Shadowsear - not bad at all....Follow

I did a bit of testing with this yesterday and got some quite nice numbers on the damage front:

With Pofundity and Blood Rite II engaged I was managing 600+ damage (This was on blue and green mobs though). Now the fact that this spell increases magic potency based on the difference between the target mobs HP and yours, this could stack nicely with good magic accuracy. Compared to Scourge II and Banish II I was getting about 30% more damage on average (e.g Scourge II would hit the mob for 400+). Further testing is clearly needed, but for those of you who haven't got it yet I think its something you can look forward to as after Scourge II and Banish II we don't get any nuke type spells.

The downside of this spell is its long recast timer, so its a spell that you can't spam. Also as its 88 mp per cast its quite heavy on the mp, but not that bad - a well timed Siphon can easily get you that back.

Shadowsear

Anyone else out there have experience using this on tougher mobs? I would be interested to know your results.

Edit:

Another thing...

Obviously this spell is good if you can keep your HP lower than max (not dangerously low though) because it will mean this will work with mobs that don't necessarily have too much higher HP bars than you. Take Doblyns or Coblyns for example, they go down pretty fast if they con blue to orange because they do not have much HP (Quartz Dobylns have between 500-700ish hp) and my THM fully geared has around 1000, so the chances of Shadowsear doing great damage on them is very slight (although in my tests it was still hitting for as much as Scourge II with Profundity and Blood Rite II on). However mobs with higher HP, for example, wisps, the HP difference is greater therefore more chance of greater damage. I managed a 945 damage on a blue wisp last night. I know, before you say, that this test doesn't take into account elemental resistances (Shadowsear has neutral element btw), or defence of the mob, NM's or anything that cons red, but it does show you the potential. If I ever get into a party situation where we are fighting really tough mobs it would be really interesting to see how this does as a nuke.



Edited, Jan 6th 2011 12:49pm by EdyNOTB

Very good point about the sacrifice trick of reducing your hp - never even thought of that. So far I have used Profundity + Blood Rite II every time Ive casted and Ive been getting good number (sometimes hitting the 1k+ mark), but I've not tried it without profundity so I'll post when I have something.