Abuse 'Em While you've Got 'Em

The other day, when looking over the (temporary) skill rebalancing, I glossed over the Ritualist list. It's the biggest section of the changes, though, so the next morning I cast a critical eye upon it (Must...resist....urge...to...make....critical hit....joke! Gasp, too late!) and decided to spend some time trying out Rittualist builds. Turned out to be a great decision because it meant I was just in time to get in on the absolute brokenness that was Destructive Was Glaive. It's one of the skills I picked up in my mad cap last weekend. But I hadn't given it much thought because before the test weekend it, well, stunk.

For the test weekend, though, it had been given a little something on top of its AoE lightning damage – it would bestow Air Elementalist like armor penetration on any Ritualist damage spells. That 25% armor penetration it promised basically means Warrior level 80AL turns into caster level 60AL. (And a Ranger's built-in elemental bonus practically disappears) so that's a pretty good buff.

Problem was, though, that the armor penetration was bugged. Did a lot more than it should have. Combined with the recharge decrease on Channeled Strike that leads to some pretty amazing spikes. Something like 250 damage with a 4 second recharge with an item spell that you can keep up constantly (If you've got the energy, of course, but who cares when you're killing people in two hits?) with some pretty nasty after-spike possibilities, too.

So, I had some fun with that and so did some other people. But I had to, you know, actually leave the house and, like, talk to people and be a contributing member of society and all so I had to log off. Got back just in time for a new build. Which, of course, changed Glaive to something approaching sanity. Last I checked it now adds 5% (That's about 12 extra damage on a Channeled Strike against a 60AL target, by the way.) armor penetration and is working correctly.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. If the devs were trying to test and see just how quickly people would catch something like that and break the game wide open, I think they got a good answer. What's nice to see, though, is how quickly it was noticed and corrected by the developers. I mean, obviously broken skill and all but I'm hoping they do more of that in the days and weeks to come.