Hello Fellow Reckodins,
Prepare for a long read…
I’ve recently tried to flush out what works and what doesn’t in the current version of Reckbombing, after all the “fixes”. I can tell you that Reckbombing is working relatively well, but the key is to knowing how to manage your stacks and being in full control of your auto attacking. In Vanilla, we did have to manage our Auto attacks to a certain extent to release ReckBombs. In this current version, it feels like additional management is necessary. Please observe…
If your auto attack is on, and you get Reck stacks, that stack is somehow associated to the enemy you have targeted. If at any point you lose sight of that target (swapping targets, cancelling target, target vanishes, etc), your stacks are gone. This is probably the majority of the issue of losing stacks, because in the middle of intense fights, you’re not used to turning off your Auto Attack before swapping targets. But if you keep your auto attack off while gaining stacks, you can swap between targets freely, and then turn on auto attack the moment you want to unleash the bomb. You have to change your mindset to completely control your auto attack every step of the way.
I don’t recall it being this difficult back in the day, and this may still be considered a bug, but regardless, this is what needs to be done to fully utilize reckbombs today. I’ve created a video over the weekend just to show Reckbombs in AV, and that we can still control it for the most part. It has no production quality, just snippets of bombs and examples of what still works and what is keeping stacks. Had to do it quick because I’m busy trying to rank, so please forgive the poor quality. Also, if it looks like I’m being slow to respond to some battles, it’s because I only started practicing my new button setups for this on Thursday, and recorded most of the content on Saturday. I’m also being rather reckless and selfish because I’m just trying to engage and get as many reck stack opportunities as I can to create these examples. Not a true sample of how an effective Paladin should be played.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-q9SIhhIIA
Here is a breakdown of the points for parts of the video.
0:08 - 0:58 = Various Reckbombing
1:00 - 1:23 = Healing doesn’t lose stacks
1:24 - 2:36 = Various examples of not losing stacks when swapping targets
2:37 - 3:55 = More target swapping against Rogues & stunlocks
3:56 - 4:11 = Can still gain stacks while mounted, and bomb after dismount.
If what you see peaks your interest, then I’ll explain what I’ve done to make it all happen. First and foremost, I had to keybind the AutoAttack. If you’ve reckbombed before, you probably should already have this done. But, this is not a start/stop macro. This is just the Auto Attack from your spell book. If you notice in my videos, I also intentionally put a large Auto Attack icon right under my character, where I’ve keybinded it to one of my mouse buttons for easy/quick access. This in-my-face icon gives me a quick visual indicator of when my autoattack is on/off, because it matters that much.
Next, I also bound a key to “Target-Self’. This is because, in some cases, I found that being stunned I wasn’t able to turn off my auto-attack by pressing it again. I was only able to turn if off by clicking away, and off from my target. This is obviously messy when there’s a lot of targets around you. So a quick Target-Self will target me and turn off Auto Attack. ONLY Do this if you plan on potentially swapping targets. If you plan on sticking to your target, no need to do this.
For example, I’m chasing a Mage and a rogue(s) stuns me. I’m thinking ahead and figured I’m not likely to catch the Mage before I die, so I want to unleash a Reckbomb on the rogue. So I turn off auto, and wait for the new crits to build up stacks. Target rogue and get ready to hit auto to Bomb away.
DO NOT Right Click to target someone. This puts you on Auto Attack, obviously defeating the purpose. Get used to left clicking for your targets, or keybind Nearest Enemy/Previous Enemy. This is essentially all about controlling every aspect of your auto attack, and being mindful of your targeting.
If you’re chasing a ranged unit, every time they’re out of range for your attack, turn Auto-Attack off. You will still maintain stacks as you’re targeting them, but this way any new stacks you get can be used against another target if you find yourself needing to swap targets. In my video, you can clearly see that I maintain my stacks as I change targets, while auto attack is off. Now at one point, when I tried this weeks ago, this was not very reliable. I don’t know if they stealth changed anything, or perhaps my change in mindset made this more reliable, but I now rarely see stacks lost if I do this correctly.
Oh, to clarify. If you do keep auto attack on, and you’re out of range, and you build stacks, your next in-range attack will unleash your stacks. Again, as long as you don’t swap targets while your auto-attack is on, you will keep them on your current target.
I think I read someone claiming stacks were lost when healing or bubbling. In my video I show that it’s not the case. I don’t know if mounting still makes you lose stacks or not as I didn’t have a situation where I was able to fully test that, but I can confirm that you can still gain stacks while mounted and unleash when you dismount.
Basically what it comes down to is being much more mindful of your environment, and you have to fully commit before unleashing your Reckbomb. Try it for yourself and see how it works for you. If you’re finding it’s not working for you, try to record your game play and watch it. You may be able to catch why the stacks didn’t go off. Maybe you accidentally targeted someone else. Maybe you forgot to turn auto-attack off? Just assess your gameplay before making conclusions. It’s still not perfect as there are some rare occasions where I’m still “WTF just happened?”. But, I’ve played at least 50 AV games doing this and I’ve been pretty satisfied with my overall Reckbomb control and results.
Edit: If anyone is still interested, I’m finding that having stacks and then mounting, the stacks will remain. Not a lot of opportunity to thoroughly test this, but of the few times I had stacks and had the opportunity to mount (assuming no target swaps, and basic principles as explained above), I found I was able to unload them later. Anyone else doing Reck now, please test and confirm.
TL;DR = Do not swap targets while you have auto attack on!
** Note ** : If you’re going to complain that Sitting/critting doesn’t work, or BoS isn’t procing Crits/Stacks, or any other Bugs/exploits and PServer shenanigans isn’t working, then get over it. This is not about abusing any of that crap.
Good luck, everyone!