vulnerability is too short on final strike

[Aliss7]

What is the point of vulnerability on final strike if you can't even stack it? The cooldown on final strike is like 18 seconds while vulnerability goes away in 3 seconds. Frankly, thematically, "FINAL strike" sounds like it should be ending someone's life not stacking stuff anyway.

ughh. i hate complaining cuz aa getting thrown a bone is appreciated. blah.

[Cordovan]

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.

[Cocomajobo]

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.

As an additional note: each of those damage numbers are independent of one another. Thus creatures with 10% health or less should receive four separate damage effects.

[Vorthian]

As an additional note: each of those damage numbers are independent of one another. Thus creatures with 10% health or less should receive four separate damage effects.

Will the Elven version also be based on Ranger levels for the additional d6's or will it be based on character level? If the former, I would suggest clarifying in the tooltip.

[Cordovan]

Will the Elven version also be based on Ranger levels for the additional d6's or will it be based on character level? If the former, I would suggest clarifying in the tooltip.

Yes, both will be based on Ranger levels.

[Zebedar]

Super glad to see you guys posting about this finally thanks very much.

Can we please get all these numbers added to the release notes and to the enhancement trees in game, as well as the tool tips and enhancement listing on the character sheets as well?

[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.

[UurlockYgmeov]

As an additional note: each of those damage numbers are independent of one another. Thus creatures with 10% health or less should receive four separate damage effects.

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.

Wowser... that ought to hurt..

thanks for the information!

[Apollos713]

Thank you very much for this information.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[Vargouille]

What is the point of vulnerability on final strike if you can't even stack it? The cooldown on final strike is like 18 seconds while vulnerability goes away in 3 seconds. Frankly, thematically, "FINAL strike" sounds like it should be ending someone's life not stacking stuff anyway.

Vulnerability is a bit extra thrown in to make it helpful against tougher enemies that aren't particularly hurt yet. That said, this ability isn't really intended to stack Vulnerability high by itself, but can help increase or maintain stacks produced in other ways. Vulnerability was always intended to be something multiple party members might contribute to stacking up (though there are other ways to help stack it up by yourself).

As you get at, Final Strike could easily have left Vulnerability off completely, and perhaps been thematically and conceptually stronger, despite making that a weaker ability overall.

[jakeelala]

Why did you add a T5 ability that has an aspect which makes less useful to a Racial AA over a Ranger Level based AA? And a non-pure at that? Isn't that supposed ot be reserved for core abilities? Isn't that the ENTIRE point of making a distinction between powerful, cheap, level based class core abilities in enhancements and tree abilities at tiers 1-5? Totally confused by this.

Also, it's meant to give AoE power to an AA, but honestly the only reason to take this ability as it stands at all is to:
a. Pad kill count by taking out weakened mobs with way too much damage (20d100 is average of 1000 damage, not a lot of mobs even have 1000 HP at 10%, let alone the damage from the other tiers and physical damage of the activated attack). Not the same as AoE power.

b. increase DPS on red names but only for the last 1/5th of their HP (making the damage this adds at best 20% of it's stated value).

So basically, if your mob is at 25% health, every 18 seconds (assuming perfect alignment of mobs/timing/damage) you can get an avg of 250 damage? That's an average increase of 13.8 damage, or LESS than one d8 of Elemental Imbues with 350 Spell Power (A no brainer). This ability, used ideally, is worth 1/2 of 1 Tier of Elemental Imbues. Used not ideally, it's far worse.

The damage tiers of this are so granular and the cool-down so long that it's basically useless. This is one of the most poorly designed active attacks in the history of DDO. Its as bad as the old iteration of Merciful Shot. For high HP Red/Purple names it's a lackluster burst every 18 seconds at the very end of a fight, I guess. Put another way, it's about 65dmg per second for 10% of the fight, or 6.5avg damage over the whole fight. It's really really really bad, and probably not worth the AP, in it's current incarnation.

Can it at least multiproc with a Doubleshot arrow for extra iterations?

[Wizza]

Make it scale with Ranged Power, fix the AoE and you got a nice working ability. Right now, only a fool would take it. Long CD with low, low dmg, AoE bugged to only hit 3 mobs and requires you to take T5.

[Cordovan]

Make it scale with Ranged Power, fix the AoE and you got a nice working ability. Right now, only a fool would take it. Long CD with low, low dmg, AoE bugged to only hit 3 mobs and requires you to take T5.

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

[Wizza]

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

17s CD (iirc? correct me if im wrong) and that happens when the mob is at 10%, I consider it very weak and so does everyone seem to think.

The problem with these kind of abilities is that when a mob is at 10% HP, it dies way too quickly and most of the damage done by the ability is lost by the frame time that the ability is used and when it actually hits. Consider it like using Finger of Death when a mob is at 10%, you don't really want to do it, it feels like a waste.

[jakeelala]

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

You don't seem to understand how this ability works, Cordovan.

22d6 is ONLY if you're a pure Ranger, first of all.

Second of all, all of that that damage occurs ONLY every 18s and ONLY if the mob you shoot was at less than 10% HP. You could literally make the damage from this effect be 1000d20 at 10%, and it would still be a horrible ability, because of it's restrictions. Do the math yourself, you will see.

This ability is a 22d6 non-scaling, non-crittable proc only for pure Rangers, inappropriately put into the T5 row instead of the Core abilities where it belongs (although it belongs in the Bin of bad ideas to be abandoned in reality). 10%-25% of the time if you're VERY precise at reading numberless health-bars it can do a burst attack on a mob you're already about to kill.


Thumbs Downx100

[rehakp]

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

I agree with most posters this is bad. I mean the number itself seems very nice but in reality its sooo bad.

1.) the +22d6 part is only for pure ranger and on 18 sec CD. thats avg. 77 dmg every 18 sec (or 4.28 DPS button IF it doesnt break your attack sequence. IF it breks attack sequence you probably loose DPS) and thats pretty weak for T5 on pure character.

2.) The XXXd20 is only on 10% HP mob (a dead one basically). I put XXX intentionally because the XXX for 10% mob could be also 999 and thigs would stay the same only making slightly more lags because of those 999 dice rolling. Basically this big numer means you KILL a mob under 10% with this ability and if you made it instakill on 10%HP mob then its the same effect (without the lag portion).
Problem is instakill ability on 10% mob is bad design. (And even worse for T5 ability). Nobody wants to finger 10% mob. Nobody wants to coup de grace 10% mob. Nobody even wants to energyburst 10% mob.
Sure if you had passive ability that autokill 10% mobs life would be easier. But nobody really wants ability thak kills 10% mob AND is on 18 sec CD in T5 tier.

3.) The vulnerability part is only joke. I get vulnerability part on some other strikes. But we just discovered this ability is pretty mutch only "worth" on 10%HP mobs whitch it INSTANLY KILLS anyway. I this the vulnerability part is just another sign of SOMETHING was overlooked in design of this ability.

Summary.
You can use it to add 1 stac of vulnerability every 18 sec. -> pretty lame for T5
You can use it to instakill 10%HP mob every 18 sec. -> pretty lame for T5
You can use it on pure ranger as "fireball-like" (not scalling with spellpower) AoE every 18 sec. -> pretty lame for T5 on pure class

My suggestions:
* Make it instakill on targets paralyzed by AA arrows (i know swashbucker already has this. But this is less problem than current ability)
* Make the "injured" scalling better then 50%-nothing 25%-almost nothing 10%-lag+kill. Maybe 75%, 50%, 25% ? Or even 99% 75% 50%. Because T5 that (nearly) kills 50%HP mob every 18sec isnt OP but starts to be interesting.
* You can even get rid of the ranger level d6 part for simplicity. Believe me thers no pure ranger that will be excited about 20d6 bonus on 18sec ability that deals 130d20 base damage anyway. ( I men just compare avg damage of pure 20 lvl vs 12 lvl ranger 1442 vs 1414 difference of < 2% on 18 sec CD for staying pure .. hurray )

[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…