Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right. And I Fit Right in....

In a forum I frequent, we were discussing when to use a trinket to escape from various stuns/incapacitations. Mainly I was griping about the Rogue ability, sap, and how it seems to last forever in BGs.

Everyone agreed that you NEVER trinket out of sap, just let it go. (and no further explanation) I’m sitting there fuming, because I’ve sat there taking poison damage after getting stunned (note word choice there) and wonder what the heck WHY don’t you trinket out of sap?!?!?

“Well, it’s just like your Pally ability of Repentance; any damage will release you.”

Repentance… huh? Wait… Say WHAT?!?!?!?

*runs over to thottbot.com to look up Repentance*

Son-of-a…

So what is Repentance?

“Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation for up to a minute. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Usable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids and Undead.”

It’s a stun type spell. (Wait, change that, it’s an “incapacitation”) An incapacitation can be broken.

A spell, like Hammer of Justice, is a stun. It can’t be stopped by taking damage.

BTW, this means when I THOUGHT I was getting sapped, I wasn't. I had the wrong "spell" name. It was either Cheap Shot or Kidney shot (more on this at the bottom)

It is learned via the talent tree on tier 7 of Retribution. (which means I intentionally picked it) It is the pre-requisite for Fanaticism, which is why I got it. And, obviously, never read the fine print…

Anyhow, just like sap, if you take any damage (from a DoT or anything else) it will be broken.

Yeah, I made it to level 62 without knowing about this spell. RTFM, L2P and all that (“read the f******g manual” and “learn to play”) I'm a self proclaimed n00b, and even if I'm not necessarily proud of it, I won't hide from the monniker either...

Anyhow, this means I have 2 interrupts (methods of temporarily interrupting a spell cast) including Hammer of Justice. If I use Blessing of Justice, I can get melee induced stuns/ interrupts, but that’s a “luck of the roll” thing, and it only happens 3 times. (and each time it happens it gets shorter: 2 seconds, then 1 second, then 0.5 seconds; aka “diminishing returns”, aka “DR”)

(BTW, does anyone know if I can “reset” this like rogues do by leaving combat? And how to do that, if possible?)


FYI, rogues have the following stuns and incapacitates;

- Cheap shot – stuns 4 seconds – technically can only be used once in combat. BUT, there’s a simple way to do it again: “Vanish”, leave combat, and start again.
- Kidney shot – stuns 5 or 6 seconds

These are full stuns and the target can be damaged while stunned.

The following are incapacitates and any damage to the target will break them:

- Sap
- Gouge
- Blind
- Distract
These can last up to 10 seconds each, if not broken.

When the above abilities are used in the right order and not broken by trinket, bad things happen to you; a “stun lock”. This is where you can easily go from 100% health down to 0% health, while being stunned/incapacitated the entire time.

So, a short story longer: it’s humbling to learn about a “basic” skill/ability like this when I am getting near the top levels, and not back when I learned it (level 33 or so)

DOH!