Useless Spell? Grasp of the Spirits!

L

Lyte

Dalayan Beginner
Comparing two roots that Shaman get:

Paralyzing Earth
Level 56
Mana Cost: 100
Normal Cast Time: 2.5

Grasp of the Spirits
Level 62
Mana Cost: 337
Normal Cast Time: 3.0

The trend for roots is faster cast times and good mana-cost for the increase in duration as you get higher level roots; however, Grasp of the Spirits takes longer to cast, is 3x more manacost, and on average is more resisted and shorter durations on the root than Paralyzing Earth.

A theory might be that the damage on Grasp of the Spirits (200 to 1500 dmg over duration of the root) has a chance of breaking the root if it is considered a DD and not a DoT? This used to be a problem in that other game. However, what about the resists on Grasp of the Spirits and why is the cast-time so slow?
 
Well thought-out response Legrat.

I never knew spell upgrades were supposed to be technically downgrades and hey, if Level 1 spells are better than Level 60 spells than you should be using your Level 1 spells duh.

Let's say you kill Raid Boss A and he is 100x more difficult than your everyday named in Kedge but he drops a 5/10 Weapon while the Kedge named drops a 10/5 weapon! DUH, just use your Kedge named weapon, easy peazy.
 
If I remember correctly, Grasp of the Spirits is like Splurt, in which the damage goes up over time. It should come out to be more than 200 damage if the root lasts the entire time.

I don't have access to my spell editor at the moment, so I cannot be sure. But that would be the reasoning behind using Grasp of Spirits.
 
Ah, what's the damage total on the spell?

I guess Paralyzing Earth is for rooting and Grasp of Spiritis for ... soloing :D

I'm going to test it right now but I think when the root breaks the damage no longer sticks as well, and since the root breaks so often it would still be useless because we never get to see the majority of the damage on the root--making it more efficient to Paralyzing Earth + regular DoTs then to ever use Grasping.

Be back with some numbers in a few.
 
Lyte said:
I never knew spell upgrades were supposed to be technically downgrades and hey, if Level 1 spells are better than Level 60 spells than you should be using your Level 1 spells duh.
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Speak to all the 65(and below) rangers who use tangling weeds and flame lick still... Horses for courses.
 
phlit said:
Lyte said:
I never knew spell upgrades were supposed to be technically downgrades and hey, if Level 1 spells are better than Level 60 spells than you should be using your Level 1 spells duh.
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Speak to all the 65(and below) rangers who use tangling weeds and flame lick still... Horses for courses.
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I used to play a Ranger in the other game, and I'll be the first to say they probably should have scaled Snare properly but they didn't. Doesn't mean it's ok for spell upgrades to be useless :p
 
As a level 65 cleric I keep a level 1 spell and a level 5 spell up as part of my permanent lineup.
 
Lyte said:
phlit said:
Speak to all the 65(and below) rangers who use tangling weeds and flame lick still... Horses for courses.
Click to expand...

I used to play a Ranger in the other game, and I'll be the first to say they probably should have scaled Snare properly but they didn't. Doesn't mean it's ok for spell upgrades to be useless :p
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You must not have played the ranger much at all or he was just an /autofire bot. If you had, then you'd know that movement reduction % had absolutely nothing to do with why rangers used (and still use) tangling weeds. We also have more powerful DoTs than flame lick but none of them can compare to it in usefulness.
 
Garluk said:
Lyte said:
phlit said:
Speak to all the 65(and below) rangers who use tangling weeds and flame lick still... Horses for courses.
Click to expand...

I used to play a Ranger in the other game, and I'll be the first to say they probably should have scaled Snare properly but they didn't. Doesn't mean it's ok for spell upgrades to be useless :p
Click to expand...

You must not have played the ranger much at all or he was just an /autofire bot. If you had, then you'd know that movement reduction % had absolutely nothing to do with why rangers used (and still use) tangling weeds. We also have more powerful DoTs than flame lick but none of them can compare to it in usefulness.
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*sigh*
Yes, I know why Flamelick and Weeds were used, but the reason they were used could be scaled up right? The fact that none of the upgrades could replace the purpose of the Level 9 Flamelick suggests that 1) they did not want Rangers to use that spell for that purpose or 2) they couldn't upgrade the usefulness anymore than it was already. For example, if Flamelick was supposed to be a -AC/Aggro spell, it could have been upgraded so that Immolate inflicted even higher Aggro.

Back in oldschool we used to chaincast Flamelick long before Weeds existed.

Anyways, I never mentioned the movement % component, and why does "you have never played the class" always come into random threads :p What does it have to do with the fact that spell upgrades should be better in its intended purpose?
 
i do believe the dmg from that root also has a chance to break said root, so yes the spell is useless imo and I used it maybe once or twice and that was when i first scribed it, whether i was solo or not, just wasnt worth the mana cost.
 
After some testing, I think I realize where the problem might be with Grasp of Spirits. People are correct, it does damage similar to Splurt that increases with each successive tick. Overall damage, if the root lasts the full duration is about 1500 damage for 337 mana.

However, some things I have noticed:
1) Affliction Focus items "flash" when the Grasp of Spirits damage ticks; however, there is no actual damage increase.
2) The damage might be affecting the root portion of the spell, and causes it to break very early. Because the damage increases progressively, this means that most of the time you will register less than 200 dmg on the mob before root breaks and you have to re-cast.
3) When the root breaks, the damage also stops.

Overall, using Paralyzing Earth + regular DoTs is more mana-efficient, and safer for all grouping/solo situations and is higher DPS as well.
 
hmm

Yeah I have to say that if the root is ticking it self off, and its a progressive dot like splurt, it is kind of, self-counter-productive beacuse of this. Maybe if it had the root aspect takin off, or it was made into a stright dot root spell, or if the root wore off the spell wouldnt wear off, I mean I dont think the sepll it self 337 mana for 1500 hp(over a good while) is even that powerfull..... but its truue lots of classes use lower level spells so maybe jjust deal with it ^_^
 
Yanbik said:
i do believe the dmg from that root also has a chance to break said root, so yes the spell is useless imo and I used it maybe once or twice and that was when i first scribed it, whether i was solo or not, just wasnt worth the mana cost.
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No.
 
I actually used this spell alot when I was soloing with my Shaman. I would just use that root and dot the mobs...never had any problems, and the damage scale was quite nice.
 
Alright, it's been confirmed by Wiz that the DoT damage isn't breaking the root.

However, Raherin, you may have used the spell a lot to solo with DoTs, but did you consider that using Paralyzing Earth + DoTs is more mana-efficient and thus better for solo'ing? You can kill mobs just as fast (faster if you have the higher DoTs) then if you used Grasp of Spirits.

There's rarely a case where Grasp of Spirits would be used.

EDIT - But Kathor is right, it might just be a case where we live with a useless high level spell :p
 
Maybe its just me but this spell does no where near 1500 damage. The first tick starts at 5, and the last tick ends at 43. It increases 2 damage with each tick. According to my calculations that is around 540 damage. I have never noticed a tick of this dot causing it to break root, so i dont think it does. This spell is basically useless as far as i am concerned with a few exceptions. This spell stacks with the other shaman root spells, and it always lasts the full duration, unless broken by damage.
Having the ability to have 2 roots on a mob can be quite helpful when dealing with high mr mobs that root wont usually stick on. Of course most of them time you are dealing with highly mr mobs, they will probably summon from the damage of grasp of spirits, making it useless once again. With all that being said, i do think the mana cost is a bit extreme.
 
I did the tests on very very low level mobs, that's the only time I was able to ever see full damage of the spell when the spell landed for full duration.

When casting on DB mobs at L65, don't even think about it lasting longer than 30 seconds :p
 
the only time i use this spell, is when i am soloing mobs that are 55+. I am currently level 62, I use this spell to kill the golems, including the named one Valkah, in sorcs labyrinth. To the best of my knowledge, these golems are 56. I have yet to have grasp of spirits were off before the last tick of 43 damage went off, unless i broke the root by redoing DoT spells on the mob. Paralyzing earth never seems to last more than 30 - 45 seconds on those golems in sorcs labyrinth, and having an extra root spell on the golem helps immensely. Maybe i have just been really lucky with my use of grasp of spirits since i have never once seen it not last the full duration(unless broken by damage). This spell is hardly useless, but it is definitely not the most usefull spell out there. I think it could use either an increase in overall damage, so that it does actually do 1500 damage, or a decrease in mana to the 150 - 250 range.
 
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