Medium Armor + misc questions

[gialla]

Hello, here's another round of noob question for you

- Why should I use medium armor ?
When I'm playing healer or off magic, I use light armor that give me no action penalty and still come with some HP/SAP bonus.
When playing as a melee, I use Heavy Armor, in order to absorb more dmg.
When should I use medium armor ?

- Sleep / Root spells
I've bought sleep spell last night and found that it act like root more or less.
With sleep you can "disable" the mob for a short period of time...with root you can do the same !
The big difference is that a mob that is sleeping, will wake up as soon as he get hit, so it is always better to root.
Also sleep spell last few seconds so that it can't be really used for crowd control.
Question is: will sleep2/3/4 last longer than sleep 1?

- Slow attack (with blunt weapon)
I've bought slow2 and, while playing with blunt weapon, I've done some tests.
First question is: how do I know that slow attack land? There's no icon, or link or message telling me that "mob xx is now slowed".
Second question is: how do I know when the mob is no more slowed ?
Playing with capryini blue 4x, I've tried to kill them without using slow attack..it took around 30 seconds and the capryini made 11/12 attacks.
Then I've tried to kill the same kind of capryini using only slow attack. It took 30 sec and capryini made 11/12 attack !
So the slow attack isn't working at all?
Maybe it is because slow2 attack has a so little slow % that it is almost unnoticable ?
Will slow 3/4/5.. be better ?


Thank you

[lienem]

Hello, here's another round of noob question for you

- Why should I use medium armor ?
When I'm playing healer or off magic, I use light armor that give me no action penalty and still come with some HP/SAP bonus.
When playing as a melee, I use Heavy Armor, in order to absorb more dmg.
When should I use medium armor ?

Medium armor is useful depending on what you do. If you're a secondary tank, it's usually helpful, because since there's less penalty that Heavy Armor, it enables you to use less Hp/Stam credits, and helps out the healer of the team, who can concentrate on the main tanker. I think protection factor is between 20-30% (not a very accurate estimate i know). The other advantage is that you can use a higher quality MA than HA, which gives more boosts... All in all it's a question of how you like to play .

- Sleep / Root spells
I've bought sleep spell last night and found that it act like root more or less.
With sleep you can "disable" the mob for a short period of time...with root you can do the same !
The big difference is that a mob that is sleeping, will wake up as soon as he get hit, so it is always better to root.
Also sleep spell last few seconds so that it can't be really used for crowd control.
Question is: will sleep2/3/4 last longer than sleep 1?

I disagree as to your comparing Root and Sleep. I consider Sleep to be more like Fear. The mob cannot hit you while it's under the spell, but as soon as it has broken the link, it will attack (even though if you fear it, it will take time coming back).
But a rooted mob can still attack you (happens frequently when you try rooting and they resist your first cast... sometimes the second cast will root them right next to you, and you'll get hit anyway).
The use of Sleep is if you're going to have adds... but then again it's prolly mostly useful is you're the team Afflictionist, not on a solo/duo team basis.
And, yes, higher spells are better .

[rasmus]

I agree to the above, but I do have one thing to add.

I dont think the sleep spell is of much use when fighting mobs, as they break out of the spell as soon as they get hit.
But I DO think its usefull in case of PvP (and I think that is the reason we are able to learn that spell), as in a PvP fight it would be great to make that super nuker go to sleep

[blaah]

- Why should I use medium armor ?

for looks.. ohh and almost forgot, when you secondary tank.

- Sleep / Root spells
...
Question is: will sleep2/3/4 last longer than sleep 1?

yep, sleep will break when mob gets hit.
use it if there is 2 aggro on your group and both of them are immune to fear/stun (and hope it lands
sleep is link spell, like all aflictions.

- Slow attack (with blunt weapon)

slow is.. hmm.. spell that you can use your sp's ?
hehe, some say that slow is broken, but probably it affects attack speed too little to see effect.
imho dont bother with "slow attack".

[sehracii]

Medium Armor-

As others have said, it's good for a secondary tank. About 25% protection (half of heavy) and only 7.9 penalty per piece (less than half of heavy's 20)
You can open up with a more heavy duty attack and not drain your stam so fast. But you still have reasonable protection when you do end up getting hit. And of course you can wear higher Q (1.5 times your con) so get more bonus.
I also like to wear a few medium pieces in my mage outfit. The extra sap usage can be a drain on healers and nukers, but afflictionists don't have double missiles to worry about, the spells are much cheaper and a little penalty doesn't hurt.

Sleep-

With Defensive Affliction being my highest combat skill, I'll have to say that sleep is almost useless. Firstly, stun is always a better choice unless the mob is immune. I'd never use sleep in PvP, since no homin is immune (even if their stun resist is higher I'd still use it over sleep, as you never know when someone will attack them and break your sleep link, and you never know what your targets resist is anyway)
That being said, I've really only found one use for sleep -Leveling on stun immune mobs. You want to work DA but your team has a great rhythm set up on stun-immune kincher? (being hypothetical here ) Do you make them move to another mob? Nah, just cast sleep. It won't contribute much to the fight, except maybe helping the melee get a free hit every now and then. But they already have a good rhythm, dont' mess it up.

Fear is infinitely better than sleep. If you want to incapacitate a mob temporarily (like an add) fear is the way to go. Sleep needs to have the link held to be of any use (and that's assuming no one wakes it up) but fear just needs to connect and it goes running off. In fact holding a fear link isn't even necessary at all, as it breaks when they run a certain distance away anyway. Cast it and then do something else, like heal.

Oh, both medium armor and sleep are shiny and pretty
If you play like some of us, for eye candy, they're both awesome

[gialla]

Thank you everyone for the answers