HM seed shroud... not worth it?

[dklm]

I was excited to get Fateful Tome - Seed Shroud...but ever since Overflow was nerfed, it's now pretty useless in pvp and in pve in my opinion.  And the other HM seed shroud volume 1 seems not useful either because I never run out of focus ever since the changes were made.  So now both seem pretty useless.

[RainbowDashie]

19 minutes ago, dklm said:

I was excited to get Fateful Tome - Seed Shroud...but ever since Overflow was nerfed, it's now pretty useless in pvp and in pve in my opinion.  And the other HM seed shroud volume 1 seems not useful either because I never run out of focus ever since the changes were made.  So now both seem pretty useless.

you say overflow is useless right now, but in next sentence that you dont have any focus problems?
You realise that they just give overflow focus costs right? no changes on dmg output right now.

Also it will be more wortheless with t3 bees and soulburn changes.

[dklm]

Do you know I'm taking about the HM skill right lol

[Tandleheart]

Resetting cooldown of Rumblebees along with instant cast at 550% attack power is only available after HM unlock.  So if you're running a Bees build (particularly stage 2 with its long 18s cooldown), I can't see how one could assert that the unlock was useless.  But if you're running a different build (like a Sunflower build) then the unlock might not be as meaningful.  But there's not really an issue here because skill unlocks were never "balanced" to begin with---depending on your build, certain skill branches are simply going to be more valuable (or even critical) than others.

[dklm]

Okay, the skill you said, making Rumblebees instant cast for stage 2.  WHEN would you ever use that? LOL.

Second, WHO uses stage 3 LOL.

 

The most powerful ones are stage 1 and sunflower.  Both do not benefit from HM fateful tome seed shroud.

[Jackiesaysya]

definitely useless in pve where you almost always have focus. Is really good for pvp though where you have significantly less focus regain.

HM seedshroud the only hm skill I havent unlocked.

[dklm]

Okay you say HM seed shroud is good for pvp?  Which one? the fateful tome or the other one.  In my opinion both suck for pvp.

[Gamer4ever]

well I personally love the stage 1 HM seed shroud, for Stage 2 and 3 of bees, and the sunflower buff. Stage 3 will be even more useful after the next rosethorn buff

 

it's ESPECIALLY useful for stage 2 bees in pvp. people ignore stage 2 bees, while I admit, it's useless for pve, I'd say it's just as op as Stage 1 and sunflower if built right with the appropriate skills, HM and normal.

 

Stage 2 just requires a different play-style, you need to play defensively, or as I like to call it, the attrition battle. You don't fight to win in ten seconds.

I can't help giggling a bit when I use Stage 2 bees in Pvp and watching my opponent slowly die, baiting out all their escapes and slowed to like 70% inside nettle and under the effects of Stage 2 bees as I play keep-away near the opposite side of the arena.

And since the fight lasts awhile and I effectively control the speed of the fight, I can true friend heal any damage, then party huzzah to heal my cats hp back up, so as long as my cat is alive and I'm not being 100-0'ed, time would run out before I die

[dklm]

Do you use stage 2 in arenas? What rank are you Gamer4ever?

[Gamer4ever]

1 hour ago, dklm said:

Do you use stage 2 in arenas? What rank are you Gamer4ever?

Silver, yeah, i know that's not saying much, but i don't particularly like pvp. I've probobly played less than 30 1v1 games this season and used Stage 2 bees maybe 3-4 of those games.

I do like to try different strategies though. I don't use stage 2 alot, but when i do decide to switch things up, I've won more than I lost using it. I wouldn't dare use stage 2 fighting another Summoner or Warlock though, I'm pretty sure that's an attrition battle I wouldn't win, it's quite effective on a destroyers though since stage 2 pierces counters and deflects, so short of iframing, it'll hit regardless of their spinning and as long as I can stay away or Shroud their pull or next attack  once in range, i can retreat, insta cast bees, root and bait out their escapes again, then repeat until their dead. 

 

I haven't used stage 2 on all the classes yet, (lack of desire to pvp), but my longest fight was against a sin, nearly timed out, they were invis most of the time, so my Stage 2 bees did most of the work while I played defensively and kept my cat Q'd waiting for the right moment to tab. My most difficult fight using Stage 2 so far was against a BM, or possibly a BD, forgot which it was, I lost the first round but won the next to thanks to alternating heals and the usual baiting out their escapes.

 

I know the sample size isn't huge, it's pathetically small, but in my silver ranked experience, Stage 2 bee's is just as viable as the others if you don't mind a different play-style, but it does have a glaring weakness, if you can't survive a long fight, your dead. I haven't tried it in 3v3 though, I don't think it'll be too effective in that scenario with the tag-ins and double-teams

[dklm]

Hongmoon skills are supposed to be powerful skills, that's why they take effort to unlock.  I am simply disappointed at the current seed shroud hm skills because they do not seem to be worth it.

[Grimoir]

HM Seed Shround is very usefull in arena expecially. In PVE is not really viable and needed.

 

In arena when fighting destroyers / blade masters where your counter is very important it will give you some extra damage  or a good focus pool to spam rmb at the oponent.

[Bits]

s3 bees is the strongest single-target summoner DPS right now, by a large margin. Many people don't realise this, because in order to get max DPS out of it, you have to move constantly, and be in melee range.

So for all dungeons in PVE when you don't need AOE, and can be in melee range (this is pretty much every boss except for 4 specific encounters) s3 bees is king, giving summoner massive single target DPS. The HM seed shroud, which gives you 550% ap bonus on your bees for 3s potentially EVERY EIGHT SECONDS if you can counter enough, is a huge DPS gain. To say it is worthless is to really misunderstand the state of summoner's pve dps right now.

[RainbowDashie]

1 hour ago, Bits said:

s3 bees is the strongest single-target summoner DPS right now, by a large margin. Many people don't realise this, because in order to get max DPS out of it, you have to move constantly, and be in melee range.

So for all dungeons in PVE when you don't need AOE, and can be in melee range (this is pretty much every boss except for 4 specific encounters) s3 bees is king, giving summoner massive single target DPS. The HM seed shroud, which gives you 550% ap bonus on your bees for 3s potentially EVERY EIGHT SECONDS if you can counter enough, is a huge DPS gain. To say it is worthless is to really misunderstand the state of summoner's pve dps right now.

ive tested s3 bees and sunflower alot and you must block constantly to be on the same level and to get a little bit higher.

[Bits]

24 minutes ago, RainbowDashie said:

ive tested s3 bees and sunflower alot and you must block constantly to be on the same level and to get a little bit higher.

Where did you test? Did you move constantly while using it, and stay within 1-2m of your target?

 

During my testing (on Profane Jiangshi boss solo in Necro 4m) I didn't use HM seed shroud at all, only using s3 bees with constant movement in melee vs using sunflower, and s3 bees was over 1k DPS ahead, without the HM seed shroud buff.

In a party, with equal gear, I out DPS assassins, warlocks, KFM and blade masters (I haven't run against a FM lately). In addition, I think bees scales better - with 740ap I reached 51k dps on the final boss in Lair, with KFM blue buff and soulburn, vs only 38k dps with the same buffs using sunflower.

[RainbowDashie]

2 hours ago, Bits said:

Where did you test? Did you move constantly while using it, and stay within 1-2m of your target?

 

During my testing (on Profane Jiangshi boss solo in Necro 4m) I didn't use HM seed shroud at all, only using s3 bees with constant movement in melee vs using sunflower, and s3 bees was over 1k DPS ahead, without the HM seed shroud buff.

In a party, with equal gear, I out DPS assassins, warlocks, KFM and blade masters (I haven't run against a FM lately). In addition, I think bees scales better - with 740ap I reached 51k dps on the final boss in Lair, with KFM blue buff and soulburn, vs only 38k dps with the same buffs using sunflower.

i did a lot of testing in yeti (cause more attacks to dodge) and was slightly ahead with sunflower, but will test it again right now

Edit: did some testing right now with same other skills (except lmb, rmb, f) and got around 1-2k dps more on jiangshi (1-2m range to boss with both builds)

dps around 21-22k with bees and 23-24k with sunflower (712 AP, 58.7% Crit rate, 219.89 % Crit Dmg)

max bee dmg was 23k. Super Sunflower was 15k.
So the single skill damage yeah bees are stronger in my testings, but you shouldnt forgot the 2 resets and aditional f dmg. And i think thats the whole diference between both builds.

[Bits]

2 hours ago, RainbowDashie said:

i did a lot of testing in yeti (cause more attacks to dodge) and was slightly ahead with sunflower, but will test it again right now

Edit: did some testing right now with same other skills (except lmb, rmb, f) and got around 1-2k dps more on jiangshi (1-2m range to boss with both builds)

dps around 21-22k with bees and 23-24k with sunflower (712 AP, 58.7% Crit rate, 219.89 % Crit Dmg)

max bee dmg was 23k. Super Sunflower was 15k.
So the single skill damage yeah bees are stronger in my testings, but you shouldnt forgot the 2 resets and aditional f dmg. And i think thats the whole diference between both builds.

That's really interesting! I spend a few hours this afternoon testing myself, and posted my findings in detail here 

Maybe we can discuss there, I don't want to drag this thread more off-topic.

 

I'll reiterate though that, since in my testings bees s3 performs very highly, HM seed shroud is well worth it imo. I should do some tests where I use it and see how high I can get!