The Spirit Realm

Just finished this AA last night. I will try to keep an eye out for it to see if anything significant.

One rank is enough to get 100% effect, so no need to dump a whole lot of AA into this. It's definately worth the 6 or 7 AA that rank 1 costs (can't remember, sorry) just to get no ripostes for an unconfirmed period of time. Also, I've just dug through a minor log (3Mb of one-group fighting) of the evening, doing a search for "ripostes!" (which should give a hit on any mob that ripostes me, as well as others), and the only hits being my bard riposting pretty much confirm what I had been thinking; it doesn't just reduce the damage you take by removing the swing that the riposte generates, but increases the damage you do by removing the riposte altogether. Mobs stop riposting you - that is, they don't just stop counter-attacking you (that's the definition of a riposte), they actually stop defending themselves as well (which is actually a parry, the two are supposed to be in sequence; i.e. first you parry, and then you riposte - but in EQ a riposte is the action of both parrying and riposting).

While the monk aura has been bugged for a while, it has always had that parry/dodge/riposte mod around - our AA (or that of warriors, rangers, rogues, etc) doesn't have anything to do with that description-wise - so, while one rank is enough to give a major boost, I wouldn't bother putting any more points in it as it is likely to be removed eventually (either by the bug being fixed [less likely imho], or by it being reverted to it's original intent).

Getting more ranks in it increases chance to add a bash to riposte. However you get 100% riposte immunity already with 1st rank.

Aye, I was of course only speaking about the riposte immunity. The extra bash is so meaningless it's hardly worth the space it takes in AA listing

I dunno man, yeah its a small gain, but I wouldn't consider it meaningless. The bash revamp was decent (and long needed), and I still mash bash for a lil bit more damage. Can't go wrong with a free bash every now and then

Consider that you riposte roughly 5% of incoming attacks (I think the number is actually lower, but lets go with it). Then you bash on 50% of those, so 2.5% of incoming attacks. A bash would do about 250 points of damage on average, I'd say, including crits.

Lets say the mob that's swinging on you double attacks every round and swings (slowed) every 2 seconds. That comes out to an average increase of 6.25 DPS. Stop the presses, that's totally worth the 20? AA that it takes to max out. Or not

its one of those small gains worth more when added to the pile of twenty other similar abilities that boost you in various ways ;p

A game of inches, not of yards.

Sure, but the inches have a cost. These particular inches are pretty expensive heh... I bought one level of it for the non-bash benefits, at least for the time being. Beyond that, I have a lot of AA's to purchase before the higher levels will be the efficient way to use my AA's. Worthless, no, but pretty inefficient.

i think i agree with brohg on this zsazsa, i think in the grand scheme of things we're upgrading at the rate that's intended. as the expansions accumulate the total gain becomes HUGE but in the day to day we're just y'know taking one step forward at a time. and i think i like it that way. sure it's nice to get a new ability, and whatnot, but part of what gives eq the opperunity to be something MORE than the aa's and stuff accrued, part of what makes that a background for social stuff, friendship, adventure, struggle, which bring together, is the slow rate, well, the rate, i won't call it slow because it is what it is. Kindof a philosophical view i know ;p but i like the idea of it.

i agree

Choosing to gain the next inch for a dime instead of a dollar is totally reasonable.

Screw inches. It's an antique measuring unit. About time you woke up and smelled the metric system.

Anyway, that was my point in the first place. That it was worth it for the first rank, but the following ranks are way too costly for their return and shouldn't be considered until most other options are depleted. That counts as "virtually useless" to me

Wakatta. I'm just saying, Swedes gave up on using body-parts for measurement around 1890

Actually, the reasoning was that the value for the same units were often different. For example, the swedish 'aln' that was the length of the underarm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger was 0,593802 meters in Sweden, the same as the roman 'ulna' (which, coincidentally, is the medicinal term for the elbow bone). Meanwhile, the same unit could be as short as 0,554 meters (in Germany) and as long as 1,949 meters (in France - don't ask). The same issue is actually found when comparing the american gallon to the english counterpart.

But I guess we're a tad bit off topic now