Vindictive Spirit-usefullness?

[Hordza]

[Caanus Grey]

[Kilgaroz]

[Telosk]

[Xrat]

[Scowls]

a fairly situational spell, but if used correctly it makes a big difference. as a minimum it makes AE faction groups something we can go to...and actaully get FACTION.
pretty useful on king/queen RSS mobs, sine your gonna have 3 princesses and umteen chimera, and they are uber resistant
tier 5 of time, great when monk try to see how many they can get in 1 pull...the recorse is your friend there
Ive used it as a preslow many times on many raid targets, better than nothing till some one can get debuffs and some other slow on

[Caanus Grey]

Just picked it up after having posted above.

Recourse only lasts 6 seconds. I had always thought it would last the full 3 ticks that the slow did. Bummer there since with a 30 second recast I could see myself trying to use it when solo'ing just for the recourse if it would last longer (assuming that I am solo'ing something that won't eat the entire recourse is 6 seconds anyway).

Not being overwritten by Turgur/Balance really surprised me. Makes it a lot more useful when you are having to reslow mobs as well.

[Ginormus]

I only used it in Tacvi for both snake events so far: have 2 or 3 shaman rota AE slow while the enc are setting their mezzes.

[Beafly]

[Scowls]

[LachdanonColdpaw]

I find this is one of the most useful spells we get, period. I always have it memed, I cannot remember how many times it has saved me and fellow group members. Everyone used to complain that shamans don't get a "get out of death free card", well this one holds up pretty well imo. Pull 1 too many? just pop it and damage is half'ed(50% slow) and half'ed again(50% mitgation) until you can get the adds slowed and parked. The refresh time is very reasonable and gives your healer's a nice break if you feel like chain casting it. I don't know why this spell gets such a bum rap, its practically aggro free! worthy of a permanent spell slot imo.

[XeroOmega]

well, the spell needs a bit of beefing up, the rune isn't big enough, and doesn't last near long enough, it has a negative aggro mod but not large enough to make a life/death difference (you can shed proximity aggro with it, but thats about it), and only really is good for massive amounts of mobs in a small area. I've tried using it in normal groups, but it just gets in the way, doesn't get used, and when you exp in harder-hitting areas, it doesn't really help much in a life/death situation. I find that my limited number of spellslots could be put toward something more useful.

I tend to use it when we're <b>planning</b> for multiple mobs in the raid at once...p5 in time for example....the slow gets resisted there still, and the rune is a waste. but its good for damage control in a small area.

try and use it in RS if your tank goes down, I guarantee the rune is gone in one quad from one of the mobs and the 50% slow isn't gonna save you if you don't have sufficient AC/HP to do some tanking yourself.

[LachdanonColdpaw]

I use it all the time in RS, and yes it does make a big difference. The 900 quads are knocked down to 450, and no the rune doesn't fade in 1 string of hits. Are you sure we are talking about the same spell?

[Caanus Grey]

Yeah at 450 a hit they would have to land all 4 hits in that round for full (meaning you don't have any defensive AAs at all) to take out the rune. And with them slowed even just by a 50% it means that you should be landing Balance right after the second round of swings easily.

[Henora]

[XeroOmega]

[Lickity]

[Scowls]

[Lickity]

I don't have trouble slowing in Uqua, just with this spell, which is why I brought it up. BoD lands about 50% of the time with a -60 mod, landing Malos and use Turgur's yields about the same (I do use the disease too however.) I mentioned it, because with a -100 mod, it ought to land a good portion of the time, but in about 50 mobs (tried it on every trap through the zone), it didn't land even once, which sounded rather fishy, even more so after Malos had landed on at least one of them.

[Caanus Grey]

Actually Henora I was serious about it only lasting 6 seconds. I never looked at Lucy before and I see that it lists it as having a 3 tick duration, however holding the ALT key down to watch buff timers in my window as I cast the spell showed it popping up on me with only 6 seconds till it faded. I will check again sometime and see if it was a one time thing, but so far I've only ever seen the timer at 6 in game.

Another thing that isn't listed which holds back the usefullness of the spell is of course the range. It's nice to have a small range so that you don't cause adds in an exp group when you use it, but in my opinion this was designed for raids anyway. And presently the range on it is barely double the melee range for a normal (human) sized mob, and for most raid mobs it is just barely outside of max melee range I fear (so if they AE ramp you're gonna need that recourse!).

On the note of aggro, I haven't managed to pull aggro from anyone using this, even in cases where I can easily snag the aggro with Balance. Maybe it's the longer cast time and the fact that I have to wait until they are at my feet to cast it, but it would seem with a monk tanking for me each time that if it generated decent aggro that I should have managed to snag SOMETHING one of the 2 nights.


If we were to get an AE slow with our survivabilityability tied into it (which I think would be quite overpowered, I just don't see them allowing us to fulfill our jobs AND save ourselves with a single spell. Would be like upgrading DIvine Barrier to be a group Heal over Time for 1K as well as invulnerability for the cleric, or a defensive with an aggro enhancer built it), I would like to see a full invulnerability (ala DB/DA) for 6 seconds actually. Sure that means that you have that much less time to toss out real slows, but it means 6 seconds where you don't care how much aggro you have AND you aren't doing anything foolish to generate even more of it while the poor tank tries to peel them off of you.

[Beafly]

I guess I'm looking at this spell from more of a raid perspective (not faction farming, small grouping, trivial content).

My main concern is that a 50% slow for 3 ticks on mobs that ARE being picked up and actively tanked is near worthless in most raid situations. Once our tanks have agro they are capable of handling a few rounds while our shaman get them stuck with full 75% slows, and they all have clerics/druids assigned to them with patch heals to keep them alive while we do so. In this case, the 50% dmg mitigation is irrelivant since the mobs are all being tanked.

The other case is that not all the mobs are being picked up and actively tanked. If this happens, I'm going to get agro. Most of the trash we run into nowdays, if I get agro, I'm toast and a 50% dmg mod up to 1600pts isn't going to save me in anything but trivial content.

[cosikfin]

I use VS on trial of corruption on the sec and third waves. buys time for the off tanks to pick up rouges. have used it like this our last 6 runs and no deaths yet, but 5/6 times i was charmed or mezzed

[Derakahn]

[Ungkor]

We use it ofen as a preslow.

Say 4 shaman are on a raid:

Shaman one has Discord, Balance, VS memmed.
Shaman two has Malos, Malo, VS memmed
Shaman three has TA/Turgur, Balance memmed
Shaman four has TA/Turgur, Cripple memmed


3 tough to slow mobs are pulled, like Anguish.

Shaman 1 VS on inc, then starts BoD/Nihili/TA cycles
Shaman 2 malos on inc, followed by VS cast.
Shaman 3 starts working TA/Balance
Shaman 4 alternates cripple/TA/Turgur


I also use it to save myself. If I cast BoD fast, and get a mean mob on me, I'll often hit VS and hope I power thru the cast. The 50% dmg reduction (up to 2750?) has saved me a few times that I can recall. And hey, if it hits a couple extra mobs around me, thats a good thing.

[Scowls]

the nice thing about this spell, is that it "lands" on mobs that are already slowed with discord/turg. it doesnt overwrite the slow like the others do, but you still get the recorse. so you dont undo anything other shaman have done. hopefully DoD will have an upgrade to this spell, with a longer duration or shorter recast.

[Veril]

VS is a great spell, there are a number of circumstances where it makes a significant difference to your playstyle. PLaces, generall on raids where there are multiple mobs in. Bamb. everything slowed for that first 18 seconds.

And 2 shaman can keep a VS cycle up, keeping mobs perma slowed. Like pulling all the trash mobs in Time P5 for AoE

[konarg]

[Brohg]

[Caanus Grey]

[Gardeltron]

[Lickity]

[Caanus Grey]

[Brohg]

[Caanus Grey]

[konarg]