Nature and Weapon Mastery....

If the sorcery guy was using a faster WM combo he would have got alot more procs from the WM crit bonus making all his dots stronger each time and getting him faster and more burst damage, and he would have been able to keep the dots from shards more consistent. Not taking anything away from him he did great job and it was a awesome run.

And you cant really judge dps by a alert where everything dies in 2 weapon combos (especially a run like that) you need things that live along time so each power has time to do many consistent rotations. Thats where you really start to see the gap in dps. If you read back a few pages you will find a test i did with 3 other dps's all wearing unmodded t3 gear with the same stats, skill point usage and the same WM combo to keep things as equal as possible. Then we ran gates cause theres a good mix of single target and mobs and with unmodded t3 gear all of the stuff in there takes a while to kill so we got the chance to see what a few of the powers are like when your in long fights.

I'll come visit your thread when rage gets hit with the nerf bat like your hl did.

Of course he is - this is the whole problem. If you want one DOT - you have to have them all, or at least 2 + Swarm, as well as Harvest and Carnage.
That's going to make Nature DPS even more "cookie cutter" than it used to be. Forms are now completely marginalized, since they can't use WM at all... 35% finishers also seem to be inefficient, when used with WM (not to mention cast-bar powers, although Nature doesn't have those for DPS). Sure - when T6 raids drop Nature should be doing well, depending on the boss/add ratio, but all of us will be running with the same 2 loadouts.

Also - Nature's DOTs work extremely well in boss fights - or any fight where adds stay alive long enough for DOTs to be stacked and spread at least once. So it's no wonder in every video showing "beast" Nature DPS topping the score-board... ehm... coming in second by relatively small amounts in T6 alert - the group skips most of the adds. And why do they never show Power-in on the score-board? How about someone shows me a group of well geared and skilled DPS running Paradox Wave, closing all tunnels, and preferably with solo troller (which should be fairly easy to do, using WM) - just to show the difference between power-to-damage ratio of Nature DOT stacking and that of other powersets' WM.

Not that random videos really prove anything, anyway. There are plenty of ways (use of which not necessarily "advertised" in the videos) to improve performance of any powerset, like buff soders, consumables, multiple armories, quick-switched trinkets, not to mention that there are many possible ways to spec SP/gear-up/mod, with drastically different results. Not to mention that there is always element of chance involved, especially when it comes to criticals. In a short instance, like TD, if you miss a few high-yield WM attacks, or SC (or if you get CCed/KOed/etc) - you can fall behind by a substantial amount, with very little time/opportunity to catch up, provided the other DPS are competent and/or more lucky than you.

How different powersets really rate post-WM will show over time. But it should be obvious that Nature is the only powerset with almost half of the powers preventing it from receiving some or all of the WM benefits in DPS role. That basically pushes Nature DPS back to where it was before the revamp in December - good DOT powerset with very few viable burst options. Great in raids, in the hands of experienced players, but unimpressive in small-group content and for new players difficult to get to grips with.

I believe restrictions on Nature's WM abilities are necessary, because Harvested DOTs + Swarm +45%Prec buff+WM bonuses would be way over-powered, especially in future raids. But it has to be done in a way that gives players at least a little flexibility in playstyle - without resorting to iconics. I think Swarm, Harvest and - maybe - Thorn Burst should disable the WM crits, but not single DOTs. That way we could use just one or 2 of them as PI for Voracious Plants, instead of Serpent Call, without refreshing or spreading them. It wouldn't be that much of a difference in terms of damage potential (Mental can do this with no restrictions to WM, for example), but would offer more options to personalize our playstyle. A WM-style combo or 2 for the forms would be much appreciated as well...

And on a side-note - I'm hoping WM will get a bit of an "adjustment" soon, because that is really the root of the problem. I thought it was supposed to be an alternative to the old, clip-heavy approach to DPSing - not a replacement for it.

Crappy gave a great reply. Now the dots won't get the wm bonus harvest would not sure if your confused on that. How is that different as seen in that vid the sorcery dps can drop sw and cod two aoe dots oh but wait cod provides a third dot when pi is up that makes 3 dots. He then as seen can wm trans for bonus, how is this different?

Your answer might because we can reapply but if things are getting melted then not a big significance. WM bonus is clearly dealing higher damage then a awesome mechanic with less power in but nature doesnt have the powers in which to put out those numbers.

Edit:also add he used robot sidekick which is kinda like another dot.

Just to be clear here. In this post your saying that weapon mastery crit% continues on the dots after the initial burst crit %. Just wanna make sure im reading your post right.

Great post. I love that your giving a suggestion to fix the issue instead of just complaining. Im still in the belief that harvest should go back to the way it was and not refresh the dots only spread them. To me its an easy compromise that can be implemented quickly. Your thoughts?

This guy again, I thought you were done. Complaining? Lol again coming from a guy who didn't know what powers were available to use for wm bonus.
Again if you back you would see I made some suggestions, again you bring misinfo. Please if your not bringing positive to the thread then just read ty.

Well, on the vid i linked, the group skipped most of the content so the dps is mainly focused on the bosses.

You gave some great inputs, i completely agree with your analysis.

What if they leave the dots and harvest alone as far as not getting the WM crit bonus, but then let us get the crit bonus on Voracious Plants while dot's and swarm are active? I don't think that would really unbalance anything, but would allow us to get some crit bonus damage and not lose all of our core mechanic (dots)

I can live with swarm up not getting bonus but carnage is for all not just us so this power is irrelevant. Harvest would be really the only power getting the bonus and again how is this different then sorc cod sw (up to 3 on a boss) robot sidekick and even shards dots while having burst power and wm bouns? Is that balance? Dont think so.

This is a very good idea.

That might work, although I imagine it would not be enough of a restriction in itself. In many encounters it would be too easy to "bounce" DOTs between bosses and adds, by switching targets after Harvest, then Harvesting again - and that's especially true about top tier raids (which we don't have at the moment, but they're coming - I'm told), where even trash mobs have relatively large amounts of health and defense. Being able to do that with 3 DOTs, together with Nature's other perks (like buffs, extra loadouts, pet that scales with CR) AND the full WM bonus - all that without even having to melee - would most likely give us a huge advantage in t6 raids, or any other instance where we're not overgeared.

I was thing harvest would spread but not reapply..so dots have a specific duration no matter when you use harvest...use harvest too late would be detrimental as the spread wouldnt last long and would make people really work there rotation and skill level.

How? He suggests using vine lash a single target dot with no burst damage from it, to use vp as the wm bonus plus extra damage from single dot but what about the rest of the adds?

Then some what to put harvest as it was really, why? Do you remember how that was? Why is nature even mention as top power prior to WM.

That would make Harvest - and probably Nature DOT-stacking DPS in general - useless. The whole idea of Nature DPS has always been keeping DOTs up for a long time. Without that - it would be just inferior version of Mental.

Aren't there any multi target dots in nature?(Honest question, because I don't know) If there are, you can apply a dot and then use your voracious plant along with wm buff, and nature'd be pretty good.

That's a good point. Not being able to apply PI to multiple adds at once would make this approach worse than using Terror PI for Voracious Plants - for adds anyway. It would offer some WM options for single target situations, although nothing particularly exciting. Still - better than what we have at the moment. And let's face it - Harvest the way it is now AND full WM bonus - that's highly unlikely to happen.

No, the only way to have multiple DOTs is by spreading with Harvest or Thorn Burst.

Hey I appreciate the suggestion and yes would offer an option but not a solution.
I will post my suggestion in a few but ty for posting

Allow voracious plants or harvest to crit their burst damage while not letting crit affect poisons or swarm would be a start. Voracious plants crits for 3000 to 4000 just a little bit more then harvest when pi is applied. Not op at all... Also wolf form and insectoid form have become pointless with wm... I feel these should be redone to either take advantage of wm or just taken out period... Maybe give nature an overhaul again cuz serpent call roar fig form are a bit weak!