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Trickster Rogue Class Balance Suggestions
sirjimbofrancis
Member Posts: 348 Arc User
Hi All,
When the subject of TR balance comes up, it stirs up a lot of feelings all around. TRs suffer from several significant disadvantages in PVE when compared to other classes and this post is an effort, by several experienced TR players, to bring attention to those disadvantages, and to offer some solutions which will hopefully be taken into consideration for the upcoming rework of the TR class. These are only a suggestions and it is up to developers to use or not. Our goal is to help the developers balance the TR in such a way that opens up the viability of a variety of different builds without sacrificing what currently works. At the same time, we also want to make TRs more competitive as a DPS class in PVE and elevate the class to be a desirable addition to a party in endgame content which, right now, they are sadly not. And, finally, fix the numerous bugs that have plagued TRs for years. Thank you for your consideration!
Lilia Drakon
Janne Moonmist
Blur
Quilla
Haxxident
N0t0ri0us
Known Bugs:
Stealth: When Soulforged activates under the effect of Lurker's Assault our Stealth gets stuck and is not recharging unless we change instance or relog.
Duelist Flurry: When refreshed, it only resets the timer, NOT the damage. So that, for example, as the life of a boss goes down, if the bleed stacks are continuously applied from the beginning, they will not reflect damage bonuses from feats, companions, the Orcus set, etc. Are they shared when 2 or more TR's attack the same target? Bleed icon on target is shown only once, other TR's cant keep track of how many bleeds they stacked.
Shadows of Demise: It doesn't register the SoD owner correctly. If more than one TR applies SoD to same target only one TR gets the credit for the damage. When counting the TRs damage in the 6 second window, some of the damage doesn’t count in, for example, weapon enchantment damage except Vorpal and Aura of Courage.
Shadowborn: As of now, this upper level feat procs on any at-will or DOT attack. A lot of the time, it is wasted on a single at-will hit, bleed tick, smoke bomb tick, etc. Basically, ANY attack procs it, and that makes it nearly impossible to use consistently after the first attack in combat. Note: See the Executioner section for a rework of this particular feat.
Twisted Grin: It suffers from the same problem Shadowborn suffers from where it procs on any damage you deal at all and is easily wasted.
Lurker’s Assault: Action points are not generated from damage done while using it. However, fixing this has the possibility of making Shocking Execution ridiculous in PVP. Exclude SE from the damage bonus from Lurker's Assault.
Smoke Bomb: This power does NOT proc weapon enchantments, and does NOT grant Combat Advantage against enemies under control from it. Also, it’s buggy with its interactions with Feytouched. Sometimes it will proc the +18% damage, and sometimes not. Also, it is buggy when dealing damage to test dummies as it stops hitting them altogether after a short time.
Impossible to Catch: If struck as it is enabled or if pressed in conjunction with a dodge, ITC will fail to work although it will go on cool down.
Path of the Blade: This power does NOT proc weapon enchantments or the owlbear cub.
Bait and Switch: The bait doesn’t hold agro.
Not a bug but will be mentioned here. Activation animation time of Courage Breaker and Whirlwind of Blades could be a bit faster.
Tab Mechanic (Stealth) issue:
The stealth mechanic is the primary TR skill, and it has a unique problem. Although, the main advantage granted by stealth is automatic critical strike and combat advantage, it doesn't last long enough for TRs to abandon allocating points in critical strike, because a high percentage of TR damage comes from attacks performed outside of stealth. This creates a situation where stealth provides very little in PVE since most of time TRs already have combat advantage, and already have a high critical strike percentage. Because of this, the TR's tab mechanic grants the smallest advantage when compared to every other class in PVE content.
Proposed Solution:
As of now, stealth adds 100% critical chance as a direct rating modifier. For example, when the stealth button is pressed, a TR with a 70% critical chance will then have a 170% critical chance. Obviously, 170% critical chance is in no way better than 100%.
This suggestion originally outlined in this post by @hoperuby, offered an interesting solution. In short, it suggests taking the extra percentage in stealth over 100%, and add that to the critical severity percentage. So a player with 70% crit would receive 70% crit severity when they enter stealth. A more simple solution would be to simply add 50% crit severity while using stealth. This also allows a nice scaling as it will help lower leveled and lower geared TRs much more than BIS TRs.
In PVP, it would have to be changed to either work only on at-wills and encounters to avoid making dailies (notably Shocking Execution) not over powered.
At-will: Duelist's Flurry
The biggest proportion of the damage TRs do in PVE comes from duelist's flurry. Depending on the build, even conservatively, it accounts for greater than 30% of TR's overall damage. Some bosses like FBI (Drufi), or MSVA, either move a lot, or appear for short phases of time, limiting the effectiveness of this power. No other class is as handicapped with their at-wills, and consequently their damage, as TRs are by this mechanic.
The reason this is a problem is because it takes long time to set up a full stack of bleeds on a target (about 3 flurries). In addition, the randomness of the flurry bleed stacking makes it much more difficult, when compared to other classes, to have a single rotation. It forces TRs to try to watch for the stack numbers, which is nearly impossible with the tiny text in the moving debuff list. Also, the length of the mechanic is not forgiving for mistakes or extended dodges. For example, if the TR is caught in ice, the full bleed is not applied. Or, if the TR dodges too far, or makes a rotation mistake, the full bleed is not applied.
Our suggestion is to make a single flurry add all 10 stacks of bleed. This makes adding bleeds not a "chance", but a reliable system. This allows TRs to have higher overall burst, less time to set up the damage, and an easier mechanic as TRs can make a fixed rotation. Since duelist's flurry is only 8 hits in total, each hit applying 1 bleed would not be enough. So perhaps adding all 10 bleeds from last hit could be easiest solution.
(Continued in comments)
When the subject of TR balance comes up, it stirs up a lot of feelings all around. TRs suffer from several significant disadvantages in PVE when compared to other classes and this post is an effort, by several experienced TR players, to bring attention to those disadvantages, and to offer some solutions which will hopefully be taken into consideration for the upcoming rework of the TR class. These are only a suggestions and it is up to developers to use or not. Our goal is to help the developers balance the TR in such a way that opens up the viability of a variety of different builds without sacrificing what currently works. At the same time, we also want to make TRs more competitive as a DPS class in PVE and elevate the class to be a desirable addition to a party in endgame content which, right now, they are sadly not. And, finally, fix the numerous bugs that have plagued TRs for years. Thank you for your consideration!
Lilia Drakon
Janne Moonmist
Blur
Quilla
Haxxident
N0t0ri0us
Known Bugs:
Stealth: When Soulforged activates under the effect of Lurker's Assault our Stealth gets stuck and is not recharging unless we change instance or relog.
Duelist Flurry: When refreshed, it only resets the timer, NOT the damage. So that, for example, as the life of a boss goes down, if the bleed stacks are continuously applied from the beginning, they will not reflect damage bonuses from feats, companions, the Orcus set, etc. Are they shared when 2 or more TR's attack the same target? Bleed icon on target is shown only once, other TR's cant keep track of how many bleeds they stacked.
Shadows of Demise: It doesn't register the SoD owner correctly. If more than one TR applies SoD to same target only one TR gets the credit for the damage. When counting the TRs damage in the 6 second window, some of the damage doesn’t count in, for example, weapon enchantment damage except Vorpal and Aura of Courage.
Shadowborn: As of now, this upper level feat procs on any at-will or DOT attack. A lot of the time, it is wasted on a single at-will hit, bleed tick, smoke bomb tick, etc. Basically, ANY attack procs it, and that makes it nearly impossible to use consistently after the first attack in combat. Note: See the Executioner section for a rework of this particular feat.
Twisted Grin: It suffers from the same problem Shadowborn suffers from where it procs on any damage you deal at all and is easily wasted.
Lurker’s Assault: Action points are not generated from damage done while using it. However, fixing this has the possibility of making Shocking Execution ridiculous in PVP. Exclude SE from the damage bonus from Lurker's Assault.
Smoke Bomb: This power does NOT proc weapon enchantments, and does NOT grant Combat Advantage against enemies under control from it. Also, it’s buggy with its interactions with Feytouched. Sometimes it will proc the +18% damage, and sometimes not. Also, it is buggy when dealing damage to test dummies as it stops hitting them altogether after a short time.
Impossible to Catch: If struck as it is enabled or if pressed in conjunction with a dodge, ITC will fail to work although it will go on cool down.
Path of the Blade: This power does NOT proc weapon enchantments or the owlbear cub.
Bait and Switch: The bait doesn’t hold agro.
Not a bug but will be mentioned here. Activation animation time of Courage Breaker and Whirlwind of Blades could be a bit faster.
Tab Mechanic (Stealth) issue:
The stealth mechanic is the primary TR skill, and it has a unique problem. Although, the main advantage granted by stealth is automatic critical strike and combat advantage, it doesn't last long enough for TRs to abandon allocating points in critical strike, because a high percentage of TR damage comes from attacks performed outside of stealth. This creates a situation where stealth provides very little in PVE since most of time TRs already have combat advantage, and already have a high critical strike percentage. Because of this, the TR's tab mechanic grants the smallest advantage when compared to every other class in PVE content.
Proposed Solution:
As of now, stealth adds 100% critical chance as a direct rating modifier. For example, when the stealth button is pressed, a TR with a 70% critical chance will then have a 170% critical chance. Obviously, 170% critical chance is in no way better than 100%.
This suggestion originally outlined in this post by @hoperuby, offered an interesting solution. In short, it suggests taking the extra percentage in stealth over 100%, and add that to the critical severity percentage. So a player with 70% crit would receive 70% crit severity when they enter stealth. A more simple solution would be to simply add 50% crit severity while using stealth. This also allows a nice scaling as it will help lower leveled and lower geared TRs much more than BIS TRs.
In PVP, it would have to be changed to either work only on at-wills and encounters to avoid making dailies (notably Shocking Execution) not over powered.
At-will: Duelist's Flurry
The biggest proportion of the damage TRs do in PVE comes from duelist's flurry. Depending on the build, even conservatively, it accounts for greater than 30% of TR's overall damage. Some bosses like FBI (Drufi), or MSVA, either move a lot, or appear for short phases of time, limiting the effectiveness of this power. No other class is as handicapped with their at-wills, and consequently their damage, as TRs are by this mechanic.
The reason this is a problem is because it takes long time to set up a full stack of bleeds on a target (about 3 flurries). In addition, the randomness of the flurry bleed stacking makes it much more difficult, when compared to other classes, to have a single rotation. It forces TRs to try to watch for the stack numbers, which is nearly impossible with the tiny text in the moving debuff list. Also, the length of the mechanic is not forgiving for mistakes or extended dodges. For example, if the TR is caught in ice, the full bleed is not applied. Or, if the TR dodges too far, or makes a rotation mistake, the full bleed is not applied.
Our suggestion is to make a single flurry add all 10 stacks of bleed. This makes adding bleeds not a "chance", but a reliable system. This allows TRs to have higher overall burst, less time to set up the damage, and an easier mechanic as TRs can make a fixed rotation. Since duelist's flurry is only 8 hits in total, each hit applying 1 bleed would not be enough. So perhaps adding all 10 bleeds from last hit could be easiest solution.
(Continued in comments)
15
Comments
The biggest challenge the Whisperknife Path has is that it doesn’t have access to the excellent passive powers available to Master Infiltrators, namely Invisible Infiltrator and Infiltrator’s action. If they could have a passive power or other source, for example an encounter that would grant a similar buff, that would go a long way to making this paragon path on equal footing to MIs. Some added piercing damage would also help them be more competitive in PVP to make up for the fact that they don't have access to Shocking Execution.
Disheartening Strike - Make it AOE, like current area from encounter Blitz.
Advantageous Position - After activating a Daily power increase Deflect chance by 10% and Damage resistance by 30% for 3 seconds(6 seconds at rank 4).
Vengeance's Pursuit: Add damage buff of 10% for 8 seconds. This power would be a good one to add piercing damage to help with PVP, but the exact change that should be made here, we weren't really sure about.
Feat Trees: Saboteur Suggestions
Grinning Steel - Increase crit from 5% to 10%.
Gutterborn's touch - Increase Power rating from 10% to 20%.
Ambusher's Haste - Increase damage from 25% to 30%.
Feat Trees: Scoundrel Suggestions
The biggest challenge the Scoundrel tree has in PVE is that the top feat is useless against enemies immune to control effects. At end game, that’s mostly all bosses, and some mobs, too.
Skullcracker – Every 15 seconds next Encounter activates Skullcracker effect and buffs the player for 6 seconds to deal 30% more damage(up from 25%) so it works on all targets including those immune to Dazes(+current Daze effects).
Savage Blows - Dealing damage to foes increases Life steal and Damage by 1% for 3 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
Low Blows - Deal 40% more damage to foes who are affected by Control effects.
Feat Trees: Executioner Suggestions
Shadows of Demise - The problem with this capstone feat is that it doesn't have a chance to proc in highly geared parties, because most things die in less than 6 seconds. This makes the executioner path not scale well into Endgame BIS.
One solution is to make SoD work in 1 sec ticks after the initial proc, and extend SoD an extra second. This way, it applies the extra 50% damage accumulated each second at the end of each second for the duration of SoD. So, for the 7 seconds SoD lasts, it will be 7 ticks.
Another option would be to grant a flat +50% damage for 6 seconds from when SoD is procced. This is essentially what it does now, only on a 6 second delay and with piercing damage. This would be an easier option if the former turns out to be too difficult.
Shadowborn - As pointed out in the "bug section", upper tear feat is wasted on a single sly, bleed, single smoke bomb tick or any attack, this makes it impossible to use consistently after the first attack in combat.
Make this feat a more consistant stable buff by making it buff power the same way, but for 5 seconds AFTER leaving stealth. That will help it be more useful while, and at the same time remove it as a buff for Shocking Execution, reducing the one shot dunk effectiveness in PVP.
Deathknell and Last Moments - These are much less useful than they seem, because most things die too quickly. One ice knife or IBS and your points in these feats are useless. In addition, since the introduction of the Orcus set, which most endgame DPSers are using now, and which operates similarly to these feats, they have become even less useful.
Have them grant a flat +5% bonus for each of these feats and gradually increase them as the life of the enemy goes down to a +25% damage from each feat when target is under 40% HP.
Dying Breath / Twisted Grin - The "died near you" / "killed by you" feats create a situation where it forces the TR to run fast to the next mob pack to use the buff from the last dead mob before it expires which Makes it a formula race and not a dungeon crawl. These are also useless for most bosses as most bosses don't have any mobs at all.
Every feat can't be great, but if we tied these to doing a crit, being in stealth, having combat advantage, or some other mechanic, it would help make these much more useful.
Powers Suggestions
Blitz: Add an additional 5% damage buff for 5 seconds to its current effect, when used from Stealth.
Courage Breaker: Halve its debuff duration versus players. Right now, this particular daily is overpowered in PVP and needs adjustment.
Lashing Blade: Lower it's cool down to make it on par with other classes' single target big encounter hit.
Wicked reminder: TRs need a buff/debuff that is more useful with parties so they will have more utility in groups. Right now, WR applies a debuff which is limited by the defense reduction cap which means when compared to debuffs from other classes, it has limited use as the cap can be reached so easily, that there isn't a consistent need for it.
Our solution is to make this encounter have 3 charges, where each charge gives a 10% damage bonus for the party, instead of a defense reduction. Stealth applies 3 charges. When 3 charges are applied to target the buff lasts 6 seconds and has a maximum +30% damage bonus regardless of the number of WR hits applied after the 30% is reached.
A Note on PVP
You will notice that a number of powers have to be altered to accommodate a single daily in PVP. This limited our ability to balance what we wanted to do to buff TRs in PVE without making Shocking Execution overpowered in PVP. One solution was to simply put a cap on the damage SE did to 90% of the target's max HP, but it was thought that would hinder TRs too much in PVP because of the reliance on that one specific power. In the end, we decided to carve out a number of exceptions for SE, because we were at a loss to come to a complete agreement on how to balance the synergies of the buffs we wanted with the nature of SE in PVP.
Shocking Execution is absolutely necessary in PVP for TRs to stay competitive, so removing it isn't an option. However, whenever we try to balance PVE or PVP, it screws up the other. We (the entire community) need the devs to take certain powers and have them do one thing in PVE and another in PVP. As mods, boons, and equipment are added to the game, this balance between the two is going to get more and more difficult and problematic. By separating some powers into PVE and PVP effects, we can eliminate this growing problem. And, by virtue of the new loadouts introduced in the next mod, it would allow for more player flexibility and play between PVP and PVE. On this point, we all agree.
Again these are only suggestions. They come from a long playing group of TRs who love their class and want to help in the rebalancing process. The devs, of course, can take our ideas and apply them, or not, to varying degrees.
@terramak
@dreadnaught#5263
@chaidrin#2320
@nitocris83
@asterdahl
@mimicking#6533
She Looked Lvl 18
Here is my Blog
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1231317/tr-compiled-balance-suggestions/p1?new=1
She Looked Lvl 18
Here is my Blog
I was thinking it'd be a nice fix to say, if the enemies health reaches </= the amount of damage built up, SoD could tick off and kill that enemy.
That way our built up damage during those 6 seconds wouldn't go to waste.
I've also felt that a lot of the problem that TR has is that the devs chose to add damage buffs from feats and building stacks, etc... rather than just buff damage (PvP concerns, I remember the when people posted 1 shot videos to the forums and not just from SE) The situational nature of these buffs works against the class, where the rotation based buffs of the GWF strengthen it. TR needs to hit harder than any other class single target, due to being both melee and squishy. Building stacks of X, or meeting condtion Y is always going to be more difficult when you are always forced with decision to dodge or not, to give up damage or maybe die. Given the amount of AoEs that some bosses (and dragons) tend to spew everywhere, it can be hard enough to find a place to stand, much less worry about a hundred technical details. And I haven't really mained a TR since before Stealthed ITC got nerfed. That was the only way for a TR to be useful in places like the old Spellplague where everything could be red at any given moment.
Vengeance Pursuit, did this ever get fixed? When I came back to the game last August, I didn't put any points in it. The power was so broken back in the earlier days of the game and WK doesn't have much of a resource to look at for builds...
When you say, make Disheartening Strike an AOE, do you mean to remove the DoT or in addition? While it's clunky to use in groups, the power does a fair amount of damage. Also, Blitz doesn't need to be targeted but I would hope that the proposed rework would retain a requirement for a target (like Split Shot does) or else it would likely cause issues in PvP.
Proposed change: Multiple stacks by multiple TRs cause a DoT effect, even if it's a small one, in addition to it's regular damage reduction.
For the only TR in the party: Possibly up the damage reduction for a single stack, to bring it inline with other classes debuff abilities.
About WR, we discarded the idea of it being Defense reduction ability because DR has a limit and its easily reached even without WR. It would be useless so we turned it into party buff, something compared to HR's Longstrider.
Thanks for your suggestions.
She Looked Lvl 18
Here is my Blog
Disheartning strike deals around 25-30% of total dmg in dungs - make it aoe - instantly doubting any of you played wk longer than 15 mins.
Duelist flurry isn't forgiving on moving bosses ? Maybe not use it on moving bosses then ? (sly ain't that bad)
Vengeful Pursuit is already very deadly in pvp and you want to add piercing dmg to it ? (Deadly as Pursuit > Lashing blade)
Shadowborn - really ? 5 sec ? What stops me going pvp - using stealth - smoke bomb - shadow strike - stealth - se ? infinite damage yeeey
Wicked reminder - I kinda have feeling none of you plays buffer or debuffer support class - if you did you would know how unnaturally much is 30% dmg buff - cw renegade capstone only grants a chance for geting such buff and it requires sacrificing whole build toward it. Longstrider's shot requires hr to be at least 30' away from target to proc the buff and frankly, its quite tricky to use it properly.
I am sorry if someone feels offended by this or feels disconfort - in my opinion I just stated the obvious and pointed out some of the things you should have paid attention to. There are more flaws but those are most eye catching ones. I did like some suggestions but sadly they are not that game changing they would fix the class.
*edit* take into account your stealth changes, sod changes, shadowborn - good, now imagine this - stealth>smoke>shadow strike> stealth > vengeful pursuit = just stack all that power and severity and tell me who survives it lol (if possible add whirlwind of blades on combo start for extra spicy taste)
THC
http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
Still, are razor action, hateful knives and dagger threat good as they are?
Imo, DT - 20' limit should be removed, let it be 3/6/9/12% instead.
RA - as I recall, it's 'piercing' damage now and it's not WAI.
If I'm not that wrong, when damage is not piercing, it can use both crit chance and CA (similar passive powers of other classes). That would be something at least, not sure about damage amount, though.
HK - it's just awful. The only way for TR to prone a thing, yet CC time is way too short. Also, pve-wise, almost 100% party has CA - let it be crit. severity /crit chance or damage bonus instead - that would be something.
Also, how many of you ever slotted 'talisman of shadows"? Some damage/x2-x3 healing amount for all in party/7% of TR power added to all party in 30' - otherwise even for WK there's always something better than that one.
>:) Life is like a train journey. Someone gets in, someone gets off and someone switches the wagon>You have to understand that these changes are coming from PvE players, 1 PvP player contributed but obviously not enough to satisfy everyone. Also no matter how hard we would have to try we will never be able to satisfy everyone so we wont even try. It is up to developers to take these ideas into consideration and implement if they think they are worthy and balance them for PvP (make them work differently vs players like they did so far).
About your valid point, it is about the PvP part ofc, interaction of Shadowborn and Shadow strike. Once again we are PvEers and Shadow Strike never came to mention and its possible abuse. All because of SE, we already mentioned that devs should take a close look to interaction of all our suggestions with SE.
We were fine with keeping Shadowborn as is but excluding procing on dots and atwills and excluding SE but we thought that might be too complicated to implement so we changed it in effort to make it unusable for SE, but we didnt calculate in Shadow Strike.
If they can exclude dot, atwill and SE from Shadowborn we welcome it with open arms.
Another thing, Vengeance's Pursuit, we did not know that it is bugged, since WK lacks SE we thought of it as main damage dealer for PvP. Thanks for adding one more bug to our Known bugs section.
Disheartening strike, it is ability from WK paragon path, it is behind MI in PvE quite a lot, so yes it is meant to be better, like Scoundrel and Saboteur from feat trees as well, because we wanted to make other options a bit closer to MI Exe.
We should not use our DF on moving targets, sure lets accept that our highest source of damage is useless and deal almost 50% less with Sly. *sarcasm*
Funny that a WR complaint is coming from HR, who has Longstrider with 45% party buff and 100% up time (your words, not mine).
I dont mean to insult anyone just trying to explain things better. Every criticism is welcome and it helps us see mistakes and improve our suggestions.
Also, you likely won't see any experienced trs using Wicked Reminder in PVE. (At least, I know for a fact haxx does not use it in pve and since it is possible to hit the debuff cap without it, it makes little sense to run it.)
THC
http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
How it is adjusted.. well thats up to the devs.
But before I write a longer comment, I wanted to ask the creators of this thread about how much damage percentage the TR class should be buffed to make it more 'viable'?
@sirjimbofrancis you seem to be the more active one about the suggetion, thats why the tag
The amount that will bring the majority around the average of BiS players (1.5 standard deviations, will explain in a sec)
to the same dps in late-game content as the rest of the classes.
What is that average BiS players?
If we take all the BiS players, some will be better, some will be worse, naturally they will spread as follows:
The most players are average, and exceptionally good players are fewer and fewer as better and better they go. And so are exceptionally 'bad' players. Though perhaps we are a bit skewed here.
We take the fat middle, about -1.5, and +1.5 And I personally want it to match the other classes.
Now how much it is in DPS? Only the devs know. They can make the above chart with real numbers, draw the conclusions and make the changes. Not ours to presume.
Hence, a lot of the changes are mechanical in nature or to alleviate specific issues. And not "give > 9000 dps"
Though you started well, this is still not how to provide constructive criticism, usually if you need to insert "no offense" then you are describing the writers and not the issues.
Here for your convenience:
https://personalexcellence.co/blog/constructive-criticism/ May I ask how we got to the 25%-30% numbers? Or what the issue of making it AoE?
Disheartening strike is foremost is a DoT, that ticks over 15 seconds. (was changed from 7.5 in mod5)
So now, lets assume not a pug party but actually a normal one. We have two options either things die before 6 seconds, read the SoD part, or we have a boss, where AoE has no difference. Or an unusual case like FBI climb where you have several big targets, but those are only a part of the total damage, and congratulation while it doesn't solve the scaling problem for WK, they actually
have something to compensate for the lack of invisible infiltrator and it's damage buff in a very specific case.. You have one bad, so you suggest to use the even worse one ?
I don't follow the logic here.... Can't comment on PvP What prevents you to do similar now ?
stealth-> smoke -> daily -> invisible infiltrator -> stealth-> shadowborn active again, time with smoke and SE
with shadowborn on.
The difference is that here you need to make the stealth->SE during the shadowborn timer of the first stealth, and the second is that you need to time it with smoke ticks.
In both cases it's a fixed buff, same as now, you can't stack it.
Now, lets simply solve it by making shadowborn not to affect dailies. Problem solved?
Another option, limit shadowborn to last until it's time out or next stealth. So you cant have both shadowborn and stealth for the same hit. While I think that WR needs a longer uptime, and animation fix, for those cases that it is needed.
I'm not sure what the point, lets assume Longstrider is harder to maintain, but gives 40% and WR is easier to maintain and gives 30%. A bit harder than ITF. Where the balance problem ? Feel free to add things you think are better, and no, I'm not sarcastic. No one trying to claim monopoly over suggestions.
If I do stealth->VP now, I get SoD, Shadowborn and if I did WW before so I get that too. So?
Is severity is the issue, lets make it PvE scaling only.
Or as I've suggested few paragraphs earlier:
"Another option, limit shadowborn to last until it's time out or next stealth. So you cant have both shadowborn and stealth for the same hit."
If I could propose solutions in few minutes, while typing, I'm sure you who in your words do not "lack some of the basic class wide and general combat knowledge. "
Can surely propose even better.
I think much of the issue with this class is the learning curve, its very technical and gear based. I am finally now able to hold my own in PUGs with similar IL DPS Classes, but if I run with my Guild, I am always behind, even beat by much lower IL char. I have to own my rotations flawlessly, I have to setup SoD on my boss and constantly stay on target, any miss of my Rotations and I am on the bottom of DPS.
I have not seen this learning curve to be as harsh with other Classes. On top of only BiS Builds being viable, other classes have some leeway and Build variability. This has led to a lot of bad TRs, and we have to deal with the stigma of being low DPS, even though we add to the team dynamic. I think adjusting this technical curve would be better as you stated, it would allow for more diversity and still allow for well performing TRs to still be top performers.
@micky1p00 Thank you for reply and I have to praise your observation ability as you pointed out to some of my obvious mistakes.
Before I start - my intention wasn't really to give constuctive criticism yet - at that point i was just a bit
I do agree that current pve TR needs a buff, but buffs that you presented are in my opinion too big and barely useful for devs as they would make pvp tr even more deadly and that might present a problem (very sensitive topic imo)
Disheartening is dot - and you probably are familiar that dots maintain buff spike of the moment they are casted at without changing before expiration. Time it right at disheartening strike does wonders - sadly all other powers in WK I tried were underachiving a lot therefore dps pie chart made a lot of space for ds.
As for most other your observations they are correct.
I do not agree on WR change however as I find it too powerful - even the idea to take longstrider as source of idea is wrong as its far more trickier to maintain than wk applying is - and you should not take other classes powers as an example since in my opinion all classes are quite unique and require different approach.
Now before doing changes if we limit at PVE only as Blur says that was your goal - there are 3 steps what needs to be done.
1 - pinpoint broken / underachiving / problematic powers
2 - determine the % rate in which each TR path is underachiving
3 - make changes that are likely easy to impelent in code and not likely to become bugged if possible
Once again in my opinion I think tr MI needs around 20% single target boost and 35% aoe boost in damage in executioneer tree. Scoudrel needs to tackle issues with CC immune mobs while saboteur also needs buff in damage however I am not sure how much since I do not possess enough information about it.
However some of my suggestion that I find more fit are following :
- SoD : on encounter target gains debuff that lowers mitigation to TR attacks by 50%-60% which lasts 8 second and after that if target don't die goes on a 10 sec cooldown (not sure about length), but don't go on cooldown if target does die. In case multiple targets are hit each target will be applied with mitigation debuff of 30%. Mitigation debuff as you know is not affected by effectiveness cap.
- Shadowborn - After entering stealth next used encounter power will be applied with 100% damage buff.
- Stealth - While in stealth TR deals increased damage - base power increases the amount of bonus damage dealt - 1 power = 0.00054 increased damage for example
Now sorry for not presening more ideas - and for typos - I am fairly drunk so trying to keep it as simple as I am able to.
THC
http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
I hope you are joking because every single one of your suggestions is far more than we were asking (first Shadowborn suggestion aside).
"No offense"
She Looked Lvl 18
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She Looked Lvl 18
Here is my Blog
Also the damage increase i presented would be necessary as some other skills would need rework but for less dmg overall, such as duelist flurry which would in my case - reduce max stacks to 5 making it easier to apply but also halving the speed of the ticks of bleed caused by this power - if stacks expire and target is not dead, tr will automatically teleport behind the target which had bleed stacks. (needs placement adjust for stuff like turtle in fbi where behind target is a no go
There are more of similar changes to be done before real balance achieved but tr being too op would be out of question in the end.
THC
http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
You didnt seem to understand our Stealth suggestion and keep throwing big numbers out so ill break it down to be understandable easier.
You say 30% damage buff thanks to additional severity from Stealth. That is best case scenario, if we already have 100% crit, which most of us high geared do, or at least close to it, but that additional severity is not a permanent buff. It is added only for attacks from Stealth. If you understand for what we use Stealth (procing SoD) you will understand that your number 30% buff goes down to overall 5% buff. How? Because damage done from Stealth is very low compared to damage done while outside of Stealth. So if u spread that number 30% on total damage done you should get a number around 5%, more or less, depends which encounters each TR uses. I hope that is clear.
We certainly dont want weaker and slower bleed ticks. Its our main damage dealer and our idea was to make it more useful, not less, since we are heavy atwill class. To get a full stack of bleeds takes 9 seconds, party ends before we even start. Our suggestion for DF doesnt make it do more damage, it makes it available sooner, higher burst, which we wanted and solves problem with moving targets.
A friend of ours mentioned additional 10% boost from Deathknell and Last moments, 5% from each. May or may not be too much. If its too much making it start from 1% each could be a solution to live with. Same mechanic like Orcus set with difference that it reaches full potential at 40% HP. TR is a class which is supposed to be unrivaled in single target combat, these two as suggested could provide exactly that.
We find ourselves too often in situations where 4 feats out of 6 from our Exe tree are not working, dont have time to activate, namely Deathknell, Last moments and SoD dont get to activate and Shadowborn gets wasted, simply things die too fast, no matter which content. If people think that is ok, well we dont think it is ok, not at all.
There are ways to slow down how fast things die but TR is not contributing to those things, even with party buff from suggested WR rework there are ways to keep things in check.
I am trying to give as constructive critic to your critic as i possibly can, hopefully its understandable better.
We presented our issues and our proposed solutions. These suggestions are not a rule which has to be accepted as suggested from us with numbers we gave, developers should know and test before releasing anything as final product.
As for your suggestion @isssssho , as Blur pointed out, we don't do as much damage as you think from stealth. A 30% buff from stealth (which it isn't that much, but whatever), would not equate to a 30% buff in overall damage in PVE. How much of our damage do you think comes from damage done while in stealth??
You are welcome to offer your suggestions here. But, you should phrase it in terms of what you would like to see and less in terms of why what we suggest is bad. It's not just Blur and I that are on the same page. Quilla and Haaxi and Janne and Noto are also in agreement. Now, if you think you have more TR knowledge than everyone involved, that is certainly your prerogative. And, if you have your own ideas, which clearly you do, that's great. You don't have to attack someone else's ideas in order to put forth your own.
If you think you are more knowledgeable about the TR class than all of us put together, great. Write your own TR rebalance suggestion post as detailed as ours.
I look forward to reading it.
She Looked Lvl 18
Here is my Blog