Has any Storm Screamer done the awaking to FW yet?
Do you feel it's better or worse than the SS?
What should I be aware of before picking skills for FW (example: I pick this and lose that)?
Do we lose the level 82 AOE or do we get to keep it?
I'm expecting to be ready to do my awaking this weekend, and any information would greatly appreciated.
first of all you can now choose which element your elemental skills affect (except for old ones i would guess), plus if you don't like your current element you can 2 times exchange element in a weapon. although i don't recommend changing wind since it knocks back.
the new spam nuke (like hurricane was) comes in 2 - elemental spike and elemental crash. power is 122 and 144 so its better than unenchanted hurricane. crash also has additional effects, for instance it knocks back with wind, which is very nice.
you should learn to use them both one after another since they have much longer refresh than hurricane had.
the skills i have decided to not trade for the new skills:
1. robe mastery - since you can enchant it for mdef, and you won't have a chance to OE new skills until you get level 99 (mb less for some skills, i am not sure)
2. empowering echo, arcane power. they are replaced by the 30 second self buffs that have several minutes reuse. i hate such skills since i always forget to use them in time, so i just kept my superior dark elf matk instead. maybe for pvp they are very good though.
3. aura blast. this is a very nice aoe with power 199, which is enough to compensate for it being non elemental. i just love this nuke so i decided to keep it, especially considering that 1 of the new elemental mass nukes has VERY small area of effect. the replacement skill Mass Death Curse however seems like a good debuff (but only for multiple targets since you get single target Death Curse anyway), oh well i still think another mass nuke is nice to have. it's pve only though so if you are into mass pvp then you want MDC.
4. death siphon.. i took it since i did not know better.. this is pretty much useless skill. in the time it takes to get any significant amounts of hp using it, you will be long dead, since you can't do anything while it's active. i don't remember what it replaced but if it's anything useful, you'd better keep that.
the new aoe nukes are also nice but they have issues. elemental blast has extremely small area of effect so it only affects multiple enemies when they are hitting something (for example me) at melee range. elemental storm is a bit better but sometimes it misses some enemies which seem to stand in the radius... maybe it's just lag though.
there are other goodies, especially cool are magical charge/evasion... basically blink forward/backward so you can easily get out of approaching mobs range to avoid melee damage.
I love empowering echo as it is as a SS, but now your telling me they've killed 25% of my m.atk.? That sucks. Should I assume that your m.atk. is raised a lot after awaking? What is your m.atk. with just self 20 minute buffs?
no you don't lose matk, I meant you lose matk by not having the EE and AP all the time.
I think the base matk was not changed or maybe increased a little. can't check right now, but I remember that with my icarus spirit +3, in Major Arcana set, with Aoere buff (basically 78% and 20% matk plus 6% from synergy if I didn't forget to turn it on) and SD dances (no bers dance), plus AP and EE I have about 12k matk. will be more when I get my SD to 85 and awaken as a Iss...
Was suprised to see my matk was not increased much over Stormscreamer (up to 12k before, up to 13k now) even when I kept Empowering Echo - but I'm glad I kept that definately.
I didn't keep arcane roar or arcane power which I wonder about, but oh well (wanted that raise-up hold spell, and I gave into the mdef boost).
I also kept Cyclone, but havn't had a chance to utilise that properly in a group yet.
As for the actual skills, they generally kill a LOT faster than Stormscreamer skills in my experience, mostly due to the high-power long-cast nuke which can crit for 29,000 damage on lvl85 mobs.
of course it got more power. as an example I have tried before to solo (with box support) t-rex on PI and failed a few times, now its a piece of cake, goes down in 2 minutes easy.
the new power comes from the following
the new 2 nukes. they refresh about 2-3 sec and have more power than the hurricane. so you can sustain about twice the dps you could with hurricane.
one of these skills has knockback which keeps targets from you. helps a lot in surviving.
the nuke with 356 power. casts kind of long (like vortex perhaps) but more than twice as powerful, also pretty spammable. it's like vortex+slug, with much shorter reuse.
the working fear, mass fear and the skill that disables the target for a few seconds by raising it in the air. also helps surviving.
the blinks which are also mass nukes around self with 120 power, although not elemental.
another mass nuke around yourself that knocks back targets.
there is also lvl 87 skill that allows to escape and travel really fast, plus the horse transform which all awakened classes get.
oh and you also get much more hp, with kookaburra's bless i had about 12k i think
Thanks olgen (and everyone else) that was very helpfull. I'm starting to get the worm and fuzzies again about all the time I've put into this toon.
One more off the wall question to the FW's out there. After being awakened and you are forced to solo do to lack of parties wanting your class (if still the case), I assume that 2-3 shot kills are still norm to keep the MP to XP ratio high or is MP no longer that much of an issue?
Hmmm, now that I'm awake, I'm thinking I should have went summoner. Maybe it's just me, but it seamed my PS sub got more groups than my FW does, granted I've only been awake for two days. I'm so sick of the solo grind.