Request - Modify Ritual Scarification (Ber) for Modern HP Levels

Discussion in 'Melee' started by minimind, Feb 3, 2021.

  1. minimind The Village Idiot

    This post is admittedly somewhat of a re-post and rewording of a pre-existing post here. I'm re-posting for visibility and clarity.

    What: Ritual Scarification (ranks 1-3) was introduced with Ring of Scale (max. level 110).

    Use: The berserker has multiple abilities requiring the berserker's HP to be below 90% prior to activation. Ritual Scarification brings the berserker's HP to 89% and holds it there for 4 minutes.

    Issue: While it doesn't say so in the ability's description, Ritual Scarification actually limits the berserker's HP to 89% or a hidden HP value, whichever is less. This means that any buffs or HP upgrades in gear you get above the following HP levels go down the drain. If you buff to 457k HP and use rank 3, you're losing 100k HP instead of 39,270 HP.
    • Rank 1: 324,000 HP or 89% HP whichever is less (Max HP before add'l loss: 364,044 HP)
    • Rank 2: 340,000 HP or 89% HP whichever is less (Max HP before add'l loss: 382,022 HP)
    • Rank 3: 357,000 HP or 89% HP whichever is less (Max HP before add'l loss: 401,123 HP)
    For context, with max AAs, Ritual Scarification Rank 3 begins holding berserkers below89% around half-way between the transition between TBL and ToV raid gear. (My experience.)

    Workaround: Some berserkers use multiple hits of the AA Ability "Bloodfury" to do 50K of self-damage to get below 90% HP. This avoids being locked at 89% HP (or less) while still enabling the berserker to use the aforementioned abilities.

    Request: Implement one of the following solutions.
    1. Remove the the raw HP limitation from Ritual Scarification altogether.
    2. Increase the hidden HP limit to the following values by 25%. This should get us to the next expansion for a potential upgrade and longer-term fix.
    Additional notes:
    1. Some berserkers don't like that we can't click off Ritual Scarification. (I don't mind.)
    2. Some berserkers have put forth the idea that the abilities that require us to be <90% HP should just take us to 89% HP themselves and then allow us to be healed up. (I presume this would be difficult to make work, but I like the idea.)
    3. Other notes likely below in ensuing discussion.
    Zolav likes this.
  2. Ezbro Elder

  3. minimind The Village Idiot

    Just as an update in personal progression. I now have ToV raid gear (or better) in every slot and my raid org will start taking shots at CoV in a couple weeks.

    I have 351k HP unbuffed according to Magelo. Raid buffed (Skin, Symbol, Ward, Shammy aura, Ranger stuff, Tribute, trophies, etc.), I'm at ~450k HP, so I'd be losing nearly 100k HP be using Ritual Scarification instead of ~38k HP. Since we're about to jump into a new expansion and I need all the HP I can get in new content, I'm using the AA Bloodfury to temporarily reduce my HP as needed.

    I'd still like to see Ritual Scarification adjusted to be usable at these HP levels. I personally like the set-it-and-forget-it aspect and don't mind losing 11% hp. But losing nearly 20% is asking a bit much.
    Zolav likes this.
  4. Zolav Augur

    One issue I am seeing now using bloodfury (I realize the post is about RS) is the lag is SOOO BAD it makes it damn near impossible at times to get things to fire.

    BUT what really needs to be looked at IMO is losing these abilites all together and simply getting a boost to frenzy.. flat damage mod. this goes in line with the devs trying to lessen procs in the game. Less stress on eq.. a tiny QOL for the berserker in these times of heavy lag.
    Viper1 likes this.
  5. minimind The Village Idiot

    Yep. The lag concern is why I'm practicing/playing around with it now. I want to find the best way to reliably use all my abilities without hamstringing myself with 2-3x the intended HP loss.

    It makes me want to say, "Hey, let's revamp berserker abilities to eliminate most of the procs", but that's an intensive process for a relatively small community. And I think Wizards could use a makeover before us.
    Zolav likes this.
  6. minimind The Village Idiot

    I've come to terms with yet another major issue with the Bloodfury workaround-- Runes.

    Runes are more important (for me, in my raid org) than ever before because we're actually doing raids in-era. To get Bloodfury to land, though, you need to mash it multiple times to get through all the spell and regular runes to begin doing self-damage, but then of course, you've now lost all your runes!

    I would much rather have HP locked at 89% max with a bunch of runes than do what I'm doing now.

    We really need a fix to Ritual Scarification.
  7. minimind The Village Idiot

  8. minimind The Village Idiot

    Values Comparison
    • Rank 1: 324,000 (Live) vs. 370,000 (Test)
    • Rank 2: 340,000 (Live) vs. 425,000 (Test)
    • Rank 3: 357,000 (Live) vs. 475,000 (Test)
    Rank 3 should meet the needs of zerks who are currently buffing to 533,707hp. I think this works!
  9. minimind The Village Idiot

    Tested the fix on live and from what I can tell, it's working as intended.
    menown likes this.
  10. Viper1 Augur

    Short term fix at best. What are they going to do next expansion when HP values jump? Revist this same issue again? Personally, I think the whole "must be under 90%" was a dumb design choice from the beginning. I'd much rather have Zolav's boost to frenzy idea. Or remove the whole HP threshold mechanic altogether and have each of these abilities apply a self-DOT effect similar to what Bloodfury already does (without the need to activate Bloodfury or RS at all).
  11. minimind The Village Idiot

    With there still being a hard HP limit, it's definitely a limited fix, but one I appreciate. I'm hoping that if RS is continued in it's current state, that it gets updated with the next expansion as well. I prefer RS over BF for the avoidance (+3%) and riposte (23%) bonuses in addition to the preservation of the runes cast by other classes (which BF chews away).

    I'm personally a fan of the "do self-damage to do more damage" mechanic as it feels more berserker-y.

    I, too, would prefer to see a LOT of our +frenzy damage modifiers centralized into just a couple abilities and preferably minimizing the number of procs for which we are responsible.