Talk:Calamitous Lash/@comment-4329280-20140419055913

I was noticing something seemed off about this skill when charged up past the first stage, so I decided to actually test it thoroughly and figure out what's up by looking directly at damage numbers (by comparing Total Damage Dealt to Foes in my History before and after using it on the same enemy) and also just attacking various enemies and seeing what happens to their life bars.

I was shocked to discover that it does the SAME DAMAGE AT ALL 3 CHARGE LEVELS against any enemy where they get knocked back by the attack. For example, right now against a giant skeleton, if I do 4 Level 1 charges of the attack they are left with a hair of health and then are killed by a single jump attack. If I do 4 level 3 charges they are left with exactly the same small hair of health!! If level 3 did more damage they should certainly be dead by the 4th swing!

Releasing the charge at the moment I flash white does NOT increase damage either.

HOWEVER there are other benefits to higher charge levels and releasing right at the moment of the flash. Notably, the actual attack animation and recovery time is sped up the higher the charge, and sped up further by releasing right at the moment of the flash. Also, higher charge levels increase the area of effect of the attack. For example I was testing against 3 giant skeletons in Ward of Regret. Using charge level 1 I would generally hit only the one I was aiming at, but at 3 I could often end up hitting all 3 at once even when they weren't directly in front of me. Also if they were too far to be hit directly, at level 3 the extras would stagger around like they experienced a small earthquake, which they would not do at level 1. Finally, higher charge levels apply greater amounts of knockback.

Now here's the strange thing - against enemies that don't get knocked back by the attack, I WOULD do more damage at higher charge levels. I noticed also that the attack has multiple "hits", even at level 1, though getting the second hit to trigger was sometimes difficult. I suspect then that the reason I would do more total damage at higher charge levels is that rather than increasing the damage, higher charge levels increase the number of hits (or maybe its the same number of hits but its just much easier to connect with all of them due to the increased range noted above?).

So if the enemy is knocked off their feet by the first hit, they take the same damage at level 1 or level 3, but if the enemy isn't knocked back, they will take the extra hits which ends up being more total damage at charge level 3 than charge level 1 (though not by a huge amount, obviously varies with enemy defense, in my case it was about 30% more damage at level 3 than level 1 when I saw a difference).

Lesson here is, if you use this skill don't bother charging it past level 1 unless you are using it against a boss enemy, and even then only if you are sure you have enough time for a level 3 charge but not enough for 2 level-1 charges (since 2 level-1 charged attacks is likely to do much more damage than a single level-3).