Comments on: Getting Up to Speed on Slow

By: Glazius

Glazius — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:09:08 +0000

Stacking Aid Self on yourself will give you some Disorient protection. …or resistance, I forget which. I don’t think it’s strong enough without serious stacking to actually protect against focused stun powers, but for the incidental stuns like Energy Melee/Martial Arts side effects, it’s good.

–GF

By: Zubon

Zubon — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:00:48 +0000

I only know of one case where sleep can beat hold: PvP against squishies with Acrobatics but not Dispersion Bubble or Health who are equipped with Break Frees. In that case, the best you can do is drop their toggles for a second or two, and Dispersion Bubble does not give sleep protection. Prettty slim, eh?

Disorient, however, is very nice in PvP, since I know of know way for squishies to get disorient protection without getting Clear Mind or a similar buff from another player. You can get protection from every other status effect on your own, I believe. Maybe I just have not noticed the one that gives disorient protection.

Sleep kinda sucks. It has its uses, but rarely in groups.

By: Samut

Samut — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 04:21:54 +0000

Pretty cool. Now can you explain when Sleep might be a more useful effect than Hold? It seems pretty worthless so far; trigger-happy teammates just sock the guy after he’s put to sleep and wake him up.

By: Kranky Kraut

Kranky Kraut — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 22:07:12 +0000

Slow (as in attack speed reduction) is a problematic thing in MMORPGs. EQ has proven that. If you can practically reduce a Mobs DPS by 40%, things get a whole hell of a lot easier. The developers then had to balance new content around the assumptions that the mobs will be slowed and that lead to slow-capable classes becoming a prerequisite for efficient exping. That’s why most newer MMORPGs have been very careful with that kind of slow.

By: Foton

Foton — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:46:29 +0000

Slows were absolutely essential in the later EQ expansions for both exp groups and some raid encounters. Shaman slow was the gold standard. Enchanters and bards had a lesser slow ability.

No slows = we might need more healing than just one cleric for an exp group = less room for DPS = more downtime = less than optimal exp = this group sucks.

I haven’t found any other games to be so slow-dependent however, as you noted. Guess that’s all a matter of tuning and what abilities are given to the classes. If you have reliable mezzes (EQ term), sleeps, saps, holds in your game of choice, not much need for slows UNLESS the mobs all hit like a truck, which was the case in later EQ.

WoW has the Thunderfury sword with an AE 20% slow proc. That’s epic however and difficult for the average player to obtain. Otherwise, slows aren’t essential for exp’ing or raiding in WoW.

Good discussion, enjoyed reading.