Celtic Heroes

I decided to do some testing on Howling Wind with my druid. He is level 107 with a defense of 1050 (radiant boots, greater ES legs and 2 greater ES birch rings, 75 dex). I tested level 5 howling wind with 325 focus, 1070 nature's magic which should be a -243 attack (which seemed like it should be meaningful as I estimated it to be around 15-30% of the attack of my targets)

I'm not really good with statistics or anything, but I tried to get a substantial amount of data to see if the difference was noticable.

I did 2 sets of tests. In the first set I fought against the new level 120 2* Tasty Dryads in OW because they didn't hit hard and had lots of HPs. I killed 10 of them without HW and 10 with HW. I then used my 2nd account level 109 warrior and dueled (note the HW debuff still shows as a full debuff in a duel unlike the buffs). In all of this I kept my druid's gear constant and assumed that neither casting, attacking, or any buffs (embrace, bark, or abundence) had any impact on attack evasion. I also assumed that any evaded melee attack counted as an evasion (miss, parry, dodge). I was very sad by what I found.

Test 1 - Tasty Dryad
Killed 10 tasty dryads without W. Was attacked 294 times, evaded 145 time for an evasion rate of 49.3%
Killed 10 tasty dryad with HW. Was attacked 317 times, evaded 157 times for an evasion rate of 49.5%
Effectively no change

Well, I thought maybe there was some sort of cap based on level difference or something wierd going on so I decided to dual log my warrior and try that.

Test 2 - Dueling level 109 Warrior with 1140 attack using the sword you can by from the starter vendor to minimize healing
Two duals (2nd was interrupted by a phone call) without HW. Was attacked 304times, evaded 166time for an evasion rate of 54.6%
Two duals with HW (was interrupted duirng the 2nd duel so stopped it early). Was attacked 282 times, evaded 151 times for an evasion rate of 53.5%
Effectively no change

So, I was pretty sad by this as I was hoping to make a solo evasion type druid leveraging HW. It may be that his evasion is too high and that there is an effective cap on how much you can evade so the debuff doesn't help. My qualitative feel is this is correct as when I dual log with my warrior (~200 evasion) howling wind does seem to have an impact on how often I heave to heal him even at level 1. Has anyone tried something similar with a lower evasion target? If not I may try and repeat it with less or no evasion. If it turns out to be right I guess that is either extra skills I can use for wards. I was just hoping that this type of build would be possible.

Andren/Aedyr

maybe its not enough at lvl 5, try to max this with alt book
and ty for testing, i was wondering but still the results r about lvl 5 skill

First off, thanks for the testing!

How ever, 10 mobs (Per test) is simply too low for something like this. Also, as Criminal mentioned, L5 may be too low, esp since you're past L100 yourself And more importantly, you're fighting mobs of Your high level.

Maybe u need more points, I have 30/35 points in it an love howling!

You have a lot of defense, which likely accounts for the high evasion rates without howling wind. At level 109, my level 29 howling wind reliably increases my evasion rate from 1/10 to 8/10 auto attacks when facing mobs near my level (kelpies and oak trees). The attack decrease is around 1100. For better results, a larger skill point investment is likely necessary.

You have a lot of defense, which likely accounts for the high evasion rates without howling wind. At level 109, my level 29 howling wind reliably increases my evasion rate from 1/10 to 8/10 auto attacks when facing mobs near my level (kelpies and oak trees). The attack decrease is around 1100. For better results, a larger skill point investment is likely necessary.

like i said
i think u should test it again, lvl 5 isnt enough for ur lvl, its like when its lvl 1 it was good against low lvl mobs (like crookback) and at shal it was uneffective
and im sure that lvl 5 isnt enough for trees kelpies or even eyes

I did some extra testing dueling my warrior keeping HW at level 5 (partially for more relevant comparion and partly due to comments that even level 1 HW is useful by several forum members, not saying it is or isn't, just wanted to test it). I adjusted my druid's defense by removing earthsone gear (no dex or focus impact so none of the other variable should be impacted). I found that for lower defense it does have an effect.


Defense % evasion no HW % evasion HW Delta
1050 55% 54% -1%
650 40% 43% 3%
300 17% 29% 12%

So, basically, as mholloman suggested, my defense was too high to see an impact. This makes me think the characteristic that is important is Attack - Defense in some sort of diminsihing return like an exponential. This seems consistent with the other aspects of game play such as the diminishing returns associated with ability points. (Perhaps a formula like %dodge = function(level difference, # of mob stars)*(C1*exp((Attack-Defense)/C2)-1) or something like that behavior, I'm not too fussed on the forumal, just the dimishing returns concept)) that basically says you don't get much benefit. My gut feel is that more HW points won't help except with lower defense defenders (i.e. HW is effectively the same as a defense buff for whoever is being attacked).

I won't likely be able to test a higher HW any time soon since I don't have much play time when I use 2 devices, but I will try to do that at some point. I'd also like to be able to test a higher defense, but don't have any more evasion gear (if anyone on Arawn wants to sell a radiant or greater ES birch ring let me know). If anyone else who already has a high HW wanted to test this with someone on their server I'd love to see any other data added to this.

In the meanwhile I'm going to operate on the theory that and anything that there is dimishing returns to attack debuffs or defense stats as teh difference between attack and defense equals zero. The implications of this are:

1) When you have no defense gear and minimal dex, HW is always good.
2) When you have dex and defense gear, HW is good when your defense is less their attack. (I have heard a rough rule of thumb that most 1* mobs have 10* their level in attack. I dont know if it's true or how that changes for 2* and higher mobs. Anyone?)
3) At high levels when I assume mob attacks are high relative to possible defense scores HW is always good. (This probabaly also applies to most boss fights)

Very few tanks use earthstone gear (other than rings) in my experience which is the main source of triple digit defense adders. This would be therefore consistent with the observations of druids who group with tanks or solo without lots of radiant evasion gear see a very large benefit.

Ok, final results. I think I was pretty wrong before. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I used a book of alt and ran multiple cases at multiple defense levels and different HW levels using my dual with tank analogy before
The key take aways for me from this is actually the opposite of what I had suspected. HW has the greatest effect when maximized. This is the opposite of most of the other mechanics in this game of diminishing returns. However, it is because the attack stat itself has dimishing returns,reducing attack by a small percentage has a very small, diminished effect, but diminishing it by a large amount gets into the "steep part" of the curve and has a big impact. As seen before it has a bigger impact if the tank has a low defense, but is still very helpful even on a 1k+ defense defender.

That being said, I'm going to be at least half maxing (or more) HW on my 1050 defense H2H druid as an alternative to wards as I am in that awkward stage where I am leveling on trees, kelpies, ghosts, and golems depending on how crowded OW is and whether I am solo, 2 boxing with my war, or grouped.

Well, I did not read the post with graphs etc but I just wanted to say that

HOWLING WIND is far an underestimated spell !

My druid in level 143 with 34/30 HW, -1250 to -1350 speed (depends on my gear)
All focus, 80 VIT only.

1/ Solo tasty trees :

without HW : I get killed easily, my spells are interrupted (indeed, I don't put points in dexterity). I need to use many wardings and buff if I want to kill the tree. So, it's time consuming.

with HW : I evade / escape between 95 to 100%. I often end up with full health. My spells are not or rarely interrupted.
I can kill fast and finish quickly the daily quest . I don't need to use warding, embrace or bark. I start directly with HW, then vines, lightning, storm touch.
Since my build is also DPS, I can kill as fast as a warrior of my level (depending on the warrior build). For the time spent for one kill: about the timing of one vine if all spells do good damages.

Note: if the first HW fails, I get killed, so I don't use vine before HW succeeds.

2/ Solo Blackstone mages:
- with max embrace and no HW : I get killed in not time .... LOL
- with my current stats (as said above): I can kill Blackstone Mages using once or two times HW, meaning less than 1 mn30

3/ Solo Wyverns:
I still get killed
Indeed I maxed focus . If I were more balanced : 200 VIT and max focus, maybe I could solo. But I don't want to give a try a waste 2 rebirths because I am needed for boss fights.
Or maybe I should try H2H and heroic gloves (I dont use heroic gloves on my druid...)


Conclusion: I gave up embrace for HW (momentarily maybe) and this changed my game play for a more exciting one !

Healmaster lvl 143
LUGH