The thing that makes wide/towering kinda pointless is how you can work around not having it. If you do your pulls properly, you can get all the mobs in your arc anyways, making those SA's kinda redundant.
imo haste for more damage, critstun to reduce a little damage taken, health for pvp.
The thing that makes wide/towering kinda pointless is how you can work around not having it. If you do your pulls properly, you can get all the mobs in your arc anyways, making those SA's kinda redundant.
imo haste for more damage, critstun to reduce a little damage taken, health for pvp.
Towering Blow - Lengthens your total distance on your Pole Swing. I've never encountered a situation where this SA has been useful. When you run to a wall, all the mobs line up good enough that you can hit them without this SA.
Wide Blow - Broadens Your Poles Swing. More mobs you can hit when they don't line up good, or when you can't do the corner pull.
But from the 2, Wide Blow for sure. You almost always get into problems with Towering Blow, when you end up AOEing outside catas. Chests, other mobs, re-spawned mobs, etc tend to get caught up in the Huge Length.
But Yeah, if you have the option Crit Stun, Haste or maybe Health are better options. I know Crit Stun saved my butt on more than 1 occasion.
you can get health on a low C weapon for the same effect and use haste or crit stun for when you pole
True you can, but I pvp often (on my xp spot or gank) and and losing thousand of hp switching between blunt or pole is bad. And like that I don't have to take 2 or 3 heal before going to pull if I don't have health on my pole.
I never find a spot where I could use Wide blow. But in darkness room I think I could use towering but it s not a must have. Better is critical stun or haste for pve.
I've never found towering blow or wide blow useful. If I'm soloing, I have a hard time puling more than 4 catacomb type white-red mobs. If I'm in a group, if i cant hit them all, oh well. Im sorry i only hit 14 of the 18 mobs. I think I would rather have health and then have tattooes. haste, and crit stun are also fun.
In the current game, as a healer, I can see a role for wide blow SA.
Your crit-stun SA doesn't help me, cuz if the mob is already getting hit, it's not a problem. After the VR nerf, it may be more helpful. In no way does it help us kill faster.
A few times a night, there's a bad pull where the mobs just won't stack up right - they get on the inside or something stupid that lets them not be getting hit. Those pulls are the ones that make us have to sit for a while and waste time, cuz the healer blew all his mp keeping you alive, maybe drew aggro from those unhit mobs, etc. Wide blow SA, if it prevents those bad pulls, will get you more killing done in a night.
Health is meh, just compensation because everyone always tattoos their CON down so massively, in which case it's prob'ly good. As a healer, it really doesn't matter to me if you have health or not, altho I can imagine it making you limit the # of mobs you pull.
Haste is always yummy ;) Will get you thru your piles (of mobs and SS) faster.
Well I went with the Wide Blow and am thus far really loving it. Theres nothing quite like pulling an entire big cata room and having a nice huge pile of loot there waiting for you. Too bad that I waited until now to figure out how much this rules. :p
My friend recommends a health blunt + shield for pulling. He also likes anger on lance. Shield + blesss shield = good block dmg from mobs while pulling, and shield can block mage dmg to.
Wide blow can be good for them bad pulls, or bad pull zones...I seem to have a issue with getting mobs to stack in corners in cata's for some reason.
long blow could be good for PvP in side throne rooms, or small places like cata's, Pagens, or other tite spots that your enemy might get stuck in. Lost of people small areas.
I can see the value of health sometimes, but not really a benifet in kill speed. I'd much rather have a useful SA that will help me kill faster or safer...and more HP on a dwarf don't seem that useful to me, more of a waste in money.
Personally I'd like to get a good haste pole and whack away at them.
My friend recommends a health blunt + shield for pulling. He also likes anger on lance. Shield + blesss shield = good block dmg from mobs while pulling, and shield can block mage dmg to.
I just made an orcish glaive with towering blow yesterday to test it, since I've never had one of the things myself.
I honestly can't say that I noticed any difference at all. If I force-attacked an npc for example, my char would still walk up to the normal range. If I attacked a stationary target with my longblow pole and then switched to my regular pole, my character would keep hitting without moving closer.
I tried taking a step away and force-attack-stand'ing the npc, but no matter how small that step was, I would be out of range. When I got in range with my longblow pole, I'd also be in range with my normal pole.
I had two friends help me test it in the arena, I had them stand as close together as possible. All 3 of us would line up in a single row, and I'd attack the nearest one. I would still only hit the one I had targeted unless I targeted the one on the far side, as if the polearm range only extends to your target.
It definately has no effect on specials. I would inch up to my friends trying to get the exact max range on both my regular and normal pole, and after about 30 minutes of constantly trying, I was not able to find a spot where I'd hit them with longblow but not without.
The *only* situation where it made a difference, was if I attacked two adjacent targets from the side (kinda like . : where I'm the left dot). My normal pole would hit one while the longblow would hit both.
It's mostly the first point which to me seems to make it kinda useless. I'm sure it allows you to hit those few extra mobs in that odd messy pull, but.. just not sure if I'd spell tens of millions on it while forfeiting something like critstun, haste, or health.
I just made an orcish glaive with towering blow yesterday to test it, since I've never had one of the things myself.
I honestly can't say that I noticed any difference at all. If I force-attacked an npc for example, my char would still walk up to the normal range. If I attacked a stationary target with my longblow pole and then switched to my regular pole, my character would keep hitting without moving closer.
I tried taking a step away and force-attack-stand'ing the npc, but no matter how small that step was, I would be out of range. When I got in range with my longblow pole, I'd also be in range with my normal pole.
I had two friends help me test it in the arena, I had them stand as close together as possible. All 3 of us would line up in a single row, and I'd attack the nearest one. I would still only hit the one I had targeted unless I targeted the one on the far side, as if the polearm range only extends to your target.
It definately has no effect on specials. I would inch up to my friends trying to get the exact max range on both my regular and normal pole, and after about 30 minutes of constantly trying, I was not able to find a spot where I'd hit them with longblow but not without.
The *only* situation where it made a difference, was if I attacked two adjacent targets from the side (kinda like . : where I'm the left dot). My normal pole would hit one while the longblow would hit both.
It's mostly the first point which to me seems to make it kinda useless. I'm sure it allows you to hit those few extra mobs in that odd messy pull, but.. just not sure if I'd spell tens of millions on it while forfeiting something like critstun, haste, or health.
As a BH, pretty much all I do is solo AOE... I prefer the health SA... and I see no sense in wideblow... it's not so difficult to stack the mobs in a corner that you should need an sa like that... but when you pull too many and are solo... it's nice to have all the extra HP.
As a BH, pretty much all I do is solo AOE... I prefer the health SA... and I see no sense in wideblow... it's not so difficult to stack the mobs in a corner that you should need an sa like that... but when you pull too many and are solo... it's nice to have all the extra HP.
I just made the switch from crt stun to wide blow yesterday with my friends BD.
Not long after I dinged 55 someone dropped 2 rooms on my train of 1 and 1/2 rooms; so I had 3 and 1/2 rooms of mobs on me, and I didn't miss one single mob cause I had wide blow.
It does matter, it makes a huge difference in how many mobs you can hit, and how wide your arc is. I still want to try out haste halberd and tallum heavy.
But for the most part I think I'm sold on the wide blow it seems to matter that much.
I tried WB for a few levels on a pole I borrowed, but can't say I noticed much difference myself. I kinda raise my eyebrows at tallum glaives with wideblow (considering the cost to get it and the health alternative), but people keep telling me it really helps.
I'm curious, does it increase aoe cap? Even without WB I still have no problems reaching that cap, so I honestly never saw the appeal in it.
I'm curious, does it increase aoe cap? Even without WB I still have no problems reaching that cap, so I honestly never saw the appeal in it.
I'm not sure but I think so.
It helps in cata's cause when you pull to conners that AI forces mobs to fall out side my arc from time to time, making me get hit when I can't hit back. with WB I don't miss those mobs any more.
come on bartz this weekend I'll show you. PM me your chr name and time, I'll meet you this weekend and show you what I mean.
well reading back over this. and having hellbound active, with ct2.1 on its way.
I'd saw I'm still sticked on WB has being the best SA option for weapons. Atlest till A/g. You don't see too many people poling any more these days.
VR nerf hit players hard. Deffently need a live healer if you want to pole, and you need a recharger.
Alot of people with sub's swear by the lesser celistiral shield (enchanter sub). While I think chance haste would help alot, they don't think it will proc enough to be of help. Lesser cel. has a 3% chance to proc, while haste has a 55+% chance.
There's also the knight ability: defense (lesser UD). While it does not make you invulnerable, it lasts far longer than the celestial shield subclass skill (15s vs. 5s), and you can get healed. Well, hard to get it now without the event. Not all that many players have a 75 tank sub.
In fact the Celestial passive pop up a lot in aoe but I took haste instead because I didn't took dance/song & cov too often.
In an incomming update benefic "buff" will work when celestial is up so may be I will change back to Celestial skill but for now it's not that good.
5 of my 7 toons are polers of one form or another.
IMO Towering Blow is never helpful. I've un-TB'd a weapon to replace it w/ Crit Stun and been very happy about it.
Wide Blow is definitely nice - if you pole a lot it's like playing tennis with the net down. It lets you be sloppy. As Tarun says though, if you have skill, then wide blow is a wasted SA, however. If you can form your mob ball properly, then you might as well get Health or Crit Stun or Haste.
5 of my 7 toons are polers of one form or another.
IMO Towering Blow is never helpful. I've un-TB'd a weapon to replace it w/ Crit Stun and been very happy about it.
Wide Blow is definitely nice - if you pole a lot it's like playing tennis with the net down. It lets you be sloppy. As Tarun says though, if you have skill, then wide blow is a wasted SA, however. If you can form your mob ball properly, then you might as well get Health or Crit Stun or Haste.