Remove flat damage from Soul Annihilation and increase focus scaling

[grasida]

Soul annihilation adds 10 + focus spent/2 raw damage to a primary attack. The melee attack is normal except that it benefits from the hidden power level bonus all martial abilities get. The raw damage is boosted multiplicatively by might and power level. Assuming we take draining whip, which is probably always better for soul blades, the flat damage is worth about 40 damage dealt on an off hit. Even if you’re dealing well over 100 damage with your focus generating hits, the flat component still makes up a significant portion of soul annihilation’s damage.

 

Why is that bad? Because before it was nerfed, the ability primarily scaled off of focus spent and the flat damage was fairly insignificant. That meant soul annihilation was mostly weapon style agnostic. It basically worked equally well with dual wielding or two-handed weapons. Now it’s yet another situation in which dual wielding is supreme, since maximizing attack speed lets you get the most benefit from the flat damage. The vast majority of soul annihilation’s damage should come from focus spent to make sure the skill is equally useful with all fighting styles.

 

What’s more, saving up focus for big hits is heavily penalized when flat damage is so significant. But it would add more tactical choices if it weren’t always the best move to use soul annihilation as often as possible.

 

I don’t know if this is the right place to post suggestions for the dev team, but here you go. If anyone else has any ideas, or just wants to discuss how to build around soul annihilation in general, please feel free. I think a street fighter/soul blade looks like the best choice to maximize damage with it, but I could see arguments for shattered pillar, helwalker, or berserker as well. A witch using lord darryn’s voulge could do well with it, for example, since static thunder builds focus.

Edited June 20, 2018 by grasida

[Kaylon]

Sorry, but what hidden power level bonus for melee classes you're talking about?

[grasida]

Check in the power level scaling mechanics thread. Weapon based skills get the base damage of their weapon multiplied by something like 5% per power level. This becomes extremely noticeable if you are testing stuff and do something like give yourself 100 alchemy and drink a potion of ascension.

[grasida]

I'll double post in my own thread to bring up an interesting tidbit I discovered while messing around with various soul blade combos. Primary attacks always use your main weapon, but don't reset the attack order while dual wielding. That means if you do a normal attack with your main weapon, then use soul annihilation, your next attack will still be with your main weapon. Effectively, you can drastically reduce the number of times you attack with your off hand. There are probably a few niche cases where that's useful, like using the magistrate's cudgel to mark enemies and break through armor, while using a more damaging main hand weapon most of the time.

 

But there's one clear case where it's really good: the monk punching shield. A transcendent could get up to 28 deflection and reflex from the shield while greatly mitigating the loss in damage. It's probably not worth it for classes other than monk, since if you want to build focus for spells, you can't avoid attacking with the shield. But it looks like a really nice tool for a helwalker / soul blade.