The decay tree for the Void Gauntlet is pretty much worthless. The skills might sound good on paper but in reality they provide little value. When are we going to get an overhaul of the skills in this tree. No one uses baleful tether or essence rupture.
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The weapon changed so much in the recent and upcoming nerfs that tether was never a viable option.
Rupture, in theory, is a great sustain debuff, but, with the weird GUI latency update and overall lack of combat logs, I know that it works, but it’s not a constant. It’d be a great debuff if it was more consistent/effective, but having tested it on many many scenarios; I ditched it for the buff-debuff ball, even when the only use it has for a healer was also nerfed recently, it’s still more effective, or at least, more noticeable, that the awesome-yet-unproven effectivity of life leeching and stamina recovery that the rupture offers but won’t pay. PvE wise speaking, on PvP I also did like a million tests, and it was unnoticed, even when the VG offers basic heavy rangeds recovery, with or withour rupture, there was no difference.
wait in line
blood tree has been fucked since launch.
2 Likes
Honestly though. Orb of Decay is such a solid ability I love it. Then you get to tether and essencce rupture…oof. Essence rupture thearetically works but its not consistent and you don’t even need focus to use it “effectively” because it scales on weapon dmg of the person hitting the afflicted target. Tether is so weak I’d rather take more passives on the annihilation tree than tether as a 3rd ability…
In Short
1.) Orb of Decay is fine (imo)
2.) Essence Rupture needs a buff and should scale on focus not the weapon dmg of the attacker
3.) Tether needs to be JUICED. The ability perk needs to be BUILT IN and it needs some kind of actual damage application instead of the empower. Such as a DOT per second that scales up the longer the tether is attached, or a flat dmg proc every time you hit the tethered target. Since VG can provide it’s own mana tether s cimpletely useless atm cause it’s just an empower.
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I agree that orb of decay is fine as it is.
baleful tether should have a dot or activate the heal when a enemy moves more than 15m away.
They also need their hitboxes looked at as they are extremely difficult to land on moving targets.
even the ult of the tree is terrible to use. The heavy attack is difficult to land because its so slow. So even when you get stacks to reset the cooldowns its difficult to activate before it wears off.
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I’d go one step further, PvP side of things, because tether on PvE is a wasted slot IMO.
I’d make it a full both-ways root with a 7-10m effective range.
No debuff, no slow, nothing else but a good old fashioned root, but we both get rooted, and I can’t switch the weapon cuz I lose the root and I’m stuck there without my alt-weapon waiting for someone else to kill the target.
I’m just throwing things at the wall here and see what sticks, sleep deprived me should not be on the forums.
The whole reason it’s broken, is because it’s a buff/heal weapon “companion” tree to life staff.
If they made it strong enough to stand on it’s own as a buff/heal weapon it would become mandatory for the life staff and they would need to neuter the life staff for it.
So they made it “Ehh”
Theoretically speaking, they SHOULD lower the life staff abilities, and buff the beans out of VG right tree to make a full healer.
That would open up options for other buff weapons and things. And even include focus modifiers for other weapons/abilities like SNS or hammer ect. That way they could do more damage, like a paladin ect.
There’s a lot that could be done.
IE instead of taunt abilities with a gem, you could include heal/buff abilities with a focus gem instead.
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Been asking for some of these functionality changes probably since December or January which has yet to be addressed. My thoughts below:
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OoD: Draining Orb, Slowing Orb, and Diminishing Orb are not proccing off of the Detonating Orb damage instance.
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ER: Overflowing Essence ONLY procs after the 10 second duration has been satisfied even though it SHOULD proc after target death or reapplication of Essence Rupture especially with Refreshing Rupture as the new perk.
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BT: Tether needs to persist after weapon swap, ability is DOA without it. The Soul Eater passive is incredibly out of place and does not assist your teammates whatsoever and can barely assist you the user.
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Glimpse of the Void: Even with the deserved CDR caps on Refreshing Frailty and Refreshing Precision, CDR is not much of a problem with Keen on VG and Keen Awareness on Ring. Glimpse just gets outclassed by Voidcaller even while playing a ranged, Focus heavy playstyle.
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Ranged Heavies don’t offer anything imo whatsoever, and as a result I do not bother with 3 passives in the Decay Tree at all. Functionality change to Life Staff’s Siphon from Preview might be decent, or just make that the capacity of Tether I guess.
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I still hold my ground in believing that Orb of Decay is better than Oblivion, but I was hyping up the ability for the longest time with my Company Governor because on paper it looked as if it would singllehandedly do what Oblivion does.
On hit, Orb of Decay reduces the duration of the target’s buffs by 52%.
Well, when Detonating Orb was and still has not been counting as a hit for some bizarre reason, that calculation sadly falls flat. Bugs like that/unexplained intentionality/insufficient tooltips are really aggravating and make the weapon/playstyle weaker. Relegates 100 buff removal to tankier individuals that can survive in the thick of things while only giving half of that capacity to ranged users.
2 Likes
Just to clarify, you said that if VG was strong enough to stand on it’s own then LS would need to be nerfed? Wouldn’t that logic also apply to every focus scaling weapon in the future that has any kind of healing mechanic? In turn making LS the only real healing weapon ever. Sounds a bit boring being locked into one weapon for eternity. I also see how it can be problematic if VG was truly an alternative to LS in terms of healing ( especially in pvp) because it would be a flat buff to healers.
To me there’s only 2 choices for VG or focus scaling weapons in the future that heal.
1.) Make them heal relatively the same amount as LS while somehow limiting how many “healing weapons” someone can use. IE Can’t equip Life and VG at the same time for balancing purposes or giving a heal cut debuff for if you have an addition focus weapon equiped (somewhat like how they did the healing ratios in light,mediun, and heavy).
2.) Make all of them except LS support weapons with a little bit of healing like VG is now.
I don’t think either answer is the right one but I want to see decay VG buffed to at least do respectable damage or healing. Also, the thought of being stuck with lifestaff as the only healing weapon forever is truly haunting.
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Hard agree.
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Essence rupture is a great PvE skill
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Pretty much every ability except VB and Scream is lackluster. Both Orb of decay and Oblivion are only strong because of armor perks debuffs - meh otherwise.
Orb of decay damage is pretty low for an int weapon imo.
Rupture and Tether (especially the latter) are not viable options outside of 1v1s. Tether especially but thats due to its design I guess so whatever.
PvP point of view btw
In pve essence rupture it’s pure gold. Negates the need of a healer
Noooo it doesn’t. It still scales off of foc. You really want a healer using it.
Sounds pretty cool. Maybe in the same vein we could make Tether have some sort of synergy with Voidcaller and allow it to cling to the target hit by the ability.
I still prefer Voidcaller over Glimpse of the Void by a mile, but when you proc it while not around you allies, it sadly falls flat. Considering how you crumble under duress in light armor, it would be a nice way to apply that heal from range while not compromising the melee oriented VG builds. Would have to sacrifice Scream to for more healing output, but you could at least offer another source of healing in certain situations.
Before the haters come and salt this thread, all the VG heal mechanics are either based over time or damage so, even not being even close to be a full time healer weapon, it’s a good choice to eventually get the LS out of the way. If only AGS would decide what to do with it, coz right now is a jack of no trades.
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No you don’t 
The 20% life steal it’s insane together with leeching. We did m10 tempest gold as 5 dps. You need healers for pvp and there damage it’s lower so the burst heal might be wort but for pve…. He better run scream oblivion and orb
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Honestly id prefer they rework the entire tree its theme is decay but what are you decaying? Damage with heals? Id prefer it removes the healing and just becomes a dot and debuff tree
i mean its what mushrooms do. consume the decaying for nutrients.
realistically its more like vampirisms