Return of Reckoning

I want to discuss one of the most underperforming abilities of the Witch Elf: Envenomed Blade. I will go over the issues with the ability and what I believe should be done to resolve the problems that it presents.

Before you continue reading the issue I want to note that the following numbers are base tooltip values without strength and mastery points.

The Issue

Envenomed Blade is the Suffering anytime Ability which deals 76 base damage instant and another 216 over 9 seconds, without an initial tick. Each tick will deal 72 damage.

You can stack it 3 times. If you consider the global cooldown that means, the second tick could potentially deal 144 damage and the third 216 damage which remains if you keep the DoT up after using the ability three times in a row.
Note: That damage gets mitigated by Armor and Toughness.
Meanwhile the bread and butter anytimer of the class: Agonizing Wound deals 177 damage each GCD and ignores the enemies’ armor and its only mitigation comes from Toughness.

Therefore the only use Envenomed Blade currently has is to cover your Ailments as the damage is way too low for a damage only ability. It requires 3 globals in a row, plus another one every 8 seconds to then get a DoT up which can be cleansed and still does low damage post mitigation.

Solving Envenomed Blade

I think there is only one solution that can fix that problem properly, so that the ability is finally worth using and which will bring some diversity to the Witch Elf gameplay.

Solution 1: Make Envenomed Blade a 3x stackable Corporeal debuff.[/i][/b]

Each stack of Envenomed Blade will increase the corporeal debuff by the amount of 40 without Mastery Points spent into Suffering.

Each Mastery Point will increase the amount of the debuff by 5.

That means: One stack of Envenomed Blade would debuff a maximum of 115 (40+75) resistance at 15 Mastery Points. 3 Stacks would debuff a maximum of 345 resistances.

With the common suffering mastery spec – 13 Points for Witchbrew – a single stack would debuff 105 resistances (315 in total).
That amount clearly is on par with other resistance debuffs in the game and would finally make the ability worth using/stacking.Also it would synergize well with Kiss procs and the 13 Point Ability of Suffering (Witchbrew).
This change wouldn’t benefit the cookie-cutter build or lead to imbalanced/more frontloaded burst. The Suffering tree is build around sustained damage and backloaded burst with all its dots and the design of the 13 point ability. That’s why I think the change would fit the design of Suffering well.

Side Note
This change should also be applied to the Witch Hunter as Fervor isn’t that great either. I’d suggest a spirit resistance debuff, considering his bullets and opener are all spirit damage.

- Fromlive(WE) - rr 65 / Confused(WL) - rr 73

It's not gonna benefit to Witch Hunters as you said as much as witch elves,considering the bullets are proccing per finisher.And well the Envenomed blades and fervor meant to mask the other ailments you gonna apply .Sounds like a straight WITCH brew and kiss buff to me.As long as it doesnt stack with other corp debuffs it sounds okay tho.

I suggest an edit to the language used in the post. "Make Evenomed Blade a 3x stackable corporeal debuff" into "Make Envenomed blade a 3x self-only, stacking debuff" in order to prevent confusion in this thread. Definitely should be specified EARLY that it isn't going to stack with other corp resist debuffs before that can opens.

As for the initial proposal, the proposed change makes good points. I would rather see a different proposal for the WH mechanic since it is different.

It would prolly be more useful if it just dealt corp damage with a damage boost rather than a debuff.

Darks63 wrote: Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:31 pm It would prolly be more useful if it just dealt corp damage with a damage boost rather than a debuff.

actually this makes more sense so WH and WE benefit from it equally.

Fully agree that this skill is lackluster. Fully agree that any form of "dot build" don't work on WE. But:
1. Adding corporeal resist debuff only makes better solo performance as will increase dmg from Witchbrew and kisses. In proper group setup it will be covered by chosen aura. And useless again.
2. If anything it should be spiritual resist debuff. And spiritual dmg. Then you have synergies with chosen (ravage, relentless with crippling strike) and sorceress (side note: at the beginning witch brew also did spiritual dmg). And even creat reason to bring BO-BG as tanks. In solo play would open chance to build spiritual dmg combo with wracking pain (spirit dmg + toughness debuff).
WE need IMO:
- more reasons to spend bloodlust (we have other discussion for that);
- more reasons to be part of the group (IMO this skill can be use for that but not in form you propose).

No, AW spam still looks way better pointless EB stacking.

Miszczu5647 wrote: Fri Apr 20, 2018 10:13 pm - more reasons to be part of the group (IMO this skill can be use for that but not in form you propose).

I'd say groups need more reasons to bring WE.

The problem on EB comes from its duration, instead of refresh the dot each application should add duration. first EB 9s, when apply the second/third stack this increase the duration of 6s per stack.
The damage is ok when 3stack and i'm not sure about gets mitigated by Armor and Toughness sometimes they aren't affected in the same way as the rest.

is it unreasonable to have a dot that just has decent damage from one application? I never understood this about that that dot, Why make it take 3 whole gcds to get any damage out of it why can't the player just have the damage from 1 gcd? Its not even like it ticks for crazy amounts even with 3 stacks.