Balthazar's Spirit Questions.

I play a W/Mo as my main character. I know alot of people have issues with that, seeing as there are just so friggin many of us, but I do redeem myself by playing around with several other very strange builds. Anyways, what I really enjoy is cool combinations of skills. My symbiosis and enchant monk was a riot. But the combo that has been bugging me is Balthazar's Spirit for the W/Mo. Its great when I'm soloing because ALL the monsters are attacking me and it works for any kind of damage whatseover except DOT. It's a great source of mana, but I don't see any difference whatseover to my adrenaline. AND I have studied this extensively. I have tried with 0 smiting, 12 smiting, taking high dmg and low dmg. I have testing absolutely everything I can think of but I can't notice any difference in my adrenaline. So, if anyone knows anything about this skill please post it. It could be that it just doesn't give adrenaline period, but I need to know for sure how it works. If I'm lucky the skill is just broken right now and Anet will fix it in next update to give adrenaline, but I doubt it since it's been like that since the WPE. It would become a much more popular skill if they did. Anyways, thanks to anyone who can give me some information on this.

I agree. I have had issues with this skill for awhile.

I have retinkered my W/Mo and added smite skills for use of Zealots Fire. I still use sword skills while my energy recharges and i have yet to see any adrenaline recharge value with this skill.

I was told that it gives one energy point per damage taken strike and that adrenaline gain is actually linked to smite attibute points and increases per level, which is contrary to what you are saying, so I am still in the dark about that skill.


PS. Don't worry about the large numbers of W/Mo characters. This game has only been out for a month and the character snobs are at it already.

When people ask for advice on a starting character they are told W/Mo. Its the same people who then complain when their advice is taken. Parties need warriors just as much as monks....period. Monks just make an obvious 2nd profession choice to a warrior to aid with healing and enable more solo or hench play.

I don't care, I'm bumping this. It is an important question to me and I would like it answered. On the June 1st patch Anet says they fixed balthazars spirit and some other skills to reflect their text. Well the text hasn't changed which means they must have fixed the adrenaline, but I tested it again with 0 smiting and 10 smiting and couldn't really notice anything. Please, give me some numbers to work with here. Ie 12 smiting = .25 adrenaline each time you are hit. If anyone knows anything about this skill please post it here.

I wish the Idiot Savants Guild would have put this question in their sigil contest. At least that way, we could finally get some sort of answer on this damned skill.

last i heard it was 1 energy and 1.2 adrenaline. or was it 0.2 adrenaline...? no i think it was 1.2..... i only use it for energy management on a mo/me, so i dont know about this adrenaline possible bug.

Most defintetely was not 1.2. I would've noticed that. I think it's somethign like 0.1

Well, I did some testing on Balthazar's Spirit. I walked out the front of Sardelac Sanitarium and let a couple of hulking stone elementals beat on me to see how many times they had to hit me before Sever Artery got the four strikes of adenaline it needed to be fully charged. I counted 25 hits, but I may have been off a couple one way or another. Assuming that's accurate, though, I was getting 0.16 adrenaline per hit.

Then I walked out of Augury Rock and let a devourer hit me a few times. In that case, Sever Artery was fully charged in only 13 hits, so about 0.3 adrenaline per hit.

So it appears that the amount of damage you're taking per hit figures into it. It's not as simple as X damage = Y adrenaline, however. I took about 250 damage from the devourer before Sever Artery was charged, but I only took about 25 damage from the stone elementals before they charged Sever Artery.

I would guess the actual formula has some constant that forms for floor, a minimum you get even if you're hit for like 1 damage, added to some term that takes into account the amount of damage. Maybe something like (and I'm sure this isn't it, this is just an example): log(damage) * factor + constant, but what the factor is, or the constant, or even if it's a log function or some other function (or just damage itself) I know not. In any case, it's more complex than a simple "You get X adrenaline per hit" or "You get X adrenaline for Y points of damage taken".

The problem I see with the way it adds to adrenaline is unless you gain an additional amount each hit to activate a skill with 1 fewer hits the remainder when you activate the skill is wasted.

For example, say I gain 1 adrenaline/second both taking and dealing damage and baltazar's spirit gives me an additional 0.1. If I have a 10 adrenaline skill, after 9 seconds I'll only have 9.9 adrenaline and can't use the skill until the 10th second, the same as if I didn't have balt's spirit running. And then since the adrenaline for that skill caps at 10, the fact that I had 11 total adrenaline when I finally activated it doesn't matter, it zeros out anyway and the extra 1 point I had is lost.

If you break down the adrenaline gain to .5 or even .25 second intervals, which would be the only way to measure the gain from balt's spirit, you'd have a hard time noticing skills lighting up faster than before anyway since the graphics for adrenaline based skill icons are rough measurements and not accurate guages.

I'm gonna bump this, as I've just received Balt's Spirit, and it seems that adrenaline doesn't go up at all from it. I do notice my energy pumping up in spikes whenever I take damage, so at least that side works.

And I thought you received adrenaline when you take hits as a warrior period, not just dishing it out, so unless Balt's Spirit gives a marked increase in adrenaline, what's the point?

It does give you a significant increase. I repeated the tests I did previously, this time without Balthazar's Spirit. In the case of the Hulking Stone Elementals outside Sardelac Sanitarium, they hit me over 400 times, doing over 400 damage, without generating even a single strike of adrenaline, whereas with Balthazar's Spirit on, they fully charged Sever Artery (which requires 4 adrenaline) in approximately 25 hits.

The devourer in the Prophet's Path outside Augury Rock had to hit me 28 times and do over 450 damage before charging Sever Artery, whereas with Balthazar's Spirit it only had to hit me 13 times for about 250 damage to charge it.

In both cases, the amount of adrenaline received was more than doubled with Balthazar's Spirit vs. without it, and in the case of the stone elementals who did very little damage per hit, the increase was orders of magnitude greater.

Either way, however, the amount of adrenaline you get for being hit is dwarfed by the amount you get for hitting.

little info, dunno if someone posted it already, just thought this might help a little.

adrenal skills work per hit as you no doubt know, each hit gives you one strike of adrenaline. each strike of adrenaline counts for 25 adrenal points.
for final thrust or back breaker for example, you need 240 adrenal points, hence 10 hits.

with that said here's the info about balthy's spirit adrenal gain.
for 0,1,2 smiting prayers you gain 2 adrenal points
3,4,5,6,7 smiting prayers you gain 3 adrenal points
8,9,10,11,12 smiting prayers you gain 4 adrenal points
13,14,15,16,17 smiting prayers you gain 5 adrenal points
with 18 smiting prayers its believed you gain 6 adrenal points.

so basicly if you have 8 in smiting prayers its KIND OF worth getting/using the skill. anything below it is utterly useless (maybe if you got 6 attrib points left it might still be worth it but thats the only case)(example at end of post)

so if you have 8 smiting prayers and using balthy's spirit. to fully charge your sever artery for example you would need to be hit 20 times
20x4=80
20 hits x 4 adrenal points each hit = 80 adrenal points total which is needed for sever artery. if your planning on using b. spirit for stuff like final thrust..you can but ....for the love of god dont. you would need to be hit ATLEAST...well no, not atleast, you'd just need to be hit 70 times before you could use it. (and thats with atleast 8 smiting prayers). so basicly having balthy spirit is nice to have allong if you can afford it, but i'd perfer something more effective like strength of honor which at 9 should give you +7 damage. you'd just keep your 25 adrenal poitns each hit and use bonetti's for example to get energy back and with 12 tactics it should last 10 seconds which should allow you to hit him another 8 times (here are the attack speeds of the melee weapons)
Daggers - 1.25 seconds*
Axe - 1.33 seconds
Sword - 1.33 seconds
Hammer - 1.75 seconds
so using a sword or axe gives you 7.5 hits in 10 seconds which is equal to 8 hits aka 8x25=200 adrenal points which in turn is needed for bonetti's.
(actual number is 7.5187969924812030075187969924812 lol)

example for your attrib points with only a few attrib points left which you cant spend on anything else anymore
divine favor 9
healing prayers 9
tactics 12
you would be left with 7 points
you could put 3 on smiting prayers which leaves you with 1 point.
note: this is just as an EXAMPLE and are without ANY runes obviously (otherwise i would have put in 9+1 for example)
so basicly thats how balthy adrenal points work

05-23-2005, 10:21 AM

necro'ed post ftl....

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=49539

What I dont get is how sometimes my energy goes up per hit, and other times I suddenly get like 20 energy at once. I remember this skill working, when you get hit you get energy/adrenaline. Now it seems I sometimes get energy and sometimes I have to wait a while to get 20. Either way its energy but sometimes I need it sooner rather than later.

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