QUOTE(BlueWaterSplash @ Dec 12 2019, 23:29)
For people on whom Vital Strike has a bigger improvement, it should be done as much as possible even if spirit stance runs out.
The way I've been doing it is to vital strike once, then usually I'm able to finish off hitting them during the cooldown. It's easier with 2 & 3 schoolgirl rounds as you can split the vital strikes more. I only vital strike twice if I make a really poor hit that doesn't do a lot of damage, otherwise the oc use isn't worth it as you often massively overkill them, which is a waste of OC.
For example, I vital strike the first, if it's less than roughly 25% health remaining after a vital strike, attack it normally until 3-5 pixels left on the hp bar, then let bleeding wounds finish it off and move to the next, vital striking whichever one I'm currently attacking. Usually, with the exception of bad hits, it's possible to get them to a point where bleeding wound will finish them off during the cooldown so only one vital strike is needed. On a bad hit (i.e. more than 70% health remaining), I move to attacking a different one immediately, as I don't want to bring the health down low enough that I overkill on the 2nd vital strike. If the health after the first vs is between those two, I just make a judgement depending on how close to either side it is, often carrying on hitting it during cooldowns (even if it means dropping off a different SG and coming back to it after vital striking another) + bleeding wounds + counters generally finish it off, just slightly less efficiently, and can occasionally mean more turns needed on other SG's, which in turn sometimes means I need to re imperil due to it running out.
QUOTE(BlueWaterSplash @ Dec 12 2019, 23:29)
Unless maybe OFC is better; I don't know how it compares. There's also the very expensive hath perk to make OFC stronger.
I haven't done tonnes of testing between the two styles, but for me vital strike is much quicker for me. The reasons mostly being it's easier to handle OC, as when OFC'ing, it's common to drop out of spirit stance on the next hit, and as it usually wipes all player created monsters, you're left in a bad spot for recovering OC. With vital strike, when OC is getting low, you can wait until a fresh round, drop out manually, then bring it to max while you have a full roster of monsters attacking you.
Another thing that might make the difference is that while OFC does 5x damage (if wiki is accurate) on multiple targets, it only matters on at max 3 of them, and when you consider that OFC costs 200 OC and has a cooldown of 50, vital strike has a OC cost of 50 and a cooldown of 10, so taking both cost and cooldowns into consideration, you can vital strike 4 times for one ofc, and do so with 10 turns left to spare. Considering you can also manage your OC easier with vital strike, it's (in my opinion), vastly superior to OFC. The expensive OFC hath perk might change things, but I'm not willing to fork out 25000 hath to test it, I think DD would be a better investment lol
QUOTE(BlueWaterSplash @ Feb 20 2019, 00:28)
It depends how quick you are with using Vital Strike,
^Pretty much sums up my argument for using vital strike. If I were to compare it, hacking away at a SG until it's dead is easier to learn, and easier to master, but costs more turns, vital strike is harder to master, but with practice should improve real time purely by the fact that it has better turns, so long as you practice until your t/s while using vital strike is close to when you're not. If I get in the flow, I can vital strike accurately in less than a second, you don't need to move your mouse far, and it's quick to spot. Unfortunately I've not quite mastered being in that flow throughout an entire DwD haha.
QUOTE(BlueWaterSplash @ Feb 20 2019, 00:28)
spotting stun is optional, most of the time I just guess and it works okay. I don't have OFC yet.
Stuns happen so frequently that this is actually viable, though slightly less efficient. Considering you still do 2.5 times damage when they are not stunned, it's not terrible even if you guess wrong. I don't do this, but I have considered it, as a lot of my loss in speed is when I guess that it's been stunned, and when it doesn't I stop my hand after preparing vital strike, losing a bit of time. Often to disable the vital strike I'll then just re cast imperil as my fingers are always on the keys for that, but on 3 sg rounds often at least one of the sg's have a stun at any given time so it's just a case of changing target.
QUOTE(decondelite @ Feb 19 2019, 22:36)
The conditions to use Vital Strike make it non-viable to be actually effective.
The time you lose to spot the stun condition, hover away, use it, then resume could very well be used to keep hovering instead, for the same amount of damage overall.
I don't agree. Considering I can one shot konata in the half a second it takes me to vital strike, I can't do the same just beating her down. It you can get to a point where you can do enough damage with normal attacks to kill konata fairly frequently in just 3 normal hits (after imperil and spirit stance), I'd agree, but I'm not sure if that's even possible for 1h.
This post has been edited by Ubershank: Dec 13 2019, 02:28
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