PSA: A bit of quick WPoS testing

So I was curious about a few things WPoS related and decided to do some quick tests in modded.

Firstly Smite/Empowered Smite. They do indeed work as expected, giving a multiplicative damage increase in effect. All the numbers I got lined up exactly (accounting for rounding) with the smite hit being 20/40% of the damage of the hit that procced it. Not suprising, but you can never be sure things work how the description says, so figured it was worth checking.

Now for what I was REALLY interested in, Shield of Faith end AoE breakpoints. Firstly, it is possible to stagger packmasters with it, but the investment is pretty absurd. 30% power properties, Prayer of Might, AND EP to make it stagger packmasters. Also worth noting is that Opportunist on your weapon does not affect the ult’s stagger strength, unlike eg Slayer Ult, which is affected by Opportunist on the weapon you’re currently holding. Or it just specifically doesn’t affect it while a packmaster has you grabbed, because your weapon is technically away. I dunno exactly, testing that further sounds like a nightmare. I also didn’t test if casting it on someone else used their power properties or yours. I would presume the latter.

The second important packmaster breakpoint makes that first one even more of a meme. For the low price of 2 power properties, or 1 power property + EP, you can guarantee that the dot from the end of Shield of Faith will kill a packmaster on Cata. Pretty handy, genuinely might be worth speccing for.

All testing done in modded realm using creature spawner and show damage mods primarily.

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This is not thoroughly tested on my part, but if I cast the shield on an ally and the shield burst kills an elite, say a Stormvermin : I get the hit ticks on my crosshair, but (I think) the kill is credited to my ally.

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A lot of people seem to be running the bonker & naughty ratmen ledger with 20% chaos, 10% attack speed and opportunist. With this setup it charges significantly faster and the big bonk can bring common sense back even into chaos warriors doing overheads. If you opt for the +25% stagger power talent, you can calm frenzied monks as well.

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So Skaven/Armoured may be one of the better picks, if you’re running Flail+Shield, so you can double down on deleting shield users, while hitting that Packmaster BP.

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Opportunist or something else for it?

Been running Resourceful to nip some cooldown time off, but thinking if I really want RC I might be better off putting it on dual hammers

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I’ve been going between Opportunist and Swiftslaying, because Righteous Fury lets you outkill everything with procs on SS, and if you continuously dodge backwards you can’t really take damage while spamming heavies.

On Cata either/or. On Cata+, I think I’d go with Opportunist for more safety, as the Flail doesn’t have that much crazy Cleave on it’s Stagger.

Haven’t tried RC.

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I started using it at someone’s suggestion and knowing WP’s passive regen is very low.

On the one hand, he’s low crit

On the other hand, RC has that 4 sec refresh so it’s not like he’d be getting crits too often anyway.

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can it be the case that a strangler can be staggered with the shield burst so he let off of your teammember running the + 25% stagger increase talent? because i dont have any power vs skaven and power vs monster and it works for me XD

What difficulty level? Because below Cata the shield of faith just kills them outright.

If Cata I really don’t know what’s going on there, as I ran the test quite a few times with different increments of power vs.

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i am playing on cata, but maybe i have to test it again, i played both legend and cata, can be the case that i mix it up

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If you wouldn’t mind doing a quick test yourself I would appreciate that. Pretty sure I was thorough but you never know.

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ok you are right, it only works on legend without the power vs skaven properties. I tested it on modded.
But what i recognized is that you can just put the vs skaven properties on your weapon. And even if you dont have the weapon in your hands when you are grabbed, it counts to you ult.

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Super interesting, great work! Just one thing that sprung to my attention:

How do you get 30% power without the weapon, though? You can only get 20% from jewelry, so the 30% implies that the power from weapon is counted right? Kind of odd that Opportunist doesn’t count then.

This is absolutely golden information, thank you!

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Good observation. I incremented the power up one property at a time to find where it started working, so indeed it must be getting the power property from the weapon fine but not opportunist for some reason. That would suggest it’s nothing to do with the packmaster grab itself, just the way the ult itself is coded.

My pleasure! Of course it will take most of the duration of the dot to finish it, so it still leaves you/your teammate vulnerable for several seconds before it dies. Still valuable and buys a lot of time, but definitely not a guaranteed save if the packmaster manages to yank you/them through a dense horde. I’m not too sure what other useful breakpoints it might be competing with, but EP + a property on one or your weapons is a decently cheap investment.

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I haven’t found any very good breakpoibts to compete with that packmaster breakpoint, but I’ve wanted to experiment what the twohander can do to CWs stagger-wise with enhanced power and the 25% stagger talent, so I wanted to put chaos + armor on the jewelry, and that might compete. But one instance of + vs. skaven & EP seems like a very minor investment indeed.

Maybe Opportunist doesn’t count because the Packmaster isn’t considered as “attacking” according to the game?

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Ohhhh yeah that’s a really good point. Trying to test the end burst against specific enemy attacks sounds like an awful time unfortunately, so hard to say, but sounds very likely.

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Is there a breakpoint to oneshot a packmaster like GK can do with Bret longsword or exe?

Good question. I haven’t tested the weapon breakpoints so I have no idea. I’d imagine 2h hammer heavy 3 or the bonk book would have the best chance.