Tangleweed and blessing lore

[rushblitz]

So with tangleweed at 10 blessing ranks can get up to 25 AS and .6 * 25 = 15 CS at max failure. I read somewhere this only works on living creatures. Other than that is there any other wonkiness to it? Do I need summoning lore as well, I see my vine leeching str all the time? This seems like a very strong effect and worth getting early.

[Ralk]

610 is pretty sweet after the spell review. It was a useful disabler before, and now it's just great. With just occasional use, you can maintain the AS boost and cast it in 1 second with the 625 proc. Summoning lore boosts the effectiveness (the SMR roll result), but it doesn't feel at all necessary. Like other SMR spells, there are diminishing returns to heavy training and it seems fairly forgiving with just basic training. I'm approaching cap with 1x spells, 10 blessing ranks, and 10 summoning ranks. And I've never noticed difficulty landing 610.

I would imagine most rangers want 10 blessing ranks fairly early (perhaps by 20 or 30?) for this effect.

There's a number of wonky but interesting (IMO) interactions that don't detract from it's overall use.
- as you mentioned, the AS drain (buff) is only granted from living creatures
- so some creatures can be knocked down but don't grant the buff
- some creatures stomp it out (constructs) or are just immune (e.g. lava golems)
- treekin steal it and turn it against you (only make that mistake once...)
- prep cast it (untargeted) rather than incant (with a target) to get around Vvrael magic immunity

Seems fun and very core to the ranger kit right now.