Living Weapon, new weapon proc

[dunkelst]

This thread is intended for discussion on how to utilize our new toy and give feedback on possible issues arising from the added mechanic!
This is after only a few tests, nothing too in-depth yet. I might be missing something obvious!

TL;DR:
We lack the tools to utilize this proc, which makes it super unfun*!
* to me atleast, I don't like mechanics that have an optimum that is not reasonably reachable

What does it do?

When your Power drops below 20, your Power regeneration is increased drastically for 10 seconds.
Additionally, your healing and damage are increased by 3% for 10 seconds.
This effect may trigger once every 20 seconds.,

In short:
After the first weapon upgrade, when power drops below 20:
- Power regeneration is drastically increased for 10s
- You gain up 50% (depends on upgrade) increased damage for 10s. These are actual 50%!
- Procs once every 20s

What does it mean for us?
We gain two things.
1. An amazing power regeneration steroid in case we drop low. Since we really have to force it to drop below 20 again within its cooldown, I don't expect us to have any power issues anymore. This is especially great for power straving specs like warchanter, beastmaster and the likes.
The downside of this is the fact that cost reduction (5%, bard/oracle/chloro) as well as the resource regeneration cooldown (+5power/s, bard/oracle) will work against our proc. On the contrary it supports the proc of rogues and clerics, so it'll be hard to convince people to stop using those
2. A very strong damage increase. Too strong to ignore.
Testing it in warchanter (look at tooltip of some ability, activate Deep Breaths, compare new value), these are actual 3-50%. With the "possible" 50% uptime this means a damage increase of up to 25% overall!

How do we get it?
We have to dump our power fast, preferably exactly every 20s. Because of the increased power regeneration, we will only have 10s to do so and that's where I see the main problem:
We lack the tools to achieve this consistently across most souls!

What affects our weapon proc negativly?
- Cost reduction (5%, bard/oracle/chloro/mastery)
- Resource regeneration cooldown (+5power/s, bard/oracle)
- Talents (power reductions, power gains, such as RB's Surging Energy or Tempest's "everything that needed to be added to make wavelength somewhat usable")
- Mentoring. There seems to be a level requirement, so as soon as you are mentored, we will lose everything. Kinda dumb design, mechanics changing from mentoring when it never did before.

What can we do to dump our power?
The easiest would be warchanter with his low power regeneration and high cost abilities.
Second easiest is libchanter because of the many offGCD abilities.
After that it probably is warlord with legendary Breaking Blow, followed by riftblade with his bursts, or any spec utilizing either of those. These are rather slow though, so working that into our rotations in any spec will certainly disrupt established playstyles and result in weird changes of flow (paragons "builder-followup-finisher" pattern might change to a "BREAKING BLOW BREAKING BLOW BREAKING BLOW" "pattern" every 20s).
Edit: Playing regular riftblade it takes ages to drain without raid support. Even spamming utility offGCD and 1pt finishers isn't enough for fast drain
This also will affect our rotations, priority lists and the like to play around a mechanic we have no timer for unless we use a non-existing addon to track the internal cooldown of the proc. This certainly will be a joy to find out and then execute in a raid environment
As a side note, this proc will most likely also trivilize warchanter's power management, making it more accessible, so that's a good thing.

What does it mean for other specs, like paragon or tempest?
Well, without the cost reduction and the usual tempest spec for example, I didn't drop below 20 power within my first burst. Since that's when the cooldowns will be active, and with the raid buffs on top, our regular tempest simply won't be able to proc it. RIP tempest.
Same thing for paragon, I wasn't able to even remotely drop low enough to proc it on my own in the first burst.

What about tanks?
Who cares? I don't. VK slowly drains itself iirc, Paladin no clue tbh. Still hard to dump power fast iirc.

What could improve?
Well, another balance patch would be the best option I think. We need tools to dump power across the board. Apart from warchanter and maybe libchanter being able to dump power on demand within one or two GCD, we simply cannot consistently proc this effect.
While the proc certainly is a fun mechanic, it's not fun* that we cannot use it properly.
* to me atleast


Until any changes or input from the rift dev team come around, I guess we'll sooner or later have to think about how to redo our specs.
Drop power gains and reductions, and include power drains, with the little tools we have at our disposal

[dunkelst]

I don't want to make my first post longer than necessary, so here are some findings:

Basically we can sacrifice utility for power drains. I haven't listed it because it is dumb that I'm even considering it, but interrupts also cost power and could be used. Please don't.
I also hope that this isn't the intention behind this mechanic, but at the moment I think sacrificing utility is our best bet.
I'm looking forward to the ability lag

Tempest

suppressmacrofailures
cast Focused Fire
cast Jolt
cast Storm Shield

Dumps 30-40 power immedietly.
False Response every 30s for another 10 power if needed.


Paragon

suppressmacrofailures
cast Shield of Will
cancelbuff Sweeping Blades
cast [notactive] Sweeping Blades

Dumps 10-20 power per two presses. Clunky, but can get the job done. Impacts DPS during use.


Warlord

suppressmacrofailures
cast Battlefield Medic
cast Eye of the Storm
cast Sergeant's Order
cast General's Order
cast Forced March

Dumps 31-47 power immedielty. The last two probably are a bad idea, and Sergeant's Order depending on encounter as well.
If using a Riftblade-variant of warlord, Icy Burst can be used to dump power as well.
If atleast 4 into tempest, Offensive Blast could be used as a high cost ability.


Riftblade

suppressmacrofailures
cast Stoneshield

Dumps 10 power immedietly.
Rift Travel would be another 5 power, but is clunky as hell and has a 45s CD. Not worth it imho.
Spam bursts and/or use AoE builders (Thunder Strike).
If really desperate, I'm with you! from Warchanter is the highest power cost builder


Reaver

suppressmacrofailures
cast Eye of the Storm
cast Crest of Entropy
cast Pestilence
cast @gtae cast Stumbling Morass

Dumps 38 power immedietly. Assuming warlord-variant.
Toggling Plague Bringer is another 11 power.


Champion

suppressmacrofailures
cast Weapon Defense
cast Mark of Extermination
cast Eye of the Storm
cast Breaking Blow

Dumps 67-75 power on the next GCD. Uses an onGCD ability!
Inescapable can be used every 30s for 8 power if not needed.
Naturally drains power faster than other specs. BB by itself should be plenty.


Beastmaster

suppressmacrofailures
cast Battlefield Medic
cast Eye of the Storm

Dumps 23 power immedietly.
Can use Icy to drain faster.
Naturally drains power faster than other specs. Shouldn't be too much of a problem.


I'll forgo the healers and tanks. Warchanter/Libchanter should be easy enough, Liberator probably is hard to drain fast without sacrificing a lot. Tanks, I don't know/care/etc. Probably sacrificing cooldowns isn't the best idea and the gain isn't the same as for DPS anyway, so I wouldn't really bother trying to use the proc.

[Jotunn]

If there will be no changes to overal power managment, i recon we'll be spaming all the ogcd power drain abilities like crazy, even interrupts ...

As for tempest, if you don't take the 2 power regen/reduction masteries you get starved relatively fast in WL.