We interrupt our regularly scheduled Tanking Part 2 post to bitch about Cry of Vengeance. I’ve said this before in the CSTM Captain Roundtable, but it bears repeating: Cry of Vengeance is the #1 “looks great but is actually terrible” skill for Captains and, in my opinion, In the Game.[1]
Here’s what it does:
When one of your companions falls, your Cry will return a nearby fellow back to battle and inspire those around you to greater feats of skill.
Target revives with 20% Morale
Target revives with 15% Power
The key part — the part that makes it totally suck, is this:
When one of your companions falls…
Y’see, this skill only opens up when someone is defeated, and it only STAYS opened up for … I dunno exactly. It feels like three to five seconds, so let’s say ten.
And here’s why it sucks, in ascending level of BITE ME:
- You get a TINY window of opportunity to use this skill.
- You can’t AIM the thing, so if two people die at the same time, it’s random who you’re going to rez. A DPS and the Minstrel drop? Good luck getting the right one up, because you can’t pick.
- You rez you’re target with a tiny portion of their health and virtually no useful amount of power.
- You have to rez right away, so the odds are INCREDIBLY high that you’ll rez them right back into the situation that killed them in the first place.
- Finally (and this is the worst point and yet most subtle), it teaches people that in combat rezzing must happen ZOMG RIGHT AWAY DO IT DO IT NOW!, because that’s how it works for the first in-combat rez anyone sees, in-game.
Let me expand on that last point. Everyone gets trained by the Captain’s first in-combat rez skill (we get two, and the second one sucks a lot less) — when someone drops, that rez comes RIGHT AWAY or NOT AT ALL.
Well, since that’s how we see it done, that’s what everyone else does, as soon as THEY get Rally or whatever.
That means that we see something like this.
Finnras: *defeated*
Minstrel: RALLYING FINN.
[Healing stops when Rally begins.]
[Damage that killed Finnras continues to hit the rest of the group.]
[Health drops across the board.]
[Minstrel’s Rally gets pushed back by the damage.]
[Health drops across the board.]
[Minstrel’s Rally gets pushed back by the damage.]
[Health drops across the board.]
[Minstrel’s Rally gets pushed back by the damage.]
[Health drops across the board.]
[Minstrel’s Rally gets pushed back by the damage.]
[Health drops across the board.]
[RALLY COMPLETES.]
Finnras: *Rallies.*
Everyone else: *Defeated.*
Boss: *High-fives Turbine Devs* Nice one.
Devs: I kno, rite?
You see what I’m saying? If someone in your group gets defeated, let him stay defeated until you have the situation totally in hand.
Then, and only then, use your in-combat rez.
And if it’s no longer available?
That’s fine — that one’s crap anyway.
[1] – The worst skill in the game is the Rune-keepers in-combat ‘anticipatory’ rez, tied with Fleet Stance, but those two LOOK as bad as they actually are.