Veskrashen
2008-10-16, 12:35 PM
'Allo. First post, at least use lube...
First of all, this is mostly just Theorycraft at this point, since my WH is currently only 11, and I've not made it to the higher end tier RVR to get a solid feel for the battle dynamics. The build is basically intended to break tanks and gut healers.
http://war.mmoguildsites.com/career_planner/witch_hunter?000911000000010010000111000
My current thinking is that the reason tanks are so dangerous are their high physical mitigation, high toughness based mitigation, and the tendency of healers to be able to spam heal them enough to keep them from dying. Therefore, in order to break them you need to drop their toughness enough to up the incoming unmitigated DPS and decrease the effectiveness of incoming heals.
This build accomplishes a couple different things. First, Shroud of Magnus gives you a predictable 35% damage boost (let's face it, if you're in the thick of things tank breaking, you're likely getting slammed with spells as well - hence DPS boost when you want it). Combine this with armor ignoring talents like Seal of Destruction (following SoM ofc) and Torment+Feignted Positioning, and you have the ability to bypass their armor with higher damage, as needed. As if that wasn't enough, Exit Wounds gives you and everyone else focusing on the tank a straight +42.4 DPS boost from reduced mitigation; I'd need to have better numbers on endgame DPS and armor/toughness mitigation, but I've got the feeling that's not an insignifcant boost post-armor reduction. Finally, Punish the False means the enemy healers would need to dump twice as many heals as normal, plus an additional 84.4HPS worth of heals per DPSer on the target, in order to equal his previous heals. Considering a 40 Shaman can kick out about 615ish HPS worth of heals regularly, the lower mitigation and healing effectiveness means that about 7 DPSers focusing on the target renders a shaman going full bore completely useless, since the increase in damage the tank is receiving through lower mitigation almost completely cancels the shaman's effective healing. That's not counting how damage those 7 DPSers are actually putting out, either...
Oh, and there's the other nice benefit of using low Accusation ranged confessions to debuff the healers further, rendering them even more ineffective at keeping their targets up. Not to mention the fact that if I'm heading backfield to take out healers instead of staying on a line to help out tanks, I can reduce their effective heals to about 25% of normal, in addition to increasing the damage they're taking in the first place. Given their generally low armor and toughness to begin with, and the +35% DPS from SOM (they'll toss something my way, pretty much guaranteed) I'm thinking they'll fold spectacularly quickly.
There's a few things I'm still juggling around with this build, however. Currently I'm spec'd into Sanctified Bullets for the self heals... but this means I miss out on the rank 4 morale, and have zero AOE capability. Granted, there's Broad Swings at rank 3, but that's not something I want to have to depend on, and is brief enough in duration to make me question it. In addition, I'm not sure how often one is able to build up a rank 4 morale ability in the first place... I know I can see billions of uses for the rank 1-3 abilities, and will most likely spam those out first, meaning I'll need to rebuild the morale all the way to rank 4 again before using it. Doesn't seem that likely.
Getting an additional 5 points from post RR40 opens up a LOT of different avenues, however. I could drop Sanctified Bullets and push up to Sweeping Razor pretty easily, which would get me a short range AOE as an always on ability... I just am not sure whether that would really be worthwhile as far as a tradeoff. I can see using Repel Blasphemy plus Riposte in a melee battle, as a real screw you tactic, especially since Riposte can't be defended against. Taking that against a Witch Elf would be quite amusing methinks. I could take other tactics like Encourage Confession for more healer hosing, and simply switch out tactics bars as needed. The best option, I think, is to snag Repel Blasphemy, Encourage Confession, and Prolonged Confession... that would give me the ability to switch between anti-MDPS Riposte tactic, to true healer pimping, to buffed DOTs for greater instant DPS ability and better stacking.
Choices, choices...
First of all, this is mostly just Theorycraft at this point, since my WH is currently only 11, and I've not made it to the higher end tier RVR to get a solid feel for the battle dynamics. The build is basically intended to break tanks and gut healers.
http://war.mmoguildsites.com/career_planner/witch_hunter?000911000000010010000111000
My current thinking is that the reason tanks are so dangerous are their high physical mitigation, high toughness based mitigation, and the tendency of healers to be able to spam heal them enough to keep them from dying. Therefore, in order to break them you need to drop their toughness enough to up the incoming unmitigated DPS and decrease the effectiveness of incoming heals.
This build accomplishes a couple different things. First, Shroud of Magnus gives you a predictable 35% damage boost (let's face it, if you're in the thick of things tank breaking, you're likely getting slammed with spells as well - hence DPS boost when you want it). Combine this with armor ignoring talents like Seal of Destruction (following SoM ofc) and Torment+Feignted Positioning, and you have the ability to bypass their armor with higher damage, as needed. As if that wasn't enough, Exit Wounds gives you and everyone else focusing on the tank a straight +42.4 DPS boost from reduced mitigation; I'd need to have better numbers on endgame DPS and armor/toughness mitigation, but I've got the feeling that's not an insignifcant boost post-armor reduction. Finally, Punish the False means the enemy healers would need to dump twice as many heals as normal, plus an additional 84.4HPS worth of heals per DPSer on the target, in order to equal his previous heals. Considering a 40 Shaman can kick out about 615ish HPS worth of heals regularly, the lower mitigation and healing effectiveness means that about 7 DPSers focusing on the target renders a shaman going full bore completely useless, since the increase in damage the tank is receiving through lower mitigation almost completely cancels the shaman's effective healing. That's not counting how damage those 7 DPSers are actually putting out, either...
Oh, and there's the other nice benefit of using low Accusation ranged confessions to debuff the healers further, rendering them even more ineffective at keeping their targets up. Not to mention the fact that if I'm heading backfield to take out healers instead of staying on a line to help out tanks, I can reduce their effective heals to about 25% of normal, in addition to increasing the damage they're taking in the first place. Given their generally low armor and toughness to begin with, and the +35% DPS from SOM (they'll toss something my way, pretty much guaranteed) I'm thinking they'll fold spectacularly quickly.
There's a few things I'm still juggling around with this build, however. Currently I'm spec'd into Sanctified Bullets for the self heals... but this means I miss out on the rank 4 morale, and have zero AOE capability. Granted, there's Broad Swings at rank 3, but that's not something I want to have to depend on, and is brief enough in duration to make me question it. In addition, I'm not sure how often one is able to build up a rank 4 morale ability in the first place... I know I can see billions of uses for the rank 1-3 abilities, and will most likely spam those out first, meaning I'll need to rebuild the morale all the way to rank 4 again before using it. Doesn't seem that likely.
Getting an additional 5 points from post RR40 opens up a LOT of different avenues, however. I could drop Sanctified Bullets and push up to Sweeping Razor pretty easily, which would get me a short range AOE as an always on ability... I just am not sure whether that would really be worthwhile as far as a tradeoff. I can see using Repel Blasphemy plus Riposte in a melee battle, as a real screw you tactic, especially since Riposte can't be defended against. Taking that against a Witch Elf would be quite amusing methinks. I could take other tactics like Encourage Confession for more healer hosing, and simply switch out tactics bars as needed. The best option, I think, is to snag Repel Blasphemy, Encourage Confession, and Prolonged Confession... that would give me the ability to switch between anti-MDPS Riposte tactic, to true healer pimping, to buffed DOTs for greater instant DPS ability and better stacking.
Choices, choices...