Trickster Rogue Class Balance Suggestions

lordseth1985 · April 2017

Dunnpo if it's allowed here, but...

http://orcz.com/Category:Neverwinter_Trickster_Rogues shows not only older version of tr's powers, but any other class.

trgluestickz · April 2017

lordseth1985 said:
Other solution to Cloud of Steel: make it create a dot or smth like that, with 10 stacks. With each new stack, the dmg is increased by, idk... maybe 2,5%? So it makes a good at will for both MI and WK, and when reach the 10 stacks, it refreshes, dealing X dmg to target and anything nearby it in 10'? or debuff the target, reducing armor resistance and speed.

This sounds like it would take time to kick in, unless all 10 stacks apply on the first hit. If it only applies one stack per hit, hell no. COS does currently have an effect where each hit steadily increases in damage but its underwelming and having more damage from all hits would be much more useful. While I suport adding more DOTS to some things, COS is probably not the best place to put them, same for debuffing and reducing armor resistance.

As for COS reducing the target's speed, one of the artifact weapon passive bonuses already allows you to give COS a slow effect.

mafiadelperro · April 2017

When this is going to happen i want my TR rework now lol not in mod 13

trgluestickz · April 2017

mafiadelperro#8853 said:
When this is going to happen i want my TR rework now lol not in mod 13

That we do not know for sure, probably a couple months. Probably will have it by mid summer if not sooner.

I feel your pain though XD, we have waited forever already to get a rework, we haven't had one since mod 6 and that was mostly nerfs.

mafiadelperro · April 2017

TR sucks right now we need so many changes and this thing of everything get kill fast is really hurting us i mean no boss now last 6 second if you run with elite team my shadow of dimise just proc once on druphy or turtle sometimes they dont even last longer enough to take advantage of what we have i mean more damage when targets are 40% less of health wtf they die before i can touch them

trgluestickz · April 2017

lordseth1985 said:
Dunnpo if it's allowed here, but...

http://orcz.com/Category:Neverwinter_Trickster_Rogues shows not only older version of tr's powers, but any other class.

TY, I will check it out

lordseth1985 · April 2017

trgluestickz said:

lordseth1985 said:
Other solution to Cloud of Steel: make it create a dot or smth like that, with 10 stacks. With each new stack, the dmg is increased by, idk... maybe 2,5%? So it makes a good at will for both MI and WK, and when reach the 10 stacks, it refreshes, dealing X dmg to target and anything nearby it in 10'? or debuff the target, reducing armor resistance and speed.

This sounds like it would take time to kick in, unless all 10 stacks apply on the first hit. If it only aplies one stack per hit, hell no. While I suport adding more DOTS to some things, COS is probably not the best place to put them, same for debuffing and reducing armor pen.

As for COS reducing the target's speed, that would be cool but one of the artifact weapon passive bonuses already allows you to give COS a slow effect.

For most mobs, the encounters do fine... but for bosses [our specialty] it should work fine. Also, those stacks already existed pre-mod6 and increased dmg, but it was very little [almost the same we have now].

mousebreaker85 · April 2017

Well at least we got the hardest part done ..
Getting the word out ..
We want our money and we want it now.
Call JG wentworth 877-REWORK-NOW.
Lol
And by the support shown I think most of the better players realize TR is just not in a good place .with little choices and by choice I mean 4powers we all use..
Some naysayers don't want it to happen because they like the way it is it's one less class they have to compete for a spot with and no matter what you say they will always say every other class is fine .
But I think we all know the truth
ACT does not lie.
We even got a visit from Mimic King which is hopeful.
Some great suggestions in here and 100s of ideas (keep em coming)
And keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best!
Oh and Rogues rock!!
Even dragonborn (thundering footsteps)Boom ..Boom ..Boom...RAWR!!!
Look !! I am so stealthy!!

trgluestickz · April 2017

lordseth1985 said:

trgluestickz said:

lordseth1985 said:
Other solution to Cloud of Steel: make it create a dot or smth like that, with 10 stacks. With each new stack, the dmg is increased by, idk... maybe 2,5%? So it makes a good at will for both MI and WK, and when reach the 10 stacks, it refreshes, dealing X dmg to target and anything nearby it in 10'? or debuff the target, reducing armor resistance and speed.

This sounds like it would take time to kick in, unless all 10 stacks apply on the first hit. If it only aplies one stack per hit, hell no. While I suport adding more DOTS to some things, COS is probably not the best place to put them, same for debuffing and reducing armor pen.

As for COS reducing the target's speed, that would be cool but one of the artifact weapon passive bonuses already allows you to give COS a slow effect.
For most mobs, the encounters do fine... but for bosses [our specialty] it should work fine. Also, those stacks already existed pre-mod6 and increased dmg, but it was very little [almost the same we have now].

On bosses, not nessasarily. A lot of people have already mentioned how on strong pve teams, the boss is dead before most of their delayed stuff has time to do much, its not just mobs. That's not to say we shouldn't have some delayed stuff, but again, I don't think COS is a good place to put it. In pvp, some delays are fine there as well but keeping COS fast acting would be more useful there too.

lordseth1985 · April 2017

trgluestickz said:

On bosses, not nessasarily. A lot of people have already mentioned how on strong pve teams, the boss is dead before most of their delayed stuff has time to do much, its not just mobs. That's not to say we shouldn't have some delayed stuff, but again, I don't think COS is a good place to put it. In pvp, some delays are fine there as well but keeping COS fast acting would be more useful there too.

That's another problem the devs should look: bonding runestones, but it needs a thread of its own.

In a group without it [rarely saw any, I must admit], or even in pvp, it should make it's path. I mean, I'm not saying that CoS should be THE att will for any TR around here, but at least have other options, and usefull options.

trgluestickz · April 2017

mousebreaker85#4641 said:
Well at least we got the hardest part done ..

Getting the word out ..

We want our money and we want it now.

Call JG wentworth 877-REWORK-NOW.

Lol

And by the support shown I think most of the better players realize TR is just not in a good place .with little choices and by choice I mean 4powers we all use..

Some naysayers don't want it to happen because they like the way it is it's one less class they have to compete for a spot with and no matter what you say they will always say every other class is fine .

But I think we all know the truth

ACT does not lie.

We even got a visit from Mimic King which is hopeful.

Some great suggestions in here and 100s of ideas (keep em coming)

And keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best!

Oh and Rogues rock!!

Even dragonborn (thundering footsteps)Boom ..Boom ..Boom...RAWR!!!

Look !! I am so stealthy!!

I have been trying to spread knowledge of this thread to other TRs. Anyone who wants to help TRs should spread awareness of this thread to other TRs they come across as they game. The more feedback the devs have to work with, the better and the chances of TRs getting what they want to see actually implemented goes up. We have not been reworked since mod 6 and that was mostly nerfs. If the pattern continues, after this rework, we are unlikely to get another rework for some time so its absolutely vital that this rework is done well.

skatopsixos7 · April 2017

Galactic underwear here.

And just to add my view on the topic as a PVE tr, all the changes that my good friend james, noto, and the rest mentioned, are a step in the right direction, obviously not all of that can be fixed, well it can but will they ? .. Tr's do lack a lot of pve dmg , unless you are a skilled tr you don't do harldy any dmg and end up frustrated.. It has been a long while since any work was done to tr's, and some of our skills definitely need a boost, or atleast make them work properly, why should i steal someones demise? or visa versa.. good job james , blur and the rest.. hope they listen and do something right..

talon1970 · April 2017

My personal thoughts are:

Overlook and maybe reduce the (for me the outdated) cooldowns from some encounters like smoke and lashing blade.
And yes i know these could be an huge impact to the pvp part, so it should be tested, maybe with some pvp players invited.

Lashing blade had an higher range in the past, but was reduced bc of pvp, but these leads now, that we (espaiccelly me^^) missed drufi for example a couple of times in her "cat at 4 am mode".
So if the range was increased a little bit, could be helpful again, but as always sould also tested out how far bc of pvp.

ITC: Most Tr prefer nowadays an exe/scoundrel or sabo/scoundrel build with Press the Advantage for the selfbuff.
But it is again an encounter without direct damage output, like smoke until Mod5.
So increasing the selfbuff from PtA could be an solution

or

My thoughts: Replace the feat "Battlewise" for an feat that allows us to deal x%/x%/x% more damage while in close combat, these could improve not only PtA, it could be helpful for every build and every Paragon Path.
And make it an T1 feat (very biased i know) bc i never felt that i have to invest points into "Toughness", for me a Tr is full life or dead and these few more hitpoints couldn't safe me.

trgluestickz · April 2017

talon1970 said:
My personal thoughts are:

Overlook and maybe reduce the (for me the outdated) cooldowns from some encounters like smoke and lashing blade.
And yes i know these could be an huge impact to the pvp part, so it should be tested, maybe with some pvp players invited.

Lashing blade had an higher range in the past, but was reduced bc of pvp, but these leads now, that we (espaiccelly me^^) missed drufi for example a couple of times in her "cat at 4 am mode".
So if the range was increased a little bit, could be helpful again, but as always sould also tested out how far bc of pvp.

ITC: Most Tr prefer nowadays an exe/scoundrel or sabo/scoundrel build with Press the Advantage for the selfbuff.
But it is again an encounter without direct damage output, like smoke until Mod5.
So increasing the selfbuff from PtA could be an solution

or

My thoughts: Replace the feat "Battlewise" for an feat that allows us to deal x%/x%/x% more damage while in close combat, these could improve not only PtA, it could be helpful for every build and every Paragon Path.
And make it an T1 feat (very biased i know) bc i never felt that i have to invest points into "Toughness", for me a Tr is full life or dead and these few more hitpoints couldn't safe me.

Reducing the cooldown for lashing blade would not hurt PVP in the slightest, no worries there. Lashing blade would be even more useful with a slightly greater range, not a thing it desperatly needs but would be a quality of life improvement.

On the other hand, smokebomb having a shorter cooldown would likely have a negative impact on pvp. So its cooldown could be made shorter for pve but I do not advise reducing SB's cooldown in pvp.

Press the advantage getting a buff would be one way to improve TR damage, it does not have to be one of the feats that gets a damage buff but its certainly one place a buff could be placed.

I like your battlewise sugestion, I was thinking another utility feat or a defensive feat would go good there but damage is also an option. I will point out that your sugestion is not whisperknife frendly so I would recommend there being a different trigger for it instead of it being "when you are in close combat".

lordseth1985 · April 2017

Also, we are missing one point: Deflection. Trs should be the squishier class of all, and sincerely, we don't have much feats that do anything when we deflect (like hrs have)... Why not make smth like "whenever you deflect you do 2/4/6/8/10% more damage for 5 seconds"?

It always bothered me that hrs had more deflection and more feats around it than trs...

mousebreaker85 · April 2017

Well a lot of mmos when they run across balance issues between skills in PVE and PVP classes like TR single target burst damage classes they use buffs that are conditional or PVE situational only
Where they only activate under certain circumstances like (this increase does not affect damage vs players ) or (this will only activate when 3 or more npc's are in range) which may have to be used in order to give us a proportional damage increase to put us in line with other classes while still not giving us a pvp I Win button.
It is very hard with the way neverwinter is set up.but I believe these sort of buffs would work and bring us up in PVE without affecting PVP at all.

spideymt · April 2017

lordseth1985 said:

That's another problem the devs should look: bonding runestones, but it needs a thread of its own.

Boundings are not the problem and devs dont need to look at boundings. And there are a lot threads about boundings.

ravenskya · April 2017

I finally read through the old TR stuff - and it sounds like TR's used to be monsters. I'd love to have been able to play that TR.

One of the things I would like to see come back is the at-wills not draining stealth.

wwwazza · April 2017

Hey All,

I have a TR. It was my first toon of choice for NW.
Over time I have respec'd this toon multiple times trying to find
a) a build that is viable
b) a build that matches my play style

I have toons for each class, save for SW. And I find each class at 2000iL is more viable than my TR with 2500iL. Despite seeing this I didn't want to believe it, so I would respec my TR again to find a better build.
I'm not saying each class is out DPS'ing my TR, this statement was for viability, as in "able to solo game content intended to be solo'd". (PS: Pally is an indestructible beast, I highly recommend that as a first toon for new players)

I'm at a point now I'm "happy" with my TR, deciding upon MI:Executioner. Keep in mind I was led here through constant discovery of what was and was not working. It is the only viable TR skill path, in my opinion - though I was doing OK with a WK once upon a time but hated the miserable DPS.

*** IDEA ***

I do have an idea for making TR more viable, and more enjoyable. Keep in mind this is for MI:Executioner but perhaps the concepts can be applied to other skill trees...

[Shadow of Demise]

I absolutely agree on its value being diminished when in groups, since stuff dies before it kicks in. Three ways to improve it come to mind:

1. Has a chance to apply when not in stealth. 100% apply, when in stealth. Everything else stays the same.

My in-character justification for this is that you're an Assassin, you know what kills things not just how to hurt them, and you don't have to have combat advantage in order to apply your trade. Plus you're a formidable 1-on-1 opponent, in fact one of the worst you could possibly face anywhere at any time. If an Assassin is after you... run, or say your prayers.

2. The 6s window has an effect depending on whether the opponent is alive or has expired within the 6s window
Still alive: Current behavior.
Dead already: TR is invigorated by the easy kill, spurring them into KILLING SPREE (a new effect name I'd like to see popping up on the screen). While KILLING SPREE is active the TR *add cool thing here*
KILLING SPREE ends when *add abuse preventative measure here*

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR has combat advantage and is immune to control effects.
e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR critical severity is is increased 50%
e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR stamina is always 100% and movement increased by 25%
... you guys can think of cool stuff that makes sense, I'm sure.

Example limiter might be:
e.g. Ends when TR has made a kill or no deaths have occurred for 10 seconds.

3. Apply SoD to all targets hit by the encounter power, when that encounter power has AOE

My least favorite but putting it out there. It may be an improvement but realistically I suspect it won't be noticeable except when soloing.

lordseth1985 · April 2017

wwwazza#1611 said:
Hey All,

I have a TR. It was my first toon of choice for NW.

Over time I have respec'd this toon multiple times trying to find

a) a build that is viable

b) a build that matches my play style

I have toons for each class, save for SW. And I find each class at 2000iL is more viable than my TR with 2500iL. Despite seeing this I didn't want to believe it, so I would respec my TR again to find a better build.

I'm not saying each class is out DPS'ing my TR, this statement was for viability, as in "able to solo game content intended to be solo'd". (PS: Pally is an indestructible beast, I highly recommend that as a first toon for new players)

I'm at a point now I'm "happy" with my TR, deciding upon MI:Executioner. Keep in mind I was led here through constant discovery of what was and was not working. It is the only viable TR skill path, in my opinion - though I was doing OK with a WK once upon a time but hated the miserable DPS.

*** IDEA ***

I do have an idea for making TR more viable, and more enjoyable. Keep in mind this is for MI:Executioner but perhaps the concepts can be applied to other skill trees...

[Shadow of Demise]

I absolutely agree on its value being diminished when in groups, since stuff dies before it kicks in. Three ways to improve it come to mind:

1. Has a chance to apply when not in stealth. 100% apply, when in stealth. Everything else stays the same.

My in-character justification for this is that you're an Assassin, you know what kills things not just how to hurt them, and you don't have to have combat advantage in order to apply your trade. Plus you're a formidable 1-on-1 opponent, in fact one of the worst you could possibly face anywhere at any time. If an Assassin is after you... run, or say your prayers.

2. The 6s window has an effect depending on whether the opponent is alive or has expired within the 6s window

Still alive: Current behavior.

Dead already: TR is invigorated by the easy kill, spurring them into KILLING SPREE (a new effect name I'd like to see popping up on the screen). While KILLING SPREE is active the TR *add cool thing here*

KILLING SPREE ends when *add abuse preventative measure here*

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR has combat advantage and is immune to control effects.

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR critical severity is is increased 50%

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR stamina is always 100% and movement increased by 25%

... you guys can think of cool stuff that makes sense, I'm sure.

Example limiter might be:

e.g. Ends when TR has made a kill or no deaths have occurred for 10 seconds.

3. Apply SoD to all targets hit by the encounter power, when that encounter power has AOE

My least favorite but putting it out there. It may be an improvement but realistically I suspect it won't be noticeable except when soloing.

Somehow I liked that "Killing Spree" idea. BUT, I would suggest this about SoD: While not in stealth, whenever you have Combat Advantage you have X% of chance to inflict Shadow of Demise on any target hit by your powers [be it encounter, daily or at will]; While in Stealth, 100% chance to inflict SoD to the target with most hp.

demonmonger · April 2017

Whenever you have combat advantage proc shadow of demise would be nice.
(Don't use the power since I'm sab, but this would work very well)

demonmonger · April 2017

Personally I would change trickster to do critical attacks 100% as long as you have combat advantage bonus.

I would also change the encounters to work off combat advantage instead of stealth. (This way you get the bonus from being behind or in stealth)

This plus a few cool down reductions in single target attacks.

Change cloud of steel to be a 45% cone aoe on every second toss.

Speed up attack animations for gloaming strike.

Grant combat advantage when you:
Stun
Daze
Prone
Stand behind opponents.
(Note critical chance 100% with combat advantage)

This would be enough for us.

trgluestickz · April 2017

lordseth1985 said:
Also, we are missing one point: Deflection. Trs should be the squishier class of all, and sincerely, we don't have much feats that do anything when we deflect (like hrs have)... Why not make smth like "whenever you deflect you do 2/4/6/8/10% more damage for 5 seconds"?

It always bothered me that hrs had more deflection and more feats around it than trs...

EDIT: Everything I have put in bold and italics is an idea that I scrapped. Everything not in bold and italics is still viable.

I feel the same way.
One thing I asked for in earlyer posts was to take the feat Mocking Gesture out of the scoundrel tree and give it to the sabotuer tree as a replacement for Blood Soaked Blades. Then make a brand new feat for the scoundrel tree to fill the gap. The feat that you presented as an example, "when you deflect an attack, deal 10% more damage for 5 seconds", would be a good feat to fill the missing spot in the scoundrel tree with. Another good place to put your sugestion or soemthing like it, would be adding it to one of our unloved passive powers.

I have also mentioned how the scoundrel feat Survivor needs to be reworked as its' current trigger makes it useless. It should probably remain deflection themed.

As another sugestion, the devs could double the amount of deflection granted by our passive Skillful Infiltraitor and weave half of that behind a situational trigger. Here is a possible improved version:
You gain 20% more movement speed, 4% more critical strike, and 4% more deflect. Whenever you critically hit, you gain an additional 4% more deflect for 6 seconds.

Our passives Tenacious Consealment and Talisman of Shadows would be places to consider tacking on something that works off of deflection. Both of these are very lacking right now compared to many of our other passives and need some kind of improvement.

trgluestickz · April 2017

wwwazza#1611 said:
Hey All,

I have a TR. It was my first toon of choice for NW.

Over time I have respec'd this toon multiple times trying to find

a) a build that is viable

b) a build that matches my play style

I have toons for each class, save for SW. And I find each class at 2000iL is more viable than my TR with 2500iL. Despite seeing this I didn't want to believe it, so I would respec my TR again to find a better build.

I'm not saying each class is out DPS'ing my TR, this statement was for viability, as in "able to solo game content intended to be solo'd". (PS: Pally is an indestructible beast, I highly recommend that as a first toon for new players)

I'm at a point now I'm "happy" with my TR, deciding upon MI:Executioner. Keep in mind I was led here through constant discovery of what was and was not working. It is the only viable TR skill path, in my opinion - though I was doing OK with a WK once upon a time but hated the miserable DPS.

*** IDEA ***

I do have an idea for making TR more viable, and more enjoyable. Keep in mind this is for MI:Executioner but perhaps the concepts can be applied to other skill trees...

[Shadow of Demise]

I absolutely agree on its value being diminished when in groups, since stuff dies before it kicks in. Three ways to improve it come to mind:

1. Has a chance to apply when not in stealth. 100% apply, when in stealth. Everything else stays the same.

My in-character justification for this is that you're an Assassin, you know what kills things not just how to hurt them, and you don't have to have combat advantage in order to apply your trade. Plus you're a formidable 1-on-1 opponent, in fact one of the worst you could possibly face anywhere at any time. If an Assassin is after you... run, or say your prayers.

2. The 6s window has an effect depending on whether the opponent is alive or has expired within the 6s window

Still alive: Current behavior.

Dead already: TR is invigorated by the easy kill, spurring them into KILLING SPREE (a new effect name I'd like to see popping up on the screen). While KILLING SPREE is active the TR *add cool thing here*

KILLING SPREE ends when *add abuse preventative measure here*

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR has combat advantage and is immune to control effects.

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR critical severity is is increased 50%

e.g. While KILLING SPREE is active the TR stamina is always 100% and movement increased by 25%

... you guys can think of cool stuff that makes sense, I'm sure.

Example limiter might be:

e.g. Ends when TR has made a kill or no deaths have occurred for 10 seconds.

3. Apply SoD to all targets hit by the encounter power, when that encounter power has AOE

My least favorite but putting it out there. It may be an improvement but realistically I suspect it won't be noticeable except when soloing.

If I'm not mistaken, SOD used to apply to all targets hit with the triggering power in mod 5, it was nerfed as part of the mod 6 "rework". Making it so it can apply to all targets hit by the triggering power is one of the things the devs should look into bringing back. It may turn out to be too strong when you take the other requested buffs into account, but definatly something to look into.

rustlord · April 2017

I'm coming in late to this thread. LIFE! Who has that and still get to play at all! Or, well you could teach me a thing or two.

I wrote some notes for what an ideal PvP rework should look like in our point of view (but can't find it) so I'm just going to scribble the basics;

Piercing

It's the heart of all the shitshow in PvP. If you would make piercing respect tenacity, and as a compensation make it ignore all forms of shields and temp HP you've effectively given TR a role in PvP again: kill healers and tanks with piercing damage, while dealing normal damage to everybody else. This creates a ripple effect down the line addressing a massive problem of overhealing and insignia and lifesteal. There's another thread for that icy wrote, or some guy, but it's very informative if you want to dig it up.

But beyond that, neutering piercing damage also gives our good ol' hardworking PvE boys here a little more wiggle room when suggesting balance changes for PvE content. As of right now, Shocking Execution is your biggest hurdle if you ever start tampering with things like crit severity or shadow of demise.

And something else, TR Bleeds. I know that's your bread and butter in PvE, but coming from PvP, setting up a proper bleed is ridiculously hard compared to the benefits. My personal suggestion is to add a healing depression-type debuff to players affected by Bleed.

Edit: more info

If you set up a DF in PvP it takes Smoke Bomb + Courage Breaker to properly hold your opponent. All of the ticks coming from these powers can be deflected that it even heals the target - i.e. Wilds Medicine (ranger) + Survivors Blessing (insignia) + mod11 boon that heals for even more. I propose that targets affected by bleed heal for 50% less to account for this.

WK > Disheartening Strike has a very long cast time. It takes you nearly half of your stealth meter to cast it from the safety of Stealth, or rooted for that long out in the open with no defensive mechanisms like ITC. It does 700~2000 ticks on a geared target. and any slight jitter movement cancels the power and just adds to its clunkiness. It only serves to balance this power to have the same healing-depression debuff to targets affected by disheartening strike.

As for PvE; The others pretty much nailed it.

rustlord · April 2017

Didn't realize this thread was 6 pages long! But yeah, still agree on most points. I'd rather leave the bickering on which powers need buffs, and focus myself on what's currently broken and need some serious rebalancing.

"There is a WK build, but it's based on a bug and is only really good against other TRs."

@morenthar About time I came clean dont I? So Whisperknife has a passive called
Razor Action that the devs unwittingly left as Piercing damage [1]. It hits on the low numbers, fully feated it hits up to 10K with 3x 1.5K ticks afterward. Who cares right?

Bloodbath multiprocs this power [2], with the initial hit appearing twice, and the ticks up to 14 times. Now where are we with the math:

(10,000 x 2 ) + (1,500 x 14) = 41,000 + 50% SoD = 61,500 AOE Piercing
Not counting the normal damage from all powers used -

From there it's just,
Stealth > Vengeance Pursuit > Bloodbath > Shadow of Demise

Then rinse and repeat with 12-20K recovery, about one bloodbath every 8~10 seconds. This will shred any TR and most classes below 3.5K. Admittedly, it doesn't work against many BiS healers, but it's obviously not a WAI interaction. Spamming dailies in PvP should also be looked at, but this is more a blanket issue across all classes.

trgluestickz · April 2017

rustlord said:
I'm coming in late to this thread. LIFE! Who has that and still get to play at all! Or, well you could teach me a thing or two.

Anyway;

morenthar said:
@isssssho

In terms of active players, I may have the most logged hours played as Whisperknife. You know very little about anything regarding the TR subclass. You may go now.
I'd listen to this guy. Syndul and I are probably the only serious WK player left who PvP. He's logged way more battle time than I have, I mostly like testing and (shamelessly) testing for broken mechanics. That being said, the VP bug isn't as bad as everybody thinks. There's one that's worse, a story for another time.

I wrote some notes for what an ideal PvP rework should look like in our point of view (can't find it) so I'm just going to scribble the basics;

Piercing

It's the heart of all the shitshow in PvP. If you would make piercing respect tenacity, and as a compensation make it ignore all forms of shields and temp HP you've effectively given TR a role in PvP again: kill healers and tanks with piercing damage, while dealing normal damage to everybody else. This creates a ripple effect down the line addressing a massive problem of overhealing and insignia and lifesteal. There's another thread for that icy wrote, or some guy, but it's very informative if you want to dig it up.

But beyond that, neutering piercing damage also gives our good ol' hardworking PvE boys here a little more wiggle room when suggesting balance changes for PvE content. As of right now, Shocking Execution is your biggest hurdle if you ever start tampering with things like crit severity or shadow of demise.

And something else, Bleeds. I know that's your bread and butter in PvE, but coming from PvP, setting up a proper bleed is ridiculously hard compared to the benefits. My personal suggestion is to add a healing depression-type debuff to players affected by Bleed.

As for PvE; The others pretty much nailed it.

+1 to your peircing damage sugestion.

The healing depression bit is something to consider but making all bleeds grant healing depression would probably be too OP. I can't tell if you meant just DF or all bleeds. Tacking a healing depression on to at least one of our DOT powers would be a good idea though. I'm not sure which one should get it. Disheartening strike maybe? It also fits the smokebomb theme of being poisoned extreamly well though SB is already pretty good.

I'm happy someone mentioned the problems TRs have making their bleeds strong enough in pvp. I don't know how deep into this thread you read so I have pooled some of the sugestions that may improve our bleed powers into one place for you. I had some trouble with text size when attempting to quote some of these posts the normal way so I have improvised:
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This was the main post's sugested upgrades to DF:

"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."
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Here is a quality of life improvement to DF I brought up:

"I do not want DF's animation changed much if any. There is however one part of the animation I would support changing; durring a flurry, you cannot simply walk away and if you want to end it early, you need to dodge. DF's flurry lockdown should be modified to where you can end it by walking away but the rest of the animation should stay as is. If this change is made, the devs should take care not to accidentally remove the CC immunity you get durring the flurry or the cling effect. In PVP, the cling effect is vital for landing your flurrys against moving opponents. In PVE, the cling effect can be a double edged sword if you are fighting mobs near a cliff and a party member shoves the monsters off the edge, everywhere else, this is a helpful feature. In both PVE and PVP, the CC immunity effect is really nice and has no cons. Also, as part of the TR rework, these 2 features should officially be added to the tooltip discription for duelist's flurry, they have been there since forever and its high time the tooltip actually mentioned them."
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There have also been a few posts sugesting adding a DOT or 2 to the executioner tree. The main post's sugested change to SOD is similar to a DOT as well:

"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."
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A lot of people are also sugesting damage buffs to our feats. The fact that dazing strike is the only TR daze that grants combat advantage has also been mentioned, if this gets fixed, that will help make our bleeds stronger as well. There are too many posts on damage buffs to bother with quoting them so I did not provide any.
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I am under the impression another one of our bleeds, disheartening strike also needs a buff, I won't put anything specific fowards for it though, I am not a WK.

lordseth1985 · April 2017

So, I was wondering and after playing with the 3 paths [scoundrel, sabteur and executioner, even if 75% of all my playtime I did with exec] I have some suggestions.

>>> Remove "you generate Stealth 20% faster and no longer have your regeneration interrupted when taking damage." from executioner and give it to saboteur, even with a weaker version of it. I'm saying this because it makes no sense in exec path; instead of it, give to execs something like "Additionally, whenever you deflect, you have 10% increased damage output during 5 seconds" or smth like that.
So, One with the shadows" should read: "Every 15 seconds, you gain the One with the Shadows effect. One with the Shadows: The next time you deal damage with an Encounter power you gain combat advantage. Additionally, for 10 seconds after your Encounter powers deal 20% more damage, you generate Stealth 20% faster and no longer have your regeneration interrupted when taking damage. "

>>> About Shadow of demise, as I said earlier, make it work like this:
"While not in stealth, whenever you have Combat Advantage you have 30% of chance to inflict Shadow of Demise on any target hit by your powers for 6 seconds; while in Stealth, you have 100% chance to inflict Shadow of Demise to the target with most maximum HP.
Shadow of Demise: When this effect ends, its target takes Piercing Damage equal to 50% of the damage dealt to it by the Rogue. If the target dies before the timer expires, the Rogue deals that damage to any target on a 30' radius."
This should fix two problems we have so far: the proccing of SoD on random targets, AND affecting more than 1 target at a time.

>>> As some ppl mentioned before, Skullcracker needs a total rework. first, make the 15% speed bonus fixed; change the effect so it always work when you have combat advantage, and every critical hit stun them for 3 sec and you do 25% more damage to anyone affected by Skullcracker. So, the tooltip should read like that: "You have 15% increased movement speed. Whenever you do a critical hit while having combat advantage, you inflict 'Skullcracker' on your foes, stunning them for 3 seconds and dealing 25% more damage to anyone affected by Skullcracker. Additionally, your encounter powers deal 100% of your weapon damage against control immune targets afflicted with 'Skullcracker'. This feat is half effective on players".

>>> Change the way Shadowborn works. Instead of "your next attack", make it "your next encounter". This way, we can avoid the one-shoting of SE on pvp and still make it competitive and usefull.

blur · April 2017

I appreciate all the PvP input, nice suggestions guys, we were really thin in that part.

One thing, we dont know how far the devs are willing to go with their TR rework. Are they going to modify current abilities just a tiny bit, are they going to revert some abilities to how they were before the Great Depression (when the big nerf happened) or they are going to completely rework the class? I would not put my money on last option, to me it seems the least likely to happen. If they decide to revert to pre mod6 state nothing we can do about it, i guess, but that might make TR too strong so the first option seems most likely.
With that being said, i dont know how much likely it is, for the suggestions who differ too much from current state, to be implemented. That's why when we made the original suggestions we had one question in mind. "What are the smallest changes we can think of which would have best results?"

Back to PvE. I saw many great suggestions but i think most of them are great just on paper, in actual combat they would not help us. I'll try to explain few.
I saw few suggestion about combat advantage. In PvP it might be more rare but in PvE we have CA almost all the time, on mobs maybe not full time but on bosses definitely 100% up time.

Shadowborn. If we tie it only to encounters we lose too much. WoB, Bloodbath and CB benefit from Shadowborn and some other abilities which would not work if it was encounter only. Excluding SE from Shadowborn bonus is needed.

Shadow of Demise. Many great suggestions but not effective imo. I saw the Killing Spree suggestion, suggestions which "if target dies before SoD hits do this or do that". Thing is, after the target dies, its too late.
Its rare to have SoD up in mobs fights. Mob groups are usually made of one tough guy and few guys who die instantly. Even that tough guy gets one-shotted in strong parties. My point here is any effect we get which activates too late is not effective. It may be helpful to lower geared parties who take a lot more time killing things but keep in mind those parties which melt everything. In those strong parties SoD has no time to proc except on bosses in FBI, SVA and mSP. For example, lets take suggestions which buff us if SoD didnt get to proc on time, lets say CN bosses. It is not useful for any of the 3 bosses. They can give us ability to one-hit anything we attack but no help of it if we dont have a target to attack.
20% increased Stealth regeneration and regeneration not interrupted by damage is important part of SoD. If we remove that the up time of SoD might be influenced too much.

Anything tied to deflect doesnt proc in PvE. Also TR is a class with Stealth, highest deflect severity and strong CC which makes our defensive abilities already too strong in PvP. Improving those even more is too much.

Battlewise feat is indeed a joke. Any suggestion would make it more useful than it currently is.

Clouds of Steel, interesting suggestions. My input - inspired by epic Death Slaad. Every 2nd hit would be an aoe. We would have 1 normal hit and then a hit which causes explosion (or name it something else) in a small radius.

Additional damage based on % of weapon damage. I think that bonus is too small, even for PvP. If i remember correctly Elol set was 50% of weapon damage and damage was barely noticeable even tho it activated on every crit hit. So 100% weapon damage on encounter is barely noticeable x2, or even less since its encounter only.

trgluestickz · April 2017

lordseth1985 said:
So, I was wondering and after playing with the 3 paths [scoundrel, sabteur and executioner, even if 75% of all my playtime I did with exec] I have some suggestions.

>>> Remove "you generate Stealth 20% faster and no longer have your regeneration interrupted when taking damage." from executioner and give it to saboteur, even with a weaker version of it. I'm saying this because it makes no sense in exec path; instead of it, give to execs something like "Additionally, whenever you deflect, you have 10% increased damage output during 5 seconds" or smth like that.
So, One with the shadows" should read: "Every 15 seconds, you gain the One with the Shadows effect. One with the Shadows: The next time you deal damage with an Encounter power you gain combat advantage. Additionally, for 10 seconds after your Encounter powers deal 20% more damage, you generate Stealth 20% faster and no longer have your regeneration interrupted when taking damage. "

>>> About Shadow of demise, as I said earlier, make it work like this:
"While not in stealth, whenever you have Combat Advantage you have 30% of chance to inflict Shadow of Demise on any target hit by your powers for 6 seconds; while in Stealth, you have 100% chance to inflict Shadow of Demise to the target with most maximum HP.
Shadow of Demise: When this effect ends, its target takes Piercing Damage equal to 50% of the damage dealt to it by the Rogue. If the target dies before the timer expires, the Rogue deals that damage to any target on a 30' radius."
This should fix two problems we have so far: the proccing of SoD on random targets, AND affecting more than 1 target at a time.

>>> As some ppl mentioned before, Skullcracker needs a total rework. first, make the 15% speed bonus fixed; change the effect so it always work when you have combat advantage, and every critical hit stun them for 3 sec and you do 25% more damage to anyone affected by Skullcracker. So, the tooltip should read like that: "You have 15% increased movement speed. Whenever you do a critical hit while having combat advantage, you inflict 'Skullcracker' on your foes, stunning them for 3 seconds and dealing 25% more damage to anyone affected by Skullcracker. Additionally, your encounter powers deal 100% of your weapon damage against control immune targets afflicted with 'Skullcracker'. This feat is half effective on players".

>>> Change the way Shadowborn works. Instead of "your next attack", make it "your next encounter". This way, we can avoid the one-shoting of SE on pvp and still make it competitive and usefull.

The executioner tree is actually suposed to have some things that deal with stealth, its essentially an assassin. The "you no longer have your stealth regeneration interrupted when taking damage and your stealth regenerates 20% faster" actually does make sense on an executioner, granted you are right in that it would also work on a sabotuer.

EDIT: The following section in bold and italics was an idea that I scrapped in a later post, I no longer recommend this feat. Everything else not in bold and italics is still viable:
Your sugestion for executioner of "whenever you deflect, you have 10% increased damage output for 5 seconds" I still think would go better in a passive power or as a replacement for mocking gesture in the scoundrel tree.

I don't think the stealth effects for executioner should be taken away but sabotuer could get another effect added to its capstone. I'm thinking the sabotuer should get something similar to the old profound armor set bonus, which was "you have 30% more stealth meter and deal 7.5% more damage while stealthed". Here would be a very simple improved version:
You have 25% more stealth meter. Every 15 seconds, you gain the one with the shadows effect. One with the shadows: the next hit you deal with an encounter power refills your stealth bar. For 10 seconds afterward, you deal 20% more damage with your encounter powers.

I agree that scullcracker's 15% bonus to speed should be made permanant, it should also be increased to 20%.
I will mention that you made the stun only last 3 seconds and then said to make this feat half as effective on players. That would make its stun even more pitiful in pvp than it is now as that means you get a 1.5 second stun every 15 seconds that is further reduced by your opponent's tenacity, control resistance, deflection, ect. It should be at least 3 seconds in pvp. While I recognize you probably meant just the stun when you said "this feat is half as effective on players" the wording implys that the damage buff and speed increase would also be halved in pvp, they need to remain the same for both. As for making scullcracker apply on every critical hit, this would make our feat concussive strikes redundant as it also procs when you crit and is very similar to your sugestion for scullcracker. Furthermore if it was to apply whenever you crit or have combat advantage, it needs a cooldown, otherwise it would be OP. As for the damage, I did sort of like the sugestion you had for modeling our daze feats off of shatter strike to make them work on control imune targets, its a neat mechanic. I don't think I would take it over the previously sugested 30% more damage for 6 seconds though. As long as the 30% damage bonus is made a seperate effect from the control effect, it will also apply to cc immune targets and acomplish the same thing only stronger.

Trickster Rogue Class Balance Suggestions

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