What you think of Roar of Thunder

[Coprolith]

My thoughts would be a 1.0sec stun to level 70, 500-750 min melee hit with a refresh of about 30sec - 1.5min.

What you are proposing is a 6-25 dps mana-free nuke with stun. If the dps/AA pt cost of the GoD abilities is anything to go on, are you willing to spent 200 AA pts on it? (which isnt even possible with the 30 unused AA limit)

C'mon guys, get real. Any significant increase in damage in reuse time would be stepping on SKs toes. Its just not going to happen. Frankly im surprised at not hearing cries of outrage from the SK community already. Any significant decrease in reuse time would turn it into a mana-free nuke, but the only way you'll ever get any amount of dps out it is at outrageously high AA cost
Either accept this ability for the utility (with some minor tweaks perhaps) or scratch it altogether and replace it with some entirely different.

/hugs

[Choppin]

I could live with it being put down to 1 dmg, if the rest of it remains same and the reuse time is 10 sec.

I wouldnt get this AA for dps, I would get it to save my or someone else ass in a difficult situation.

[Burrix]

I must say I'd love to see this go live.

Afcourse this is because I play on a PvP server. It will give me a chance to win now and then  :wink:

In pure PvE it has it's utility. Don't see it as a DPS enhancement.

[Jarlub]

Wow 5 second stun, that is pretty dang nice.  I see this as being useful when a mob bum rushes your clerics or your raid MA dies and you need a few seconds for the SA to pick up aggro.

Gating mobs of course too.

With OOW and new pally stuns that work up to lvl 70 I expect to see more Pally MA's or teams that can damn near stun lock some of the POP gods.  Sick but true (unless they just make the gods stun immune of course)

[Giledorm]

I like the idea of changing this to a jolt-style ability instead of a stun.  The last thing I need is more agro.  a manaless 1500DD is nice, but not much since I'm rarely OOM.  the improved mend is more useful IMO.  /shrug.

[kukana]

Personally, if they insist on giving us this ability, I'd like to see a re-use time of about 3 minutes on it.  It'll primarily be used for when things start running or gating out.  Otherwise, it's just too little damage and of limited use to be worth spending AA on.

[Urim]

the improved mend is more useful IMO. /shrug.

I'd wait til the AA cost and reuse time is found out before stating this.

[Bengali]

Well, I did some research and it changed my outlook on this somewhat.

Normal SK Harmtouch is 72 mins.  They can lower that to 36 mins, but they have to spend a fair amount of aa points to do that.  The problem with looking for a big boost to Roar of Thunder is that while it's a fair amount below the max HT for an SK (they can crit for over 10k, if they have the right focus effects and use their 72 min disc -- possibly higher with a bard in group but that's not confirmed), a regular unfocused HT that doesn't crit and without disc running is considerably lower.  For example I just tested with a 65 SK who landed a 3997 crit harmtouch on her 36 min HT (I'm not sure if she had any focus effects).  Roar of Thunder can crit for 3000.

Some of the reuse times proposed here (like 3 mins and such) would totally stomp harmtouch overall.  I don't see how this could possibly have a reuse less than 36 minutes, and I really don't see it going that low either.

That said, I wouldn't shed any tears if they came up with a better idea.

[Fibbs]

yeah my thinking there was a bit whacky with my version.

I still rate this AA anyways, especially if we get to boost it with other AA's.

I'm all for the more melee based skills though, tomes, kicks, stuff like that.

Only bad thing is where am i going to find the space for the hotkey.......


Fibbs

[Strigori]

I rather doubt anything named will be stunable, let alone a raid target.  Unless they are taking the whole expansion the way of ntov with lots of gaters(which would tend to make it very unpopular) Then its reduced to a hot key that lets us steal agro from tanks.  With out current walking of the line(at best) on agro a high damage stun is the thing that would push us over that edge.  So unless we want to develop the reputation that rangers have had of constant death, and all  the jokes that surround that, then this is not the best use of the (seemingly) only unique AA line from OoW.

[a_moss_snake_001]

For a L66+ AA it really needs to be better.

Remember "Harm Touch" is first of all FREE (you get it at L1), it is pretty hard to resist to start with and with the addition of some extra support AA's its possible to turn it into an almost unresistable monster that can critical for over 7200 (unfocused) and has the ability to lifetap for less damage if the SK chooses to (Leech Touch AA) --  Note: Consumption of the Soul AA + Improved Consumption of the Soul AA make the lifetap version of a HT very powerful too. The lifetap healing also has a chance at being criticalled if the SK has the "Theft of Life" AA

================================================
Harm Touch:
10 x lvl + 1 (levels 1 to 40), add 30 x lvl (levels 41 to 60), add 10 x lvl (levels 61 to 65)
At 60: ((10 x 40) + 1) + (30 x 20) = 401 + 600 = 1001
At 65: ((10 x 40) + 1) + (30 x 20) + (10 x 5) = 401 + 600 + 50 = 1051
Source

"Unholy Touch" AA: Adds 450 per skill level, guarantees SCF crit
"Unholy Aura" discipline: Add 50% to HT

Spell Casting Fury:
Without UT: Chance to crit as per your SCF level (add 33%, 66%, 100%)
With UT: Guaranteed crit as per your SCF level

So a general purpose formula could be (HT + UT) x SCF x UA
eg.
Level 65 HT with UA, UT3, and SCF3 (no focus)
(HT + UT) x SCF x UA
(1051 + (3 x 450)) x 2 x 1.5 = 7203

Unholy Aura (disc) + SCF3 (AA) + UT3 (AA) + worn ID4 + Bard song "Rizlona call of Flame" = 8460 max crit
================================================

Re-use time with "Touch of the Wicked" AA at L3 is 36 min.

So in terms of AA cost comparisons:-

Best "Harm Touch"
- Spell Casting Fury 3 (chance to crit non-melee direct damage)
[2/4/6] : 12 AA
- Improved Harm Touch (makes HT *very* hard to resist)
[6] : 6 AA
- Touch of the Wicked (lowers HT reuse time to 36 mins)
[2/4/6] : 12 AA
- Unholy Touch (improved HT damage and guaranteed crit with SCF3)
[2/4/6] : 12 AA

TOTAL: 42 AA

Best "Roar of Thunder"
- Spell Casting Fury 3  (chance to crit non-melee direct damage)
[2/4/6] : 12 AA
- Roar of Thunder
[?/?/?] : ?? (i am guessing a total of at least 24 AA spent to complete)

SPECULATED TOTAL: 36 AA

That nets us an AA with a re-use time of 72 mins that deals 1500DD (base) and can stun up to L70 mobs for 5.0 secs. We can probably correctly assume it will work with spell damage focuses and that it is able to be criticalled for double damage using SCF3. We have no realistic idea of the resist rate but we do know it has a mild resist adjust of -150 and it checks vs magic. So best case scenario we are looking at perhaps around 3600DD max hit with a worn focus and the bard song. A lot of tougher mobs are immune to stun so that component can be ignored on them. There is no guarantee of a critical.

From that data above I conclude that a normal HT is better by at least a factor of 3 (when taking into account the base damage difference, re-use difference, resist rate difference, and guaranteed critical) and indeed a factor of 4 when used with the Unholy Aura disc (re-use: 72 mins). Note that this HT can be achieved at L65 whereas I am willing to place money that Roar of Thunder L3 will be at least L68.

Conclusion
=======
Make this AA better. We are not asking to be shadowknights but 72mins is too long, 36m would be the maximum re-use I would expect from this AA and I am strongly leaning towards 24m for something we might even want to buy and use (even at that re-use HT is still better by at least a factor of 2).

[Bengali]

A couple of corrrections:

The resist mod on Roar of Thunder is -100, which isn't nearly unresistable but it's still like having the mob already be tashed and malosed almost (that would be -105 to MR, tash and malosinia would be -120).  If you consider that a lot of mobs are debuffed by other classes (and MR is the most popular debuff that's put on them), this ability is going to be resisted a ton less than our nukes.

Harm Touch is also a shadowknight class ability, and classes are pretty darn protective of their class abiliites.  The closer Roar is to Harmtouch (and it isn't unreasonably close right now), the more reason shadowknights have to get upset.  I don't see SOE making it too much better because they don't want to give the SKs reasons to throw fits.

Roar won't be subject to focus effects.  Harm Touch is SHD/1 whereas Roar of Thunder is Class:NONE.  Which is good because I have enough focus effects to get without worrying about a magic one too.

[Xarilok]

Whether or not a focus effect WILL work on it doesnt mean you HAVE to get one for it...

I mean, you CAN get a nuke cast time focus...but would you?

[Bengali]

Whether or not a focus effect WILL work on it doesnt mean you HAVE to get one for it...

I mean, you CAN get a nuke cast time focus...but would you?

Of course it means I don't HAVE to get one.  I don't HAVE to play EQ.  I don't HAVE to play a beastlord.  I don't HAVE to get any focus effects at all.

All I'm saying is that right now, I have zero incentive to get a magic nuke focus and I like it that way.  I wasn't saying that if a nuke focus worked on Roar of Thunder then I would become all obssessed with it like Captain Ahab.   Heck, technically I already have a magic nuke focus by accident, but at least now I can get rid of that mask without even having to consider the impact of losing the focus on it.

Your example about the nuke casting focus is totally spurious, for reasons I'm sure you can figure out.

[Choppin]

umm, if you think its going to be any dps, thats really laughable, the good thing is you can stun something and it might not hit you or someoneelse for 5 seconds,
the DD part could actually be detrimental by putting something into summon mode you dont want

the thing that makes the "super" HT useful is that its unresistable and guaranteed crits with the disc (they dont have many useful discs, so its not like they sacrifice a disc there)

seeing a wizard crit for 6 - 7k with their top nuke regulary puts things into relation maybe ?

or maybe that a beastlord can proc for 1500 quite often and with other weapons for 1250, its just not as much as everyone makes it out to be

to repeat myself, without the damage, I would still take it if I could reuse it in the fashion of protectivespirit.