Runes of Magic US / AU

Quoted from "twintyphoon"

WHAT THE SKILL ACTUALLY DOES: Gives WIND CHOP a 3 second CD...(instead of being an instant cast (like it was before the player obtains the 60 elite) and even when WIND CHOP does INDEED trigger the wind damage, nothing happens to HEART OF THE OAK...

It says "power of the oak". Not heart. Nothing happens to heart b/c noting is supposed to happen. Power of the oak is the 15% 2h damage increase for 30s. Also, by instant cast you mean to say "no cooldown" (instant vs cast time vs 3s cooldown vs no cooldown are different things).

The change to the cooldown of wind chop was mentioned and commented and reported on a long time ago. IIRC the response was some localisation error and/or wind chop was supposed to have a 3s cd before the elite aka. at level 50 3s cd, at level 80 3s cd, resononance of wind or no resonance (can't recall exactly which response was given). In either case, it sucks.


In my opinion, wd/m needs a little bit more than just this one fix to be useful. Fixing wind chop would make it playable with all of its current elites, but it would still fall behind wd/s or wd/w in terms of instance capability. A wd/w can strong summon an oak walker to be nearly as strong as wd/m oak walker during a short burst, but still have higher damage output on the warden itself so there's a lot of ground needed to cover to make it equal, but very few changes needed to make wd/m playable.

As for your skill suggestion, it sounds bad....Wd/m should be wearing physical damage equipment, so having a higher chance to trigger magical damage from wind chop will be an unnoticeable change in damage (doubled or not), and if you're a warden/mage using magical gear.....you're doing something wrong since you can't effectively use charged chop and your pet damage is based on your physical attack at the timer of summoning.


I think changing some elites to make wd/m more focused on pet is better. After all, the pet summoning is the magical aspect of the warden class....Change Narrow escape to a passive that allows instant, no-cost summon of Oak Walker (but not nature crystal or spirit of the oak to avoid abusing their abilities), and give wd/m a "feral leader" for their pets -- increased damage, reduced damage reduction and reduced aggro. As said already, due to berserk, a wd/w cna summon an oak walker that is nearly as strong as a wd/m walker, but has higher charged chop damage, so I think ramping up the wd/m pet EVEN MORE is the way to go.

I guess I'm different in that I'd prefer the wd/m to be the most magic-y warden build. I'd like to see the following changes:

1. Wind Chop - 3 second CAST, no CD. Range 120 front AOE skill. ( Think of anime-style charged sword attack ) 20% chance of inflicting wind AOE damage on and around the target ( 80 range ). Causes 90% main hand Wind dps. +6.74% damage. <-- the "real" charged chop that has a chance of "exploding" at the opponent causing an additional hit that's an aoe. This would be the basis of this warden class.

2. Tough Oak - Physical and Magical defense of Spirit of the Oak and master is increased by 5% while the pet is summoned. +1% per level, maxes out at level 50.

3. Oak Blessing - Frantic Briar now causes magic damage

4. Nature's Revenge - Nature Crystal responds to attacks against it's master. 200 range. Casts Wind Chop at the attacker. 6 second cd.

5. Crystal Protection - Nature Crystal detonates itself to protect it's master and those around it ( 80 range ) for 2 attacks. Protection lasts 12 seconds. During this time, no pet may be summoned.

6. Resonation of Wind - ( levelable ) Increases Wind and Earth damage by 20%, +1% per level up to level 50. If Wind Chop crits the opponent, opponent magic damage is reduced by 3% for 6 seconds. Stackable up to 4x.

7. Wild Offensive - Explosion of Power affects your pets increasing their physical attack speed, damage and reduces the CD of Punch, Sepal Stab and Nature's Revenge by 1 second. Every critical hit by caster or pet reduces cd of Explosion of Power by 1 second.

This pretty much puts together a cloth-based Warden build that does hit and run attacks. Wind Chop converts the physical damage they would do into magical damage. After the 60 elite, they gain Wind and Earth mastery to increase the damage of their 2 magic skills. During the hit & run, they would use their various pets buffs, but given the new elites, I think they would choose to keep Nature Crystal out for retaliation attacks every 6 seconds & sacrificing it to prevent up to 2 attacks to all friendlies within 80 range. On the other hand, the 70 elite would be a bonus for the physically minded players by reducing pet special attack CD's & increases their physical attacks & damage.

Quoted from "ycavan"

I guess I'm different in that I'd prefer the wd/m to be the most magic-y warden build. I'd like to see the following changes:

1. Wind Chop - 3 second CAST, no CD. Range 120 front AOE skill. ( Think of anime-style charged sword attack ) 20% chance of inflicting wind AOE damage on and around the target ( 80 range ). Causes 90% main hand Wind dps. +6.74% damage. <-- the "real" charged chop that has a chance of "exploding" at the opponent causing an additional hit that's an aoe. This would be the basis of this warden class.

2. Tough Oak - Physical and Magical defense of Spirit of the Oak and master is increased by 5% while the pet is summoned. +1% per level, maxes out at level 50.

3. Oak Blessing - Frantic Briar now causes magic damage

4. Nature's Revenge - Nature Crystal responds to attacks against it's master. 200 range. Casts Wind Chop at the attacker. 6 second cd.

5. Crystal Protection - Nature Crystal detonates itself to protect it's master and those around it ( 80 range ) for 2 attacks. Protection lasts 12 seconds. During this time, no pet may be summoned.

6. Resonation of Wind - ( levelable ) Increases Wind and Earth damage by 20%, +1% per level up to level 50. If Wind Chop crits the opponent, opponent magic damage is reduced by 3% for 6 seconds. Stackable up to 4x.

7. Wild Offensive - Explosion of Power affects your pets increasing their physical attack speed, damage and reduces the CD of Punch, Sepal Stab and Nature's Revenge by 1 second. Every critical hit by caster or pet reduces cd of Explosion of Power by 1 second.

This pretty much puts together a cloth-based Warden build that does hit and run attacks. Wind Chop converts the physical damage they would do into magical damage. After the 60 elite, they gain Wind and Earth mastery to increase the damage of their 2 magic skills. During the hit & run, they would use their various pets buffs, but given the new elites, I think they would choose to keep Nature Crystal out for retaliation attacks every 6 seconds & sacrificing it to prevent up to 2 attacks to all friendlies within 80 range. On the other hand, the 70 elite would be a bonus for the physically minded players by reducing pet special attack CD's & increases their physical attacks & damage.

That wind chop change reminds me of original charged chop (had a cast time). This can't be "dps" though, since all X% "elemental" dps skills use physical damage and physical attack as their basis, so cloth gear wouldn't work. It would just have to be "X wind damage", assuming I understand the concept correctly.

Frantic briar already does magical damage (use serenstum to immune). You mean you want it based off of magical damage (i.e use staff)?

Cloth based warden in magical attacks would only have the crystal as a useful pet. As far as I know, magical attack and magical damage do not influence oak walker damage output at all, so a cloth based warden build this way would only work with a nature crystal pet, making wild offenseive less useful.

What earth skill would an earth mastery increase? Its warden/druid that gets earth damage though conglomerate attack and earth pulse. You'd need to have the oak blessing elite modify frantic briar to flat earth damage if that's what you mean.

I'd be for a "magical" warden, but this limitted toolkit still sounds like charged chop spam in physical damage gear would be better....Would probly need to replace the pet-related skills to more focus on the magical damage aspect, similar to how w/m elites are nearly entirely centered around the idea of a magical warrior.

The idea is to create a new mechanic for this build where the dps is used as magic damage for Wind Chop & Frantic Briar. ie, Storm of Nature +16, t12 has about 7k dps. 2h mastery @ 50 would increase that 50%, so you're looking @ around 10.5k dps. Power of the Oak would increase damage by another 13% @ 50 for 30 seconds... so 11,865 dps so far w/ just the warden buffs. So Wind Chop would be a Wind 3 second cast that does 757.26% dps as magic damage w/ the chance for a 2nd hit on the target as an aoe. Consumables would also increase dps, thus increase the magic damage as well as the Mastery from Resonance of Wind.

& sorry about Frantic Briar, I thought that was Earth magic, so would need to actually declare that as Earth magic.

Wild Offensive was noted because I don't want a build that is purely magical if someone wants to play it as a physical dps & it also reduces the cd for Nature's Revenge, so 6 retaliations vs. 5 for those 30 seconds... I used to play the wd/m back before the change to pure physical & I loved that each of the pets has a role in this build. SotO for pure defense ( tanking style ), Oak Walker for pure physical offense & Nature Crystal for pure magic builds. I really think something along the lines of what I posted would help "define" this build as the more magic-based warden vs. all of the other physical wardens ( -wd/d magic build, which is pretty OP lol ).

& you are correct, the "proper" pet to use for this build would be Nature Crystal for the retaliation attack & protection sacrifice.

Hybrids have never really worked in endgame content, so I suppose these proposed changes wouldn't really change that, but would make it more fun? I was trying to focus it either on the pet more or the magical aspect more so it was less hybrid and more focused so raiding wouldn't be horrible.

@Keen: I think your idea about Intensification could work, but in the context of the changes I proposed, I think it would fall in line w/ Oak Blessing. I think it could look something like this:

Oak Blessing: Frantic Briar now deals Earth magic damage and Intensification makes your Wind Chops critical hits. Change to Wind Chop -> During Intensification, Wind Chop attacks are critical hits. Mana consumption is 3% per Wind Chop cast. After Intensification ends, there is a period of exhaustion. 8 second debuff where crit chance is reduced 20% and crit damage is reduced 20%.

Basically, Intensification becomes a huge bonus for the wd/m w/ a huge cost. If you're fast, you could pop out 7 WC's that will always crit for 21% mana. So that's 7 crit hits w/ 7 aoe crit hits. After that, your wd/m is "exhausted" from the effort. Think that would work for Intensification?

Isnt it better to skip 70 elite and spam charged chop and wind chop than trying to have wc doing magic damage