I will side with ThirdRace on this. In most instances for players with high end gear and promotes, Power Chord trumps Cool Beats, hands down.
I must admit I don't remember how it felt being below 60 in all stats. Also, I do realize the Hakkon staff plays a big role in that too.
But not for the reasons listed above.
- As Leakest Wink says, if it works solo, it works in a team.
- My Cool Beats solo did not have and spawn blocking in it. I have asked Drasca on multiple occasions to point out a time in my video where I was blocking spawns. He has never provided any. He only latched onto "spawn camping" after Pronto posted a clip showing us clearing the castle in about 6 minutes, assuming it would be a somewhat believable excuse. In a PM he told me he had not actually watched my video, yet he still claimed I spawn camped.
- Related to point two, my Cool Beats score per minute was actually higher than Drasca's Power Chord run.
The only reason Power Chord is more viable now is because of the crazy crit damage bonus on Hakkon weapons; Without that high crit damage or if Cool Beats could crit, it would still be more viable than Power Chord. Sadly that is not the case. If someone doesn't have a Hakkon's Wisdom and good crit chance, then Cool Beats is better. On Perilous or below, either one is perfectly viable.
I disagree with your #1, things tend to group up when soloing which makes AOE damage a lot better. When in a team of highly promoted players, things dies so fast they don't group as much. This is very bad for Cool Beats since most of its awesomeness comes from the AOE damage, not the direct hit. Although, if you have the necessary gear you won't see much difference on Perilous and lower.
There are a lot of things that lose some luster when playing with great players too. Static Cage is contender for the best CC spell of the game, but who cares when my Archer just mows things down on Nightmare in 2 seconds? The potential of DOT is often "wasted" because the damn DOT takes too long. Who takes longer duration on Dark Channel (ME3) when you can just kill the thing in 0.3 seconds instead? Wasted potential. DOT should always be less than 4 seconds or kill anything at the end of the duration, otherwise the gap in damage and killing time is simply in favor of direct damage. Although, other mechanics also play a role, for example, it doesn't matter if you kill everything in less than a second if the round always last the same amount of time because of how the spawning is done...
Maybe it's just me wanting to actually kill the damn thing in front of me. If playing with 3 other good teammates, most of what I tag with Cool Beats will die by THEIR hands. If I use Power Chord, I do the kill in about 1 second. Thus my reward is instant and tangible, not happening with Cool Beats.
And don't get me wrong, I know how good Cool Beats is. On Perilous and lower it absolutely wreck things up. I have no idea if it actually generates more or less XP than Power Chord though, I've never noticed any difference between the 2 but I could be wrong.
Power Chord is still awesome, but there are drawbacks: it can be blocked, you need tightly packed enemies to make the most out of it, it can't be used at range, and it doesn't activate Encore.
The Virtuoso is my most played Mage (200+ games) and I've done about 50% of my games with Cool Beats. This is just my feeling, but I've seen Cool Beats being blocked more often than Power Chord. I've also seen it miss often, point blank, 2 meters, 5 meters, 30 meters.
I'm pretty sure Encore activates perfectly fine on PC with Power Chord. I've done 50% of my games using mostly Power Chord (95% of the time) and got free cast with Encore more than I can count.
I really didn't want to bring this all up again, and I swear, I was going to stay out of it, but when The Third Race repeated Drasca's propoganda...
Please, never mention me in the same sentence as Drasca 
No matter what I do or say, I'll never be even remotely in the same category... Thank you 
I love that this pops up as soon as I remove the Thunderdome link from my signature.
TheThirdRace, not sure why you would suggest switching to virtuoso to do DPS once you have the damage to one shot things with powercord? Saarabas kills faster than the Virt under those circumstances.
This whole cool beats vs. powecord has been hashed out already. Perilous and lower promos coolbeats > powecord. Hakkon and high promos powercord > coolbeats.
I'm more curious why you think the virtuoso and powercord is faster and more XP than leaping and Athlok Bursting everything? Or just lightning zapping everything with the Saarabas.
I don't know, I think it's just a feeling. I've done a lot of run on Perilous with the Virtuoso and you just march fourth and things melt. It's straightforward, you walk, things dies, you get to the door and it's done.
With the Saarebas, I feel you jump around a lot which *may* lead to more spawns. Some enemies also run past you, you need to go after them or let your teammates pick them up. I'm pretty fast with her too, but there is a lot of downtime jumping around and with some of the casting time. It's less linear in gameplay, it does feel a bit less consistent than just a line marching fourth and flies melting with nothing getting past you.
Both are pretty amazing, they're very fast. I wouldn't say the Saarebas is necessarily slower than the Virtuoso, she just plays differently. The only reason I suggested the Virtuoso is that he tends to be forgotten a lot. I've seen players top 50 in the leaderboard that don't even have 30 games with it. It's almost a crime!
I know lol. She has more promotes, either work really well though. The Virtuoso games were much faster, I think because of the higher attack speed. So I was able to do matches alot faster and promote in a shorter time because of it.
That pretty much nails my feeling.
It's also a lot easier to spam Power Chord than to learn how to make the Saarebas "tic". I've seen countless players not being able to even remotely match my speed with her, it's sad 
Retour en haut
Think of all those 1 2 3 you will pressing non stop with no cooldown....
Didn't work at all, except I wasn't doing it properly (Forgot to put on inquisition staff and forgot to take off my barrier ring. It was an error!)
