Drain Bolt

[Racktor]

When I first heard of the spell Drain Bolt, I was really enthused. As a young hatchling, I thought that a spell that repeated and healed you was awesome! ....then I tested it out.

The idea is pretty awesome but the spell itself is.. poor, to say the least. On my TnC focused dragon in just power scales (they're crafting scales, but power nonetheless), the spell does 143 damage on an Elite Fiend Skeleton. That's around ~64 health given back from the hit. Mind, this bolt hits once a second. If you had 1 health and sat around and hit something that wasn't hitting back for an entire minute, you'd get back 3840 hp, which is a hefty amount. However, most mobs in Istaria will smack you back and rip your face off if you try and drain bolt their own faces off. Prime Bolt also finishes them off faster, with my TnC dragon doing 206 damage with it. A quick heal, some smacks, you're done - Drain Bolt sits in my hotbar, unused, unless I'm just trying to weaken lvl 20 or so mobs for a friend's quest or something.
(So you know, my TnC dragon with all the power scales on had around 1400 power.)

For comparison, my Helian caster-oriented dragon (fully buffed, my TnC one wasn't, now that I think of it), does 216 damage with her Drain Bolt, and 300 damage with her Prime Bolt (on a similar mob). That means around 97.2 health back (5832 health per minute). (These numbers are pretty similar to the TnC one, but TnC/Caster balance is another story.) Sh e has around 1600 power fully buffed.

While those numbers may seem reasonable, using them in a fight isn't the best - I tend to get murdered really quickly, especially if I'm only using that spell. Heck, my caster almost got murdered on the wall when I was getting those data points. She was murdered the instant she touched the ground initially to get the data points. (Whoo for primal rebirth and dual logging!)

What I would suggest for Drain Bolt is to give it a small, but noticeable, buff. I've only met 1 or 2 people who actively uses it in fights. I would say that DB would do around ~250-350 damage, rather than ~150-220 on a caster. This brings it into range and even a bit above prime bolt, and would give you 112-157 health per cast with the current 45% given back on the X. However, I'd suggest bumping that up to ~60% or even 70% to make it useful. That is 150-210 or 175-245 health back. However, to balance this 14,700-health-per-minute spell, I'd suggest making it fire a bit slower. Maybe once every 1.5 seconds, rather than 1 second, or every 2 seconds. (Please note once-per-second is a guess! I'm not sure what the 'casting delay' is in seconds. Either way, scale this data accordingly!) So the 14.7k health per minute would go down to around 9800-per-minute with a 1.5 second, or 7350 with 2-per-second.

Of course, this entire post may even be futile, considering how much the devs have on their plate. But I do want to suggest this, as lots of players I know are disappointed with Drain Bolt. Just wanted to throw this out there!

Thanks for reading! But if you're too lazy to read the entire thing...
TL;DR - Drain bolt needs more hp-drain or more damage or both to be usable in battle imo.

[Alisto]

Would be nice if it was techable too, especially if damage from Romp (or...cannot remember the names of the other techs that have a % chance to add 'x' type of damage to a bolt) also give healing.

[Machaeon]

I would have to agree with Raktor, with my hybrid-build Dragon I only ever use Drain Bolt against things that can really only barely hurt me and when I'm hunting for my alts. While hunting below your level Drain Bolt works nicely, even if the mobs can still hurt you, the health you get back easily makes up for that. Against things your level or higher, however, Drain Bolt is completely useless the health you get back from the spell does not come close to making up for the damage you take in the time you cast the spell. If you simply have to use a repeat attack then Prime Bolt is much better for any mob that's remotely dangerous to you. I'd love to see a spell that has such a difficult and annoying quest line have a better payoff.

As it stands, Drain Bolt is not a spell to take into battle. It is a spell for grinding mobs at best.

[AmonGwareth]

Only way to make it techable would be to make it craftable, but there are complications with that (as in, its a quest reward and there are more than 5 of them). Not really a viable solution to that.

The original plan called for Drain Bolt to lay between Energy Bolt and Primal Bolt in terms of damage. It has a quicker pre-delay like Energy Bolt, however (3.0 instead of 4.8 like Primal Bolt). But, what wasn't taken into account (more than likely) was the ability to technique those other spells. So, I've added it to my list to evaluate again and to take techs into account.

[hallucin8]

How about 3 new quests, one for each form, the we can tech it ourselves

lvl 40 dragon craft quest from drain bolt NPC: craft prime bolt 2, spirit bolt 2 ... Insert fun stuff and lore :P ... Receive beginner drain bolt form.
Quest again LVL 80 for Journeyman and lvl 100 for expert.

Just my two bob, cheers

[Guaran]

Instead of making it craftable, allow the drag-to-apply techs to work on it, even while it is in the spellbook.

I think that Withered Bane can be applied to scribed spells.. been awhile since I used it on anything tho. The Mental Bane tech might work if the spell had some tech slots.

Of course the follow up to that would be a drag-to-apply version of primal damage, accuracy... could get messy.

Thinking more about it, since it is a quest reward, making direct adjustments is probably the best course of action.

It's definitely too slow DPS to kill anything quickly. And the healing it does doesn't even come close to being able to heal during a fight...

Perhaps, make the healing it does, an AOE group healing effect? Along with increasing the damage done and/or the % healing. Think of a group of dragons where several of them are Drain Bolting the target, just for the group healing. That could be useful at Valkor during the bats. They wouldn't all want to do it since the damage is pitiful.

At least it might be more interesting, and get occasionally used if the heal was aoe. The op is correct, I haven't used mine since the week I finished the quests.. and subsequently learned it was way to low damage and weak healing to be usable.

[Cilok]

My TnC dragon found a use for DB once: fighting the casting undead dragons on the battlefield near Chiconis. Since they used PB, my dragon hit them more frequently (at about their same level too) and was able to out-heal a 2v1 situation. Never used it since, but that's because Cilok is built for TnC, not casting.

[AmonGwareth]

So updating Drain Bolt to be desired is one of many things we're working on for the first content update of 2014. I wanted to get opinions on the numbers.

Here are the current averages: 15.00, 23.00, 31.00, 39.00, 47.00, 55.00, 63.00, 71.00, 79.00, 87.00
Proposed averages: 33.50, 42.50, 51.50, 60.50, 69.50, 78.50, 87.50, 96.50, 105.50, 114.50

This would put Drain Bolt in terms of damage slightly (11% at the top level) above Prime Bolt (un-teched) in terms of damage.

[Tondargaet_Glit]

I'm for those changes....as has been said, it's something we have to quest to get (and, a couple of the quests aren't easy for newbier - if that's a word - players)...at least make it a useful weapon. All I use it for is to collect beetle parts, as an example...stand in the middle of 'em and hit with DB, they come running at me and die at my feet, letting me loot without having to move (yes, a lazy dragon!).