Thoughts on using WM in support role?

I was asked to post this here a few days ago as the original thread in Gotham City that Spytle was posting in got derailed from the point I was trying to make, so I'll try to make it here again with some hard numbers and opinions. Finally finished my testing and I feel I'm able to give further feedback and illustrate my point.

This is a really long post and I want to preface it by saying that these are my opinions on the matter, having tested it thoroughly in many different situations the past week.

Weapon Mastery's bonuses for the Support Role seems to be a controversial topic given the responses to the threads. In the first iteration on Test, a successful Weapon Mastery Combo + Power would result in a power cost reduction for healers on the power cast at the end of the combo, and a dominance buff for tanks and controllers that lasted for 6 seconds. After it was only on test for two days, Spytle posted that they were making changes to the mastery buffs so that there was a power cost reduction across all roles.

I pointed out that I felt this was not as useful as support roles were much more reactive than working with standard rotations and a power cost reduction wasn't needed. If there's ever a time where a support role is stressed for power, it's reacting to a situation where they won't have time to get a Weapon Mastery Combo off. If the tank just Rage Crashed and is about to die, I'm not going to have time to execute a 6 second combo to save power as a healer on a move that needed to be cast right now. Spytle felt my argument had everything to do with timing. My argument involved timing to illustrate my point: When a support role is able to perform WM combos, the power reduction is not needed, and when it is needed, there's no time to perform a combo.

Compare this to the dominance buffs that lasted for six seconds for tanks and trollers. I feel that these are much more useful because they allow you to chain WM combos to keep a buff up, and encourage putting WM combos into rotations to keep that buff going. Then when something comes up where you don't have time to perform a combo and have to react by breaking your rotation, you still have the benefits of WM for a few seconds.

I don't think a straight dominance buff is perfect, but I'll get to that a bit later in the post.

Now the latest build on Test drops this buff and instead changes all support roles over to power reductions.

I have tanked, trolled, healed, and DPSed all the T5 raids and the new T6 alert both before and after this change was made. What's more, I even sat down and tried out every single WM combo to figure out what the buffs actually were. They change depending on how difficult/long it takes to pull off a combo. I want to present two charts here: The first is the result of my testing with the old WM dominance bonuses, and the second is the current power cost reductions on Test:

Table 1: Dominance Buffs for Trollers and Tanks (currently obsolete on test)

Methodology for testing: I built up my tank and troller to have exactly 1000 dominance. I performed the WM combo against a sparring dummy, hit the power at the correct moment, then checked my stat screen to see how much my dominance increased.



Now here's the second table:

Table 2: Power Reduction Costs for Support Roles (currently on Test)

Methodology: I stripped down to T1 gear on my character (to avoid power cost increase) and selected a power with a known power cost(200). I went into a T1 instance and performed the combo, clipping the power with a soder and checking the combat log to see how much power the soder (and possible recovery) actually restored to figure out how much the power cost. I noticed immediately that the % of reduction was double the amount of the dominance buff. I did not have time to test out every single WM combo, but I tested a dozen and I am confident that the pattern remains the same through the entire table.

[IMG]

Here are some of opinions I can draw from looking at this table and trying things out practically. Would love to have a discussion on these.
Power cost reduction does not make WM worth the risk for support roles. When you look at the second table and see how much the reductions actually are, the risk/reward is just not there because every WM combo is counterable. There are a few quick combos that you can get off consistently if you want to add them into a rotation where you're throwing taunts/HOTs/PoTs/Recharges but you're sacrificing either your hit counter or you're having such a small decrease in power cost that it won't make any noticeable difference in the content. Such is case for the Brawling - MA combo that will become a staple for controllers only giving a 5% power cost reduction. For trollers, the power cost reduction doesn't make up for the amount of regeneration you lose from not getting your weapon combos to the first or second tier.

Speaking as a troller, I had a more difficult time powering a group using WM than without it, because my hit counters were not building as fast and I wasn't regenerating my own power as quickly, giving me less to power the group. The only combo that didn't suffer from this was the Brawling - Shuriken Storm combo, which suffers from the point I'm trying to make for all the different combos here: You may do more damage but you might have a harder time performing your actual role.
Stat buffs are far more useful. Maybe not dominance by itself, but I found I was getting far more use of WM when I had to think and plan my rotations to keep a dominance buff up, especially when tanking. That was definitelya risk worth taking as every WM combo is counterable.
Tanks: A dominance AND a health buff together would be a great combination, even at the percentages in the first chart. It would make you stronger for casting a power at the right time, reward you for the risks involved in trying a high-end combo, and speaking as a fire tank, we desperately need this to help cover the glaring weaknesses in our self heals and survivability in endgame content when appropriately geared, and it also helps Earth out as well.
Healers: A restoration buff would be better than a power cost reduction, especially since we're losing the first tier of restoration innates in the new weapon trees. This would also reward players that run with a group shield making it stronger if they cast it as part of the WM combo.
Trollers: A vitalization buff would be greatly appreciated here to help sate the costs of power increases in top tier content, and may actually encourage groups to bring two trollers to raids again instead of three to keep the DPS powered. Dominance buffs don't really do much for controllers here that I've seen, as the buff is minimal when applied to how long something stays CC'd.
While we're on the subject, if any role benefits from Power Reduction, it's the DPS. DPS use the most power in the raid by far (except a Rage tank going all out) and giving them a power cost reduction for successful WM combos would result in less stress on the trollers and in turn benefit the entire group.
These are just my personal opinions, but I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. The stat buff as it was isn't perfect, but I feel it's far more useful than a power cost reduction for support roles, having done all the endgame content from each role with both versions.

I'm an electric healer and I use WM.

Honestly WM is the best mechanic in the game. It gives every hero (regardless of role) to do massive damage. It gives every hero (regardless of role) to use their spells at a reduced cost.

So you essentially asked:
- Should I do more damage?
- Should I have my spells cost less?

You can see the obvious answer.


As a point of clarification to be complete in this post - there will be times in all roles that using your power without using your WM combo is more important, so prioritize that.

Not true...I have used MA into HB WM and it has a four hit combo and does less damage than HB into Explosive Shot or Duel Wield to Explosive shot but takes longer. It seems back in July / August timef rame HB and Duel wield got a buff and other longer combo weapons got nerfed. Heck Bow explosive shot into full auto on duel pistols hits harder than some long combo WM melee attacks.

One more time to see if the images import then I'm done with iPhone this mornin

^^^^This right here is the biggest point that I struggled a little with when I first started using WM. I would most of the time wait to finish my WM BEFORE throwing POT or PD. I realized I was just setting myself up for failure due to having to play catchup. I learned quickly that I am not going to be very effective if I have to empty my power bar to fill others. So I cut my combo short and just do WM when I know I am going to have the time to run it completely through. BTW Quantum troll with Bow into Dual Pistol to rebuild power.

WM for Brawling combo?

Brawling Clap into MA Shuriken Storm?

I wonder why no one uses staff as a support weapon. Hold range - Hold Range - Power. Effective, AoE damage and knock off, fast and visually beautiful. I just love it!

Brawling also has one of the lowest DPS.

hold triangle x2 I think but I'm at work and surprisingly my Weapon Mastery combo has been replaced by insurance quotes and accounting numbers.

THANKS

I AM A BATTLE TANK

That's always been an issue with elec in PVE due to the way it heals and people not understanding how to heal with it or be healed by it. I didn't hear anything about a power return function for it or any other healing power before bug form got one to replicate the power return and damage of WM so why now? I'm sure there's some basic psychology in there somewhere about only wanting something because someone else has it.

power reduction thats it -_-

I use brawling to martial arts exclusively for trolling and healing. Quick WM combo to build hit counter to regen power faster and for trolling i like the reduced power cost that all support roles so my recharge costs less.

yes brawling is the best weapon for support roles, no other weapon will do the job IMO


any time I go support even if its with armories I pick up a set of brawling.

grab the brawling > MA combo (tap triangle, hold triangle) it builds the hit counter fast + builds SC really fast.

As a battle tank with 18600k health and what about 15k def and 2000 prec, forgot how much might lol. But I use it here and there when I have the chance because I crit for 5k to 7k at times with prec and might highest I seen was about 3.3k. So to me I find it useful specially when troll goes down and I have a chance to save some power till he gets up.

Besides with 183Sp idk where else to put the extrat points besides wm....I also like to see that I either catch up to the 3rd dps or sometimes beat em lol

Ob if you've ever looked at me during raids you'll know I constantly use weapon mastery (hb currently). Not only does it reduce overall power cost, making me an efficient healer, but I add a sizable portion to overall damage. I'm usually top damage below the dps. No reason not to use it really, as long as it's a quick combo