Troll arts

So I’m preparing to change from heal to troll, and therefore need to know the “meta”, in terms of arts for trolling.

Standard artifacts: Scrap of the Soul Cloak, Amulet of Rao, Parasite's Power Harness.

What about when the new artifact comes? That might replace scrap, right?

That's for battle trolling. In a standard controller setup you are going to want your SC as often as possible.

Ahh, ok, new artifact it is

If anything the new artifact would replace the Power Harness as it’s the least beneficial of the 3. My only issue with the new artifact is it cutting the debuff duration to six seconds. Having to refresh debuffs twice as often is too disruptive to mechanics, pickups, etc IMO.

I disagree with this assessment (which I think originated from Obsidian Chill). I do believe there’s less “give” and more “take” when being used in a battle troll loadout but it can still work for standard troll loadouts depending on one’s playstyle. Personally, I’m too active with doing mechanics, pickups and other active things to help the group to have to refresh debuffs twice as often. But not everybody does as much of that stuff as I do or they don’t run elite so less of that stuff is necessary. In those cases it wouldn’t be as much of a hassle.

I'm going by Batuba's own words:

While I aknowledge that perception and interpretation differ between individuals, to me it sounded like he said battletrolling was just one of several examples of playstyles/builds that this artifact helps make more feasible. Not that it’s great for battletrolling and practically useless otherwise. Not that Batuba would ever put it in those terms, but I can’t even think of a way where “reading between the lines” would result in that conclusion.

I actually think it’s better for trolling than battle trolling. Haven’t been on test in a while but does it still give power to pets? Think I’m gonna hope on test today to retest a few things with it

Something I’d like to add. I just came from the test server and we have a little bit of synergy going on between the strategist and bop artifacts. The ticks from the bop can in fact crit. And each crit itself can also activate the strategist card too. This little synergy leads to a good amount of power. Also, and I hope this stays how it is on test, let’s can also get power from this and cause the ticks to proc on the bop. This means that a troller using the bop will give power to crystal, brick, fury, guardian, watcher which means they benefit greatly from a troll running this artifact

I'm so looking forward to this artifact for my battle troll.

This art isn’t just for battle trolls anyways, he’s misunderstood, it can be used for a standard troll set up, easily

It can but that would be pointless. In a standard troll setup you would still need your supercharge generator/debuff if you plan on using BOP. Why would any solid troll waste Nth Metal on an artifact designed to replace a Controller's SC generator?

The artifact isn't going to be great for battle trolling or group buff trolling, there are better artifact combinations.

But Why...

Is the actual question, a controller won't give out more power than running a parasite-scrap combo using the 3 debuff rotation with the 6 elite affinity proc, in a buff controller build you would have to give up an actual "buff" to use it because you'd have Claw-Amulet-Cog/tetra so if you feel dropping the amulet and needing to spam a 300 powercost move just to individually debuff targets. If you are a battle troll build same thing what are you dropping? need claw for battle troll or that would defeat the purpose, dropping amulet can be the selfish play but doable, then you need trans/vwd/cog/tetra to bridge the gap in the damage from lower stats.

The only viable option that keeps you a proper controller and not just a dps hitting the role swtich would be BoP-Parasite-Amulet to maximize the parasite buff quicker which then you are still spending more money for that combination with it being after the nth metal weekend.

It's an interesting niche artifact that you can play around with but its not even really viable till 160 because of the 2 debuffs thus needing to run the attack debuff anyways, however if the atk debuff is the supercharge generator you could still have a viable SC build with it at 120.

I actually do like this artifact for straight trolling. Atm for a troll there isn’t much needed in a loadout. The only essentials are:
Debuffs
Group power heal
Group power sc (shield)
And a shield to pick up.

Yes you can use more stuns but then risk giving adds immunity. So I would personally use the BoP ability along with the sc generator. And for the last slot I’m either adding a dot or a second shield. The dot would not be for the extra damage. Instead it would be to keep as many ticks of bop going.

I like it not only does it give the group just little more power. But because it the only way a troll can give power to pets. And this is great to help out earth tanks with brick, sorc healers using watcher, and even dps using crystal, fury or robot sidekick. This power keeps their power bars full which means they can do more. This artifact is not a must have by any means. But unlike other roles, imo trolls don’t have that “must have” artifact.

Yes being able to put a debuff on multiple targets is nice but it’s not really needed.
Getting sc faster and shorter shield sc is nice but everything goes through shields now so it’s only nice to have.
Giving the group larger power pools is nice but again not needed.
Giving power to pets and putting all debuffs at same time is nice but not needed.

Trolls don’t NEED any specific combinations. They are just nice little extras. The closest to must haves is the rao. (Again imo)

I agree that the new troll art isn’t one if the three you’d run if the goal is to put out the most power possible. But it really isn’t that hard to keep people powered. If someone feels that they’d like to be able to fit an extra ability or two in their tray by condensing debuffs down to one ability, they can do so and still keep the group powered even with the sacrifice to their maximum lower out potential.

I recently fed my power harness in to my soul cloak to get it to 200 and have been running the strat in it’s place which absolutely reduces my maximum power out potential. But since doing that I’ve ran three Metal Ii elite raids with solo heals and kept them above 80% power 90% of the time and they never dipped below 50%. If there’s a point where I’m not able to give power for more than 4-5 seconds (mechanics, pickups, or I’m down myself) that’s when I pop my buff trinket and/or battle drone and spam the hell out of my power dump until everyone is full again.

It’s not pointless to run something that alters from the “meta” lol. As long as it gets the job done, it’s fine

Lol that's fine that it gets the job done. Most people already have artifacts that get the job done. But hey it's their money.