After playing around with shadowflare in PvE, I have to agree that it's still pretty useless. The chance to slow or reduce crit aren't worth charging your normal attack for.
It would be nice if we got a a proc for PvE that would actually make the staff worth charging for. Currently, you'd sacrifice damage for a barely noticeable and fairly useless debuff. I can understand it could potentially have its uses in PvP, but PvE is completely overlooked here.
Let's take a look at the current state of shadow flare...
It deals about xxx dmg on x targets. You guys make it sound like it's just like fireball, but it's nowhere near an upgraded fireball skill. Compared to fb, it takes around the same time to charge, deals way less impact damage, doesn't have any dot component or any useful debuff (see further down this post for details). Sure, it deals AoE dmg, but so does my non-charged weapon attack. To make matters worse, the damage is even lower than a normal attack now. Why on earth would anyone charge an attack in PvE if it deals LESS damage as compared to an uncharged attack? For the additional benefits? Let's take a look at the procs...
33% chance to slow. As a PvE sorcerer, one of the thing you need is crowd control. Most sorcerers group up mobs until they are tightly packed and drop time on their butts. Where's the use of a slow proc there? It would only slow down the time before everything is nicely grouped together.
14% chance to reduce crit. Maybe could save you a death here and there, but nowhere near enough (or even noticeably) to warrant loosing damage output over.
My suggestion would be to add something that would make it worth charging for in PvE. Sorcerers already need to charge most of their skills (in PvE), risking their squishy lives every time they do so (unless they use some hotkeys on PC to spam health pots). Unless it's something worth charging for, nobody will charge. I know I won't.
So what would make it useful for PvE?
I could think about a ton of thing like some slight crowd control (similar to the magmatic staffs), stuns, armor buffs, a dot component, higher impact dmg, enemy armor debuffs... You name it. I understand PvP balance should be considered with any buffing of weapons, but that doesn't mean it should have totally useless charged procs in PvE.
So yeah, it's nice of you guys to seemingly make the staff a bit better for PvP, but it would also be nice if PvE would get the same kind of attention.
Originally Posted by Justg
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