Skill analysis: Wine and Dine ~ Gourmet of Gamble ~

Introduction

Welcome !

Under this tag of "skill analysis" I aim to take certain skills from the game and answer what I call the 3 H's: how does it work, how to use it and how good it really is. This marks the first delve from what I hope to be a stable series.

How does it work ?

Lets include the descriprion for ease of reading.

The first thing i want to point out is the "target you heal" phrase. Its misleading especially since you see Cyrus (does he even heal !?).

Heal here is when an immortal conjures from its own regeneration rate the power of healing onto another immortal or itself. Regeneration rate (as you've hopefully read in other skills) is a hidden stat (not shown through the user interface) which i believe is correlated with the magic attack of the immortal (not proven or confirmed). Now lets take Zenobia, when she casts her ultimate, it heals for an amount directly proportional with her regeneration rate. I say her regeneration rate because if you equip an artifact with Shinning Light special attribute the amount she heals increases.

Now lets take Cyrus and equip shelter (because his ultimate doesn't heal). Regardless of the immortal holding it (mage, archer, shieldmen...) you will see it healing a specific unit for the same amount every time (at least the first 5 seconds of battle, give or take). This is because shelter's heal is based on the regeneration rate of each individual immortal it affects. If an immortal is at low health it will heal less than one at full health regardless of Cyrus's health. The distinction here comes from the source of that regeneration rate, its not always the immortal holding the wine and dine skill. In the case where that source is different from the immortal holding the W&D the buff won't activate on the healed immortal. So when shelter heals Cyrus it uses his regeneration rate which is the same source as the holder of the W&D, but when it heals another immortal the source of the regeneration rate is different than the one holding W&D (Cyrus)so the buff doesn't activate for that immortal.

The duration (from video) is between 5-6 seconds. Given how most skills take I'd say 6 seconds.

How to use it ?

Not every skill that says regeneration rate in its descriptions will trigger it on the immortal you actually want it to activate. Below is a list of the current skills that can activate it.

Keep in mind that only support immortals can equip it. This means that without any of the skills above only Zenobia and Theodora can use it natively (so to say). Other recommendations require one of the skills mentioned above. I hope you noticed that 2 of them are triss only. The best combo here is either those 2 immortals with either purification or vitality touch. Shelter and Berserk won't activate the buff on any other immortal than the one with W&D which is not what you want

How good it really is ?

Kin made a video about it which sums up what I said above. Check it out here: here. Yes, while it does increase total output damage but you don't pick it for a gnome boss, but rather for pvp.

Due to the high number of required fights, I have decided to turn to a forgotten feature of the game: mock battle, oops sorry training grounds for testing.

We're using defensive skills to prolong the battle and giving Alex a handicap for the same reason. Fighting master is so that Zenobia does not get interrupted, we are looking for the happy case. In the base case this comp always looses so we hope to progress to victory by equipping only W&D. 10 battles are shown below:

Average damage represents Alex's normal attack given in the report (no crits). Total damage represents all of Alex's damage, except the dragon's 2nd skill. Overall we see an increase both in normal averaged damage as in total damage. Due note that there is high variance in each battle (5-7 million) even without actually changing anything, so don't treat the increases as absolute. All battles lasted for more than a minute which isn't true for all fights.

To really see if its good we will compare it to a similar skill: War Blessing. The damage increase is close, 25% war blessing vs 30% W&D. You can also view War Blessing as having the buff of W&D from the start of battle, like a guaranteed 2 time activation.

The increases for War Blessing are based on the base case, like Wine and Dine. I'll be frank, its not that impressive given the variance of the battles and also that Zenobia will most likely never have Fighting Master equipped in a real pvp battle. The difference is too little for me but if you read it backwards its also a safer bet with wine and dine than other variants (it did win 3/10 versus 2/10). I have tested with surge artifact as well for Zenobia (she had shinning light in this one, normal artifact), the results were worse. "What are the results if Zeno has an extra source of healing (Vitality touch or Purification)", you say? That will be for a later time . . .