Heavy Slash Gladiator: worth maxing?

[nicooolit]

is the damage increase great? or not?

[mousinNnR]

Absolutely

[MrKitz]

its gladiator..ins lv95 right?? should be maxed out.. cause gonna to use it

[Couplord]

You only use your instant above around 60% so there are many factors on which one you should take before it all comes down to preference between heavy slash and eclipse~

[Skyros]

The choice really boils on your play style. For me, maxing Heavy Slash practically makes you have two Skill Rotations: A.) One above 50% Boss HP, B.) One below 50% Boss HP. Maybe it's just me being lazy but remembering two Skill Rotations makes me confused as hell. In my early experience on playing my Gladiator, I tend to have a lot of mistakes on casting FA due to me consciously thinking to cast Heavy Slash to proc CM3 FA above 50% Boss HP and to benefit from CM3 Heavy Slash's huge damage boost. I do not have calculations on this but based on my observations, CM3 FA is weaker than the normal FA at about 52% Boss HP.
Another issue for me on maxing Heavy Slash is the SP allocation. Maxing Heavy Slash would mean that my Eclipse will be left in Level 1. Damage-wise, its true Heavy Slash overshadows Eclipse's damage, but my main issue is losing one of my survivability skills. Even though Eclipse doesn't have i-frame or block, Eclipse has maneuverability. In my play style, Eclipse serves as my tumble-chainer after using skills with stiffness (a period of inaction after casting certain skills like Hyper Drive, Parrying Stance, etc.). Having Eclipse maxed in a 9-second cooldown makes me more comfortable in using the aforementioned skills knowing that I can chain Eclipse to Tumble out of harm's way. Yes, Evasion Slash can also be used in the same way, but most of the time Evasion Slash ends up as an offensive skill due to it's utility of resetting Front Shove's cooldown.
As I said, all I said is based on my play style. It's not a bad idea though to save that SP for now and test for yourself if your more comfortable with using Heavy Slash.

[vangeodee]

-snip-

I suggest you learn how to use Circle Break Lv6 i-frame as a survivability skill, it has saved my life in so many instances than a 9s eclipse ever has. I only use eclipse as a combo chain to keep the combo counter running (love seeing those 100+hits billions damage).

My current skill build: https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/sea...-0-00-----0--0

My 93-cap skill build: https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/sea...-0-00-----0--0

Some answers to obvious questions:
1) Why didn't you max Relieve? - Lv5 and Lv6 relieve remove the same number of debuffs, and have the same cooldown, why waste 1 SP on it?
2) Why is Hacking Stance Lv1? - Seriously? You even use that thing?
3) In your 93 cap build, why do you have Lv6 Rising Slash and ML skills? - I did some PvP back in 93 cap, so those skills were a must.
4) In both builds, why don't you max Dash Kick? - 20 bubble Line Drive has a 14s CD, Lv11 Dash Kick has 10s. My playstyle is x2 Line Drive > Hyper Drive > Brave, so as long as my Dash Kick CDs before Line Drive CDs, I'm good (I found Lv11 to be enough).

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When I reached 95, I was able to immediately try out a Lv11 Heavy Slash + FA Instant combo. I got around 60~70m Heavy Slash damage, I thought "hey that's not bad!" so I reset my skills, maxed it out (by sacrificing PvP), and Heavy Slash damage went up to 110~120m, very nice increase. Note that this is on a 95 golem with me having less than 20% FD for 95-cap.

I did Rune HC 8Man last night with it, I do 200m heavy slash, 800m FA instant (total for 2 hits). Before, a 100-hit combo could only go as high as 3-3.5 billion damage; now I'm getting as much as 5.5~6b per 100 hits, it's insane. My ML and DA used to be the kings of warriors doing over 200m DPS on HC stage 1 (and doing 6~7b per 100 hits), now my Gladiator is able to come ridiculously close with 185~195m range; compared to pre-instant gameplay, if you can manage to keep yourself fully aware of boss HP and cooldowns for Hyper Drive and FA, your DPS will fly.

As for FA instant vs regular FA, assuming you have a +1 (plate/necklace):

let x be equal to the amount of boss HP below 60% required to achieve regular FA damage equivalent to FA instant;

x = 100% / 17% : 100% - bonus damage for FA instant, 17% - additional damage for regular FA
x = 5.88%

So technically speaking, at 54% HP onward, regular FA would do more than FA instant. My playstyle has me doing regular FA at the 50% mark onwards, and based on experience, at 50% boss HP, regular FA does more than FA instant.

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So conclusion time, Heavy Slash worth maxing out? Yes, it is. Even at the sub-54% HP mark, you can still use FA instant as a decent DPS skill (considering it does close/equal to 1 cast of Front Shove). Investing on Heavy Slash however requires you to be fully aware of boss HP and cooldowns, as well as timing usage and habit control for maximum use.

[Skyros]

Oh, I commonly use Circle Break as a survivability skill. It's one of the rare skills that has an i-frame, provides airtime and also displacement. I don't know maybe I just really like Eclipse, it's fast casting and can be cancelled by Tumble. I don't know really, maybe I'm still on the point of adjusting to the CM3 FA (I use FA+Evasion Slash during 93 cap to maximize the CD reduction mech). I still didn't open my 95 Achievement Box for the Oblivion Scroll so I can make adjustments once I change my skill rotation for 95 cap.

[Jeugal]

I suggest you learn how to use Circle Break Lv6 i-frame as a survivability skill, it has saved my life in so many instances than a 9s eclipse ever has. I only use eclipse as a combo chain to keep the combo counter running (love seeing those 100+hits billions damage).

My current skill build: https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/sea...-0-00-----0--0

My 93-cap skill build: https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/sea...-0-00-----0--0

Some answers to obvious questions:
1) Why didn't you max Relieve? - Lv5 and Lv6 relieve remove the same number of debuffs, and have the same cooldown, why waste 1 SP on it?
.

Lvl5 relieve got 25 secs of cd... while level 6 got 15... the -10 secs is crucial for me because I can't rely on our saint's cure relic when I have burn/poison debuff (happens at s3 in rudn most of the time)

[vangeodee]

Oh I stand corrected on the cooldown then. I never really noticed since I don't use relieve that often anymore.

[Jeugal]

screw double post

[sngweiwei]

Heavy Slash is pretty nice when maxed, do you think it's worth a dmg plate to go along with it?

[vangeodee]

Heavy Slash is pretty nice when maxed, do you think it's worth a dmg plate to go along with it?

Yes and no. It does good damage, yes, but it's not worth plating. It's a 10s cooldown skill which you will most likely not use beyond 50% HP (I'm still trying to get myself to use it at less than 50% boss hp).

However, if you can use it as often as you use evasion slash, then going by board damage alone, plating heavy slash would be somewhat a better choice.

[sngweiwei]

Alright, given how easy it is to make a plate, I'll give the plate a try for awhile. Thx

[Jeugal]

Heavy Slash is pretty nice when maxed, do you think it's worth a dmg plate to go along with it?

You will sacrifice 1 dmg plate for your main dps skills (FA,T-slash,F-shove,LD) if you wish to have a plate for it.. Unless you have an extension(that you can maintain its activity every 30 days) then why not?

[Couplord]

Last I heard triple slash wasn't a main damage skill, and most opt to use a no recovery for feint or tumble so they can parry more.

[Jeugal]

Hmm.. You got a point there, I really never bother on using T-slash (The 5slashes is too annoying without willpower or lancea's harmonize) But what I noticed is that a maxed Tslash /w plate still does a better damage (full 5 hits) than a maxed HSwing /w plate. (I tried this in BTG when I was pondering whether should I max HSwing or not) However we often cannot complete the 5slashes in order to avoid a swipe or stomp so having a plate for a maxed HSwing is a better choice than a Tslash dmg plate.

Having a MP recovery plate for Tumble or Eva slash is quite helpful if you're the type to spam parry for DPS..

[Couplord]

Yeah... I only used the first 3 hits because it's too slow even with harmonize and willpower...
Also sorry for the auto correct MP -> no earlier.... yeah, I spam parry for the most DPS,
if the party isn't ultra geared or a Light Fury is not present..the plate helps quite a bit with my MP issues.

[vangeodee]

Heavy Slash is pretty nice when maxed, do you think it's worth a dmg plate to go along with it?

Here's a recently finished IDN HC run (I chose IDN HC since I can max out my Hyper Drive usage).

I use regular FA at the 50% mark onward. Since Heavy Slash can't even do more than Evasion Slash, we can conclude it's not worth plating. My plates are all damage: FA, Front Shove, Evasion Slash, Line Drive.

It's also worth pointing out that FA instant does double of what regular FA does. It does indeed give 100% damage to FA.

[sngweiwei]

Thx for the indepth testing. I'll just stick to usual 4 plates in the end.