I don't see any skill you mention that need "Ymir Child" and only usable every 8 mins.
I am sorry, but it's kind of hard for me to understand: What do you mean by Ymir Child and 8min?
Immunity isn't usable every 8min, but every 8sec for 3min every 8min.... Hope you were talking about that.
You can basically spam 2.7/3 Brandish Storm (VS evey CD of Immunity). DPS wise which is better?
What do you do in between two Immunity activations? Nothing? It's not that Immunity has a 10sec casting time, so you can use other skills instead.
That's why I wrote that it's better to compare Brandish Storm with a Mental Breakdown that hops over to other targets with a Soul Injection.
Then we have:
Mental Breakdown: 420% damage to up to 5 targets;
Brandish Storm: 443% damage to up to 10 targets; 2~3sec animation time
So sure, let's compare the DPS here. We either have 420% damage that hits half the number of targets but can be used twice as often. So who is the winner here? We could do the same with Soul Extortion.
Mental Breakdown: 434% damage to up to 5 targets every second for 5sec; slowing the targets by 50% and recovering 71% of the damage inflicted
I think, it would be even better to compare Immunity with Battle Leap (15sec cooldown) at least.
Rage Stike can Crit 77k (what is the highest "Immunity" crit in the game?)
Does Rage Strike recover hitpoints as well? So sure, let's kick Battle Tactics and make Cure unstackable and then we repeat this, ok? Cause falling back to the typical BT reference will lead nowhere.... just useless insults and random QQing.
Also, Death Spell + MB/SE technically out dps "Immunity".
I am not sure what you mean with 'technically'. Sure, a Bash can out-DPS even a Rage Strike, if you do nothing else. However, the Rage Strike is nevertheless more powerful.
The fact is "Immunity" can't compete with other AOE skill and it have a handicap (8 mins to re-use).
My point is: for a skill that is usable evey 8 mins it should be on par or better than other AOE skill in the game. Sadly it is not.
See, and here we get to the more problematic decision. Whereas a Warrior has a lvl-10 Rage Strike, the Soulmaker can have a 30sec lvl-5 Sacrifice and an - let's call it optional for a while - lvl-3 Immunity.
Sure, you can use Immunity only while the Awake Form is active. So you have a 3min window-of-opportunity every 8min. That means, over the next 8min (the cooldown for Awake), you can cast a total of ~22 Immunities. Assuming the same Vigor rate, a Warrior would be able to cast ~30 Rage Strikes instead. Yes, a Soulmaker would have a 5min duration where he can't use Immunity at all, but during the remaining 3min, he can cast it twice as often.
In addition, the Soulmaker also has Sacrifice. He could easily level this skill as well, because neither Sacrifice nor Immunity has a maximum skill level of 10, like Rage Strike does. Over the next 8min, that's allows for a total of 20 activations. Together with the 22x Immunitiies, the Soulmaker clearly beats the 30 Rage Strikes here.
You should look at it this way:
Sacrifice is your normal 'ultimate' attack. It has a higher cooldown than other finishers, BUT that drawback get's negated, if you add in Immunity as well. Therefore Awake is similar to a vigor bonus, that also changes/boosts your ultimate instead (adding the AoE damage/heal effect).
Do the same with Rage Strike and you could say: Base Rage Strike has a 30sec cooldown and hits a single target. While Ymir Form is active, the cooldown is lowered to 10sec instead and it hits multiple targets.
So sure it's aguable whether the 'half the common cooldown but usable only during a certain period ' strategy is suitable or not, but generally spoken, you won't fight for the whole 8min. So it's quite a benefit to awake the Soulmate at the start of the fight, knowing that you have can use a powerful skill twice as often during the next 3min. And you always have Sacrifice as a 'back-up' plan.
Last but not least: I told you already that I've suggested to improve Immunity, So my original reply only ponted towards your reasoning, not towards the power-up.
Edited by Greven79, 26 August 2014 - 08:48 AM.