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Wakalord's concerns/ideas for DPS assassins/shadows


EatenByDistance

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(This thread will only cover the two assassin DPS specs. I plan on making a tank thread within the next few days but I felt it was extremely important to just type something up now because I've been thinking a lot about how to improve this class and just wanted to go public with my thoughts asap).

 

Also, imperial terminology sorry my republic friends!

 

Ok, since everyone else with any chance of being elected as sin/shadow class rep is doing this I will too.

 

Most of the questions/issues that have been brought up in these kinds of threads are quite important and I would love to have answers to all of them. While it is not the representatives place to suggest actual changes, I feel like simply raising concerns is simply not doing enough.

 

I have a fair amount of experience with both DPS and tanking and PvE but nothing on the bleeding edge hardcore level that serious raiders have. As such, if I am elected I plan on privately talking to some of the more prominent PvE-focused assassins in the community.

 

With that said, I'd like to express some of my concerns related to the PvP aspect of sins/shadows.

 

1) Madness: Currently, what is the point?

Madness assassins are arguably the worst PvP class in the game. Worse than the nerfed pyrotech, worse than concealment, worse than a marauder nodeguard. They're really, really bad.

 

This is due to nonthreatening dots (lightning discharge is energy damage, while sniper/sorc dots are all internal), terrible procs (no more bonus melee damage, no maul at all...The only "big" move we have is crushing darkness and the method of proccing it is both more unsafe and less reliable than sorc's method). And of course, the damage is just atrocious. Madness sins had a problem of "what is our niche" pre-2.0. While they were arguably the single most damaging spec if left completely alone pre-2.0, that was both entirely unrealistic and doesn't even apply anymore.

 

Respec utility aside, the only things madness sins have over sorcs are stealth, taunts and phase walk. Our methods of getting procs and our filler are both more risky and far less damaging. While both madness sins and sorcs have paper-thin defenses, sins have to get into melee range to do anything. Even a mediocre team is going to be able to focus you down to oblivion. Marginal self healing doesn't matter when three smashes and a fully-loaded cull are tearing you apart.

 

So how could this be fixed?

 

Madness sins are always going to be a hybrid of melee/ranged moves. And that's a pretty cool concept. But right now, our only reason for being in melee is to proc crushing darkness. Losing Unearthed Knowledge (fairly weak as it was) and any sort of Maul really destroyed the spec. Also, Shock has been rendered useless. We basically put some dots on the target and pray to god we get a Raze proc before dying. After we get it, we're pretty much useless for six seconds.

 

And of course, *** Lambaste.

 

Defensively, while 30% DR while stunned and 15% dot DR are obviously great, they aren't enough when you factor in the fact that you need to be in melee range to get your procs.

 

Here are some ideas:

1) Rework the Lambaste talent to make Lacerate apply the Lightning Discharge dot to all affected targets. I really don't know what the thought process was, giving lacerate some utterly useless force damage on hit. Make it apply the Discharge dot to all affected targets, making it a melee version of the agent's corrosive grenade.

 

2) Bloodletting seems like a very lazily designed talent. Madness is about sustained damage, and giving us a marginal damage boost against sub-30% health targets is contradictory by design. We should be about constant, sustained pressure. Mediocre "burst" like this isn't necessary.

 

I suggest this: Scrap Bloodletting and give us a talent that increases Force Lightning and Shock damage by 10/20/30% (the numbers are debatable) for each one of our DoTs on the target. This would give us the burst and pressure required to actually be viable in rated warzones. It would also necessitate smart play. Instead of just spamming dots on everything, setting up the three dots on a target would reward proper focusing play (especially given the short duration of Crushing Darkness...That said, this would make Lingerning Nightmares make sense over the old Unearthed Knowledge).

 

WOW WAKA THIS WOULD MAKE MADNESS SIN OP SO MUCH BURST!

 

Not really. Unlike an agent's cull, our Force Lightning could be interrupted (if this proves to make our Force Lightning useless then make it uninterruptible if we take this proposed talent..Probably lower the % damage increase to compensate though). Also, our Shock still costs a massive amount of force. Currently, it's almost impossible to use Shock more than once or twice without suffering force starvation.

 

Therefore, we couldn't use spam Shock and Force Lightning on cooldown. It would necessitate smart play and knowing when to burst.

 

Also, giving us a reason not to just spam Recklessness for more Death Field AoE damage would be great. All in all, this synergies with the theme of madness being a "master of the arcane force," as opposed to "HOLY FK I GOTTA DOT EVERYTHING IM GONNA USE THRASH NOW OK I GOT CRUSHING DARKNESS I GUESS ILL GET CCD AND DIE NOW" theme which is considerably less uh....Cool.

 

3) What about melee and madness sin defensive issues?

 

To keep with the concept of "sustained, hybrid ranged/melee damage" this spec has going for it, actually wading into melee range should reward the player. As such, I suggest a two point talent that increases damage resistance by .5/1% every time you use a melee attack on a target affected by one of your dots. This stacks up to ten times (again, we're going with a theme of madness sins excelling in long sustained fights).

 

The catch? It only lasts for five seconds. This means that you need to be constantly pressuring the opponent in melee range to maintain your stacks. It would also punish players trying to use the previously mentioned Shock/Force Lightning talents to play like a sorc with a more damaging proc (we're trying to differentiate the classes here, people).

 

On the offensive side, make Lightning Burns proc off of melee attacks instead of your dot?

 

I'm sure someone is gonna ask about why maul and assassinate weren't mentioned here. While it would be nice to have every ability be somewhat useful for every spec for every class, that would probably require a ToR 3.0-level rework of pretty much everything. Being realistic, I don't think not having a super duper cool maul/assassinate proc in madness is necessarily a bad thing. And I have cool ideas for those abilities in Deception (see below)

 

I believe that if these changes were made, madness sins would become a significantly more useful, fun and rewarding class than what it currently is.

 

 

2) Deception: Putting the ASSASSIN back in assassinate

 

I have been very vocal about the 2.0 "balance" changes for a variety of classes, but I probably yell about the deception changes the most. While I don't feel that deception was hit as hard as oher specs (it's downright godlike compared to the current madness sin/concealment op specs, for example) it requires a fair amount of fine tuning if it is going to be respected again by the community at large.

 

While I'd still argue that sins have a great amount of utility (though very old this thread does a good job of explaining the utility I think DPS sins bring: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=582016&)

 

That said, most people still prefer the raw power of Smash maras/sents to deception sin. While an issue of toning the Smash spec may be in order, that is not the intent or focus of this thread, so instead I'm going to talk about how to make deception "up to par" and fill its own niche as a viable role in rated warzones.

 

So what issues do we face?

 

When Recklessness is up our damage is on par with snipers and marauders. When it's not...Well, good luck hope the stars align and you get a Maul crit to even be on par with everything else! RNG is a crippling issue for assassins (low slash miss? There goes Impose Weakness, the only good [no I don't think the recklessness reset is good in rateds] offensive talent we have! Oh, you got it? Maul doesn't crit you do no damage anyways).

The tree seems to be redesigned for ONLY doing upfront burst and then being useless. Concealment has the same issue (though admittedly its a much more severe issue for them) and as such is equally ignored in rated play.

 

We need some sort of proc that puts us on a threat level on part with Carnage's Gore, Lethality's Cull, Smash...etc.

Defensively, Phase Walk is fantastic, but the raw power increase that other classes/specs have acquired necessitate more in-combat survivability. Also, being forced to run away from a fight (causing you to do literally nothing for quite a few crucial seconds) is a major issue that either needs to be reworked or justified.

 

So how could this be fixed?

 

1) Blackout is our most reliable defensive cooldown. Our Cloak of Pain, basically. Our Impose Weakness basically revolves around Low Slash because Spike is basically used once in a fight: aka useless to have a talent revolve around it for rateds (Nerve Wracking is also useless in PvE). I believe that moving Nerve Wracking back to the tank tree would greatly improve its viability in rateds since the utility can be nice. In its stead, give the seventh tier of deception this two point talent:

 

"Reactivating Phase Walk has a 50/100% chance to put you back in stealth."

 

This would refresh our blackout, but at the cost of Phase Walk. Smart play would be required to not blow all your major defensive cooldowns at the same time. It would allow us to use Spike and take full advantage of Impose Weakness. It would NOT remove us from combat (no recklessness reset), and could be somewhat countered by being afflicted with dots. I believe that this talent would give us the survivability we need to handle ourselves in PvP.

2) Offensively, I have several ideas, but they all revolve around one key concept: Giving us an Assassinate on a target of any HP%.

 

Sith Executioner is bad. It's a boring and thoughtless damage boost for execute phases in PvE and just as unreliable as Madness' Bloodletting in PvP. You either kill the target or it is healed up to full in a split second, your useless 6% damage boost won't change a damn thing.

 

Maybe rework the talent like this:

 

"Using Discharge while in Surging Charge has a 50/100% chance to finish the cooldown of Assassinate and make the next Assassinate inflict trauma for 6 seconds, reducing all healing the target receives by 15/30% (or maybe 20/40%). This effect can only occur once every 10 (this number of course up for debate) seconds. In addition, increases your melee critical chance by 17.5/35% for 5 seconds after using Assassinate.

 

Now, let's pick apart this theorycrafted talent.

 

This gives assassin's a very supportive and useful niche in rated warzones. While the trauma duration is shorter than those of other classes, it is a much stronger debuff. This would necessitate proper focus targeting and communication. This is a good thing.

 

Don't like the idea of assassins getting trauma? Here's another idea: "...make the next Assassinate ignore 25/50% (or 50/100%, whatever is balanced), of the opponents resistances."

 

(note that that would include armor, actual resistances, buffs and the like), making this a truly unique proc and attack that could really make an impact.

 

While a Marauder gets armor penetration from Gore, we get increased melee crit from Assassinate. Due to Maul's hefty power but lack of a cooldown and somewhat frequent uptime you'd have on this crit% buff, it wouldn't give you guaranteed crits. But it would give you enough to make your melee attacks actually threatening.

 

The rotation would be rather similar to what you do in PvP after Gore (you force scream if you have a proc [you use maul if you have a proc] or you just spam massacre [spam voltaic slash]...And if you think you should use a Gore'd ravage you're wrong don't try to argue that).

 

Note that the crit% buff lasts 5 seconds. Assassinate has a 6 second cooldown. You can't chain this proc on low target enemies without proper planning (assassinate, proc, assassinate). It finally gives us a serious reason to run full Deception over Wakajinn (proc is related to Surging Discharge, which is way better in full Deception).

 

3) Humbling Strike is basically 3 points for something useless. Either give Low Slash a chance to slow for X% after effect ends or increase the knockdown duration of Spike. But something needs to change, because it's currently far too niche and unrealistic to be of any use.

 

I have thought of several other ideas, such as reverting Surging Discharge to pre-2.0, giving Voltaic Slash a cooldown and so on so fourth....But these ideas seem like complete overhauls as opposed to the more modest tweaks I am assuming we are supposed to present in this class rep system.

 

These changes would give us the sustained pressure, possibility for burst and team utility we need to make deception sins once again a force to be reckoned with in rateds!

 

 

 

So these are my ideas everything is work and progress and most of the numbers are of course up for debate. I plan on making a second/updated thread within the next few days covering my tank concerns/ideas but until then feel free to tear apart this thread unless you are dumb then please don't do that.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited by EatenByDistance
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i like the general ideas, may not work down to every little detail but that doesn't seem to be the point of this thread.

All in all, good suggestions, i like the direction you're thinking about with both dps builds, i hope to see any of these changes in upcoming patches because everyone on this forum knows we need a helping hand.

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Here are some ideas:

1) Rework the Lambaste talent to make Whirling Blow apply the Force Breach dot to all affected targets. I really don't know what the thought process was, giving whirling blow some utterly useless force damage on hit. Make it apply the force breach dot to all affected targets, making it a melee version of the smuggler's shrap bomb.

 

2) Crush Spirit seems like a very lazily designed talent. Balance is about sustained damage, and giving us a marginal damage boost against sub-30% health targets is contradictory by design. We should be about constant, sustained pressure. Mediocre "burst" like this isn't necessary.

 

I suggest this: Scrap Crush Spirit and give us a talent that increases Telekinetic Throw and Project damage by 10/20/30% (the numbers are debatable) for each one of our DoTs on the target. This would give us the burst and pressure required to actually be viable in rated warzones. It would also necessitate smart play. Instead of just spamming dots on everything, setting up the three dots on a target would reward proper focusing play (especially given the short duration of Mind Crush...That said, this would make Mind Warp make sense over the old Twin Disciplines).

 

WOW WAKA THIS WOULD MAKE BALANCE SHADOW OP SO MUCH BURST!

 

Not really. Unlike a smuggler's wounding shots, our Telekinetic Throw could be interrupted (if this proves to make our Telekinetic Throw useless then make it incorruptible if we take this proposed talent..Probably lower the % damage increase to compensate though). Also, our Project still costs a massive amount of force. Currently, it's almost impossible to use Project more than once or twice without suffering force starvation.

 

Therefore, we couldn't use spam Project and Telekinetic Throw on cooldown. It would necessitate smart play and knowing when to burst.

 

Also, giving us a reason not to just spam Force Potency for more Force in Balance AoE damage would be great. All in all, this synergies with the theme of balance being a "master of the arcane force," as opposed to "HOLY FK I GOTTA DOT EVERYTHING IM GONNA USE double strike NOW OK I GOT mind crush I GUESS ILL GET CCD AND DIE NOW" theme which is considerably less uh....Cool.

 

3) What about melee and madness sin defensive issues?

 

To keep with the concept of "sustained, hybrid ranged/melee damage" this spec has going for it, actually wading into melee range should reward the player. As such, I suggest a two point talent that increases damage resistance by .5/1% every time you use a melee attack on a target affected by one of your dots. This stacks up to ten times (again, we're going with a theme of madness sins excelling in long sustained fights).

 

The catch? It only lasts for five seconds. This means that you need to be constantly pressuring the opponent in melee range to maintain your stacks. It would also punish players trying to use the previously mentioned Project/Telekinetic Throw talents to play like a sage with a more damaging proc (we're trying to differentiate the classes here, people).

 

On the offensive side, make Rippling Force proc off of melee attacks instead of your dot?

 

I'm sure someone is gonna ask about why shadow strike and spinning strike weren't mentioned here. While it would be nice to have every ability be somewhat useful for every spec for every class, that would probably require a ToR 3.0-level rework of pretty much everything. Being realistic, I don't think not having a super duper cool shadow strike/spinning strike proc in balance is necessarily a bad thing. And I have cool ideas for those abilities in Infiltration (see below)

 

I believe that if these changes were made, balance shadows would become a significantly more useful, fun and rewarding class than what it currently is.

 

 

Madness-Balance translated. Hmm... but I don't get the Lingering Nightmares/Mind Warp and Unearthed Knowledge/Twin Disciplines comparison though. Isn't the lengthened Crushing Darkness/Mind Crush as Sorc/Sage only talent?

Edited by leto_cleon
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Madness-Balance translated. Hmm... but I don't get the Lingering Nightmares/Mind Warp and Unearthed Knowledge/Twin Disciplines comparison though. Isn't the lengthened Crushing Darkness/Mind Crush as Sorc/Sage only talent?

 

Thanks for the translation!

 

But no, it isn't Sorc/Sage only anymore. Torhead hasn't been updated properly to reflect this, if that's the calculator you use. Unearthed Knowledge was replaced with Lingering Nightmares.

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Thanks for the translation!

 

But no, it isn't Sorc/Sage only anymore. Torhead hasn't been updated properly to reflect this, if that's the calculator you use. Unearthed Knowledge was replaced with Lingering Nightmares.

 

Ah ok gotcha.

 

Hmm... personally instead of the change which you suggested to Lambaste to make Whirling Blow apply Force Breach/Discharge, I was thinking more along the lines of buffing Rippling Force/Lightning Force to a 5m AOE, by adding this effect: "Hostiles within a 5 metres of the target and not affected by crowd control will also be affected by Rippling Force". In effect a group that keep standing in place would have a continuous rippling force damage proc and be an excellent source of extra force regen.

 

Lambaste can then be left open for buffs in terms of a lower force cost to Whirling Blow/Lacerate as well as increase damage dealt by force technique/lightning charge damage and rippling force/lightning burns damage.

 

And hmm... increased damage to Project/Shock and Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning on each DoT applied to the target. It's somtimes just insanely difficult to track your own DoTs in a 16m PVE Ops (DoTs by other toons also increasing Project and TK Throw damage would be waaayyy to OP :p). That said, my personal preference would be to have critical DoT damage have a chance to proc "Shadow Strike Projection" which enables Shadow Strike to be dealt by a force avatar (ie no positioning requirement and maybe even at range), at a set rate limit and a slightly lower force cost.

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I very much hope my English isn't as bad is I Bet it is, heres my WOT.

 

I've thrown out a Trauma Proc proposal a while ago and got told that it's to much Utility for a tank/heal class. (afaik only sent/maro&slinger/sniper have it).

I still think it's perfect for Shadows/Assassins!

even if it's just in the 30% phase (point of fact I'd think that would fit even better)

 

but I don't think the +15% DOT+FIB damage we get below 30% are really that bad, for PVE.

(the <30% phase is often a Burn phase you'll want over quickly)

the Problem is it's nowhere near buffing our DPS on par to the other classes.

perhaps have Recklessness give you a *your targets are regarded as below 30% HP* Buff with 15sec duration

(but that would reinforce the feeling of balance that everything worth using is sticked together and then you fill with useless stuff waiting for CDs to reset)

 

to Force potency/recklessness make it +80% or even autocrit & apply to shadow strike/Maul.

that should fix a lot of Infi/decep Problems?

 

 

to balance/madness

I'm still missing survivability.

Mental defense/shapeless Spirit should give 30% DR while immobilized (not just stuns) and 15%DR while Slowed.

the stacking 10%DR would go a long way in the right Direction but just one root/stun maybe even a Slow and 5sec are over.

 

 

 

 

[enrage]:jawa_mad:

remove the force lift/whirlwind talents, thank you, no replacements necessary.

seriously: cast time, force cost, 3 targets (2 of them weak&standard), 8sec duration, breaks on coughing

WITH 4 POINTS WASTED ON IT?!?

and while you are at it remove the two-piece set bonus that grants force whenever you use Sabre Strike...

again no replacement necessary. thank you in advance.

 

remove them today with a Hotpatch

Patch notes are already done:

Shadow:

  • Removed talents affecting Force lift from the Shadow Balance Tree
  • Removed the two-piece bonus from the stalker set

 

Assassin:

  • Removed talents affecting Whirlwind from the Assassin Madness Tree
  • Removed the two-piece bonus from the stalker set

[/Enrage]:jawa_smile:

thanks again

 

 

 

back to your points

Telekinetic throw would need push back immunity (no interrupt immunity)

if it's left at baseline it would be almost worthless for pvp and would vary like crazy from fight to fight in PVE.

just the need to avoid AOE would make live hard enough but if it's balanced (not OP if left alone to play turret),

missing just one tic of the channel (25% less damage) will make you wish you had used something, anything, else we aren't Sages with 75% pushback resist & way more Force & no cool down. oh and 30m range.

also as melee you are expected to interrupt...

 

"let me finish my cast, I'll interrupt in 3sec"...

xyz has initiated a kickvote reason: none

xyz:bb

-what the? xyz ignores you

you have been removed from the group 7/8 votes

 

and I take bets if its worth using even with 0,75 of regular damage it'll first get nerfed and then people will find out it can be interrupted. who wants to take me up on that?

at first I really liked the Idea of TKT/force lightening in Balance Spec but the longer I thought about it the less I liked it.

 

 

the project changes look nice though they most probably won't help sustained damage because force management will suck but still it's worth implementing as an Option for certain situations and Burst. (hear me BW?: Situational =/= unnecessary complicated!)

 

all in all

the Project Changes

+ some QOL improvement for DoT tracking

+ anything aside from double strike/trash as filler (but not TKT)

+ a very small increase in Force regeneration (a worthy two Piece Bonus, apply it to all melee attacks for example)

+ removal of force lift Talents (replacement is optional)

*+ have alacrity affect DoTs

*+ willpower bonus / dot Citrate bonus

*+change Expertise (shadow math: not muchx1.18 = three points, the problem there is nothing else dps Boosting in range)

*+ change technique mastery (shadow math: not much+not much*(.25+.45)*.7 = three points

(but at least 3% accuracy are nice)

*+ more survivability

=Fixed balance for PVE

(* are optional since they are strait DPS/survivability boosts my main goal is fixing the play-style then talk about DPS later)

force technique does 5-6% of our DPS and is affected by 6 points?

thats worse then force lift!

 

TL;DR

there are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many ways to fix shadows

try a few, balance at least can't get worse.

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While it's great to see Balance/Madness get so much attention, especially with the class representatives on the horizon, I don't really think we need a second lethality spec. In my opinion, the niche about Balance (before 2.0) was that our DoTs were for maintenance. In my parses they did about 1/4 of my total damage. For PvP it was a lovely hit and run spec, and the force management (while not difficult) was very satisfying.

 

On the offense.

2) Bloodletting seems like a very lazily designed talent. Madness is about sustained damage, and giving us a marginal damage boost against sub-30% health targets is contradictory by design. We should be about constant, sustained pressure. Mediocre "burst" like this isn't necessary.

 

I suggest this: Scrap Bloodletting and give us a talent that increases Force Lightning and Shock damage by 10/20/30% (the numbers are debatable) for each one of our DoTs on the target. This would give us the burst and pressure required to actually be viable in rated warzones. It would also necessitate smart play. Instead of just spamming dots on everything, setting up the three dots on a target would reward proper focusing play (especially given the short duration of Crushing Darkness...That said, this would make Lingerning Nightmares make sense over the old Unearthed Knowledge).

 

I agree that bloodletting is a very lackluster talent, and I myself have suggested in many threads that Bioware remove it for another talent that gives us a second proc. I've played the Maul/Crushing Darkness hybrid a bit, and despite the loss of Calculating mind, having two procs really makes the gameplay a lot smoother.

 

As for what that proc should be it can be debated. While your idea is not a bad one, I do think it is a bit too much like Agent's Cull... and another problem is we don't have any dispel protection to support that. As it stands right now, it is impossible to threaten a sorc who knows how to click on dispel. This wasn't an issue before 2.0 because our melee damage was so high. I dare say it was fair in 1.7, seeing as Balance/Madness was such a versatile spec.

 

Of course, maybe we should have some form of dispel protection now? In World of Warcraft the DoT-reliant specs had some form of dispel protection. Affliction Warlocks had Unstable Affliction which would deal AoE damage and silence the caster if dispelled, and Shadow Priest's Vampiric Touch got buffed so that if you dispel it, you get frozen in fear for a second or so. I don't think we should have CC connected to our DoTs, however, as it could work against us due to resolve. Maybe just instant damage would be enough? Something that bites should our DoTs be dispelled.

 

On the Defense.

Personally I'm very happy for the 30% damage reduction when stunned. I always thought Balance had great survivability and that their only real weakness was stuns. So long as we could kite, we'd survive. Creeping Terror is an incredible tool for survivability and very fun to use.

 

We need Instant Whirlwind, however. Not only for defense but for utility as well. Alternatively, change the Whirlwind talent so that it does not suffer from spell pushback (i.e taking damage delaying the cast) and have it not breaking on our DoTs, and then have Phase Walk be instant for us. Being able to place the mark on the run would give Balance Shadows unique survivability in comparison to the other two specs.

Edited by Majspuffen
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Here are the changes I would like to see made:

 

Talents removed:

 

Kinetic Combat - Shadow Wrap (replacement: a 2-pt armour bonus talent)

 

Infiltration - Low Slash & Impose Weakness (replacement: a 2-pt +crit talent); Shadow's Mark (replacement: 3pt +force damage talent, swap positions on tree with Upheaval)

 

Balance - Lambaste, and convert Mental Defence into a 1-pt talent (replacement: a 2-pt +crit talent)

 

New ability for all trees:

 

Low Slash - Mezz removed; now an off-gcd ability (cannot miss) which procs further abilities; consider damage reduction. Cost: 0 force.

 

Low Slash generates the following effects for each technique:

 

Kinetic - Shadow Wrap

Infil - Impose Weakness (i.e. grants infil Tactics on a separate CD)

Balance - Auto-crit on FiB or a free Project with a +x% damage increase

 

Ability changes:

Force Breach now hits 5 targets in Shadow & Force Technique to bring it into line with the Kinetic variant, and is a smart-AoE in Shadow Technique. Consider marginal force cost increase.

 

Shadow Strike now has a reduced base damage and costs 40 force to reflect the change.

 

Double Strike & Clairvoyant Strike have seen their base damage increased.

 

Net Result:

Average damage up

Damage spikes down

Tanks are tankier

Shadows are a legitimate AoE threat in PvE & PvP with legitimate trade-offs to counterbalance the advantages

Burst is available in all trees for PvP & PvE that doesn't break class balance.

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Kinetic Combat - Shadow Wrap (replacement: a 2-pt armour bonus talent)

 

I really don't know what people seem to have against Shadow Wrap. I actually think it's an interesting tactical option to replace Double Strike with a higher damage variant. The way the proc currently works is actually pretty well done, in my opinion, since it fuses pretty seamlessly with the huge amounts of Force Regen currently afforded Shadow tanks.

 

My only real problem with it isn't that it's *there* but rather than it only has a 30% chance to proc PA rather than DS's 51%, which could be pretty easily fixed by upping the proc chance for Shadow Strike (and Spinning Strike) to 50% while leaving the Double Strike proc at 30%.

 

Also, any +armor or +DR talent for Shadow tanks would have to have a commensurate reduction in self heals or Defense/Shield/Abs to go along with it.

 

Low Slash - Mezz removed; now an off-gcd ability (cannot miss) which procs further abilities; consider damage reduction. Cost: 0 force.

 

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this since it's really asking for a fundamental change to the overall play of a Shadow, especially since all that it does for 2 of the specs is trigger another attack (and that's it) without really providing any real benefit. For Balance it would, essentially, be a permanent buff to FiB that causes it to autocrit (since they would both be on 15 sec CD). It really just seems like an arbitrary addition that only really serves to add an off-GCD attack to Shadows and applying control over what is, at the moment, simply a proc you have to watch for. It's like you wanted an off-GCD attack and were looking for *any* justification for it and decided to coopt the existing Shadow Strike proc mechanics rather than actually looking for or adding a legitimate reason.

 

Force Breach now hits 5 targets in Shadow & Force Technique to bring it into line with the Kinetic variant, and is a smart-AoE in Shadow Technique. Consider marginal force cost increase.

 

I *really* can't support that.

 

First off, the only smart AoEs are tank attacks (and not even Force Breach is a smart AoE) so providing them to DPS specs would be pushing the envelope a bit: the reason that tanks get the smart AoE (and it's only *1* per tank) is because they have to keep aggro on a lot of things at once. DPS are supposed to know how to control their AoE, which is why they don't get it. The closest they get is having DoTs that don't tick on CCd targets, which is less about smart AoE than it is about being able to CC a target after attacking it. I can pretty much guarantee that DPS aren't ever going to get safe AoEs since their AoE isn't *supposed* to be used when there is CC nearby.

 

Secondly, I *really* don't see either of the DPS Force Breaches going AoE. Yes, it would bolster their AoE DPS by a *lot*, but it, honestly, pushes credulity a bit by providing them with *so much* AoE. Without really doing any math for it, I *still* get a really bad gut feeling about the balance aspects of it. I wouldn't be adverse to some kind of proc based splash mechanic to cleave DoTs to secondary targets for Balance and something similar for Infiltration, but providing it as automatic functionality for Force Breach just feels wonky.

 

Shadow Strike now has a reduced base damage and costs 40 force to reflect the change.

 

Double Strike & Clairvoyant Strike have seen their base damage increased.

 

This change just provides less of a reason to use Shadow Strike. The only reason it's got a point right now is because it hits a fair deal harder than DS/CS. Decreasing its damage, even if you decrease the cost, while increasing the damage on DS/CS just reduces the value of it even further. The entire reason why the Shadow Strike procs are *valuable* is because Shadow Strike hits like a truck but costs an arm and a leg. These changes would make those selfsame procs *way* less valuable from a comparative value standpoint, especially if you want the changes to be made in large enough amounts to actually enact real change on mean DPS.

 

Average damage up

Damage spikes down

 

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. For Balance, you're cranking the living hell out of its burst with your Low Slash + FiB change. Being able to control Infiltration Tactics with an off GCD attack definitely has some strong potential for drastically increasing burst DPS on that level as well (Spinning Kick>ForceBreach+Low Slash>Shadow Strike>CS>Project). I'm also not entirely sure why you seem to think that the damage spikes need to be addressed. Infiltration's burst DPS has always been one of its only real strong points in PvP, and it's actually a fair deal *weaker* than a Combat Sentinel's.

 

Your increasing of average DPS really comes at the cost of making Shadow Strike a *lot* more bland since the only other real things you did were increasing DS/CS damage and add the off-GCD attack (which is just adding just shy of one free DS every 15 seconds).

 

Honestly, the whole "Low Slash as off-GCD attack for everyone" thing really just doesn't grok with me. I just don't see the point since it's not really doing anything that isn't being accomplished in other ways that work perfectly fine right now.

 

Tanks are tankier

 

As I've said numerous times here and in other places, Shadow tanks don't need to be tankier. They need to be more stable, which is a completely different concept. It's not a question of buffing them but redistributing their mitigation mechanisms so that they don't spike to dead in the current content.

 

Shadows are a legitimate AoE threat in PvE & PvP with legitimate trade-offs to counterbalance the advantages

Burst is available in all trees for PvP & PvE that doesn't break class balance.

 

I'm curious what you describe as "legitimate trade-offs" for their AoE buffs you provided. You're suggesting giving one of the bigger, nastier attacks that DPS Shadows have available to them AoE functionality. The only "trade-off" is a potential increase to the cost, which is going to screw with the existing resource construct for all 3 specs since Force Breach is actually (now) one of the fundamental AoE attacks used by tank Shadows (since they only recently reduced the CD to 6 seconds so that it can be used as more than a debuff power). Increasing the cost on Force Breach enough to actually act as a *trade-off* would diminish ST DPS by wrecking resource management.

 

I just don't really see the point. You're suggesting a lot of changes that don't really do anything: the Force Breach into AoE is just wonky on the face of it (I'd much rather just see them add an actual AoE attack to the class rather than try to repurpose an existing fundamental ST attack) and the benefits of your Low Slash are just coopted passive benefits that would remain pretty much identical. You're disturbing a lot about the specs to do very little, which just doesn't make sense (especially since I'm not even really sure I see the logic behind some of those ideas).

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Here are the changes I would like to see made:

 

Talents removed:

 

Kinetic Combat - Shadow Wrap (replacement: a 2-pt armour bonus talent)

 

Infiltration - Low Slash & Impose Weakness (replacement: a 2-pt +crit talent); Shadow's Mark (replacement: 3pt +force damage talent, swap positions on tree with Upheaval)

 

Balance - Lambaste, and convert Mental Defence into a 1-pt talent (replacement: a 2-pt +crit talent)

 

New ability for all trees:

 

Low Slash - Mezz removed; now an off-gcd ability (cannot miss) which procs further abilities; consider damage reduction. Cost: 0 force.

 

Low Slash generates the following effects for each technique:

 

Kinetic - Shadow Wrap

Infil - Impose Weakness (i.e. grants infil Tactics on a separate CD)

Balance - Auto-crit on FiB or a free Project with a +x% damage increase

 

Ability changes:

Force Breach now hits 5 targets in Shadow & Force Technique to bring it into line with the Kinetic variant, and is a smart-AoE in Shadow Technique. Consider marginal force cost increase.

 

Shadow Strike now has a reduced base damage and costs 40 force to reflect the change.

 

Double Strike & Clairvoyant Strike have seen their base damage increased.

 

Net Result:

Average damage up

Damage spikes down

Tanks are tankier

Shadows are a legitimate AoE threat in PvE & PvP with legitimate trade-offs to counterbalance the advantages

Burst is available in all trees for PvP & PvE that doesn't break class balance.

 

 

 

Dat lowslash on bosses :cool:

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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Kitru I'm trying to address the key concerns of the Shadow PvE/PvP community, while addressing the concerns of the remainder of the PvP community.

 

If you look at it from the perspective, the objectives are clear:

 

Raise average DPS

Increase AoE options

Keep Shadow Strike in check as DPS goes up

Ensure there is regular enough burst so people don't complain about a nerf to Shadow Strike.

 

Upon reading it over after I posted, my first thought was "maybe a reduction on Force Breach damage with the change," so in that sense I definitely agree with you.

 

The point of the cost reduction on SS is to give Balance an emergency burst move that doesn't break the bank as much, especially in early levels. From memory SS is approximately worth a little under 2x DS/CS without a proc. That needs to change.

 

Additionally, the rotation for Balance is immensely simple, and needs a skill cap. An off-GCD move helps with that. With infil, the damage is there, but it's locked behind the force cost of proc abilities. The tank rotation becomes slightly more complex, perhaps more in line with other tanks.

 

Perhaps give the aforementioned armour bonus with the off-GCD move as well to reinforce the benefits of a good rotation. At no point have I assigned the delta percentages for the changes, (except hinting at up to a 20% reduction on SS before factoring in talent reductions), because that would clarify the kind of balancing I'm looking for; there'd be a bit to do there.

 

I hope that clarifies my methodology, and I'd be open to hearing estimates on where Shadow DPS would be with just the off-GCD change and a consistent double IT SS, as well as the auto-crit change to Balance, but feel that this doesn't address concerns with regards to low level play, nor in PvP given how every other DPS has a legitimately powerful AoE spec or is a powerful AoE class.

 

So far, the biggest concerns I have are how Force Potency would be utilised as Balance, and if the CD would be manageable if used on 2x Project in a 11-20s window.

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Ok some quick napkin math suggests the base boost from Low Slash would be around 200-250 dps, with a 500 and 120 dps boost to Infil & Balance respectively (using the best dummy parses I have seen as a reference).

 

Given that projected DPS for Infil in an actual ops fight is 2900 DPS now with 72 BiS, this boost would likely make Infil OP, hence the SS nerf. Low Slash would most definitely soften the PvP blow suffered through this change.

 

Balance would become competitive under these initial changes, though I have not factored the use of project, which would slide into a value just below a non-crit DS before a +dmg modifier is brought in. A fair estimate would then be replacing Sabre Strike once every 30s pre-boost, for a gain of around 16 DPS.

 

Doubling the damage of project with this proc would then boost this to a 78 DPS gain over existing values. So there's 100 DPS with CDs for those who want to push it with Balance under my proposed changes. That said, it's 6 hits in a 5 min fight, a mediocre PvP benefit and probably worth dropping out of the concept altogether in favour of a new burst mechanic or an overall buff to damage output in the tree.

 

New thoughts Kitru? :)

Edited by DaftVaduhhh
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Given that projected DPS for Infil in an actual ops fight is 2900 DPS now with 72 BiS, this boost would likely make Infil OP, hence the SS nerf. Low Slash would most definitely soften the PvP blow suffered through this change.

projected DPS

this is what i'm talking about, no infiltration is actually achieving remotely close to that number. let's also take a look at how classes ACTUALLY behave as well as what the math shows. if only these changes were made infiltration/deception would still have loads of things wrong with it in pve. i really hope the community doesnt become balance/madness tunnel visioned.

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Ok some quick napkin math suggests the base boost from Low Slash would be around 200-250 dps, with a 500 and 120 dps boost to Infil & Balance respectively (using the best dummy parses I have seen as a reference).

 

I'd be curious to see your napkin math, mainly because, as an ability off of the GCD without any cost, it shouldn't vary *at all* for any spec unless there are explicit DPS increase talents. As it hits at roughly 80% of the damage of a Double Strike/Clairvoyant Strike (the 50% increase to crit damage that Balance gets actually makes the two average out to the same damage) though it'll likely get nerfed a bit more than than (look at the tweak to Energy Blast's damage when it was taken off GCD: it got a hefty reduction in damage so that, when you added a basic attack to it, it only did about 10% more than it did before; this means you could likely expect a 50% nerf in damage, assuming they keep the same design construct). Based on that, you could expect to see, at most, a 200 DPS theoretical increase for both DPS specs and, more realistically, a 100 DPS increase.

 

New thoughts Kitru? :)

 

I wasn't saying *anything* about it not increasing average DPS. It does that pretty effectively though pretty much the *entire* method that it accomplishes it is through your Low Slash addition/fix/tweak rather than through any of your other changes.

 

My problem is with *how* you're accomplishing your desired goals. You're either making changes for change's sake (Low Slash triggering Infiltration Tactics and Shadow Wrap) in an attempt to justify a pet concept that doesn't really have a place (off-GCD Low Slash) or you're doing something without any real purpose (reducing Shadow Strike's damage/cost and increasing DS/CS).

 

When you get rid of the arbitrary/pointless changes you're suggesting, it can really be broken down into "FiB should always crit" and "Low Slash should be completely changed from its current form into a completely new ability for all Shadows that is a free off-GCD damage attack".

 

On top of that, your suggestion that FB be turned into a safe AoE by default is just ludicrous on its face.

 

Rather than attempting to increase DPS by arbitrarily changing an existing attack into something *completely different* and attempting to justify it by changing a bunch of other stuff that currently works perfectly fine, just increase the damage by modifying existing capabilities.

 

Have some kind of +crit talent in Balance to make up for the huge losses of crit thanks to the tweaked DR curve and Balance's *massive* reliance on crit thanks to having fully 75% of its damage dependent upon the surge talents. Provide some kind of single tick damage dealt on Balance's DoTs if said DoT is already on the target if they clip so that it eases up on the required precision to play it perfectly. Create *some* kind of mechanism that provides some degree of cleanse resistance to Balance's DoTs (dealing damage or bouncing the DoT to the cleanser; dealing damage when the effect ends early; replacing with a weaker DoT; applying some substantial debuff when it's cleansed off; etc.). Create *some* Infiltration tactics variant for Balance, even if it's just a DoT-triggered version of Shadow Wrap.

 

Fix the problem with Shadow Technique procing off of Force Breach so that it puts your Breaching Shadows generation on the 4.5 ICD without actually being useful. Increase the damage from Judgement so Infiltration is actually as good during the Execute phase as Peckenpaugh seems to think that they are. Punch up the damage on Force Breach or Project for Infiltration in order to increase average damage without drastically increasing spike damage capability.

 

For AoE, *just provide a friggin' new AoE to all Shadows*. Make it a channel so that Tank Shadows aren't going to use it (since attacks would cause pushback). Barring that, replace Low Slash or add a new attack of some kind (like, maybe, a nuke where you're standing/landing when you use Phase Walk) for Infiltration and change Lambaste so that, rather than triggering your Force Technique, it cleaves any DoTs on one target to all of the targets. ST attacks priorities, barring the need for Balance to get some softening on the level of precision required and Shadow Strike to be added in *somehow*, are fine. You don't need to turn the existing ST strings into AoE strings. It's the AoE priorities that need to be revisited since, for Infiltration, it's a *single* ability (Whirling Blow and more Whirling Blow!) and, for Balance, it's only 2 (FiB and Whirling Blow with, guess what, *more* Whirling Blow!). They don't need a repurposed ST attack. They need a completely new AoE attack/combo simply provided.

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Fix the problem with Shadow Technique procing off of Force Breach so that it puts your Breaching Shadows generation on the 4.5 ICD without actually being useful. Increase the damage from Judgement so Infiltration is actually as good during the Execute phase as Peckenpaugh seems to think that they are. Punch up the damage on Force Breach or Project for Infiltration in order to increase average damage without drastically increasing spike damage capability.

 

THANK you! :D this is all infiltration REALLY needs, anything else added to infiltration is probably unnecessary.

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I'd be curious to see your napkin math, mainly because, as an ability off of the GCD without any cost, it shouldn't vary *at all* for any spec unless there are explicit DPS increase talents. As it hits at roughly 80% of the damage of a Double Strike/Clairvoyant Strike (the 50% increase to crit damage that Balance gets actually makes the two average out to the same damage) though it'll likely get nerfed a bit more than than (look at the tweak to Energy Blast's damage when it was taken off GCD: it got a hefty reduction in damage so that, when you added a basic attack to it, it only did about 10% more than it did before; this means you could likely expect a 50% nerf in damage, assuming they keep the same design construct). Based on that, you could expect to see, at most, a 200 DPS theoretical increase for both DPS specs and, more realistically, a 100 DPS increase.

 

...

 

On top of that, your suggestion that FB be turned into a safe AoE by default is just ludicrous on its face.

The variance in my estimate for Low Slash reflects that it was guesswork, with no math put in beyond working out the estimated dps once I had established a value (factoring in the armour count of the Ops dummy) and CD.

 

The smart AoE was for Infil's FB only, given how much it would hamper the rotation to avoid that attack in PvP, but that can be revisited.

 

I'm working off the assumption the Devs don't really want to give us another ability, given the way they hacked apart Balance and gave us Phase Walk.

 

Have some kind of +crit talent in Balance to make up for the huge losses of crit thanks to the tweaked DR curve and Balance's *massive* reliance on crit thanks to having fully 75% of its damage dependent upon the surge talents.

I suggested this for both trees as a high-tier talent.

 

Fix the problem with Shadow Technique procing off of Force Breach so that it puts your Breaching Shadows generation on the 4.5 ICD without actually being useful.

Was not aware of this but agree 100%.

 

Increase the damage from Judgement so Infiltration is actually as good during the Execute phase as Peckenpaugh seems to think that they are. Punch up the damage on Force Breach or Project for Infiltration in order to increase average damage without drastically increasing spike damage capability.

Increasing sub 30% damage means that Devs have to create fights that suit the mechanic, I would rather that they simplify or remove this process and think about how they can make fun and unique fights without worrying about discounting individual classes beyond the range/availability of attacks. You can see that ranged is king right now, and I think dancing around such points is the cause of that.

 

Shadow Strike, Shoot First, Back Blast and their mirror abilities need to be tapered down by perhaps 10%. It is the *first and most obvious* step to rebalancing without mass-whining. Then, you boost up other things to bring DPS in-line. To ignore that concept and complain about a reliance on crits without crit bonuses is quite strange. You're certainly going to hear people screaming about 12+k SS crits even if the ability goes untouched through the buffs.

 

this is what i'm talking about, no infiltration is actually achieving remotely close to that number. let's also take a look at how classes ACTUALLY behave as well as what the math shows. if only these changes were made infiltration/deception would still have loads of things wrong with it in pve. i really hope the community doesnt become balance/madness tunnel visioned.

That's a rough estimate for a 5-6.5 minute fight with a normal burn phase, for an Infil player that is doing around 2600-2700 DPS on a dummy. Factor in a CS being replaced with a Spinning Strike every 6s, the slightly smaller amount of auto-attacks due to the low cost of Spinning Strike to CS, and the 6% increase to all damage on a mob below 30% and if the burn phase is a standard one, DPS sky rockets.

 

That's the problem right there, that to meet low-end bracket of acceptable 'dummy' DPS, Shadows need a normal burn phase: take that out of a fight, and it becomes problematic. They've re-engineered fights for this in several ways (more add phases, longer burn phases, damage boost phases) but honestly if you guys think my way of rebalancing Shadows is unnecessarily complex, you should be tearing strips off of BW for how they chose to nerf Shadows to suit the PvP community's concerns.

Edited by DaftVaduhhh
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honestly if you guys think my way of rebalancing Shadows is unnecessarily complex, you should be tearing strips off of BW for how they chose to nerf Shadows to suit the PvP community's concerns.

 

I don't think that your ideas are complicated. I think they're arbitrary. You could achieve the same increases in DPS while actually using methods that aren't centered around the arbitrary desire to include a default off-GCD attack. Shadow don't *need* another attack tacked on. They *need* is for their existing mechanisms to be improved.

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I'm not sure you understand what the word 'need' means. :p

 

Ok, how about my Force Breach idea becomes this new AoE attack similar to how I described, and there's a redesign on Force Breach while in Force Technique to add a burst mechanic, while maintaining the nerf to SS, buff to other attacks, high-tier crit talents, and scrapping the SS buff in favour of a bonus to force damage?

 

I still think a Low Slash redesign would be favourable as well in terms of a skill cap, but if Shadows become AoE & Single target pressure in DPS specs, I think that will satisfy the PvP & PvE crowd, and justify a melee class in light armour.

 

Giving Balance Shadows another button to press would be a welcome change.

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Fix the problem with Shadow Technique procing off of Force Breach so that it puts your Breaching Shadows generation on the 4.5 ICD without actually being useful. Increase the damage from Judgement so Infiltration is actually as good during the Execute phase as Peckenpaugh seems to think that they are. Punch up the damage on Force Breach or Project for Infiltration in order to increase average damage without drastically increasing spike damage capability.

increase Max Stack size to 4 but only consume 3 stacks,

the chance for Force technique to trigger isn't all that good excluding some abilities from Proccing it is the easy way out.

I have enough of the easy solutions

Infiltration tactics was so nice because most of the time you had it after your opening FIB you would proceed with your normal Setup and then SS and often you'd proc the next SS only two or three Seconds later

people didn't reach optimal DPS so they took the easy way out instead of Solving the QOL issues they tried to make it so easy you can count to 18 while playing.

 

something else i thought of lately in Balance & Infiltration

remove the Heal from Battle Readiness and:

increase its uptime

or reduce the cooldown

or reduce the ICD of the techniques and infiltration tactics & Force Strike for it's Duration

 

it's a mainly Offensive & Force Management CD it's simply so bad in its supposed Role that it was considered the easy way to give shadow DDs another Def CD, one they didn't need.

 

 

Offtopic yea i read the Madsith interview again lately,... had a hard time not commenting on it,.. wouldn't have been possible to read due to grammar, Translation mistakes and size.

just like I have a hard time not Commenting on the Nerf Guardian Thread and there I can't even say witch Side is Worse

 

 

move masked assault one Tier down and maybe lock it to Force-&Shadow-technique (or remove the DR from tank Battle Readiness, if masked assault Uptime is to high remove Resilience that's 80% done already anyway:mad: because again Bosses Completely Ignoring half our Def CDs is the Easy way to keep Shadows from being OP)

though I don't have the slightest Idea what to do with the Force :D hm maybe for offtanking:eek: but that can be changed to Force-&Shadow-Technique only so, no Problem.

and the Added Force might well make it Possible to get Project back into Balance Ability list (even if its just once every 60sec) and cut saber strike out of it.

 

give some sort of QOL improvement to ALL the dot/Proc using Specs

give some sort of Cleanse Protection

maybe if someone dies with all 15 Force Suppression Stacks reset FIB but I don't mind leaving AOE to others as long as Single Target Damage&Survivability are fine

(don't count the Execute DPS increase when calculating single Target DPS as a Tradeoff for having such weak AOE Damage for Example)

look over the Talent Trees there are so many bad talents that require way more points then they deserve

remove Force-Technique from Shadowy Veil you indirectly encourage Balance players to use Project :rolleyes:

btw Shadow's Respite is in tier one, changes gameplay and adds another Button to Balance List:rolleyes:

the easy Solution would be to remove Shadow's Respite:rolleyes:

increase Force Potency Crit% to autocrit for Balance Shadows we don't have enough Force attacks to wait for the CDs to reset

 

I'm not sure you understand what the word 'need' means. :p

 

Ok, how about my Force Breach idea becomes this new AoE attack similar to how I described, and there's a redesign on Force Breach while in Force Technique to add a burst mechanic, while maintaining the nerf to SS, buff to other attacks, high-tier crit talents, and scrapping the SS buff in favour of a bonus to force damage?

 

I still think a Low Slash redesign would be favourable as well in terms of a skill cap, but if Shadows become AoE & Single target pressure in DPS specs, I think that will satisfy the PvP & PvE crowd, and justify a melee class in light armour.

 

theres no need to change any mechanics of the attacks there wasn't even any need to change the Number of targets affected by FIB that was the most likely reason to change how Balance Shadows regenerated Force -> witch most likely lead to Lambaste, easy solution to increase AOE DPS that resulted in Dumped down Gameplay

 

nor was there any need to have Battle Readiness Heal in all Specs, buffing it's Damage/ Force Regeneration would have been much preferable. again an easy Solution Fixing the Perceived lack of an Ability

 

I have no Idea what was the Reasoning behind the Removal Instant Force Lift.

It really Bugs me that I can't even make a Guess, it wasn't PVP Knight&Smuggler kept their instant Mezz (and theirs is AOE...).

 

 

Giving Balance Shadows another button to press would be a welcome change.

 

even more Buttons? are you crazy? the people who play Balance can't even count to 18 as it currently is!

we have to remove some more abilities! :rolleyes:

 

 

[TINFOIL HAT]it could be Favoritism[/TINFOIL HAT]

but I can't belive they would be so Stupid, it's the easy Solution to assume the Defs crap on Balance (both, Balance and balance :p) because they Favor One Class over the other.

and what they did with Shadow Tank Gameplay proves they can do it Right.

they didn't take anything away, instead they allowed us to play the spec it was Obviously meant to be played if you looked over the Tree. and the Addition&Implementation of Shadow Wrap was just as Perfect the small difference in proc% is a bit of a hindrance but it's minor enough and the few HPS more or less don't matter at the moment anyway.

 

so People, stop hacking on the defs they might do some stupid things but that's just criticizing them with Knowledge the didn't have during PTS because so few played the Specs there,

and now they have to deal with the same Inertia why Raids still use Shadow Tanks.

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That's a rough estimate for a 5-6.5 minute fight with a normal burn phase, for an Infil player that is doing around 2600-2700 DPS on a dummy. Factor in a CS being replaced with a Spinning Strike every 6s, the slightly smaller amount of auto-attacks due to the low cost of Spinning Strike to CS, and the 6% increase to all damage on a mob below 30% and if the burn phase is a standard one, DPS sky rockets.

 

first of all, 2600 is a number only two infiltration shadows have EVER been able to reach. two. so if we're gunna take a shadows dps lets do a realistic number, shall we? in pre KD gear an infiltration will be lucky to break 2500. and as to your 30% burn point, go play infiltration shadow in a boss fight and see how long that phase lasts, and how much of a dps increase you'll actually get. i promise you the only increase you will see is after a drop because we have trouble sustaining dps after a minute and a half. so by the time a boss gets to 30% and all this becomes available, we have another 20 seconds, maybe, to use it. from my experience this boost is only enough to make up for the dps you've already lost from the fight dragging on too long. TLDR; if you're going to speculate on a spec, please speculate on how said class ACTUALLY preforms.

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first of all, 2600 is a number only two infiltration shadows have EVER been able to reach. two. so if we're gunna take a shadows dps lets do a realistic number, shall we? in pre KD gear an infiltration will be lucky to break 2500. and as to your 30% burn point, go play infiltration shadow in a boss fight and see how long that phase lasts, and how much of a dps increase you'll actually get. i promise you the only increase you will see is after a drop because we have trouble sustaining dps after a minute and a half. so by the time a boss gets to 30% and all this becomes available, we have another 20 seconds, maybe, to use it. from my experience this boost is only enough to make up for the dps you've already lost from the fight dragging on too long. TLDR; if you're going to speculate on a spec, please speculate on how said class ACTUALLY preforms.

 

Yeah the increase on the sub 30% is way to low.

 

Some numbers:

Two chars, an assasin and something else. Assuming that the time to kill is completly even, aka the last 10% takes as long time as the first. Assasin does 10% less dps(which is somewhere around what the dummy parses show). To catch up with the 10% less dps for 70% of the time how much does the dps increase have to be?

It has to be(100-70*0.9)/30=1.2333... of normal dps. So the increase needs to be 23% higher for the last 30%. Considering that the sub 30% usually is faster than rest an dps increase of about 25% would be appropiate.

We are not even near 23% as it is now. Kitru made a calculation about was it was a few days ago in someother thread.

Edited by Berjiz
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Yeah the increase on the sub 30% is way to low.

 

Some numbers:

Two chars, an assasin and something else. Assuming that the time to kill is completly even, aka the last 10% takes as long time as the first. Assasin does 10% less dps(which is somewhere around what the dummy parses show). To catch up with the 10% less dps for 70% of the time how much does the dps increase have to be?

It has to be(100-70*0.9)/30=1.2333... of normal dps. So the increase needs to be 23% higher for the last 30%. Considering that the sub 30% usually is faster than rest an dps increase of about 25% would be appropiate.

We are not even near 23% as it is now. Kitru made a calculation about was it was a few days ago in someother thread.

 

i just searched a bit for the post your referring to, they calculated on the basis of a madness/balance build, and the change in damage that's being referred to is actually the change of parsing on a dummy to on an operation boss in a group, which includes the 30% hp damage boosts. the number given was 11.7% of a damage increase.

so now, my request is that you do the math for the specific subject you're speaking of, or change your statement to go with the specifics of the post your referring to.

personally i'd like to see the math for the comparison that you originally intended to make. i'm curious about the outcome but lack the motivation/math background to find out for myself
;)

EDIT: kitru beat me to it, lol

Edited by thejollygreenone
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so now, my request is that you do the math for the specific subject you're speaking of, or change your statement to go with the specifics of the post your referring to.

 

I actually did that during that post. The 11.7% represents the DPS increase from a raw dummy parse without the armor debuff. I also listed the non-armor debuff contribution (i.e. averaged out execute improvements) which amounted to a 5.567% increase in total DPS.

 

If you're looking for the raw increase to DPS during the execute phase rather than the values averaged out across the entire fight, just divide by .3: the 5.567% increase for Balance gets pumped up to 18.5567%, which means that DPS jumps by almost 20% during execute phases. For Infiltration, it's a bit simpler since it's just a raw 6% end multiplier from Judgment and a 41% increase to CS damage from Spinning Strike (SS does ~82% more damage and replaces half of your CSs). If you can throw me a decent Infil dummy parse to go off of, I can slap those into a comparable increase for you.

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I actually did that during that post. The 11.7% represents the DPS increase from a raw dummy parse without the armor debuff. I also listed the non-armor debuff contribution (i.e. averaged out execute improvements) which amounted to a 5.567% increase in total DPS.

 

If you're looking for the raw increase to DPS during the execute phase rather than the values averaged out across the entire fight, just divide by .3: the 5.567% increase for Balance gets pumped up to 18.5567%, which means that DPS jumps by almost 20% during execute phases. For Infiltration, it's a bit simpler since it's just a raw 6% end multiplier from Judgment and a 41% increase to CS damage from Spinning Strike (SS does ~82% more damage and replaces half of your CSs). If you can throw me a decent Infil dummy parse to go off of, I can slap those into a comparable increase for you.

 

here's the best one i have, but i know theres a few up people who are up in the 2600s, i could find you one of those too if you'd rather.

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