Possible but requite great discipline: For mobs below 25% - additional average 250 damage per mob (or 13,85 DPS increase)
Almost impossible to archive without extraordinary discipline or reserved only for boss fight (“mighty AA finisher, lol”): For mobs below 10% - additional average 1000 dmg per mob (or 55,42 DPS increase)

Any of these benefit requite:
- Turn on HP bar on mobs (thus turn game to ugly looking game)
- Constant looking at that HP bar to get proper timing.
- Change target one to another to get any benefit then one target (this is AOE ability - just to remind)
- Fight against target that will not die too fast
- Be very good at math, to calculate in fly when target gets 50/25/10% HP (especially 10% - monster with regeneration will be your nightmare )

Simple question: Who design this kind of ability, and why this guy hate AA so much?

Simple solution:

On-Hit: 2d6+1d6 per Character Level plus any imbuement effect
Additionally, if the target is at 50% health: 5d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 30% health: 25d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 20% health: 100d20 damage

Damage scale 50% with Ranged Power
Ability can proc on Doubleshoot

Explanation:
- Character level with scale well with Epic levels, and with Elf version of AA
- Imbuement effect allow some great tactics and ability uses for all AA users, not only “looking-at-the-HP-bar-players”
- Changes 25% to 30% and 10% to 20% - more uses if you are this “looking-at-the-HP-bar” player
- Scaling with Ranger Power – mostly for Epic levels
- Doubleshoot – for Pure Ranger that have 20% capstone

Harder but cooler solution:

Requirement: Improved Elemental Arrows
Cost: 2 AP, Cooldown 15 second

On-Hit: Any AOE imbuement effect (no other effects)
On-Critical-Hit: Any above plus Fireball effect with proper Element (Acid/Fire/Cold/Electrical/Force) depend of Elemental or Force Arrow Imbuement
On-Vorpal-Hit: Any above plus AOE +500 Elemental or Force damage

And The simplest solution:
Cost: 2 AP, Cooldown: 10 second.

On-hit: AOE damage, same as you get single target (base damage, effect from bow/arrows, effect from imbues, ED effects, other effects ect.)

Why you guys try to developed so complicated abilities, then simple one? Idk…

[Robai]

On-Hit: 2d6+1d6 per Ranger level
Additionally, if the target is at 50% health: 5d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 25% health: 25d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 10% health: 100d20 damage

A useful version would be this:

On-Hit: 2d6+1d6 per Ranger level
If the target is at 90-100% health: 100d20 damage
If the target is at 75-90% health: 25d20 damage
If the target is at 50-75% health: 5d20 damage
No bonuses below 50% health.

EDIT. Changed the text since I had in mind non stacking bonuses, but that's not the point.
The point is that damage bonuses on almost dead mobs have no use (even small dmg bonuses on full hp mobs are more useful than large damage bonuses on almost dead mobs).

[janave]

Skip on the AoE part, the damage on heroics is probably overkill, unneeded, while in epic elites it barely moving the bar (not worth bothering with). I suggest make it a well scaling single target finisher with some boss shaming portion on-crit effect.

Not every class needs to be a nuker. Adding massive aoe for everyone is a mistake imho, because the classes just become played the same.



PS:
Up to 130d20+22d6 is low, low damage as an AOE?

As for the damage for perspective i can hit (3x30,000)+/-10% fairly consistently pre-helpless state. This is about 20-25% away from absolute min-maxed possible. IPS can work for aoe, this is at-will whenever i want it to happen not random at all.

[Augon]

This damage does not scale with Ranged Power.

Additionally, if the target is at 10% health: 100d20 damage

I have to agree, I am not real impressed with this enhancement. And these two lines have a lot to with it.

The way I see it, Ranged/Melee/Spell power is a way to scale heroic abilities into epics. As we level in epics we get more and more ways to increase our necessary Power scores and thus increase our overalll effectiveness.

ANY ability that does not increase with Ranged/Melee/Spell power WILL be left behind as we level. This was what was happening to Paralyzing arrow as Rangers got into epics but its DC was static.

At level 12 when you can first take this new enhancement, it may be pretty sweet. But every time you move up in level and thus move up to more difficult areas, this ability will seem weaker because the damage numbers are NOT moving up with you at the same rate.

IMHO ALL damage enhancements should scale with Ranged/Melee/Spell power.

I understand that with perfect rolls you can do 2713 points of damage to everyone around and that sounds great. But lets be honest, we aren't going to see that. We will see 1500 points of damage most often but only if the mobs are at 10% or less. Most of the time the damage is going to be a lot less (around about 350 points or less I'd guess)

Once mobs start taking damage, they dont clump up to make it easier to hit, they spread out. If they are clumped up they are clumped up around the Paly drawing all their agro and he ain't gonna be your best friends for long if you kill all the folks he just worked to get below 10% (assuming you can get the arrow off between the time they hit 10% and the Paly finishes them off)

I would rather see the whole thing turned over on its head.
Call it initial strike and give the best damage if mobs are 90% or better and lower it as the are weaker.

Or some of the other folks ideas in this thread that are more thought out than that.

[Aliss7]

First, thanks for the info.

Second, if we're gonna get abilities based on %health left, I want a better way of knowing what it is than guessing. I'm sure they're those who think that's "fun", but not me, not ever. I already have to guess with execute (30%) on my assassin and it annoys me. Guessing 10% is just gah. I end up looking at the targeting icon, back and forth (i'm not turning on hp bars cause those look awful and cluttered and still have to guess). Back when we could theme the UI, at least we could get tick marks on the health bar, which was better.

[Renvar]

The cool down is way too long for the damage output. Against trash it is unnecessary. Against bosses it is pointless.

It would be fine if the ability had no cool down (or very short, like 3 seconds), no AoE, just single target and it only did the final two tiers (Below 25% and below 10%). It would be great to have an ability that would let me finish off almost dead mobs in a single shot. But, honestly, it wouldn't be OP all. You had to get them down the first 75-90% on your own. OR no/low cool down, with AoE, but scale back the damage a bit. keep all 3 tiers, but reduce the 25% and 10% tiers by 50%.

I don't know for sure. Just throwing out ideas. This is a Tier 5 ability. As it stands, as folks have said, it is weaker and less useful than lower tier options and brings very little real DPS to the table. That cool down is a killer. Bow ranged is pretty far behind X-Bow ranged (and thrower probably too) in terms of DPS. A decent T5 ability would help bridge the gap.

But even more importantly than any of that, the d6 damage needs to scale on Ranger OR Elf level. You can't have an AA racial tree with abilities that only key off of a class that the elf might not even have. AT TIER 5. Tier 5 abilities are supposed to be the best. And you are locking out a 20 fighter Elf AA from being able to use this ability. You can't do that in a racial tree. Does any other racial tree have a T5 ability that locks you in to one class? Can't disagree with this design strongly enough.

[Enoach]

This is interesting information. I currently have an Elf 12/8 Fighter/Wizard AA/EK build and based on what I've read I have not yet added this ability as it does not seem to have been selectable by the Elven AA (String Table Errors). However, if the damage is scaling by Ranger Levels I'm OOL since I don't have any Ranger Levels.

[dunklezhan]

May I ask who came up with the AoE idea for the IPS class in the first place?

Well "who" isn't particularly relevant, I don't really understand how that helps improve what we now have. But I do wonder why, if ranger needed a different kind of AOE rather than just a 'line' AOE like IPS that they didn't try for an additional stance which requires but can't be active with IPS which delivers a radius based AOE or maybe cone AOE instead. Slow down the fire rate and have it apply to every shot, and let it work with manyshot at least to some degree. This would then be of benefit whether using DWS to build for doubleshot (and therefore manyshot), or if using using AA to build for maxed out imbues and low-proc manyshots. Nor would it have to have any horrible random proccy effects or 'remember to click if you notice it's off cooldown' active abilities - just stances to change.

[Augon]

Yes, both will be based on Ranger levels.

While I have never used the Elven AA tree, I am guessing that the character builds that do rarely have Ranger levels. If you have ranger levels it makes more sense to just use the Ranger tree. Thus basing the elven version on ranger levels is a bit unfair to the folks who like using the Elven version.

[Mryal]

While I have never used the Elven AA tree, I am guessing that the character builds that do rarely have Ranger levels. If you have ranger levels it makes more sense to just use the Ranger tree. Thus basing the elven version on ranger levels is a bit unfair to the folks who like using the Elven version.

I see now why my druid does almost no damage with that.
What sort of logical reason is there to tie the damage to ranger levels on a racial tree again? Elf Arcane Archer has nothing to do with Ranger class at all?

[Requiro]

I see now why my druid does almost no damage with that.
What sort of logical reason is there to tie the damage to ranger levels on a racial tree again? Elf Arcane Archer has nothing to do with Ranger class at all?

I agree.

If they want boost ranger as a Pure class, they should add something to higher Ranger levels (like improvements to Ranger Spells selection, some additional stuff that boost Ranged combat style, some cosmetic buffs like additional Animal Empathy uses per day, maybe Animal Empathy regeneration, boost to FE ect. ect).

Nevertheless imo this ability should be rework to be at least average ability.

[kalaka]

Up to 130d20+22d6 is low, low damage as an AOE?

Yes.

[Waaye]

[...] in addition to Vulnerable, the benefit should be:

On-Hit: 2d6+1d6 per Ranger level
Additionally, if the target is at 50% health: 5d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 25% health: 25d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 10% health: 100d20 damage

This damage does not scale with Ranged Power.

Thanks for the post, Cordovan, it does help to understand what is available.

The character I am playing right now has two points to spend and I was about to take final strike until I read this thread. The DDO community rarely agrees on anything but the vast majority of posts in this thread agree that Final Strike is not worth taking. That is too bad because my L19 ranger AA really needs something to boost damage.

An ability like Final Strike sounds like it should take down a trash mob with one shot and even a boss if it is weakened enough. Perhaps inverting the damage would make Final Strike worth taking.

Letting CL stand for character level my suggestion is:

On-Hit: CL33d20
Additionally, if the target is at 50% health: CL8d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 25% health: CL2d20 damage
Additionally, if the target is at 10% health: CL1d20 damage

That sounds like something I could use.