Choices for 5 leftover feat points on WK Scoundrel/Sab

beckylunatic

I'm currently happy enough with the bones of this character, but I've got these 5 unassigned feat points, which I could go muck around with on preview to see which feels best, or I could pick forumbrainz first.

10 existing points in Sab are to feat Disheartening Strike, which means I could add in Knife's Edge. Drawback there is that I would usually use a daily and then start unloading encounters, so that's not helpful. And the T3 Sab feats seem very underwhelming.

Not currently specced into Master Infighter, but I do see how it's a useful just-in-case feat.

Alternatively, I could put points into Arterial Cut in Exec, which would be in effect while using stealth strategically, even though the Scoundrel isn't exactly known for being able to (cough) return to shadows easily.

I haven't been using a Vorpal on this character, but I do have access to one. Currently Plaguefire (I just like it). Was going to make a perfect Lightning next 2xRP to try on different characters for synergy, but I see it's beneficially broken on Scoundrels and that would plague my conscience.

rayrdan

im trying to figure your scoundrel build but you are missing all the perks of it.
i assume you totally skipped all the deflect feats... scoundrel can achieve 80%+ deflect chance? why not get it?
i mean tr arent really good dpser, in particular scoundrel is lacking but offers some very nice features:
deflect ,master infighter, lifesteal. Assuming you are building for pve and control i would take these feats

http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/tr?b=23ci:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,19i35ci:1u00000:1uu5uzv:1000000&h=0&p=wkn

roll full cha/dex, slot advantageous position with offhand bonus and tactics/oppressive darkness
the combo adv. position oppressive darkness is nice.

if you are happy with your choice i would put those 5 points in master infighter or flashing blades.

beckylunatic

That provides some thoughts on how to switch up heroic feats a bit more. I've got the stamina regen maxed out right now, but with all the boons and other sources these days, perhaps it's not needed.

http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/tr?b=23ci:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,13j35ki:150u000:1z050z1:1000000&h=1&p=wkn

I don't have Survivor because in practice, being below 30% health doesn't happen much, though I could drop Bloody Brawler for it, because you have a point about deflect being a special Scoundrel strength. That would have the 5 points being a choice between Mocking Gesture and Master Infighter. Interesting.

I feat Distracting Knife because I do plant Disheartening Strike on everything with enough HP to warrant it, and let the bleed tick. That's 5% more damage from Flurry and any encounter damage.

rubytrue

I've been running a full WK Scoundrel build (only low 60s so far) and it has been a blast. It is pretty much a tank if you have any lifesteal at all. Lots of AoE DoT disrupting CCers with fair single target damage leading to very high survivability.

rayrdan

so if you dont like the t3 sabo feats what about going 15 points in executioner?
you can get vicous pursuit (comparable to distracting knife and deathknell for a nice damage boost.

aaramis75

rayrdan said:

so if you dont like the t3 sabo feats what about going 15 points in executioner?
you can get vicous pursuit (comparable to distracting knife and deathknell for a nice damage boost.

Which is arguably the better path. Vicious pursuit = +5% damage once you damage a target, which IMO is better than Distracting Knife as it doesn't require you to hit them with DHS only. Plus it opens up Deathknell, as mentioned, which will boost your dps significantly. Because, let's face it, Scoundrel single-target dps is weak compared to Exe, and this helps bridge the gap a wee bit.

beckylunatic

Hmmmmaybeeee. Good point about Vicious Pursuit, and I think recovery is high enough to give up Shady Preparations.

Lots to test out to see how it feels.

rayrdan

beckylunatic said:

Hmmmmaybeeee. Good point about Vicious Pursuit, and I think recovery is high enough to give up Shady Preparations.

Lots to test out to see how it feels.

if you go for that consider to pick grim pleasure over arterial cut. Assuming you are a lightning scoundrel fan you are going to run with no more than 100% crit severity. This means that 15% crit severity more is exactly 15% more damage on crit but it works only in stealth and you arent going to be stealthed much. I guess a 2.5% more damage (with 20k power) may be slightly better for your since you are probably able to keep it actived indefinitely. But i may be wrong

enomic123

rayrdan said:

i mean tr arent really good dpser, in particular scoundrel is lacking.

@rayrdan you may be right about scoundrel, but an exe MI is a destroyer when it comes to single target. Id go even as far as saying that its a strong competitor vs a GWF. As for SWs, there are too many bugs that make this class produce a 100 mil damage within 10 or so seconds with the right amount of buffs.
I think you are underestimating what a TR can do.

aaramis75

enomic123 said:

rayrdan said:

i mean tr arent really good dpser, in particular scoundrel is lacking.

@rayrdan you may be right about scoundrel, but an exe MI is a destroyer when it comes to single target. Id go even as far as saying that its a strong competitor vs a GWF. As for SWs, there are too many bugs that make this class produce a 100 mil damage within 10 or so seconds with the right amount of buffs.
I think you are underestimating what a TR can do.

^^ well, Rayrdan edited his comment, so I'd imagine he takes it back. That said, Exes (yes, WKs too) can do massive damage, but their 2 biggest hitters are SoD and the bleed from crit stacks of Flurry - both of which take time to get going. In some content with 3+k GWFs running around, nothing lasts longer than 2-3 seconds, so it's hard to shine sometimes.

That said, you're right, TR damage isn't in a horribly bad spot. Exe damage is through the roof on single-targets; Scoundrels excel at great AoE damage (+CC). Sabos I'm still trying to get a handle on, not too many around, but they can be somewhere in the middle.

We'll see what Maze Engine brings, though. We could start seeing Scoundrels running around with an easy +45% movement speed and self-healing like crazy, which could make it the go-to spec for soloers or small groups.

enomic123

aaramis75 said:

^^ well, Rayrdan edited his comment, so I'd imagine he takes it back.

I quoted it from his first comment, its still there.

rayrdan said:

grim pleasure over arterial cut. I guess a 2.5% more damage (with 20k power) may be slightly better

Neither Grim Pleasure, nor Shadowborn work with your total power. They take a much lower value. Someone told me it only considers your "white" power values (no pun intended) but its a bit higher than that.
Whirlwind of Blades on the other hand, doubles everything you have.
I haven't tested whether or not we could snapshot power if we used Whirlwind while everything is active (bonding stacks, grim pleasure, shadowborn, brutal ring, rising power ring, etc...), it could produce some disgusting amount of power. I would love to see some first strike + back alley tactics + twisted grin + shadowborn stealth hits with lashing against a highly debuffed target.
My guildies already managed to hit lostmauth for 2 mil with lashing and our rogue is still using Ioun stone + there is plenty of room to increase his power.

micky1p00

I wouldn't call the exe now through the roof, but I guess compared to mod 1-3 or so (iirc) it could have been much worse.
Shadow Born works from non buffed sources, as a simple guide line if it the source is an icon under the portrait, it wont get a boost, if it's gear / boon, you will.
You relatively easy to test, unsummon the companion, and if you have twisted set remove one or calculate how much it buff now, to subtract later, press stealth and open the char sheet.

@beckylunatic, I dont know your rotation nor what you fight the most, and unfortunalty played WK + scoundrel the least, but I would go for Arterial, Vicious, Dying breath. I must say I was never much impressed with dying breath until I specced to Sabo and didn't take it, that little run speed boost is really nice and helps positioning (combined with the skullcraker 15% it should be even better) and in PvE usualy something will die nearby so the bonus is more or less consistent.

rayrdan

micky1p00 said:

I wouldn't call the exe now through the roof, but I guess compared to mod 1-3 or so (iirc) it could have been much worse.
Shadow Born works from non buffed sources, as a simple guide line if it the source is an icon under the portrait, it wont get a boost, if it's gear / boon, you will.
You relatively easy to test, unsummon the companion, and if you have twisted set remove one or calculate how much it buff now, to subtract later, press stealth and open the char sheet.

@beckylunatic, I dont know your rotation nor what you fight the most, and unfortunalty played WK + scoundrel the least, but I would go for Arterial, Vicious, Dying breath. I must say I was never much impressed with dying breath until I specced to Sabo and didn't take it, that little run speed boost is really nice and helps positioning (combined with the skullcraker 15% it should be even better) and in PvE usualy something will die nearby so the bonus is more or less consistent.

how much does the bonus from dying breath last? im interested in your sabo build
assuming an overall 60% critical chance, perfect vorpal, arterial feat you are going to have 150 critical severity.
so the overall damage increase assuming 100% uptime of dying breath would be 25/150*0.6 = 10%

micky1p00

rayrdan said:

micky1p00 said:

I wouldn't call the exe now through the roof, but I guess compared to mod 1-3 or so (iirc) it could have been much worse.
Shadow Born works from non buffed sources, as a simple guide line if it the source is an icon under the portrait, it wont get a boost, if it's gear / boon, you will.
You relatively easy to test, unsummon the companion, and if you have twisted set remove one or calculate how much it buff now, to subtract later, press stealth and open the char sheet.

@beckylunatic, I dont know your rotation nor what you fight the most, and unfortunalty played WK + scoundrel the least, but I would go for Arterial, Vicious, Dying breath. I must say I was never much impressed with dying breath until I specced to Sabo and didn't take it, that little run speed boost is really nice and helps positioning (combined with the skullcraker 15% it should be even better) and in PvE usualy something will die nearby so the bonus is more or less consistent.

how much does the bonus from dying breath last? im interested in your sabo build
assuming an overall 60% critical chance, perfect vorpal, arterial feat you are going to have 150 critical severity.
so the overall damage increase assuming 100% uptime of dying breath would be 25/150*0.6 = 10%

The bonus lasts 10 seconds and refreshes every time something dies. So having high up-time is realistic.
I'm exe again now, I don't remember the crit chance as Sabo but I believe it is higher than 60%. much higher.
Now I'm over 90% and better geared TRs than me get it even higher to the 98% range. (If we look at things that can crit or not crit and not fixed things like lostmauth that always crit and some boon procs that always not crit)

If we take Arterial and Vicious, as I see it we have 4 options:
1. Flashing Blades
2. Dying breath
3. DeathKneel
4. Grim Pleasure

Flashing Blades is nice, but even if it counts for DF bleed and DF total is about 40% of the damage (bleed ~28% + hits 6% x2) we get overall about 1%-2% dps increase.

Dying breath optimally ~25/140 * 0.9 = 16% But 0% in Tiamt / Dragons and the like. As I mentioned I like this one a lot for the speed boost too, it can be really felt.

DeathKneel 7.5% Optimally. As opposed to Dying breath, this one actually is much more useful on Bosses/Heralds and the rest of the big stuff. On small mobs either they will die from much higher than 30% or below 30% it will be major overkill and just inflate damage charts. And usually on trash mobs if something didn't die in one rotation someone else will kill it and not the TR while the TR slashes with sly / DF.
Semi useful for the lurker->BF thing for trash though.

Grim Pleasure, I assume it works like shadow born on non-buffed power (didn't test)
so for about 30k power we get 1500 power, which is about 2% dps increase.

btw arterial is 15% so it will be 140% without Erinyes or some other severity bonus.


Even if take Dying breath at half the value -> 8%, it's mainly it or Death kneel, so it remains to pick what are the most likely target, if someone doing mainly HEs, Mobs and stuff like that, imo, Dying breath is better, if someone only farms heralds and tiamat then DeathKneel looks better.
In a more subjective manner if you do dungeons the speed boost is really nice and will tip the scale for me towards Dying breath

beckylunatic

Janne, if I feel like doing Heralds (etc.) then I usually take my DC instead, so Dying Breath is a very interesting suggestion and actually fits my style with the WK Scoundrel a lot (focus on mobility).

Gah, I so haven't had time to get onto preview and try any of these out.

beckylunatic

morenthar said:

Someone tried telling me that taking both Death knell and Last Moments is a waste because they do not work together (at the same time.)



Can anyone confirm that?

According to Sunny, they stack. And I know a great deal of testing went into this guide (insofar as XBox players can test due to lack of ACT)
http://mmominds.com/2016/02/21/sunnys-guide-to-the-executioner-m7-pve-tr/

micky1p00

afaik they stack, I don't remember if I tested myself or not when the rework was introduced, but we tested almost everything back then and I use them both since (when specced as exe)