Stalker's Patience Procs Mercy Strike way more than 20% - what is true rate?

[Shai Hulud]

Description says Mercy Strike: 20% chance to recovery immediately on crit. 

My experience is it procs much more than this. I have had many many opponents I proc 5+ times. Does anyone know what the actual rate is? It's hard to tell because it's sort of random but after playing a Savage quite a bit using this spear most of the time, I'd guess it procs on the initial hit something like 20%, but repeated proc probablity seems higher. 

I recorded a fight vs The Messenger to test this. Picked this fight as it is decent enough length to get an okay sample, everything is a vessel, and I'll crit 100% except vs The Messenger (dragon scales).

Anyway, after looking through the video I have 91 crits, of which 41 procced Mercy Strike. I'm probably off on the count by 2 or 3 in either direction, but that's roughly 45% proc rate. And this fight seemed very typical for my experience, so I'm guessing that is at least close to the true proc rate, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were as high as 50%. 

In this fight I had at least four quadruple+ procs. That is just incredibly unlikely if it's really 1 in 5. Quadruple procs would be rather rare (1 in 625). There could be some interaction with carnage as it seems to proc more when facing groups than individuals but I'm unsure.

I do know one thing, this weapon is stupid good. On top of its innate +5 accuracy, Mercy Strike proccing more than it should, Ambushing adds like 24% damage to flanked targets with max stealth, and Mortal Wounds causes A LOT of raw DOT (it stacks, and the DOT gives +50% damage to animal companion with predator's sense). Definitely a top tier weapon for crit builds IMO, particularly for melee rangers.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Shai Hulud
minor correction

[elbe]

I don't have an answer to the hit proc percentage question but stalker's patience is one of my favourite weapons, particular on something like Stalker + Soulblade/Trickster or Forbidden Fist + Soulblade/Trickster.  Rogue is nice for persistent distraction to automatically trigger ambushing as well as the intrinsic bonus to stealth.  Forbidden Fist is nice to prolong the DOT and also to have a crush back-up which tends to be a weakness for most pierce immune foes.  If using with a shield it just needs to be a non-bashing shield otherwise the Mercy Strike proc will skip to the shield bash attack.  Although it also makes a strong case for single weapon style for the bonus ACC and crit chance.

It has me wondering whether, if the proc chance is closer to 50%, it works out faster overall in most fights to go with a non-bashing shield and stalker's patience, than to use a bashing shield with two-weapon style.  Might be nice to try out a different shield for once on an FF (perhaps Outworn Buckler for the additional 5% hostile effect reduction, or Xoti's Lantern for the Mortification and Wounds on kill...).

Getting a bit off topic though!

Edited April 15, 2023 by elbe

[Boeroer]

It may be that if your attack has multiple hit rolls (e.g. using Crippling Strike - or whatever might add a secondary roll like Blood Frenzy) each of them might trigger the effect on crit.

I don't think that Wounding/Mortal Wounds thenselves add another hit roll like Saru Sichr's "Poison Dipped" or Mohora Tanga's "Red Flag Flying" do. 

When used with a Barbarian who has Blood Thirst the perception might be skewed.

Same with a Monk who uses Swift Flurry/HBD.

Could also be that the actual value got raised without adapting the description. 

Mybe someone can look into the game object file. I'm on vacation at the Baltic Sea and only brought my phone.

[Elric Galad]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Could also be that the actual value got raised without adapting the description. 

Mybe someone can look into the game object file. I'm on vacation at the Baltic Sea and only brought my phone.

I did it. Oh my !

If I understand well :

 

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Mercy_strike_SE_ApplyOnEvent",

        "ID": "dec282fb-96f1-45b7-8566-33d89ce5873f",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEvent",

            "OverrideDescriptionString": 254,

            "OverrideDescriptionStringTactical": -1,

            "UseStatusEffectValueAs": "None",

            "BaseValue": 0.2,

 

The 0.2 does not feel suspicious, but the ApplyStatusEffectOnEvent is.

Compare with Weightless draw and Galawain's Harry from Saint Omaku and Veilpiercer :

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Weightless_draw_SE_ApplyOnEvent",

        "ID": "01badb09-824d-4e49-b77a-f670eda74a50",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance",

            "OverrideDescriptionString": 278,

            "OverrideDescriptionStringTactical": 745,

            "UseStatusEffectValueAs": "None",

            "BaseValue": 0.5,

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Galawains_harry_SE_ApplyOnEvent",

        "ID": "c1048185-e71d-46cf-8d19-a77a7ef2b6fe",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance",

            "OverrideDescriptionString": 249,

            "OverrideDescriptionStringTactical": 746,

            "UseStatusEffectValueAs": "None",

            "BaseValue": 0.5,

 

 

 

In short, it is 100% chance on Crit.

EDIT : Then, if it doesn't work everytime, it might be  because negating recovery might work weirdly with melee weapon (negating recovery before it has started might lead to mess, ranged weapons won't have this issue because of the projectile non-null travel time).

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Elric Galad

[Shai Hulud]

5 hours ago, elbe said:

I don't have an answer to the hit proc percentage question but stalker's patience is one of my favourite weapons, particular on something like Stalker + Soulblade/Trickster or Forbidden Fist + Soulblade/Trickster.  Rogue is nice for persistent distraction to automatically trigger ambushing as well as the intrinsic bonus to stealth.  Forbidden Fist is nice to prolong the DOT and also to have a crush back-up which tends to be a weakness for most pierce immune foes.  If using with a shield it just needs to be a non-bashing shield otherwise the Mercy Strike proc will skip to the shield bash attack.  Although it also makes a strong case for single weapon style for the bonus ACC and crit chance.

FF prolonging DOTs has got me wondering how that works. Like I assume Mortal Wounds adds X amount of damage that ticks off over Y seconds, so if that duration is doubled to 2Y does it do 2X damage or is it X damage over Y/2 duration? I'm guessing the former...

Ghost Heart works well with the weapon, I have scripted my toon to summon the animal on enemies and when you do this it tends to summon the animal on the other side of the enemy, or very close, and ghost heart summons have no engagement so it is very easy to reposition for flanking if necessary. I also scripted my character to attack whatever the animal companion is attacking, so I'm getting flank bonuses like 90% of the time. With FFs the main attack is so good I tend to use nothing else (besides for the passive bonuses, like Squid's Grasp). 

5 hours ago, elbe said:

It has me wondering whether, if the proc chance is closer to 50%, it works out faster overall in most fights to go with a non-bashing shield and stalker's patience, than to use a bashing shield with two-weapon style.  Might be nice to try out a different shield for once on an FF (perhaps Outworn Buckler for the additional 5% hostile effect reduction, or Xoti's Lantern for the Mortification and Wounds on kill...).

Getting a bit off topic though!

Hmm yeah I don't know, but I've used Xoti's Lantern probably more than any other shield because of how useful it is with Skaen challenge, but it is a really good shield for monks also, at least if you're expending resources a lot. Particularly mortification, since there's no other way to get that back. 

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

It may be that if your attack has multiple hit rolls (e.g. using Crippling Strike - or whatever might add a secondary roll like Blood Frenzy) each of them might trigger the effect on crit.

I don't think that Wounding/Mortal Wounds thenselves add another hit roll like Saru Sichr's "Poison Dipped" or Mohora Tanga's "Red Flag Flying" do. 

I was thinking there was probably some background thing where it was rolling multiple times because of carnage maybe, I need to try it on a straight ranger and see if it's still way north of 20%. I also tried dual-wielding it offhand with Mahora Tanga but I couldn't trigger the Red Flag Flying craziness.

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

When used with a Barbarian who has Blood Thirst the perception might be skewed.

Didn't pick it, but yeah. 

 

8 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I did it. Oh my !

If I understand well :

 

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Mercy_strike_SE_ApplyOnEvent",

        "ID": "dec282fb-96f1-45b7-8566-33d89ce5873f",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEvent",

            "OverrideDescriptionString": 254,

            "OverrideDescriptionStringTactical": -1,

            "UseStatusEffectValueAs": "None",

            "BaseValue": 0.2,

 

The 0.2 does not feel suspicious, but the ApplyStatusEffectOnEvent is.

Compare with Weightless draw and Galawain's Harry from Saint Omaku and Veilpiercer :

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Weightless_draw_SE_ApplyOnEvent",

        "ID": "01badb09-824d-4e49-b77a-f670eda74a50",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance",

            "OverrideDescriptionString": 278,

            "OverrideDescriptionStringTactical": 745,

            "UseStatusEffectValueAs": "None",

            "BaseValue": 0.5,

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Galawains_harry_SE_ApplyOnEvent",

        "ID": "c1048185-e71d-46cf-8d19-a77a7ef2b6fe",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.StatusEffectComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance",

            "OverrideDescriptionString": 249,

            "OverrideDescriptionStringTactical": 746,

            "UseStatusEffectValueAs": "None",

            "BaseValue": 0.5,

 

 

 

In short, it is 100% chance on Crit.

 

So it's supposed to say AplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance? But 100%? That can't be right, because I crit every single hit in this fight, besides the ones that got knocked down by dragon scales. The recovery is canceled a lot, but not every time. It does seem to cancel more on subsequent hits than the first one though, which is weird. I get way more triple+ strikes than I should, whereas double strikes seem lower. 

Need to test it in a more controlled scenario

 

[Elric Galad]

All I'm saying is that the 20% values does not seem to be used (apart description) according to the structure of the code. 

[Noqn]

yeah the 0.2 value seems to be there for the sake of the description

The actual % chance though seems to be defined in the AttackFilter's ChanceToApply: 33%

Edited April 15, 2023 by Noqn

[Elric Galad]

OK, so wrong description or wrong proc chance ?

Which to tweak ?

I would lean to the former since it changes the game the less.

[Noqn]

Yeah, sounds good!

(Though if the description had been stronger than the actual effect, then I would of course have argued that Mercy Strike should be buffed )

[Shai Hulud]

1 hour ago, Noqn said:

Yeah, sounds good!

(Though if the description had been stronger than the actual effect, then I would of course have argued that Mercy Strike should be buffed )

Haha I agree, the weapon is fine as is even if description is off. It is extremely good in some cases but not broken or anything

1 hour ago, Noqn said:

yeah the 0.2 value seems to be there for the sake of the description

The actual % chance though seems to be defined in the AttackFilter's ChanceToApply: 33%

This makes perfect sense, what I was counting before was actually the SUM of double strikes, triple strikes, quadruple strikes, etc. 

Can see below that if a double strike happens with probability .33, a triple is .109, a quadruple is .0359, etc., and I've never seen more than 8 hits in a row so I did a sum from 1 to 8 to get .492

So effectively the probability of getting *at least* a double strike is roughly 50%, which lines up close enough with my testing. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Elric Galad]

Same issue for Rust's Poignard Bring Low.

Displayed chance is 30% but actual chance is 50%

Don't get too excited, it requires a secondary Hit from a roll vs fortitude.

 

Next BPM version will display the actual 50% 

[Lunateric]

Sorry to hijack this thread but was wondering what build you guys would recommend to maximize the effects of Stalker's Patience. I'd like to try a single class stalker because wordplay but not sure how they fare at higher levels and I'm always put off by resource limited classes. Monk/Soul Blade also sounds amazing because the extra hit spam should be off the charts and you get a significant accuracy boost through Borrowed Instincts.

Important to note Phantom Foes adds an easy way to proc flanked for ciphers.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Lunateric

[Shai Hulud]

8 hours ago, Lunateric said:

Sorry to hijack this thread but was wondering what build you guys would recommend to maximize the effects of Stalker's Patience. I'd like to try a single class stalker because wordplay but not sure how they fare at higher levels and I'm always put off by resource limited classes. Monk/Soul Blade also sounds amazing because the extra hit spam should be off the charts and you get a significant accuracy boost through Borrowed Instincts.

Important to note Phantom Foes adds an easy way to proc flanked for ciphers.

Something that crits close to 100 percent. I had a lot of fun with a ghost heart / barbarian. Any ranger or ranger / x should crit normal enemies nearly every hit and even bosses most hits if you spec for it. Absolute top tier accuracy would be a seer build. Hunters are pretty good too. But with the right gear a single class stalker would have plenty of accuracy.

SC stalker is improved quite a bit with BPM mod, ranger pet has better survivability and you can even get resource return using 8th level ability bonded fury. Also hunters claw +accuracy and upgrades are easier to use with BPM. The ability costs less and is per battle. I like to use it in tough fights with a potion of enlightenment. I dual wield sun and moon and anything else and it takes 3 hunters claw to get +18 accuracy since sun and moon strikes twice. Then if I need healing I use shadowed hunters. From there you should basically always crit one-handing stalkers patience (main exception things like dragon scales). Ranger/barbarian is interesting because crits can interrupt carnage aoe and blood storm is improved along with stalwart defiance making it a dps monster with good cc. Rangers and barbarians both feel a lot better with the mod imo. 

I have played FF / soul blade a lot (solo mostly) and it is an amazing build but I didn't use weapons. I assume you mean some other monk / soul blade. With heartbeat drumming and swift flurry you'd get tons of mercy strikes. Which one is best depends on your party and your goals. Helwalker/stalker could be pretty devastating but also pretty fragile so I'd be hesitant personally. Vanilla monk or nalpazca would be fine. Never really gotten shattered pillar to work right but it might be decent in a high dps build.

Yes ciphers can get about as much accuracy as rangers. Borrowed instinct is +20 psychovampiric shield is effectively +10 and phantom foes +10 and +1 PEN. Can further debuff accuracy with resolve afflictions, which partially stack with PVS.

Rangers have potentially more accuracy with hunters claw but you won't use it most battles. Important note for seers...does not stack with borrowed instinct iirc.

[Tomucci]

8 hours ago, Lunateric said:

Sorry to hijack this thread but was wondering what build you guys would recommend to maximize the effects of Stalker's Patience. I'd like to try a single class stalker because wordplay but not sure how they fare at higher levels and I'm always put off by resource limited classes. Monk/Soul Blade also sounds amazing because the extra hit spam should be off the charts and you get a significant accuracy boost through Borrowed Instincts.

Important to note Phantom Foes adds an easy way to proc flanked for ciphers.

I reckon monk/ranger, combine heartbeat drumming/swift flurry and long pain from monk with high accuracy and driving flight from ranger

I'm personally thinking of combining it with soul blade cipher because of borrowed instincts acc bonus and triggering multiple procs will build up focus quickly for the raw dmg attack

Rogue is a possibility maybe if it triggers with riposte because that will give you extra opportunities, plus a little bit of hit to crit conversion 

Fighter and berserker are decent contenders too with their hit to crit conversions 

Edited May 21, 2023 by Tomucci

[Boeroer]

Stalker/Monk with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming is great. 

ACC of Ranger and Monk sides will stack nicely (only beat by Ranger/Cipher) - and every proc of Swift Flurry and/or Heartbeat Drumming can proc the skipping of recovery. So with every crit the chance of actually receiving 0 recovery is much higher. Imo this is the best class combo for Stalker's Patience. Subclass of the Monk depends a bit I guess. All of them will work. FF grants a nice alternative dmg type without the need of an actual other weapon, Helwalker has the higher MIG and therefore also higher fortitude, once you use Instruments of Pain and poke from range the Nalpasca + Enduring Dance has great "passive" wound generation and so on.

I personally used the Stalker/Nalpasca variant and it was good - but only because I played the other subclasses a lot before that and wanted some change.   

[Shai Hulud]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Stalker/Monk with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming is great. 

ACC of Ranger and Monk sides will stack nicely (only beat by Ranger/Cipher) - and every proc of Swift Flurry and/or Heartbeat Drumming can proc the skipping of recovery. So with every crit the chance of actually receiving 0 recovery is much higher. Imo this is the best class combo for Stalker's Patience. Subclass of the Monk depends a bit I guess. All of them will work. FF grants a nice alternative dmg type without the need of an actual other weapon, Helwalker has the higher MIG and therefore also higher fortitude, once you use Instruments of Pain and poke from range the Nalpasca + Enduring Dance has great "passive" wound generation and so on.

I personally used the Stalker/Nalpasca variant and it was good - but only because I played the other subclasses a lot before that and wanted some change.   

Accuracy only second to ranger/cipher? That's assuming you can keep up enduring dance I guess? Which with a melee character you probably can't. Fighter/ranger is pretty good for crits with intuitive and conqueror stance, also weapon specialization and mastery give bonus accuracy with community patch. Really though if you use ranger pet properly and attack marked + flanked (with pet) targets you have like +30 to +40 just from that (depending on survival of the fittest). Cap of the Laughingstock, blinky, and gauntlets of accuracy also help. And one-handing. Doing all that you should crit every time versus normal opponents especially if you have nature's resolve.

@Tomucci Any weapon you carry can proc ripostes, and mercy strike can trigger from ripostes, but you'd want to build high deflection to get more ripostes and it's hard to go for both high deflection and accuracy. 

[Boeroer]

14 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Accuracy only second to ranger/cipher? That's assuming you can keep up enduring dance I guess? Which with a melee character you probably can't.

19 hours ago, Boeroer said:

[...]once you use Instruments of Pain and poke from range[...]

Yes, the accuracy of Ranger/Monk is only second to Ranger/Cipher. Enduring Dance can already be very useful if you don't try to tank several enemies and if you can reliably disable opponents so you don't get hit a lot (see Force of Anguish and Stunning Surge). Once you use Instruments of Pain it's a non-issue and the second best individual active accuracy buff any class has after Cipher's Borrowed Instincts.

Besides that the main point was that Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming offer multiple additional chances to proc the recovery skip of Mercy Strike which significantly improves the odds over any other class combo. I tried a lot of combinations with Mercy Strike and this was simply the best. Ofc. the skipped recovery also leads to a faster repetition of Swift Flurry/HBD procs which in turn triggers Mercy Strike more often in a given time and so on...

---

By the way: the best way for me to utilize this was to use Stalker's Patience not one-handed with One Handed Style (although that's def. a viable option) but instead to mainly use Efficient Anguish with Stalker's Patience and Tuotilo's Palm as the primary weapon setup.
That way you'll get the speed bonus for dual wielding and Two-Weapon Style (and all the defensive benefits ofc.) but will only do attack rolls with the spear - to maximize the chances for Mercy Strike. For Stunnig Surge you'll still have a proper Full Attack with two weapons - which is helpful for the Mortification refund. With Enervating Blows and Stunning Surge you can drop enemies fortitude so the hit quality of Efficient Anguish will improve. You will not have the +12 ACC of course. At the beginning of the game one-handed usage has more impact - but at some point and against the usual non-boss enemies I found the raises attack speed and defenses to be more useful than the added accuracy (which is plenty after a while).
Ofc. Tutilo's Palm becomes even more interesting if you pick a Forbidden Fist as Monk subclass - because your FF attack will profit from the shield's ACC/dmg enchantments for unarmed attacks even if you carry the spear in the main hand.

---

Stalker/Fighter will also have its benefits, no doubt. I also tried Berserker/Helwalker, Stalker/Berserker, Stalker/Streetfighter, Stalker/Assassin, Assassin/FF, Stalker/Bleak Walker, Stalker/Soulblade and even Bleak Walker/Devoted - maybe some others I don't remember. I think besides Ranger/Monk I enjoyed Stalker/Assassin quite a bit - more bc. of thematic reasons though. Assassin/FF was planned for something else entirely - but I started to have a lot of fun with an Arterial Strike from stealth and a follow-up Efficient Anguish: enemies would get up again and try to chase me but quickly die from the DoT of Arterial Strike and the DoT of Stalker's Patience. I didn't carry on with this though. Also Mercy Strike is kind of wasteed here until you get Instruments of Pain - because the enemies are pushed away all the time so the skipped recovery doesn't help you as much (unless you have Instruments of Pain). I later tried to evolve that lil' synergy with Llengrath's Warding Staff + Arterial Strike + Phantom and play Arterial-Strike-Tennis - but the staff comes too late for my liking. Force of Anguish is the better tool imo.   

Edited May 22, 2023 by Boeroer

[limaxophobiacq]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Yes, the accuracy of Ranger/Monk is only second to Ranger/Cipher. Enduring Dance can already be very useful if you don't try to tank several enemies and if you can reliably disable opponents so you don't get hit a lot (see Force of Anguish and Stunning Surge). Once you use Instruments of Pain it's a non-issue and the second best individual active accuracy buff any class has after Cipher's Borrowed Instincts.

Hey it's not Citzal's Martial Power fault other wizard spells are too good to disable casting for +20 accuracy but it shouldn't be forgotten .

[Boeroer]

Yeah okay.

For solo one could also argue that Priest can have higher acc.

 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Boeroer

[Shai Hulud]

6 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Yeah okay.

For solo one could also argue that Priest can have higher acc.

 

 

I've tried using instruments of pain from range but it is difficult to maintain enough wounds to keep up dichotomous souls plus instruments of pain (and sometimes other stuff like enlightened agony and thunderous blows). It can be done in some fights and is even necessary (like dorudugan) but with mobs it's mostly impossible. But not only that you're also maintaining enough wounds to spam efficient anguish? Or do you rely on other characters to keep back the tide and just maintain insruments of pain + efficient anguish I guess? Also in general I haven't been able to keep up enduring dance (solo) and have to reuse the ability which gets expensive.

I wonder if a shattered pillar / ranger would be a viable option here (with community patch). I've never really been able to get it to work very well for wound generation but presumably you get wounds from every time mercy strike procs. I like nalpazcas in theory but the micro of finding enough svef is kind of annoying. 

Oh and I initially figured out stalker's patience was way better than it says using a ghost heart / barbarian with dumped RES and max CON. It isn't the king of proccing mercy strikes but every time it does proc you trigger carnage and damage from blood storm so it does just massive amounts of DPS. And if using BPM it is even better since every proc can interrupt groups. Ranger/monk is interesting though. 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[elbe]

I'm not a fan of bashing shields like Tutilos Palm with Stalkers Patience because after Mercy Strike triggers it will skip recover to the shield bash attack instead of another attack with the spear.
Not sure I follow the logic of using efficient anguish to only attack with the spear.  Wouldn't the push effect undermine the benefit of skipping recovery, because now you have to chase after the target?

[Shai Hulud]

2 hours ago, elbe said:

I'm not a fan of bashing shields like Tutilos Palm with Stalkers Patience because after Mercy Strike triggers it will skip recover to the shield bash attack instead of another attack with the spear.
Not sure I follow the logic of using efficient anguish to only attack with the spear.  Wouldn't the push effect undermine the benefit of skipping recovery, because now you have to chase after the target?

Force of Anguish / Efficient Anguish use just the primary attack, but are you saying if you get a double strike from efficient anguish it would then skip to the shield? And @Boeroer keeps up instruments of pain which gives +500% melee reach, so after hitting someone with efficient anguish you can do it again. Eventually they'll fall out of range but I'm not sure how long this takes. 

One-handing Stalker's Patience with a ranger I was getting lots of triple+ strikes so if it does skip to the shield bash that seems like a good reason not to use one, but I suspect if you manually time (or script to spam) efficient anguish as long as you have wounds it will keep doing the primary strike. 

Doesn't really seem like you need the shield at range but it does count as two-weapon so when you don't trigger mercy strike the recovery would be shorter. But you skip recovery about half the time if you always crit so if the +12 accuracy from one-handing is enough to get you from "usually crit" to "always crit" I would rather one-hand. 

[Okkes]

Is force of anguish even proc stalker's patient extra attack and heartbeat/swift flurry? In my experience its not because push effect.

[Shai Hulud]

8 minutes ago, Okkes said:

Is force of anguish even proc stalker's patient extra attack and heartbeat/swift flurry? In my experience its not because push effect.

Should with instruments of pain, though eventually they'd be knocked out of reach

[elbe]

49 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Force of Anguish / Efficient Anguish use just the primary attack, but are you saying if you get a double strike from efficient anguish it would then skip to the shield? And @Boeroer keeps up instruments of pain which gives +500% melee reach, so after hitting someone with efficient anguish you can do it again. Eventually they'll fall out of range but I'm not sure how long this takes. 

One-handing Stalker's Patience with a ranger I was getting lots of triple+ strikes so if it does skip to the shield bash that seems like a good reason not to use one, but I suspect if you manually time (or script to spam) efficient anguish as long as you have wounds it will keep doing the primary strike. 

Doesn't really seem like you need the shield at range but it does count as two-weapon so when you don't trigger mercy strike the recovery would be shorter. But you skip recovery about half the time if you always crit so if the +12 accuracy from one-handing is enough to get you from "usually crit" to "always crit" I would rather one-hand. 

After an attack skill like efficient anguish ithe next normal attack should go to your primary weapon first, so you would strike twice with Stalkers Patience.  However my point was more you would push them out of range with efficient anguish so even if you skipped recovery you'd lose the benefit from having to chase down the target.  If you keep instruments of pain up all the time then I suppose that's less of an issue, but that comes late and will cost a lot of wounds to maintain while also spamming efficient anguish.

Proccing mercy strike on a normal weapon attack with SP will skip recovery to the next attack in the sequence, which if you are using an offhand weapon will mean that weapon.  So if you have stalkers patience and tuotilos palm, and proc mercy strike off a normal attack, you will skip recovery and go to the shield bash which is not ideal.

And as you say, reducing recovery with two weapon style is nice but given you can skip recovery entirely with mercy strike it doesn't seem that big of a benefit. Maybe nice to have as a secondary weapon slot against high deflection enemies where you can't rely on mercy strike triggering as often.

Edited May 22, 2023 by elbe