Infinite Forge is useless

[Kulvar.1239]

Even pDPS Virtuoso use Bloodsong who is meant for cDPS.

Reworking it into something flexible would be a nice change.

It could generate a blade every 4 or 5 weapon attack that hit, or 3 to 4 weapon #1 attack that hit.

Would help underwater, or when using a sword against a foe with lots of reflect.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

It's not useless.  pDPS can only run Bloodsong while they're with a group as they have very little bleeding to inflict on their own.  While running about in solo circumstances, Infinite Forge is much more useful for the power builds.  

[PolarBear.3961]

Im using it.

[Mell.4873]

They should just make it better. Keep it simple just change it into a passive blade regen while in combat. This would also help with down time between phases rather than spamming skills to get blades back. 

[Kulvar.1239]

4 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

They should just make it better. Keep it simple just change it into a passive blade regen while in combat. This would also help with down time between phases rather than spamming skills to get blades back. 

It's already a passive blade regen while in combat and it sucks.

[draxynnic.3719]

9 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

It's not useless.  pDPS can only run Bloodsong while they're with a group as they have very little bleeding to inflict on their own.  While running about in solo circumstances, Infinite Forge is much more useful for the power builds.  

That's not it, at least according to the tooltips, which is probably why you got confused reactions. Where it actually pays off is with Sharper Images - even on a power build, every Swordsman or pair of Berserkers summoned is eight bleeds if your phantasms are crit capped (proportionally less if not). With full Alacrity and a proper rotation, I think that's enough to outperform IF. This interaction is also part of why the bleed-focused condi virtuoso runs sword and focus offhands rather than the more traditional torch and pistol.

You're still right that IF is not useless, though - this interaction requires running Dueling. IF provides an option that isn't reliant on leveraging other synergies with the build. The problem is that this means that it tends to fall behind the more conditional options when their conditions are met.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Thanks, I didn't even know this trait* existed.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Kulvar.1239]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

IF provides an option that isn't reliant on leveraging other synergies with the build. The problem is that this means that it tends to fall behind the more conditional options when their conditions are met.

At the very least, it could be increased when not using a dagger. It would help non-dagger weapons work better on Virtuoso.

1 blade every 3 seconds. When not using a dagger, every 5th weapon #1 attack that hit generate a blade.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Kulvar.1239

[Mell.4873]

2 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

It's already a passive blade regen while in combat and it sucks.

I keep forgetting the removed the cap from Beta, they really just need to make it generate a blade every 2 or even 1 second to keep up with the condition version.

[mungozen.2379]

I believe that Infinite Forge should not generate Blades faster as a fix, as it will need to generate blades as effectively as Bloodsong, and Bloodsong can generate Blades for Power builds very effectively (at least in Meta group builds).  Infinite Forge, when compared to Psychic Riposte and Bloodsong, is only doing 1 thing, and limited to only in combat. 

One option would be to have IF speed up Out of Combat blade generation from every 10s to every 3s.  While a slight tweak, it would give IF Virtuoso faster recovery or less downtime after combat.  I still think this would need something else to make the trait compete.

Another option may be to have IF increase Bladesong Strike Damage by 1% per Blade used if within the Range Threshold (600 Units, same as Mental Focus).  This would give a DPS boost for melee oriented strike builds and a focus on 5 blade Bladesongs.  Numbers could be balanced from there.

A different twist on the above, have Infinite Forge double the effectiveness of Deadly Blades, doubling the duration of the effect, or possibly even allowing it to stack the damage modifier.

In either case you get slower Bladesongs that hit harder, and benefits for non-Dagger/GS users.

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by Mungo Zen.9364

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

5 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

That's not it, at least according to the tooltips, which is probably why you got confused reactions. Where it actually pays off is with Sharper Images - even on a power build, every Swordsman or pair of Berserkers summoned is eight bleeds if your phantasms are crit capped (proportionally less if not). With full Alacrity and a proper rotation, I think that's enough to outperform IF. This interaction is also part of why the bleed-focused condi virtuoso runs sword and focus offhands rather than the more traditional torch and pistol.

You're still right that IF is not useless, though - this interaction requires running Dueling. IF provides an option that isn't reliant on leveraging other synergies with the build. The problem is that this means that it tends to fall behind the more conditional options when their conditions are met.

Each phantasm amounts to 1 blade, maybe two if combined together in quick succession.  You'd effectively need to use a phantasm, on average, every 3 seconds to beat out IF.  This is all assuming that the enemies stay in place for Swordsman.  

[DanAlcedo.3281]

" This skill/trait is useless in my niche of the game so its 100% useless everywhere"

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Each phantasm amounts to 1 blade, maybe two if combined together in quick succession.  You'd effectively need to use a phantasm, on average, every 3 seconds to beat out IF.  This is all assuming that the enemies stay in place for Swordsman.  

I don't think Bloodsong requires the bleed applications to be in that quick succession. The greatsword cycle is three casts in twelve seconds or so. The OH sword cycle is a bit slower, probably something around two casts in thirteen seconds. You're also likely to see two or three Disenchanters thrown in that period.

So if your phantasms are crit capped*, in a period of roughly twenty-five seconds you're generating 40-41 bleeds, or 8 blades, and more if Disenchanter bounces. That's less than IF, but not by much. It's possible that my estimates are off, but it's likely to be in the same ballpark. And as long as it's approximately similar, that 25% extra bleed damage is probably worthwhile even on a power build.

*The build uses the trait that gives Fury to your phantasms. Quiet Intensity only gives an extra 10% to phantasms, so you'd need to overcap by 5% to crit cap the phantasms. But if you're 5% down that doesn't really make your blade generation that much slower than IF in ideal scenarios. IF would work better in situations where you don't have full alacrity, quickness, and a predictable target, though.

[Kulvar.1239]

3 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

One option would be to have IF speed up Out of Combat blade generation from every 10s to every 3s.  While a slight tweak, it would give IF Virtuoso faster recovery or less downtime after combat.  I still think this would need something else to make the trait compete.

 

IF do not generate blades outside combat, so you can't increase it.
I assume you're confusing it with Signet of Illusions passive effect that generate 1 clone (so blade for Virtuoso) every 10s even out of combat.

[mungozen.2379]

2 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

IF do not generate blades outside combat, so you can't increase it.
I assume you're confusing it with Signet of Illusions passive effect that generate 1 clone (so blade for Virtuoso) every 10s even out of combat.

Nope, nothing to do with SoI.

What you have quoted is the suggestion.  To have IF also decrease Blade Generation outside of combat from 10s to 3s.  And as you also quoted, I do not think that would be enough of an improvement to make it better than Bloodsong or Psychic Riposte.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Mungo Zen.9364

[Varis.5467]

8 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

At the very least, it could be increased when not using a dagger. It would help non-dagger weapons work better on Virtuoso.

1 blade every 3 seconds. When not using a dagger, every 5th weapon #1 attack that hit generate a blade.

Interaction with the psionic skill type could be a nice addition too. As of right now there is no reason why all the virt utilities should be psionic instead of anything else. 

[Infusion.7149]

"Bladesong Dissonance no longer consumes all your blades" would be my idea of an infinite forge. This would apply for any power build that needs to burst into a breakbar. 250CC with full blades is hardly game-breaking especially with 30s cooldown (20 in PVP/WVW).

Sword + focus virtuoso is not that bad , I don't see any major change happening for it as it has more boon rip and vulnerability as well as higher auto attack. If you want something specific to virtuoso maybe Infinite Forge cuts sword 3 (Blade Leap) from 12s to 6s to almost match greatsword blade generation.

Staff is pretty bad on anything but mirage ; scepter has plenty of clone/blade generation already.

I'd be wary of touching virtuoso too much as far as PvE goes.

[Levetty.1279]

On 12/31/2022 at 9:40 PM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

" This skill/trait is useless in my niche of the game so its 100% useless everywhere"

 

The trait is useless in every niche of the game though.

[Vinny.7260]

Truthfully, Bloodsong is the PvE meta on all builds, to my knowledge.

Psychic Riposte is used in PvP-related modes due to how easy it is to activate.

Infinite Forge is just a worse version of both traits. I'd love to see it do something like reduce Bladesong cooldowns based on blades used in a Bladesong. Still would not be meta but cool concepts for open world maybe.

[draxynnic.3719]

For power builds, I think Infinite Forge might win out over Bloodsong any time you can't guarantee having alacrity. And I think that's the point - IF provides a baseline by which if you can't make good use of either of the other grandmasters, you can at least fall back on IF. Which does mean that the other two will outperform it when you can leverage them properly... because if they couldn't, you'd just always use IF.