This makes me sad, I love the skill, but… ABB has a larger radius, lower cooldown, can become a default attack skill and boosts global damage, while also having a great array of supporting gear that can also add weapon damage too. It has the same skill point requirement (-1 if you take cold RoS), it’s only down-side is it has a chance of 1s freeze vs 2s for transmuted RoS.
RoS is basically becomes an (very cool looking) extra Devotion proccer, with some benefit for bleed builds. I like levelling with it, but it always just falls out of the build in the end because ABB is just more useful. Might as well just add a pierce/bleed transmuter for ABB.
How could the skill be improved to be more unique?
Maybe if it could be given a radius that spirals out to ~10-15M, that might make it a little like OFF, but damage focused (i.e. it creates biting blades at its perimeter that spin out at L16+)?
RoS has one of the best debuffs in the game on circle of slaughther, “% Chance for target to Fumble”. The skill itself and its damage is usually only worth a one pointer unless you play around its bleed damage or you play dedicated items for it like Korba set.
I personally sometimes feel like it’s almost too efficient for 1pt each and doesn’t scale well enough with more point investment unless you play specific items for the skill. Even with Korba, the variant that only 1 points RoS is better than the full RoS investment variant.
Perhaps that’s the better path for it, becoming a utility/debuff skill like Flashbang? Though it could probably just be combined into one skill with a transmuter, or add some lifesteal to the first node or something.
Is fumble really that useful? Like dodge, you still need to survive outside of it anyway. I suppose it’s useful in crucible when you’re being swamped.
You want a 10-15 meter AoE on a 320% weapon damage (more with skill mods), non-targeted, fumbling nuke with huge DoT potential and bonus crit damage?
Even if every other point you made was solid (they aren’t), this single request is so ridiculous that it would invalidate every other point you made before it.
Regarding fumble, it is one of the best debuffs in the game because there is no such thing as fumble resistance (so no enemy can resist it) and almost every enemy has at least one melee attack. So nothing resists it and everything is affected by it.
Dodge works the same way (and is multiplicative with fumble), but people don’t seem to put that as a high-tier stat to focus on? Or is it just more difficult to come across?
More difficult to come across, it generally takes much more item/skill investment to get 1% dodge compared to 1% fumble. Since fumble doesn’t stack with other fumble sources, it’s valuable to just amass a ton on a single skill, and it’s relatively easy to do with certain classes.
Do people sacrifice other survival tools to get it? Generally not, since there are plenty more important player stats, but as a debuff compared to other debuffs, it’s one of the better ones.
Is it enough to invest fully into the skill though, or just one-point it? And if the debuff doesn’t out-prioritise other defenses, it goes back to why would you use RoS over ABB, considering the large damage benefits you get with ABB? Even worse, you can’t convert bleed damage, so you can’t make other use of Circle of Slaughter either if not a bleed build.
My main point I guess is my frustration that it’s just, overall, not a skill worth investing into towards endgame/L100 as other things take over. Mainly because ABB is similar enough (without considering other class skills) to take your points away from RoS for that sweet, sweet damage buff.
Perhaps it would be better default cold w/ freeze, then you transmute to pierce w/ pierce RR or something.
doesnt’ need to, just like we don’t need to change savagery because shaman has primal strike, don’t need to change sigils because occultist has DEE don’t need to change canister bomb because demo has nado
it’s fine
skills don’t need to be 1:1 in strength nor function, this is why we have different skills with different tiers or levelling strength and endgame strength, and RoS works totally fine as support skill and main skill
don’t get me wrong, i’m not against RoS getting buffed a bit (ABB just was), but what you’re implying and suggesting is totally far out there, twilight zone territory, and not at all warranted…
Yes. Obviously with some rebalancing and a fade in damage over distance, but why not? With a large point investment I want something amazing, otherwise just make it proper utility more like OFF where damage is secondary.
Agreed
hmm.
Well how about let’s meet in the middle of “it’s fine” and “twilight zone territory” and discuss instead.
Again, I’m not saying the skill doesn’t work ok, I’m saying that when compared to ABB, when you need as many points as possible in NB, RoS will lose out. They’re too similar as damage skills, luckily RoS has at least bit of utility.
they’re not, and that might be part of your problem/misperception
you’re also wrong on the dmg part
ABB has higher DPS Ring of Steel has higher DMG pt for pt (way higher)
*likewise me saying a skill is fine but also would not oppose a (slight) buff is not me contradicting my own statement or implying the skill is not fine/“lacking something” - i’d equally have 0 issue if it didn’t get buffed “because it’s currently fine”, but since there is a trend of buffing “everything” and ring of steel being slightly underperforming compared to other high performance skills then wouldn’t make it too absurd if it got a slight bump.
But in no way am i remotely agreeing with your notion of buff type
**also giving it huge aoe but nerfing the dmg to compensate would, imo, actually be a bad thing, since more often than not huge aoe is more frequently wasted compared to high dmg
I usually have both too until approaching L100. I’ll often keep it in rotation, but never with more than a couple of points, the further investment seems useless. I think maybe as I’m always going DW I’d find less issues if I went 2H and wasn’t trying to use WPS and SS and RoS w/ ABB and running out of points. For trash, you have to hit them first with ABB to proc the damage, which with good DPS will clear the trash anyway, so might as well have Blade Spirit to proc devotions and leave RoS points for elsewhere…
So ABB clears the trash (without needing full investment) - not to mention SS+Nightfall before it - , but RoS doesn’t do enough single-target damage to come in afterwards. I’m sure it helps in very high SR, but that’s not where most people spend time. Though I see how the idea I suggested of increasing range with fading damage doesn’t solve anything so that’s a bad way to address it.
Maybe instead if ABB was adjusted to be more of a projected cone or few target skill it might make RoS a great melee AoE and remove the redundancy.
Late to the party, but I do need to point something out.
This is actually untrue. Bleed is pierce over time, so anything that converts pierce, if it has an equivalent, will convert the bleed.
I checked the numbers on my witch hunter who currently has the acid conversion MI medal on RoS itself.
It isn’t. Bleed is its own damage and nothing to do with pierce which is also its own damage. Neither have anything other damage types attached to them. They’re oddballs in that respect, but like aether and chaos don’t have them either.
it’s indeed not,
again, this has been well established for years
burn and poison is related to fire and acid,
but bleed is not related to pierce in anyway mechanically in terms of conversion, dmg booster (not counting cunning), and resist reduction or such debuffs (where as -xx% fire resit or or elemental resist affects both fire and burn)
not that this really deserves it since bleed is well established mechanics “not pierce”. but here you go
