1.5.10 Writhing One Guide

[Cathbald]

Power penalty is mostly irrelevant, only the lessened proc could be a drawback.
Power penalty is 20% of raw power so far less in effective. Say you have 80 effective powers without malus (you'll always have more late game but whatever).
That means you have 200 effective. With full malus you lose 20% or 40. 160 raw is still 70 effective, so you only lost 12.5%

[Kaja Rainbow]

Ah, I gotcha.

[Arcvasti]

Plus writhing one has overgrowth so the power penalty means even less then it usually does.

[chriseggroll]

Good guide! I made a Writhing One just to work on unlocking the Drem but I'm having a lot of fun with him! I made a Shalore because my Ogre died early on - opened a bile sac on the opening dungeon ha. The WtW is really an interesting part of the class, don't think it would be near as good or fun without it.

[GlassGo]

Best prodidgy for Ogre-WO is You Shall Be My Weapon no discuss, it's even better than Arcane Might or at least equival to it.
Get +size gear, cast Overgrowth, strike with YSBMW! - get 7K damage with not optimazed gear with 10 turn cd.
Most bosses and rares just one-shotted by it.

[Cathbald]

I dunno, i get >7k damage from lash out which is not a prod and has a lower CD.
And is AoE. And doesn't knock my target away from me if it doesn't kill it (knockback is bad on melee you know ?).

AM is so much superior to YSBMW it's not even funny to entertain the idea you'd want YSBMW for reasons other than "it's fun to use a prod noone does".

[helminthauge]

yeah, YSBMW sounds like a good idea, WITH Arcane Might, but with a weapon damage multiplier of 670%, I think we're expecting a damage about 20k instead of 7k.
and I dont think tentacle damage is affected by this multiplier, so maybe take ICCTW instead to further increase this burst damage? (but then your bump damage is probably much worse.)
Maybe time to update your prodigy guide, Cath

[Cathbald]

No I'm good, I already say YSBMW is a bad prod.

[helminthauge]

of course YSBMW is by far one of the best prodigies for any class. (but now I'm appealed to have this on that ring on my next WO lol.) what I wanted you to do is to change the "who benefits most" part to ogre WO.
and TBH why Cursed? Don't they hate active talents? Sawbutchers and Doombringers are probably better.

[Snarvid]

I'm not pretending I'm in charge of anyone else's decisions, but it might be easier to keep track of all arguments about YSBMW if we kept them in a single thread rather than reposting in every conversation where Prodigies are mentioned? I'd suggest Cath's Prodigy thread, where I just posted on why I think this disagreement might be happening, but I don't really care where it is so much as I hope that we pick a format that's comprehensible to someone just coming into one or the other thread without having to read both.

[GlassGo]

I dunno, i get >7k damage from lash out which is not a prod and has a lower CD.
And is AoE. And doesn't knock my target away from me if it doesn't kill it (knockback is bad on melee you know ?).

AM is so much superior to YSBMW it's not even funny to entertain the idea you'd want YSBMW for reasons other than "it's fun to use a prod noone does".

With the gear you had in case you did 7 K with Lash Out I would do much, much more then that lol.
My gear is absolute trash, with crit modifier below 200 even, and like +50-60 to phys/darkness damage.
Imagine what will be with good gear.

EDIT: Lash Out on training dummy without any buffs - 5 K, the only good thing I have is Sawrd.
Lash Out with every buff available - 12 K. Crit mult - 176, +70% phys damage. ^_^

AM is so much superior to YSBMW it's not even funny to entertain the idea you'd want YSBMW for reasons other than "it's fun to use a prod noone does".

AM can't deliver such numbers - simple as that. Also, that character had AM and YSBMW!, and third one would be Flexible Combat.

yeah, YSBMW sounds like a good idea, WITH Arcane Might, but with a weapon damage multiplier of 670%, I think we're expecting a damage about 20k instead of 7k.
and I dont think tentacle damage is affected by this multiplier, so maybe take ICCTW instead to further increase this burst damage? (but then your bump damage is probably much worse.)
Maybe time to update your prodigy guide, Cath

20K? 40K is the actual numbers with absolute trash gear. So I could say 60 is very realistic numbers, with 80K doable.
And yeah - damage modifier form YSBMW! is working for both weapons - off-hand too, tentacle crit for 4K.
ICCTW idea isn't good due diminishing returns and these 50 Str is nothing big if you already have 100-120.

[Snarvid]

In my understanding, Sawrd is functionally gone from 1.6, so maybe recheck your numbers without it.

[Arcvasti]

ICCTW idea isn't good due diminishing returns and these 50 Str is nothing big if you already have 100-120.

Stat contributions to weapon damage do not have diminishing returns.

[GlassGo]

In my understanding, Sawrd is functionally gone from 1.6, so maybe recheck your numbers without it.

I'm still on 1.5. Without Sawrd it's twice lower, best I have is Murderblade.

ICCTW idea isn't good due diminishing returns and these 50 Str is nothing big if you already have 100-120.

Stat contributions to weapon damage do not have diminishing returns.

True, but contribution to Phys Power do have it.

[Snarvid]

In my understanding, Sawrd is functionally gone from 1.6, so maybe recheck your numbers without it.

I'm still on 1.5. Without Sawrd it's twice lower, best I have is Murderblade.

Many one-off comments:

- Sawrd was the best melee weapon in the game in 1.5x (with the exception of Razorlock for steamsaw wielders). It's therefore a bit disingenuous to claim your numbers were reached with trash gear. Very possible Legacy of Naloren will be best melee weapon in 1.6, if so probably a better use of a Prodigy than YSBMW.
- Note that Flexible Combat has had its proc rate halved in 1.6.
- AM will not deliver such numbers on its own, but that's an apples-to-oranges comparison, so it's not "simple as that" - AM is a passive that helps all your base weapon/tentacle damage, phys power, and crit rate and stacks with other skills that care about weapon or tentacle damage. If you make your weapon and tentacle attacks more than 50% more effective and don't have YSBMW's time opportunity cost, how long will it take your rotation to reach YSBMW's extra 350% damage with no damage bonus?
- I've never used it in game, but Giant Leap is also probably significantly better than YSBMW for a Writhing One. Instant speed vs YSBMW's 1 turn cost, solid damage, gets you into range, ditches stuns/pin/dazes, is inherently AoE so if you jump into the middle of a group then you'll whack everyone with Leap and therefore your tentacle's "hit that person plus all adjacent people" effect will start you off with good AoE damage and a healthy start to your Insanity gen.