The wiki says power vs reflex. Balance debuffs suck in general these days unless they also bring something else to the table.

>>It is lackluster in PVP

So I saw this and I was like "Oh, lackluster? That means it might have been tweaked because it was completely uneffective in PVP previously." so I hopped onto Test to.. test. Here were my results:

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Test 1 Earthquake (power/reflex) - HLC Barbarian vs tiny trader

Barbarian Power Stats	Strength 125 + 25	Discipline 113 + 12	Stamina 100 + 20
Tiny Trader Reflex Stats	Reflex 30	Agility 15 + 2	Intelligence 40

With the above stats, ran Earthquake against trader at melee for ten minutes.

In ten minutes, it triggered five times. One time was a failure (though it showed a success on my side, it did not unbalance/stun/force kneel my opponent), one time it unbalanced and stunned, and the remaining three times it unbalanced and force kneel.

I felt these results were pretty lackluster since it only triggered five times in ten minutes, but hey, at least it's lackluster instead of doing completely nothing, right? So I figured I'd try another test vs someone who was comparable skill wise and in stats.

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Test 2 Earthquake (power/reflex) - HLC Barbarian vs HLC Cleric

Barbarian Power Stats	Strength 125 + 25	Discipline 113 + 12	Stamina 100 + 20
Cleric Reflex Stats	Reflex 100 + 20	Agility 100 + 20	Intelligence 100 + 4

Cleric didn't have any barriers up that would impact power/reflex contests, but did have hydra hex up as an OF/DF rolling debuff.

In twenty minutes, it triggered zero times. Zero. No messaging on either side, no pulsing, no notice of off balance through repeated assessing on both sides, etc etc. Nada. Wut?

So I thought.. well, maybe the contest is somehow too close? IDK? You'd think with my combined 395 power against 344 reflex that it wouldn't be the case, but hey, you never know. Unfortunately I did not have other reflex contests to try out with on my barbarian, so I figured hey, why not use roars to check more challenging contests to see if they'd land?

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Test 1/2/3 Wail (fear/fortitude) - HLC Barbarian vs HLC Cleric

Barbarian Fear Stats	Charisma 100 + 20	Strength 125 + 25	Discipline 113 + 12
Cleric Fortitude Stats	Stamina 100	Discipline 110 + 24	Strength 100 + 20

Tested wail three times, it landed every time. I thought, well.. maybe it isn't a fair comparison since I'm at 395 fear, which isn't any less than my power, versus the cleric's 354 fortitude stats. Sure, it's closer? But it isn't a lot closer. Oh, but wait, I also had serenity up which nerfs my roars down a little. But hey, lets really try a roar that closes the gap a little. Lets challenge willpower!

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Test 1/2/3 Rage (power/willpower) - HLC Barbarian vs HLC Cleric

Barbarian Power Stats	Strength 125 + 25	Discipline 113 + 12	Stamina 100 + 20
Cleric Willpower Stats	Discipline 110 + 24	Wisdom 130 + 30	Intelligence 100 + 4

Tested rage three times.. it also landed every single time. Wut? Even with Serenity up with a combined 395 power vs the Cleric's combined willpower of 398? Huh. Well, I'm aware that contested abilities tend to give more weight to the aggressor than the defender to make up for barrier issues, but.. why does every single ability work that way except for Earthquake?

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All in all, yes - Earthquake is lackluster when fighting someone drastically lower in stats than you are - 395 power vs 87 reflex, really? But it is completely useless when fighting someone in similar stat range. It just straight up doesn't fire. At all. Twenty minutes. So this goes back to the same complaints made 5+ years ago where we've said "OUR STUFF DOESN'T WORK" and still continues to not work. I guess it was just my fault back then for not thinking to test against someone who was 25% of my stats just to see if it maybe worked. My bad.

P.S. - we still have other things that don't work, like death's shriek's "possibly drops to knees" that hasn't triggered on anything remotely close to our stat level in pvp.