Unkindness of Ravens - useless?

[WielderofGigantus]

Playing a Blightcaster for the first time ever and saw Unkindness of Ravens and thought it looked really cool, and then I used it for the first time and it did 22 points of damage at level 14. ***?

I did a google search, and all I can find is the original preview thread where Xezom states that it doesn't seem to scale with anything (https://forums-old.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/537118-Lammania-Preview-3-Blightcaster/page2).

Has Unkindness of Ravens always been useless? Yeah it can cause extra piercing damage to blind targets if you have a raven from the Falconry tree, but it still has a 60 second cooldown at best and the piercing damage debuff only lasts 10 seconds.

 

[l_remmie]

It's a fun/show trick. Blightcaster in heroic can afford goofing around.

It's not worth the AP if you are looking for power.

 

[Frisson]

In theory- I like that it blinds. In practice- I've not found a great use for this ability. It's not very accessible for builds that make use of Sneak Attack dice, for example.

Both the status effect- as well as the debuff- could be a little more prolonged. And yes- it could scale better too. Finally: the cooldown is simply too long for what it currently does.

I would actually love to use it more; it looks, and sounds, pretty awesome!

What if it also made mobs helpless? Being assailed by ravens might do that to you. I think it would be flavourful. And that would help make Blightcaster a little more relevant beyond just the Heroic levels. Or is that too strong?

As it stands- my feelings on Unkindness of Ravens is: Nevermore.

 

[FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted]

if it worked correctly it would be useless
if it had 100% uptime it would still be bad
its an archetype so useless is part of the job description

 

[justin credible]

In theory- I like that it blinds. In practice- I've not found a great use for this ability. It's not very accessible for builds that make use of Sneak Attack dice, for example.

Both the status effect- as well as the debuff- could be a little more prolonged. And yes- it could scale better too. Finally: the cooldown is simply too long for what it currently does.

I would actually love to use it more; it looks, and sounds, pretty awesome!

What if it also made mobs helpless? Being assailed by ravens might do that to you. I think it would be flavourful. And that would help make Blightcaster a little more relevant beyond just the Heroic levels. Or is that too strong?

As it stands- my feelings on Unkindness of Ravens is: Nevermore.

blinded casters and rangers will run up to your last known position and try to punch you, so if you are using spike growth/acid rain and missed a few mobs, blinding them to run into the aeo would work