Utility of raking talons in WB

[PROsiak]

Well, that certainly looks like a free pass for all SM to go full glass cannon 2H dps, finally lore respected... lol

Do elves really need more reasons to be hated ? xd
With so many DPS AM's running around nowadays it's the last thing we need.

[zulnam]

I mean, even if it doesn's stack, Challenge is on 30s cooldown. Depending on your skill on using challenge or a sudden shift in combat which may make you lose all debuffs due to AoE dmg, it might be nice to have a counter.

And even if it lasts the whole 15 seconds, this just means you can prolong the dmg debuff until Challenge is available again.

I wouldn't say it's not useful, but you definitely need to time it's usage outside of Challenge. Otherwise you are wasting it.

[PROsiak]

For something that is SO situationally usefull it isn;t worth wasting a precious skill point on th e tree, not even talking about tactic slot.

If this was a basic tactic then maybe yea, on those ocasions when u join scenario and you're the only tank in group it could make sense to slot it. Not like it would make a difference, most likely your group would still get run over, but i would highly consider it.

Right now it turns out it's another dead tactic - and i must admit my biggest misconception which i was living in for months - that SM is a strong tank when compared to IB and Knight mostly due to Talons.

[nocturnalguest]

Well very saddening finding. That was incredibly important feature and did justify a spot for SM in serious play

[Hakker]

My apologies regarding the discovery. It was not my intention to discourage any players from playing SM. I want to sincerely thank PROsiak for taking the time and energy to conduct the test. It was greatly appreciated.

[nocturnalguest]

Nah, no apologies needed. Its rather something that was overlooked. Raking talons stack has been very long a well known fact, ww alone aint decent utility to bring SM in meta, with talons on top that however was worthy reason to bring the class into large-scale competetive environment.
Believe it should be noted somewhere somehow that it needs to be brought back as a feature. Your topic has a good, solid point. Indeed, for large scale talons not stacking kinda washes away reasons to build something with SM, assuming on top utilities snb IB brings

[detrap]

Nah, no apologies needed. Its rather something that was overlooked. Raking talons stack has been very long a well known fact, ww alone aint decent utility to bring SM in meta, with talons on top that however was worthy reason to bring the class into large-scale competetive environment.
Believe it should be noted somewhere somehow that it needs to be brought back as a feature. Your topic has a good, solid point. Indeed, for large scale talons not stacking kinda washes away reasons to build something with SM, assuming on top utilities snb IB brings

Hi,

According to my tests:

One advantage is that Bellows + VT + DT appear to work together.

39 damage base

With RT/DT = 31 dmg
With Challenge = 27 dmg

With VT: 35 dmg
With VT + DT = 28 dmg

The interesting one is with Bellows:

39 base damage is cut in half to 20 dmg, with DT it's a further 40% down to 12 dmg. Not sure why.

Combining all three:

Belows + VT + DT = 11 dmg

SM's look useful for debuffing those trains from small scale sc's to wb vs wb, anything bigger you will spend most of your time like any tank and holding the line.

Being able to reduce crit and morale drain in small scale is also entertaining to see enemy dps become frustrated.

[Pulptenks]

It does have it's use but in a pug scene it's kind of whatever. I've only seen it bring most benefit in discord organized WB where people actually hang together. Text warband are usually not tight enough to bring out it's most valuable protection value, even in between challenge shout.

I'd say just stack up you block and absorb and stay alive as much as possible and keep fostering a DPS, WW and PoH is kind of a SM staple, even for 2H. With Sov you can probably have all of that if you drop either Crushing Wave or Calming Winds. (I'd drop Calming Winds for SC, crushing wave for WB, if really adamant on using Raking Talon's.)

It's kind of why I don't super enjoy leading WB on a tank or Healer, because they're support roles, not leading roles. It's pretty difficult to build up protection if you try to do a leading DPS role.

[detrap]

Also tested the Lingering Intimidation tactic:

Along with slowing morale gain on the target, it did the following:

Reduces all critical hit rate (ranged/melee/heals by 25 percentage points) for 10 seconds. Potential to be the most annoying Order tank against assisted dps trains.

SM's can shine as the tank class on Order using these abilities to mitigate blob damage for their warband and/or party.