In its current form the new Visage of Decay AA is almost worthless. Its hard to get good parses for something that in reality would only last 2 mins and comparing long parses can hide the reality of the gain in the short term. Did some focused 2 min parses and averaged them up to see the benefit this spell gives. I hit the buff cast a series of 5 dots and let them expire. Yes in reality we would keep casting our dots but the gain is also mitigated by the fact outside a guild hall the timer would be running out while getting the dots on. Again just trying to establish a baseline for comparison not nail down the exact benefit. With Visage on the average increase in damage done over 2 mins was 20K (240K without 260K with). Compare this to First spire that refreshes faster and gives an average increase of 130K over 2 mins. Through in the loss of melee damage which over 2 mins was an average of 83K lost. Meaning if you can mellee the mobs hitting visage of decay results in a loss of 63K damage over 2 mins. Have not gotten solid numbers yet to see how bad it impact our ability to tank but lower mellee means lower self heals. If its one of the rare pure range fights where you know you will not be melleeing for 2 mins you can add that whopping 20K damage over 2 mins. Given the loss in Mellee DPS the increase to our spell damage should be significantly higher. Given the negative penalty to mellee/tanking the DPS increase really should be in line with what first spire grants.
why just dots? why not taps and spears? also, what loss of melee damage? 1: Increase Spell Damage by 1% to 20% 2: Limit Type: Detrimental 3: Limit Min Mana Cost: 1 4: Cast: Visage of Decay Effect 5: Limit: Include non focusable spells
Did not do spears or taps as again I was trying to establish something that was exactly repeatable easily to compare the damage. Look at the AA description. Increased spell damage comes at the cost of reduced Mellee ability. May not show in that description but it does reduce mellee damage as described in the AA information.
Maybe a # was left off the second part of the aa (the max adjust?) Increase Spell Damage by 20% to 0% Limit: Spell Type (Detrimental only) Limit: Minimum Mana Cost (1) Add Effect: Visage of Decay Effect <-- illusion Unknown #460 (100/-30/0)
it's 9/12/15% bonus spell damage, per rank. i did a 7 hour long parse during beta using 9 dots - one with visage, one without. without: 4100 dps with: 4800 dps spell parsers are not currently accurately showing the melee reduction and i don't remember it being posted what it was from the beta forums, but unless the melee reduction is functionally non-existent then this would actually be a dps loss to use.
Even with Lifetaps and spears going I don't think it will offset the loss of mellee DPS and survivability except in those very rare range only fights. Was hoping for a lot more from this. If there is a worry about overpowering our current sad level of DPS jack up the DPS but increase the reuse time.
Good news, guys, this is fixed in tomorrow's patch! https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/game-update-notes-july-16-2014.212189/ *** AA *** - Shadowknight – Visage of Decay was not applying the melee skill damage reduction as originally intended. This has been fixed. LOLOL
I disagree with it being useless. I see it as giving us a second chance at a burn. Currently, if I'm doing a group/HA burn to do a big pull, I use epic, visage of death, second spire, scarlet blade, and mantle. That gives me the max amount of melee dps to take advantage of the epic buff. If I wanted to do a burn with visage of decay, I'd use that, unholy guardian, first spire, and quick spear. Then just chain taps to get the double spear proc, and chain that along with dots. If you are going to use unholy and have the damage decrease from it anyway, you might as well augment your casting and chain tap/spear.
If your burning you shouldn't be using 2nd spire unless you hate DPS, SK second spire is almost completely useless.
Have you procured any data from dummy parses about the benefits of using Visage of Decay or your second burn? Would love to see some data that points to usefulness. New tools in the toolbox are great.
And with the fix to make the melee DPS reduction really kick in this might be an overall decrease in DPS unless pure range fight have not wasted the time to retest.
