Thread: SK epic vs other weapons, worth?
#61
Old 10-25-2018, 11:41 AM
jabic jabic is offline
Sarnak
Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 318
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I'm very fond of using Innoruuk's Curse, and I have had it for about two-and-a-half years on this box, through a wide swath of gear (getting progressively better as my time as casual scum goes by). I have weapons with better ratios that I will use in certain situations (generally for raids), but time and again I come back to the epic because it checks a lot of boxes in one item (read: Very Well Rounded Item)--resists, good melee and casting stats, relatively good ratio for DPS, some anti-caster properties (2h Bash), hard-to-resist magic damage (Soul Consumption), and some moderately good healing (50 hp/tick from Soul Consumption). I don't run a parser, so take what follows with a grain of salt, of course.
For soloing: The epic shines. Stacking dots and meleeing a mob down with the epic is very efficient (try it before you flame me, please), particularly since Soul Consumption stacks with Boil Blood, Asystole, and Cascading Darkness (215 damage per tick). I think it is a fair question whether the added damage and healing from Soul Consumption reduces downtime as much as a higher DPS weapon would, but anecdotally I find that I need to rest between fights less when using the epic than, say, Rocksmasher. Or, if you have aspirations of soloing mobs like hiero (very doable for a 60 SK without tons of ToV gear--hint: be creative, use some of those oft-ignored spells in your arsenal), who can slow you anyway, having the added Soul Consumption DPS (and heals) should not be shrugged off. For many of the same reasons, the epic can be extremely helpful for other solo camps, like frenzy in Velks, NG bugs in Seb, and king in LGuk.
For duoing: Particularly if you have some solid gear and a shaman buddy (even one without Torpor), Innoruuk's Curse is really nice. Frostreaver's Blessing (or spell regen) plus fungi plus Soul Consumption means that you are regenerating a not-insignificant amount of hp even without lifetapping. Assuming you have dex buff(s) on, you can very often be regenerating 75 hp per tick while standing, plus innate regen (50 hp per tick from Soul Consumption, 15 hp per tick from Fungi, and 10 hp per tick from Frostreaver's Blessing). Bottom line: if you want to be duoing things like 6-necks in WW, BM camp (including trash spiders) in Velks, Lodi, and emperor camp in Seb, Innoruuk's Curse at the very least is very, very helpful. As an aside, toss in BE Greaves and Gauntlets and Crown of Narandi, and you can single pull and tank all day while keeping your mana mostly full in this duo, but I digress.
Raids: Situationally useful. For a mob like Zlexak, for instance, Innoruuk's Curse does stick on him fairly often. If you're doing a good job of dodging the AOEs, wearing a fungi, and have either Frostreaver's Blessing or spell regen on, then Soul Consumption (plus a sprinkling of lifetaps, which also often land on him) will help you need fewer heals and stay up through the fight, while still doing some okay DPS. In many other situations, the +15 MR on the epic is also nice--yes, there are 1h/shield combos that can get you better MR (and, for some, a better ratio), but you still have a weapon that has a solid ratio and an appreciable load of stats at the same time.
So, my answer to the OP's question is that, yes, Innoruuk's Curse is worth it. Is it necessary? No. Does it give you significantly more meaningful choices and opportunities as a SK? Yes, absolutely.
As far as the knight DPS side-conversation, I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole.
Greevtox
Last edited by jabic; 10-25-2018 at 12:01 PM.
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