Deep Wound and Avatar of Melandru questions for PvE

Deep Wound and Avatar of Melandru. Both are very popular, and I don’t think I fully understand why. I’m a fairly new Dervish; a couple of “skill point levels” beyond 20, but I’ve only done maybe 10 –12 quests total in Kourna, so lack of exposure to different instances may explain some of the ignorance. In any case, can anyone explain to me the following:

#1. Deep Wound. I don’t think I quite understand the love for DW in PvE. Obviously, the goal in PvE is not to lower max health or to lower healing, since the enemy will be dead within seconds. From what I hear, people like DW in PvE for the sheer amount of damage it does. But I really haven’t seen much damage increase from this at all.

Take for example Wearying Strike [wearying strike]. At my level of Scythe Mastery, I believe it does +18 damage and gives a DW. Does that mean this attack does my normal scythe damage, plus an extra 18, plus an extra 20% of opponent’s max health? The fact that I don’t see huge damage numbers for this would suggest one of two things: 1) The damage done by DW does not pop up above the enemy as a visible number, or 2) The majority of enemies in PvE have very low health. In that case, DW wouldn’t seem worth it, unless you knew you were going out specifically to kill a boss.

#2. Avatar of Melandru [avatar of melandru]. Seems like the most popular PvE avatar. Not sure I get it. 25 energy seems like an awful lot for +100 health that isn’t really needed if you have a couple of monk heroes/henchmen. There is the possibility that this allows certain skills that require you to have more health than your opponent. But, again, in PvE almost everything has low health, so I don’t think the extra 100 is needed.

The other thing about Melandru is the immunity to conditions. Maybe conditions become more common later, but so far I get hit with a condition very very rarely. And if I do, it’s usually just Bleeding, which doesn’t frighten anybody. So, I’ve decided that the argument for Melandru must come down to the fact that it allows a condition-free use of Wearying Strike….and maybe I’ll understand why that's so great when I fully understand Deep Wound.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can give me.

You don't see damage when applying deepwound, its just a condition that does its thing. Scythe damage only gets to astronomical numbers when it crit's (ie: a low chance or when you hit a moving foe) and since in PVE its usually the monsters are just standing around and you beat on them, it won't be reaching its full potential. The super awesome thing about Melandru's is the immunity to conditions (like deep wound) which will show up a lot or not at all depending on the area. The reason it appears everything in PVE has low health is because almost everything in Elona is lvl 20 with crappy monks so everything just blows up. To get around the steep(spelling?) cost of Melandru's bring a + energy staff or +15 -/1 swaps to cast.

The main thing is that this build is more useful in PvP where it makes you virtually unspikable for the duration and immune to blind/cripple.

#1: Deep Wound earns kills. It also makes kills in PVE alot easier to achieve.

#2: 25 energy for 60 seconds of godmode. Not to mention with [[eternal aura], you can keep it up forever and spam Eviscerate for only 10 energy.

Be sure to switch to a staff for casting Eternal Aura, and energy should be back for a spike in a few seconds, regen is quite good on a Dervish and autoattacking is still good because the Dervs' weapon is stupid powerful.

Deep wound is a bit less effective in PvE for a few reasons:

1. It's 20%, but the max health loss it can cause is 100.
2. Enemies in high end PvE regularly have 700-1k health.
3. The -20% healing isn't too useful, because enemies in PvE aren't really defending themselves anyway.

Its real use in PvP is that whenever a target is deep wounded, its in very real danger in death unless deep wound is taken off or it gets a large prot. Kills in PvP would almost never happen if deep wound didn't exist. In PvE though, all were looking at is damage. For that reason you can consider Deep Wound to be an unstackable 100 damage skill for all intents and purposes.

Now, the use of [Avatar of Melandru] is mostly for the immunity towards conditions. Again in PvP, no deep wound and immunity to cripple basically means the Melandru dervish can overextend all they want with almost no worries. The +100 health is really just icing on the cake. In PvE however, a large number of areas have either no conditions or conditions that are meaningless, so its usefulness is dependent on the area. Wearying strike is the main combo that takes advantage of melandrus, though deed wound can be effected in other ways.

Personally in PvE I find [Avatar of Lyssa] builds using ["Finish Him!"] as deep wound to be more effective, but other then Lyssa Melandru is basically your only other effective option. Dervishes in PvE kill things fast either way

Wow. Thanks, guys, for your fast responses.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rakim B You don't see damage when applying deepwound, its just a condition that does its thing. But the damage is still done, right? So, if I use [wearying strike] on a creature with 500 health...and my scythe hits for 30, I will see 48 (30 + 18 extra) pop up over the creature, but won't see the 100 from the DW, even though the actual amount removed from the health bar was 148?

Quote: Originally Posted by Tyla Deep Wound earns kills. It also makes kills in PVE alot easier to achieve. Do you just mean because it causes so much damage, or because it is harder to heal?

Quote: Originally Posted by The Meth

Quote: Do you just mean because it causes so much damage, or because it is harder to heal? Because of both. 20% health is alot of health, and usually a DW'd target will die. Fast. If not, it's an enemy with a huge amount of health.

Considering it's usually easy to apply and you can apply it fast, it never leaves most of my bars.

Quote: Originally Posted by fivetiger

Quote: Originally Posted by fivetiger I get the feeling that lvl. 20-ish creatures generally have less than 500 health. Is there a way to look that up? I just feel like DW doesn't do an extra 100, but I could be wrong. Lvl 20 enemies should have about 500 health on average, which means DW does an effective 100 damage. The problem is lvl 26+ enemies, where Deep wound is capped at 100 and the enemies have far higher health. Enemy health past lvl 20 quite often doesn't follow the same rules players do up to lvl 20. Aatxe for example have over 1000 health even in NM. There are some weaker enemies who at lvl 20 have less then 500 health, but the fact that they are weaker to deep wound means that they are more susceptible to normal damage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fivetiger To me, it seems like the areas have such a mix of creatures that what I want to have equipped is more determined by what creature I come across rather than what area I'm in. That makes the whole "prepare your skill bar for the area" thing kind of pointless. Are there areas later that have a more cohesive set of dangers? For example, an entire area that is heavy with conditions, or an area that is heavy with hexes, etc? Most areas you are just fine with spot removals from monks, but there are certain ones like Shards of Orr, where nearly every mob can hit you with blind every few seconds. Just being familiar with the area should tell you whether its worth it. If you go into a place and start thinking 'god damn these bastards wont stop putting X on me' that should tell you what to use

For PvE I'd use a [Wounding Strike] for deep wound instead. It's easier to manage energy-wise. Deal more damage with SoH (AoM can add this too though), and Order or Conjure. Condition isn't an issue in PvE unless you're in Shards of Orr.

1. deep wound lowers current and max health by 20% (up to 100). so if you deep wound a 450/500 target and deal 50 damage their health drops to 300/400, which makes them a hell of a lot easier to kill. this isnt technically "damage" though, so youwont see any numbers pop up.

2. AoM makes you not die, simple as that. It makes you immune to deep wound (you die), blind (you deal no damage), weakness (you deal no damage), and crippled (you cant catch enemies). all of these conditions become more common as you progress through the game. the +100 health also makes you harder to kill, provides higher health for things like victorious sweep and most importantly, lowers your priority status on the enemy list. you have a lower base armor than a warrior, so that and low health on the frontline makes you the automatic target for almost everything, raise your health and Mr. ursan standing next to you starts to take some heat.

AoM is great when you want to survive, however most of PvE is rediculously easy. I prefer Lyssa which cranks out damage and lets me cast all of my enchantments at once and still have the energy to fight.

Deep wound isn't actually damage, so it won't show up. You'll see a bit of the target's health bar become grey however, signifying that they've lost 20% of their health(up to 100 health, of course).

didnt read every post may have been said but the DW damage does not show up...it just shows a gray bar next to their health. That scythe atk(forgot the name) effectively removes much more than the damage thats shown, you just don't know it :P
Sure you can use Wounding Strike for deep wound, but AoM gives bonus hp AND protects from ALL conditions, meaning the monks will be able to heal other ppl more especially if you keep a bunch of enchants on you and mystic regen :O