Celtic Heroes

I am wondering if a near maxed howling wind would be a good boss spell? Or is it still something to leave at lvl 1 and just admire in the skill panel?

It got boosted in a recent patch - would be interesting to hear how you find it now.

I will try it out and let you know my thoughts, I will just need to purchase some books from the play store. Any chance I can get a skill reset book for testing?

Before the update I tried maxing howling wind. No difference at all that I could see. Useless IMO.

I got a recommendation recently from another Druid that for a solo build it is now a must-have. They said it really reduced the amount of interrupts you got for spells. I decided to go buy it and check it out. First thing I noticed was it had specific numbers on how much the enemy damage was reduced by, and at level 66 a 1/20 Howling Wind reduced enemy damage by 84. I don't have any points in it yet, but I tried something against a crookback. I got him to aggro me, and he would hit 2 every single time, no misses, no dodges, no blocks. When I applied Howling Wind on it, he didn't land a single hit on me

I got a recommendation recently from another Druid that for a solo build it is now a must-have. They said it really reduced the amount of interrupts you got for spells. I decided to go buy it and check it out. First thing I noticed was it had specific numbers on how much the enemy damage was reduced by, and at level 66 a 1/20 Howling Wind reduced enemy damage by 84. I don't have any points in it yet, but I tried something against a crookback. I got him to aggro me, and he would hit 2 every single time, no misses, no dodges, no blocks. When I applied Howling Wind on it, he didn't land a single hit on me

Yer confused. Just don't want other ppl to get confused. So I'm correcting you.

Howling Wind doesn't effect Damage. It never has. It effects Attack. And Attack just means the chances that your auto-Attack Melee will land vs your targets Defense. In this case, your Defense vs your targets Attack. As you do understand in yer example.
This is my lvl 1 Wind. I use it only in Boss Fights. Simply because, no reason not to. I just throw it to my second bar with my Rez and my wards and move meditiate to my third bar. I can't see any reason to put a point into it.

Oh, thanks for catching me on that. It reduces attack, not damage. And at your level, where most of the attacks you have to worry about are skills, I can see why it would be useless to put points in. However, if you're a solo druid at a low to mid level, and you're going against melee enemies, I can see this being really useful with three or four points in it

I have tried a max howling wind build around level 75. I tried it because I could notice a real difference when the blood grove version of this was cast on my dps toons of similar level. Here is what I notice.

Targeting in this game is so bad that I like to minimize the amount of targeting outside the group targeting bar. This makes it less attractive to me.

Since it does not effect damage amount per hit, but rather causes the attacker to miss it is actually hard to tell how effective it is if you yourself are not targeted. Even when I am dual boxing it is hard to tell on the 'tanking' toon. This lack of information makes it less attractive to me.

The arguments for it, if we determined it was really working, are that no matter who in the group has aggro wind would help them, unlike the buffs. The buffs are both very good on dps roles IMO. Not as useful on tanks.

This is a similar dynamic. The proportion of the buff level to mob or char level makes a great deal of difference. For instance, abundance might only effect a tank by 10% of their total health, but I have found that my lvl 85ish abundance effects most dps in the 110-120 range by about 25%. Armor increases from bark are even more dramatic.

This same relationship exists for wind as a debuff and therefore depends on the level difference and stats of the mob upon which it is cast. Since I do not really understand these differences it is a bit random and I stick with the buffs since I have more info and can therefore make better choices. I have found, so far, that keeping the basic buffs (and embrace) up in rotation while also healing, calming myself and dps requires fairly constant casting from my Druid, even with a small group. This can go horribly wrong if I get distracted by targeting a mob surrounded by players... So I don't do it. I might change this if targeting got better.

tea says it is better. I put some points in it again and cannot tell, but I am a relative lowbie still and casting it on mobs 15-20 levels higher.

It's better, I use it now in my groups, And I made a solo 8 Slot and I replace Breeze with Wind when I am soloing and it helps. Not a TON, but it helps enough to warrant it's use in my solo 8-slot( I use a group-8-slot a ward/buff/spring 8-slot and then a solo 8 -slot so I don't need to constantly switch skills (1 Group, 2 Buffs, 3 Solo) that way one click over for either for buffs.

My point is, that Wind now belongs on my solo. I still don't use points in it. I don't think it's warranted. But it's now good enough to use.