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

[Lunateric]

4 hours ago, elbe said:

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.

Does the Efficient Anguish expected behavior work the same for Soul Annihilation on Soulblade?, it's also a primary attack so following your previous example with Anguish it should be Soul Annihilation > Mercy Strike proc > second hit with Stalker's Patience immediately after. A Soulblade/Monk with the weapon then sounds superb if you can just fuel your focus generation with all the extra hits from this interaction plus Heartbeat Drumming and Swift Strikes.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Lunateric

[Okkes]

11 minutes ago, Lunateric said:

Does the Efficient Anguish expected behavior work the same for Soul Annihilation on Soulblade?, it's also a primary attack so following your previous example with Anguish it should be Soul Annihilation > Mercy Strike proc > second hit with Stalker's Patience immediately after. A Soulblade/Monk with the weapon then sounds superb if you can just fuel your focus generation with all the extra hits from this interaction plus Heartbeat Drumming and Swift Strikes.

Unfortunately heartbeat/swift flurry doesn't generate focus

 

[Boeroer]

20 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?

Primary attack only means only the spear is used. Yet you keep the bonus of dual wielding for the times Mercy Strike doesn't proc. If you use auto attacks or Full Attacks you would be right though.

17 hours 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.

If you look at the combat log you will see that Swift Flurry/HBD attacks will get executed BEFORE the initial attack that triggered them in the first place. It seems that internally the initial attack is resolved and it get determined whether Swift Flurry and HBD will proc (recursively if they proc themselves) and after everthing's calculated the bonus attacks get executed first and the initial attack last. Last comes Carnage (if you have that). That way push effects (or knockup-effects) cause zero problems with Swift Flurry/HBD but will push enemies into the Carnage area. One reason why I love to use Efficient Anguish with a Barbarian/Monk.

The "Red FLag Flying" DoT enchantment on Mohara Tanga (that can proc itself on crit and can cause attack roll chains even without Swift Flurry/HBD) works the same by the way: additional attacks execute first, initial attack last.

17 hours ago, elbe said:

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.

That is correct. Unless you run into crowds and push them all away one after the other (doable an fun, but then Enduring Dance is less of a reliable option). You'll need Instruments of Pain to pick off singular foes and still be able to profit from the recovery skip with Force of Anguish.
An alternative is to use Evasive Roll to follow the pushed enemy instantly. It has no recovery so you can do push-roll-push in very quick succession if Mercy Strike triggers. But it will cost some Bond (1 per Evasive Roll). But it can be a good way to separate an enemy from the crowd very quickly
A Nalpasca with Enduring Dance has very good passive wound generation so it's easier to use Instruments of Pain + Efficient Anguish non-stop later on. You can use Hylea's Talons to generate more wounds through self damage (or hostile effect if FF)). The self damage doesn't harm Enduring Dance - it doesn't count.
If you don't want that sort of micromanagement and frequently use auto-attacks then one-handed style (or a normal, non-bashing shield) would be better. 

Or... you could use a ranged weapon in the offhand for dual wielding speed but only spear usage (in melee). In this case a Monk/Streetfigher or Ranger/Streetfighter could be fun with a blunderbuss in the offhand and the spear in the main hand. Fire the blunderbuss towards some enemy at range, get -50% recovery time and +50% sneak attack for the spear against a melee enemy. I didn't try this but it could be fun. 

Easiest solution is to go one-handed I guess. I did that for a whole playthrough with a Ranger/Monk with Mohara Tanga and it works absolutlely well for crits - actually too well because the game kept crashing against normal enemies (endless crit chains will result in some overflow and shut down the game).      

 

[Boeroer]

On 5/23/2023 at 4:22 AM, Lunateric said:

Does the Efficient Anguish expected behavior work the same for Soul Annihilation on Soulblade?, it's also a primary attack so following your previous example with Anguish it should be Soul Annihilation > Mercy Strike proc > second hit with Stalker's Patience immediately after. A Soulblade/Monk with the weapon then sounds superb if you can just fuel your focus generation with all the extra hits from this interaction plus Heartbeat Drumming and Swift Strikes.

That last part doesn't work, as Okkes already pointed out. But your idea goes into the right direction. You just need another weapon that (re)generates focus while executing Soul Annihilation. That weapon is Sun & Moon.

Since it has two separate attack rolls with its two flail heads: Soul Annihilation will spend the focus for raw damage on the first attack roll - the second attack roll will already generate focus again. You will not have a ton - but usually enough to use Soul Annihilation again. That way you can spam Soul Annihilation all the time (primary attack) and skip the low dmg shield bash - but have dual wielding speed. However - it is best to use a Soulblade/Rogue to make sure that the second flail head does enough dmg per hit to get enough focus for Soul Annihilation again. But Monk with Tuning Wheel could be good enough, too - I didn't try that. But Sun & Moon is also an excellent weapon for Swift Flurry because of the double attack roll which increases the chance to proc Swift Flurry significantly.   

Edited May 24, 2023 by Boeroer

[Tomucci]

Apologies, asked something that I realised was already asked and now I can't figure out how to delete the message -.-

Edited May 23, 2023 by Tomucci