svenisperfectMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 40Arc User
I feel like the rogue at the moment, with the various Master Infiltrator specs, is in a pretty good spot except for the known bugs. The whisperknive however feels a bit underwhelming. I like the suggested changes to the at wills and the Dagger threat passive.
For the passive razor action I would change the way it activates. Rather than doing it on a daily, change it so that it would work on encounter powers (or ranged encounter power/ranged attacks if it would be too strong). That way the whisperknive will get an additional damage source that might make up for the gap between what the Master Infiltrator gets with the same investment in feats/offhand powers. The hunter-ranger already has a similar passive (bladestorm if i'm correct) for melee triggers, so maybe the whisperknive could get something along the lines for a ranged version.
So something about what @ug2bk was saying stuck with me, and until @pitshade, I wouldn't have thought anyone actually ran with Dagger Threat in its state.. I'm still not convinced it does anything for you at all, but not here to argue that. Razor is right now an empty canvas. No way to stay relative to how it works now. It's either too bad, too buggy or too much of a headache. So maybe this;
Razor Action:You strike like the wind, gaining 5% run speed and 5% attack speed on your melee powers for a duration after activating a daily. +5% per rank up
-- More on Dagger threat; melee damage reduction -5% per rank up; net +50 / -15
-- Just double checked if that's even possible, turns out yeah, they do it with Unstoppable [...] your at-will attacks are much faster but slightly weaker [...] so logistically speaking, increasing attack speed is a matter of CTRL+C+V
My usage of DT may not be optimal. When I came back to the game on August, Janne linked me to Sunny's guide which I used for the MI. For the WK, however, there were exactly zero guides that I could find so she is just adapted from Sunny, modified with what I knew before about thr paragon.
The reason I brought it up is that it seems counter productive to have a passive that buffs a tiny number of powers at the expense of nearly everything else the class has.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
My usage of DT may not be optimal. When I came back to the game on August, Janne linked me to Sunny's guide which I used for the MI. For the WK, however, there were exactly zero guides that I could find so she is just adapted from Sunny, modified with what I knew before about thr paragon.
The reason I brought it up is that it seems counter productive to have a passive that buffs a tiny number of powers at the expense of nearly everything else the class has.
I must have been in total lazy mode to link a guide. Though I think back than we all used the same build more or less (with in adaptations and tweaking).
@pitshade I got ya, sadly not a lot of WK geared enough or dedicated enough. Thing is, I think blur and ug2bk already covered that "tiny" number of powers. You could in fact put a full loadout of all ranged dailies, encounters and at wills. Therefore it's not counter productive. Nor should it be. WK players only adapted to being melee-ranged because its the lesser of two garbage. Won't have to if ranged gets a proper boost. Mind if I ask why not roll MI if you're all up for melee? Seems to be that's a better choice hands down
PS: Do check my thoughts on Razor Action two posts up. It ought to even out the loss in melee by pairing DT+RA passives, all while granting you 50% more on ranged
"WK players only adapted to being melee-ranged because its the lesser of two garbage. Won't have to if ranged gets a proper boost. Mind if I ask why not roll MI if you're all up for melee? Seems to be that's a better choice hands down"
WK aren't two seperate classes though. The TR is always both melee and short to mid range. Both paragons are spending their power points on 95% of the same things. Melee isn't a compromise for a WK any more that ranged is one for an MI. It's just using whatever tools are available.
One thing about the proposed DT change, consider the CW feat Focused Wizardry, in which the debuff aspe
The RA change looks interesting. I am not a theorycrafter/math person but I don't see anything objectionable.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
So I was on my healadin last night because I'm so angry with the current state of my WK... and we ran eCC. We all know that boss is a TR pirate. And it finally dawned on me what my TR needs.
Why can't my WK throw those stupid fire flasks that he can. I want a ranged AOE for my WK. Let me chuck the fire flasks.
Founding Member of "Wrong Side of the Stronghold" Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
Before I dive into each Daily Power by itself I want to talk about how dealing dmg on a TR in PVE is tied intrinsically to using Daily Powers and how, unlike other classes, its a give and take relationship. First, the damage done by our dailies is mostly trash. Besides Shocking Execution dealing high damage in PVP none of our dailies do much actual damage in PVE. I’m totally Ok with that by the way, our dailies buff us and that’s their job so don’t go trying to fix what ain’t broke. The buff’s we receive when using our dailies come partially from the dailies themselves, as in Lurker’s, Whirlwind, Courage Breaker. The rest of the buffs come from Invisible Infiltrator and Back Alley Tactics. This is where the ‘give and take’ comes into play. So when we use Lurker’s for instance we get a 30% dmg boost for (I think) 8 seconds, we then get 20% for 6 seconds from Invisible Infiltrator. Since we just used a Daily and our AP is now empty we now have a 25% dmg buff from Back alley tactics. If we have Inf. Action slotted with the OH-Arti Power we’re also receiving another 5%. That’s a total of 80% for 6 seconds, which then drops to 60% for 2 seconds then 30%; progressively decreasing over time as our AP fills. We get our biggest bonuses the instant we’ve used a Daily Power, that bonus then drops down to almost none until we are able to use another daily. Creating a pattern of high and low troughs of damage. This is particularly bothersome for certain dailies that have long animations like Bloodbath or Courage Breaker, by the time the animation has finished we’ve lost half the buffs we just got. That’s just how TR works. Its problematic at times and feels downright punishing at others.
What I propose are a couple of small changes to mitigate the issues. First I’d like to see Inv. Infiltrator have its buff duration increased to match the duration of Lurker’s Assault. Second I’d like to see the buff from Back Alley Tactics changed to increase damage done by 25% for 6 seconds and only then begin to decrease as AP is gained. Finally I’d like to see the inability to gain AP from dealing damage while Lurker’s Assault is active removed. If we could gain AP while Lurker’s was active we could more rapidly use our Dailies bringing our ability to maintain our self buffs more in line with other classes.
One final note concerning our ability to gain AP. It is commonly believed that the Heroic Feat: Action Advantage does nothing, or at least does nothing beyond rank 1. Not only does it not seem to be working it’s weak. Other classes have a similar Heroic Feat that increases their AP gains by 20-30% for dealing certain types of damage, or damage under certain circumstances. I’d appreciate it if TR’s got similar representation in that arena. 20% or even 25% depending on internal testing. (another thing, you guys need to get a top tier TR to do your internal testing, they need to understand the playstyles as well as or better than those of us participating in this thread)
Bloodbath - Bloodbath is the ‘oh s#!t’ button. When you’re in a position where you know you’re about to take massive damage and die from it you can pop BB and be right as rain, and you’ll even have done a bit of damage in the process. The problem arises when BB isn’t slotted, because every PVE TR has Lurker’s and Whirlwind slotted 99% of the time. So how useful is BB? Well, not much. It’s not quite good enough for us to choose it over LA or WoB, or at least, I’ve never found it to be good enough. It does double proc stuff which seems like that would make it really good, but even though it double procs buffs that proc on daily use it occupies 50% of the duration of said buffs.. So you really don’t gain anything. So sure, it’s Ok… but not quite good enough.
Lurker’s Assault - The bread and butter. The beans on toast. The hummus on pita. You get the idea. Lurker’s is the core of single target damage. It's good, but it can be better. As above I mentioned the allowance of AP gains while Lurker’s is active. I believe this simple change will take a good ability and make it great.
Whirlwind of Blades - If target in range is less than or equal to 3 use Lurker’s, if targets in range is greater than 3 use Whirlwind. The power boost from Whirlwind cannot be denied, it allows for some of the highest (un-bugged) power amounts possible in Neverwinter. I’m totally cool with Whirlwind remaining as it is. Maybe the buff could last a smidge longer?
Courage Breaker - CB is decent, it provides the largest single source reduction in target damage output in the game, but is only useful if your tank needs the help, if your tank is fine than you get a bigger damage boost from Lurker’s. Sans pvp where CB+SB=Ultimate Troll. Everyone hates CB+SB but no one can deny its effectiveness. I dislike the animation on CB in a PVE environment, but I’m ok with it staying as it is as long as some of the above buff duration changes take place.
Shocking Execution - The bane of the PVP community. TR’s know they need it and everyone else hates getting 1-shot. Well I’m not a PVP connoisseur anymore but when I did PVP I felt like everything else at my disposal was gimp. Nothing I had felt like it hit hard enough to make a difference, but I had SE so I used it. (When I wasn’t trolling nodes with CB+SB that is. This thread is primarily focused on PVE performance, so considering that SE feel incredibly weak in PVE. Since we all know how much Armor Pen we need to mitigate 100% of all NPC’s the piercing factor is meaningless, and since SE is balanced around the fact that it does piercing damage the actual damage is less than if it wasn’t. This rule can be applied to just about all piercing damage in PVE. Its just not very good, and it's due to the fact that enemies don’t have enough DR and players have too much Armor Pen. If enemies were balanced better, or if there were legitimate stat curves, or if there just wasn't as much armor pen to go around maybe piercing damage would mean something, but in the current meta of the game it simply does not.
Hateful Knives - not enough experience to comment, apologies.
In conclusion. TR’s fall behind in their ability to self buff because their self buffs are tied to Daily Power usage. This would be mitigated by either an increase in buff duration from both Daily Powers and buffs when using Daily Powers or an increased capacity for gaining AP (which is a double edged sword if Back Alley Tactics remains unchanged).
I agree with the stuff in your post, I only have one section to expand on:
For back ally tactics, you sugested changing it to be 25% more damage for 6 seconds and after that 6 seconds is up, the buff decreases as you gain action points. This sugestion of yours would work well and the effects of this feat should remain the same in both pvp and pve if implemented. To ensure this feat doesn't become too strong under your sugestion, the damage increase from this feat should not be able to stack with itself. With that said, I have written out an example of your sugestion in action: You use a daily power causing your AP gage to empty. You now have 25% more damage for 6 seconds. The 6 seconds end and your AP gage is now halfway full. Your 25% damage bonus instantly drops to 12.5% (half of 25%) and as you continue to gain AP, that 12.5% decreases further until you activate your daily power again.
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
@svenisperfect "For the passive razor action I would change the way it activates. Rather than doing it on a daily, change it so that it would work on encounter powers". II and IA from MI both activate from Daily activation, for WK its already suggested for one boost to come from encounter VP and the other one to come from Daily activation RA. Its easier to activate an encounter than Daily so its easier to keep the buff up so if both buffs came from encounters its way too easy. Lets try to keep some balance.
@rustlord "Razor Action: You strike like the wind, gaining 5% run speed and 5% attack speed on your melee powers for a duration after activating a daily. +5% per rank up.More on Dagger threat; melee damage reduction -5% per rank up; net +50 / -15" In terms of damage % how much increase is this? Is it increase at all? Since its reducing melee damage, as we saw some WK's play it like MI so its a nerf for them. Increase in attack speed was suggested in general for most TR abilities but we also saw the side effects it can cause (DF skipping hits). Is it reducing damage from DF bleeds as well, or Bleeds are excluded? Bottom line, are we making it too complicated? Why not just go with simple 10% damage buff for 10 secs after Daily activation like MI does it?
@trgluestickz "You use a daily power causing your AP gage to empty. You now have 25% more damage for 6 seconds. The 6 seconds end and your AP gage is now halfway full. Your 25% damage bonus instantly drops to 12.5% (half of 25%) and as you continue to gain AP, that 12.5% decreases further until you activate your daily power again." Lurker's Assault allows us to enjoy the benefits of empty AP quite longer so this is actually a nerf than a buff. Back alley tactics is one of the best feats TR has and i wouldnt change it.
If any of our suggestions get implemented it will most probably buff the current Shocking Execution and it will definitely need to be nerfed in some way, thats why i suggested SE as physical damage. From what i understand Power stacking works better in PvP than ArPen but only against squishy classes but when a tanky class which has some serious damage resistance its time run away because we cant make a dent in them. Why? Because we dont have ArPen, but as already mentioned even with ArPen its not enough. Lets suggest STR or DEX to give Resistance Ignored as well, thats almost 20% more ArPen.
I have nothing against suggested 50% bonus for ranged attacks from Dagger Threat but it needs to be checked if we didnt go overboard with this and if it will create new meta for PvP. Now imagine that buff + suggested "atwills dont drain stealth". Compared to what we have now this is quite big.
We all saw how the question about TR rework was dodged and making things complicated is not in our favor. Lets try to keep it as simple as possible. What is WK missing compared to MI? Buffs from II, IA and ITC. VP buff 10%, RA buff 10%, DT ranged buff. If you ask me that's about it, more or less balance between WK and MI is restored.
Scoundrel focuses on Dazing enemies, increasing both Deflection and Lifesteal and deal extra damage to Dazed enemies. I feel Scoundrel falls short in any circumstance when facing enemies that are immune to CC. Scoundrel seems to focus more on dealing damage and CC’ing large groups of enemies.
Scoundrel Feats
Roll with the Punches - Increased Deflection by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5%. I feel this could be boosted to 1/2/3/4/5% without being too strong, the first tier offensive feats are all in the vicinity of 5% so why are defensive feats given half value?
Bloody Brawler - Increased Lifesteal by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5%. As above, I see no reason why these feats are as weak as they are.
Survivor - Gain 2/4/6/8/10% Deflection when below 30% Health. No complaints.
Press the Advantage - Imp. to Catch now also increases Power by 10%. No complaints, as long as you don’t go messing ItC again.
Back Alley Tactics - When AP is empty deal 5/10/15/20/25% additional damage, decreases as AP fills. There is a reason just about all PVE TR’s take this feat, it synergizes extremely well with how we buff ourselves, the caveat being its counter-intuitive nature. Using dailies is how we buff ourselves, so we want AP, but as we gain AP we lose the bonus damage from this feat. There are a few possibilities to make it less of a give and take, the first being to ‘increase dmg dealt by 5/10/15/20/25% when a daily power is active’, the second being to retain the max buff for a period of time before the reduction from AP gains is itroduced, the third would be to add a large AP gain buff to the feat, it would reduce the length of time by which we get bonus damage but allow us to use our dailies more often. Feel free to add any other ideas you may have concerning this feat.
Master Infighter - You take 2/4/6/8/10% less dmg from attacks. This tooltip for this feat is rather ambiguous, does it mean only direct damage? Does it apply to Dots or AoE’s? I’ve never tested it to find out, but it would be nice to know. Other than its ambiguous description I have no complaints, it’s potentially a straight up 10% reduction in incoming damage, which is pretty solid. However due to the layout of the feat trees and the nature of other available feats this one has rarely ever made it into any of my builds.
Savage Blows - Dealing damage increases Lifesteal by .2/.4/.5/.8/1%, stacks up to 5 times. Seems legit, but I’ve never actually taken this feat, it is extremely easy to get Lifesteal up to about 30% without sacrificing anything offensive in PVE and 30% is more than enough to make LS reliable. Sure its possible to go full-bore into LS and get upwards of 60-65% or more but its not efficient, not from a PVE perspective anyway. From a PVP perspective I feel that there are already so many sources of self-healing that stacking increasingly higher Lifesteal would as well suffer from a similar effect.
Concussive Strikes - Crits and attacks from behind a target daze them for .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 seconds, internal cooldown of 5 seconds. No complaints, fits well into the Scoundrel playstyle.
Low Blows - Deal 5/10/15/20/25% more dmg to foes under the effect of Crowd Control. Fits well into the Scoundrel playstyle but is less effective on CC immune enemies, the only CC that can affect these enemies is Courage Breaker which is a single target CC. If Daze could be changed to apply a debuff to all enemies that allowed for this feat’s function to apply I feel Scoundrel could be better represented, the actual Daze effect would not apply to the CC immune enemy, but the debuff would allow this feat to be utilized.
Mocking Gesture - Entering Stealth increases Deflection by 10% for 10 seconds. Doesn’t seem quite strong enough for a tier 5 feat, other than that no complaints.
Skullcracker - Every 15 seconds gain SkC effect, on encounter use apply a Daze to the target for 4 seconds, additional attacks to the target extend this Daze by .5 seconds to a max of 2 (total 6). You deal 25% more damage to target affected by this Daze. Fits well with the Scoundrel playstyle but suffers from some shortcomings. First of all this is rendered mostly useless against CC immune enemies (unless using CB), second the debuff should last longer; 6 seconds and 1 sec. Per extra attack up to 4 more (total of 10)
For your roll with the punches and bloody brawler sugestion, buffing the defensive values is an option but I'd rather see something like this: bloody brawler "increases your damage and lifesteal chance by 3%" and roll with the punches "increases your damage and deflection chance by 3%.
Survivor is easily the worst feat in the entire scoundrel tree for both pvp and pve. I definatly don't consider it fine as is. Here is an exerpt from one of my old posts that explains why:
"This feat is very outdated and pretty much useless for both pvp and pve. Back in the day, this feat was good because there were fewer sources of self healing and you would both hit low health more often and you would be more likely to linger at low health. As a scoundrel nowadays, if you hit 30% health, you will either die to a followup blow or heal back up in seconds. There is no inbetween and you do not linger at low health long enough for this feat to be worth taking. I would suggest reworking this feat to something that is still oriented towards deflection or other self defense but is more appealing."
Your back alley tactics idea would be a good way to make it even better, its a good feat as is but its also a conveniant place to install some much needed increases to TR damage so I support your sugestion.
Master infighter is a phenominal pvp feat though I agree that there isn't much reason to use it for a pve build. I don't want this feat's current effects messed with in pvp but I wouldn't mind it having some other effect in pve.
Savage blows is a good feat with a really smooth well designed mechanic. Its actually a fantastic feat for a pvp TRs since it makes it much easier to maintain BIS values for both deflect and lifesteal without cutting too much into other needed stats. Other trees have a much harder time doing this. Savage blows could use an additional effect added to it though, more damage would be best. Here is a good potential improvement for it from the main post:
"Savage Blows - Dealing damage to foes increases Life steal and Damage by 1% for 3 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times."
Concussive strikes has no issues in pve but in pvp, its daze is too short. The daze in pvp was halved a long time ago to keep it from being too strong. There are now a lot more sources of control resistance in this game than there used to be and this halved daze hasn't scaled well in pvp as a result. It should be increased to 1.8 seconds or 2 seconds in pvp up from 1.2 seconds.
For low blows, it needs a damage buff, the main post in this thread is sugesting 40% up from 25%. Ideally, this feat should also get a mechanisim of some sort that only applys to cc immune targets in pve. A debuff that applys to cc immune targets is an option though damage is what is needed. I sugest giving low blows an effect similar to the sly flourish buff; something like, "control immune targets take X% more damage from all sources" would work well.
I agree that mocking gesture is not strong enough to be a tier 5 feat though I would take this realization a step further. This feat should be taken out of the scoundrel tree period and replaced with something else. Mocking gesture is out of place for a scoundrel and its dependance on stealth makes it a difficult feat for a scoundrel, the tree with the least amount of stealth to work with. Its a good feat for a stealthyer TR so it could be given to the sabotuer tree as a replacement for bloodsoaked blades.
I agree with your general breakdown of what scullcracker needs. Here is an exerpt from one of my old posts that offers a more fleshed out fix for scullcracker:
"This feat stands out as being the only TR capstone that is almost completely useless. The only thing useful about it is the 15% speed increase but even this has a drawback. This speed increase is up all the time unless you have recently used an encounter power. This speed increase should be increased to 20% and made permanent. The rest of scullcracker needs a rework. The suggestion in this thread's mother post was to change scullcracker to a 30% damage buff that lasts 6 seconds. The daze would still occur but the damage bonus would be a separate effect from it. This way, the damage bonus applies to control immune targets. The damage buff should be the same duration in both pve and pvp under this sugestion since it is no longer tied to the daze. Both the daze and the damage bonus are triggered when you use an encounter power and can only be triggered once every 15 seconds. This idea would work fine though I'm open to other sugestions. To further improve on this idea, the daze should be modified to simply last 6 seconds (less in pvp, 3 would be good) instead of being a 4 second extendable daze. The daze should also be upgraded to a stun."
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
So I was on my healadin last night because I'm so angry with the current state of my WK... and we ran eCC. We all know that boss is a TR pirate. And it finally dawned on me what my TR needs.
Why can't my WK throw those stupid fire flasks that he can. I want a ranged AOE for my WK. Let me chuck the fire flasks.
You know... that's kind of briliant. +1
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
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lordseth1985Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 319Arc User
So I was on my healadin last night because I'm so angry with the current state of my WK... and we ran eCC. We all know that boss is a TR pirate. And it finally dawned on me what my TR needs.
Why can't my WK throw those stupid fire flasks that he can. I want a ranged AOE for my WK. Let me chuck the fire flasks.
You know... that's kind of briliant. +1
Fire, poison, acid... we have so many options for added effects.
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
1
svenisperfectMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 40Arc User
@blur In that example I wasn't actually suggesting we'd change Razor Action to the earlier suggestion in the thread and then make it activate on encounter powers. I was suggesting we keep it more or less as it is in its current state, but instead of triggering on dailies to make it trigger on encounters.
On the changes in general, I'd hate it if the difference between Whisperknive and Master Infiltrator became a "which flavor text do you like better". I'd rather see a clear difference in the way the paragon path can deal extra damage with passives, but not look similar (if that makes sense). Especially since Razor Action is already a sort of extra automatic attack, i'd hate to see it turn into random buff number.
That said, @rustlord, I like the idea if rogues had some sort of advantage by moving faster , that would make for a slightly more interesting playstyle. Maybe the movement thing could be incorporated into a new work out for the scoundrel tree? Seeing as the daze/mini stun is not very effective in the current state both pvp and pve are in. I'd be amazing if we had a capstone that could turn movement speed into damage ^^ (Rushin' Rogues).
@svenisperfect If you keep it as is but trigger only on encounters you would probably get as lame ability as Oppressive Darkness. It would be lame even now if it would not be bugged and double proc with Bloodbath. Due to double proc it has some use PvP but adding it to Known Bugs list we can expect it to be fixed. Also we want WK to be competitive in PvE, on par with MI but without similar buffs to MI i dont know how it is expected to catch up. Even tho only few people are making the suggestions there doesnt seem to be any agreement on how to make WK on pair with MI. I havent seen any suggestion so far which would make WK even to MI in PvE. You dont want flat damage buffs which you can probably always keep on? I dont think it gets any better than that. I am open to suggestions but most of them dont have any balance and are not a clear solution. Only real difference between paragons from PvE point of view are those two Passives II and IA.
@svenisperfect unfortunately without a major rework we can't ask Razor Action to activate on encounter powers. Like @blur said our job here is not to make things too complicated, will expand on that a bit, but with Razor Action being tremendously bugged..
Right now I can spam it with bloodbath and get 60K AoE piercing damage out of it; In PVP I can dish out 3 bloodbaths back to back in a matter of 10 seconds with all the crazy AP gain items at my disposal. That doesn't make me any better than a SE abusing PVPer, so unless you have the overhealing to counter it I'd wipe out a team of 5 people in under a minute.
Now as the first person to discover that HAMSTER, I'll also be the first one to protest if it becomes encounter activation. Then I won't wipe 5 people in a minute, I'd do it in one rotation. Then for PvE, since piercing damage is meaningless, having it activate on encounter powers basically gives you nothing.
Scoundrel!
I'm totally digging that suggestion. So I'm thinking of this path making a comback, say if the current capstone "movement speed" also affected "attack speed" then we'd have the potential to pair it up with RA and see lightning rogues streaking across the battlefield! I'd even try Lightning enchant for a bit of role play in there haha!
PS: attack speed is a direct damage buff to scoundrel [low blows] wherein attacks that become stronger against controlled targets for a duration will be closer apart, dealing more net damage http://imgur.com/a/4R8Fa
+1 those who play Plants vs Zombies!
@blur I generally agree on keeping things simple. The thinking behind attack speed was in fact a matter of simplification because it's a potential copy-paste feature from the GWF Unstoppable. And as @pitshade nicely pointed out, so is my Dagger Threat suggestion actually, it's a template taken right out of CW's Focused Wizardry. With these, I'm saving them time in drafting and implementation so they could just jump into the numbers.
In the end I believe it will even out. 50% damage on ranged is acceptable, even without individual revisions to current ranged powers: DHS, CoS, VP, Impact. The reduction of -15% melee damage at 4/4 points is also fair, and also takes it straight from the Unstoppable handbook "your attacks are much faster but hit slightly less", which is already a well-rounded and time-tested tool, saving dev hours on further testing and balancing.
Additionally, an attack speed buff like RA eliminates the need to look at WK cast times individually, including powers like DHS, VP, HK.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong, or offer more insight so I can refine this. But my line of thinking is that, I want to focus the WK changes to a few select powers that solves a lot of problem in one go. I'm not a game developer, but a developer still and often in my work it's always best preferred to have an all-encompassing solution that is cost-effective and feasible.
On attack speed + DF, skipping bleeds looks like an issue with the internal ticker that is a part of DF, and it could be addressed restrictively to that power. I'd rather that gets resolved for itself, and not remain there to block improvements in other areas.
[...] I havent seen any suggestion so far which would make WK even to MI in PvE [...] I am open to suggestions but most of them dont have any balance and are not a clear solution. Only real difference between paragons from PvE point of view are those two Passives II and IA.
@blur Here's my attempt at pseudo formula to describe the increase in damage by attack speed in comparison with passive II+IA.
If you could throw a melon and kill someone with three melons, and I throw ten coconuts the same length of time you hurl three melons, we will have the same DPS for the purpose of killing that poor HAMSTER.
▶ Covering bases * II offhand +5% * IA +20% after a daily (net 25% peak) ▶ Special notes beforehand * DT +50% to DHS bleeds brings it closer to DF bleeds * DT -15% to melee but assuming you don't use DT, stay melee * Advantageous Position unchanged for permanent CA as with Inf. Action (CA stands even, therefore excluded in calcs for simplicity) ▶ Assume the following * 1,000,000 damage in one minute, 3 dailies a minute * watered down buff modifiers to make things more readable!
Infiltrator II+IA ( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 3 * 5s ) * 1.25 = 312,506 // The damage dealt after a daily (IA) + II ( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 60 - ( 3 * 5s ) ) * 1.05 = 787,515 // The damage dealt normally + II (offhand) 31,250 + 75,750 = 1,100,021
Whisperknife RA+AdPos ( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 3 * X ) * 1.20 = Y // Increased attack frequency after RA buff ( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 60 - ( 3 * X ) ) * 1 = Z // Normal damage when RA is not active Y + Z = 1,100,021 // Solve for X, or the duration that RA buff needs to stay on in order to have relative outputs
DPS: ( 1,000,000 / 60s ) = 16,666.67 Try X = 5s Y = 16667 * 15s * 1.20 = 300,006 Z = 16667 * 45s * 1.00 = 750,015 Y + Z = 1,050,021
Try X = 10s Y = 16667 * 30s * 1.20 = 600,012 Z = 16667 * 30s * 1.00 = 500,010 Y + Z = 1,100,022✓
So I think it should be 10s or+ that RA takes you a little higher but it's also a little less forgiving when you have to keep attacking when this buff is on whilst you don't have things like ITC in your toolkit.
I am not really a numbers guy so this doesnt tell me much. I will assume it would work. I also agree with Dagger Threat suggestion if the 50% increase is not too much. I cant agree with an ability which causes general attack speed increase with reducing melee damage. I'll explain why. We have no guarantee some other at-wills wont start skipping hits like DF does it. Some play the WK like MI which is normal for PvE, simply TR is more capable in melee than in ranged combat. Melee reduction would not only affect at-wills but Encounters and Dailies as well. Attack speed increase for what gain? For DhS and CoS at cost of potentially ruining many melee abilities? Like @archangelzorak01 said many abilities are clunky and slow attack animation needs to be increased to make them an option, its mostly at-wills. I dont have nothing against attack speed increase but its better if its done for each ability separately than how its suggested at cost of melee damage. I know the suggestion is similar to GWF's Unstoppable but its not the same. It's not the Bleeds which are skipping its the hits of Flurry. If GWF would skip a hit on at-will no biggie, its just a hit, while if we skip a Flurry hit we skipped a chance to apply Bleed stack. Imagine if DF would be changed as proposed to apply all Bleeds from last hit and its skips exactly that last hit... It would be devastating even in current state. If at-wills get faster animations they will probably get a small damage reduction to even it out but it should not affect other things. Some encounters and Dailies need more fluent movements as well, it can be done without changing their damage since they are not spammable like at-wills. RA with attack speed increase would fix clunky abilities in WK but all those same clunky abilities stay the same for MI so its a better solution to do it for each ability separately instead for just 1 paragon with side effects and that brings us back to the gap of WK and MI which would not be fixed.
Post edited by blur#5900 on
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svenisperfectMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 40Arc User
@rustlord@blur I wasn't aware that the current Razor Action was that bugged. The described effect is pretty HAMSTER. In that case then yeah, that should definitely change. The proposed attack speed at the cost of power for a short time seems alot better then. Something else that popped into my head just now is replacing Razor action's effect with an aura that makes people attack bleeding targets harder or faster. (scent of blood into party frenzy idea). That way you don't get a truly deal x% more damage permanently effect. Besides it would give Disheartening Strike an extra use as target painter.
Hey @blur, yeah those are separate things though. So between DT and RA, what is reducing melee damage is DT, and if that's not desirable despite the ranged increase, how about ditch that component altogether? This makes DT a flat 50% buff to ranged powers.
Apparently I was bored enough that I made a graph of how attack speed improves damage output for WK in a different way than it does for MI! This assumes nearly identical stats and setup, a melee WK and a melee MI. Have a look at it then let me know
The 10s duration is the most balanced.
As opposed to this idea, consider that if you'd have to revise power cast times individually, then their damage, then effects, that's monumentally more work and has even less chances of getting through.
Then again, as I've had some playtime with MI in the previous mods, I'd say that removing the % chance of applying the DF bleed is better than either how it is now or applying it at the end of a flurry. You have to realize that if you dodge-cancel a DF that's essentially skipping it too. Given an attack speed increase, even if it skips some, you are doing more hits and combine those with a no-% chance bleed, it all evens out. From the WK perspective, attack speed solves so many problems for so little investment, I don't believe that a petty bug like skipping should prevent that. If there's a bug, it's better that it's brought forward and addressed on its own.
@rustlord Sorry, my bad, i thought melee damage reduction was additional effect of RA and i considered DT as just 50% increase for ranged attacks. From what i see on that graph is that WK needs more time. Problem is, even MI is too slow for the content. Still melee damage reduction would hurt more abilities than 50% ranged buff would help so i suggest only ranged increase if 50% is not too much. Also if we suggest attack speed increase damage needs to be lower to even it out, including DhS, otherwise its buff on buff. For the balance among TR abilities, DhS should not be on par with DF damage wise, having luxury of staying range and having same damage is not a balanced way. Attack speed increase for each ability which needs it separately is more work, i agree with that, thats why i suggested Most important suggestions and Would-be-nice-to-have suggestions. 10 bleeds should currently be applied with 2-3 DF if nothing skips. Thats 4-6 bleeds applied per DF. This is already too slow, thats why its suggested to be applied from just 1 DF. Due to my PC lag which causes me to skip more than others im already at 2-3 bleeds per DF, theoretically its possible to apply 0-1 bleeds per DF for me depending how hard the lag hits me. My damage suffers because it takes me forever to get those 10 stacks. It was suggested to apply all 10 bleeds from last hit but that hit can be skipped as well so best option, even tho not "balanced", is to make it apply all 10 bleeds from 2nd Duelist Flurry Hit. Those 2 Hits are slow and they dont skip, not that i noticed at least. Disbalance in that suggestion is that Bleeds are available too early but its safest way to apply them.
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svenisperfectMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 40Arc User
I don't think you should apply the bleeds from any other hit than the flurry part, since you would then just skip the flurry everytime to have more effective DPS. (which would make full animations kind of pointless except the immunity frame)
Personally I find those bleed stacks very annnoying, there's the matter of whose bleed it is, and skipping and what have you! I hate that. It's one of the comforts that DHS deals its own damage as the bleed, and the bleeds of other classes also work this way. This leaves DF-stacking-bleeds the odd kid in the back... it needs bleeds to work off of its base damage, scale with buffs and flat-out apply on the first hit (whichever is first that is not skipped) of the 3RD windup of the attack.
DF1-DF2-DF3_Skippy > applies a single flatout bleed So then cancel it with a dodge near the end and you'd missed out on those little prickly hits, not enough to be a concern of balance IMO, the dodge time itself wastes the half-second remaining of your DF3
PS: Supposing the DF skips due to its speed, no other at will or power is at risk of skipping from a 20% RA attack speed increase via a passive apart from Bloodbath and PotB. Skipping on BB is nothing of consequence, as with PotB which already hits 2x faster from stealth with neither skipping being observed nor being of any consequence to balance.
@svenisperfect It is exactly how you said it but hits from Flurry part are currently not reliable. Another solution could be reducing number of hits from Flurry part from 6 to 3 and making them hit twice as hard while the animation duration stays the same. Slower hits = less chance to skip hits.
On DF, +1 to fewer, bigger hits. I think it's more than 6, no? I remember counting my logs and registering anywhere between 8-14 flurry hits. @blur
Going back to the subject of Dagger Threat +50% ranged (flat); Razor Action +20% atk speed It does have potential for double buffing, not for DHS, but for CoS. Then if we're pulling out melee reduction which is the only balancing component of a ranged buff, 50 is essentially becoming 60+ and this proposal should benefit from being toned down in % the distance scaling mechanic removed; IF we're to retain the +50 buff a different scaling method should apply like Archery T5 Stillness of the Forest (HR) "Your ranged damage is increased the farther you get from target" This implies the same balance that if one were to get a ranged buff he shouldn't be able deliver a killer blow in melee he'd be at max distance and thinking twice of losing the buff to get close
I dont know if Bleed stack skipping can be compared to PotB but lets not bother with that anymore and lets try to wrap it up. If everyone agrees for DF to be changed so any hit of the 6 Flurry hits can apply Bleed effect, a single Bleed equal in damage to current 10 (11) to remove the problematic stacking, we are done with DF. Are we in agreement for VP marking to increase damage by 10% for 5secs? DT increases ranged damage by 50%? About RA, this should equal to 10% damage increase for 10 secs. Does 20% increased attack speed for 10 seconds achieve that? In graph it increases over time. If Daily is activated every 10 seconds does it increase endlessly? Put a limit if so. 5% run speed is fine as well. I will suggest to be mentioned that bonus for DhS from DT and RA is checked if its too much or not. If it is too much DT should be lower than 50% then. Edit: About that balance in post above. Which distance is when melee stops hitting? DT works only at distance 10'+ or something like that? About DF hits its 8 hits total+Bleeds. 2 hits in Hit part, 6 hits in Flurry part and whatever is the number of Bleed ticks.
@blur, in this graph, it denotes the buff duration, in seconds, of how long it has to take effect (For X seconds after a daily...etc)
Therefore, 20% atk speed buff for 10 seconds after using a daily power, then buff gone, must never stack with itself. This is equivalent to 25% damage increase of slotting II+IA. For whisperknife, it will pair RA+AdPos to have exactly the same CA buffs.
From 1000K sample damage to 1.100K, both paragons now have 10% equal buffs from a combo of 2 passives. +permanent CA
I dont know if Bleed stack skipping can be compared to PotB but lets not bother with that anymore and lets try to wrap it up. If everyone agrees for DF to be changed so any hit of the 6 Flurry hits can apply Bleed effect, a single Bleed equal in damage to current 10 (11) to remove the problematic stacking, we are done with DF. Are we in agreement for VP marking to increase damage by 10% for 5secs?
Agreed with the above for Duelist Flurry and Vengeance Pursuit.
p.s. Dev's have no idea what all the abbreviations mean (according to the livestream) so you might want to at least mention it fully once at the start of your posts (higher succes rate of them understanding the suggestion, especially when the thread gets longer and longer)
Its weird, i would bet Dazing to have same range as Lashing... We still have to find balance for RA. MI has 25% buff only for 5 seconds, 15 seconds after that it is only 5% buff and it takes 2 Passive slots+offhand feature, while RA takes one passive slot and gives 25% for 10 secs (in PvE this can be permanent, PvP probably the same), other Passive slot would go to DT instead AdvPos and thats 75% buff for ranged powers only from 2 passives. This is huge. These numbers need to be toned down a lot, 75% is 75% more than what we have now. DT - increase ranged damage by 30% for abilities with range of 21'+ ? RA - way too good to get 25% from one Passive. Lower attack speed to equal 15% damage increase or split it to VP 10% buff and RA 10% (fitting number for attack speed increase).
alone, RA is in fact giving a lot, though without pairing it with AdPos it loses on 15% (?) CA buff that II+IA offers, all things considered, RA + another passive like, say Tactics to have more daily uptime. we'd have to make up for that loss CA
I'd refer to the graph again. if it lasts shorter that brings the net relative increase in damage much lower. At 5 seconds it will be 5% dps increase instead of 10% (or 12.5% in relative terms of 25% of II+IA)
Comments
The whisperknive however feels a bit underwhelming. I like the suggested changes to the at wills and the Dagger threat passive.
For the passive razor action I would change the way it activates. Rather than doing it on a daily, change it so that it would work on encounter powers (or ranged encounter power/ranged attacks if it would be too strong). That way the whisperknive will get an additional damage source that might make up for the gap between what the Master Infiltrator gets with the same investment in feats/offhand powers. The hunter-ranger already has a similar passive (bladestorm if i'm correct) for melee triggers, so maybe the whisperknive could get something along the lines for a ranged version.
Razor Action: You strike like the wind, gaining 5% run speed and 5% attack speed on your melee powers for a duration after activating a daily. +5% per rank up
--
More on Dagger threat; melee damage reduction -5% per rank up; net +50 / -15
--
Just double checked if that's even possible, turns out yeah, they do it with Unstoppable [...] your at-will attacks are much faster but slightly weaker [...] so logistically speaking, increasing attack speed is a matter of CTRL+C+V
The reason I brought it up is that it seems counter productive to have a passive that buffs a tiny number of powers at the expense of nearly everything else the class has.
PS: Do check my thoughts on Razor Action two posts up. It ought to even out the loss in melee by pairing DT+RA passives, all while granting you 50% more on ranged
WK aren't two seperate classes though. The TR is always both melee and short to mid range. Both paragons are spending their power points on 95% of the same things. Melee isn't a compromise for a WK any more that ranged is one for an MI. It's just using whatever tools are available.
One thing about the proposed DT change, consider the CW feat Focused Wizardry, in which the debuff aspe
The RA change looks interesting. I am not a theorycrafter/math person but I don't see anything objectionable.
Why can't my WK throw those stupid fire flasks that he can. I want a ranged AOE for my WK. Let me chuck the fire flasks.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
For back ally tactics, you sugested changing it to be 25% more damage for 6 seconds and after that 6 seconds is up, the buff decreases as you gain action points.
This sugestion of yours would work well and the effects of this feat should remain the same in both pvp and pve if implemented.
To ensure this feat doesn't become too strong under your sugestion, the damage increase from this feat should not be able to stack with itself.
With that said, I have written out an example of your sugestion in action:
You use a daily power causing your AP gage to empty. You now have 25% more damage for 6 seconds. The 6 seconds end and your AP gage is now halfway full. Your 25% damage bonus instantly drops to 12.5% (half of 25%) and as you continue to gain AP, that 12.5% decreases further until you activate your daily power again.
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
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Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
II and IA from MI both activate from Daily activation, for WK its already suggested for one boost to come from encounter VP and the other one to come from Daily activation RA. Its easier to activate an encounter than Daily so its easier to keep the buff up so if both buffs came from encounters its way too easy. Lets try to keep some balance.
@rustlord "Razor Action: You strike like the wind, gaining 5% run speed and 5% attack speed on your melee powers for a duration after activating a daily. +5% per rank up.More on Dagger threat; melee damage reduction -5% per rank up; net +50 / -15"
In terms of damage % how much increase is this? Is it increase at all? Since its reducing melee damage, as we saw some WK's play it like MI so its a nerf for them. Increase in attack speed was suggested in general for most TR abilities but we also saw the side effects it can cause (DF skipping hits). Is it reducing damage from DF bleeds as well, or Bleeds are excluded? Bottom line, are we making it too complicated? Why not just go with simple 10% damage buff for 10 secs after Daily activation like MI does it?
@trgluestickz "You use a daily power causing your AP gage to empty. You now have 25% more damage for 6 seconds. The 6 seconds end and your AP gage is now halfway full. Your 25% damage bonus instantly drops to 12.5% (half of 25%) and as you continue to gain AP, that 12.5% decreases further until you activate your daily power again."
Lurker's Assault allows us to enjoy the benefits of empty AP quite longer so this is actually a nerf than a buff. Back alley tactics is one of the best feats TR has and i wouldnt change it.
If any of our suggestions get implemented it will most probably buff the current Shocking Execution and it will definitely need to be nerfed in some way, thats why i suggested SE as physical damage. From what i understand Power stacking works better in PvP than ArPen but only against squishy classes but when a tanky class which has some serious damage resistance its time run away because we cant make a dent in them. Why? Because we dont have ArPen, but as already mentioned even with ArPen its not enough. Lets suggest STR or DEX to give Resistance Ignored as well, thats almost 20% more ArPen.
I have nothing against suggested 50% bonus for ranged attacks from Dagger Threat but it needs to be checked if we didnt go overboard with this and if it will create new meta for PvP. Now imagine that buff + suggested "atwills dont drain stealth". Compared to what we have now this is quite big.
We all saw how the question about TR rework was dodged and making things complicated is not in our favor. Lets try to keep it as simple as possible. What is WK missing compared to MI? Buffs from II, IA and ITC. VP buff 10%, RA buff 10%, DT ranged buff. If you ask me that's about it, more or less balance between WK and MI is restored.
Survivor is easily the worst feat in the entire scoundrel tree for both pvp and pve. I definatly don't consider it fine as is. Here is an exerpt from one of my old posts that explains why:
"This feat is very outdated and pretty much useless for both pvp and pve. Back in the day, this feat was good because there were fewer sources of self healing and you would both hit low health more often and you would be more likely to linger at low health. As a scoundrel nowadays, if you hit 30% health, you will either die to a followup blow or heal back up in seconds. There is no inbetween and you do not linger at low health long enough for this feat to be worth taking. I would suggest reworking this feat to something that is still oriented towards deflection or other self defense but is more appealing."
Your back alley tactics idea would be a good way to make it even better, its a good feat as is but its also a conveniant place to install some much needed increases to TR damage so I support your sugestion.
Master infighter is a phenominal pvp feat though I agree that there isn't much reason to use it for a pve build. I don't want this feat's current effects messed with in pvp but I wouldn't mind it having some other effect in pve.
Savage blows is a good feat with a really smooth well designed mechanic. Its actually a fantastic feat for a pvp TRs since it makes it much easier to maintain BIS values for both deflect and lifesteal without cutting too much into other needed stats. Other trees have a much harder time doing this. Savage blows could use an additional effect added to it though, more damage would be best. Here is a good potential improvement for it from the main post:
"Savage Blows - Dealing damage to foes increases Life steal and Damage by 1% for 3 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times."
Concussive strikes has no issues in pve but in pvp, its daze is too short. The daze in pvp was halved a long time ago to keep it from being too strong. There are now a lot more sources of control resistance in this game than there used to be and this halved daze hasn't scaled well in pvp as a result. It should be increased to 1.8 seconds or 2 seconds in pvp up from 1.2 seconds.
For low blows, it needs a damage buff, the main post in this thread is sugesting 40% up from 25%. Ideally, this feat should also get a mechanisim of some sort that only applys to cc immune targets in pve. A debuff that applys to cc immune targets is an option though damage is what is needed. I sugest giving low blows an effect similar to the sly flourish buff; something like, "control immune targets take X% more damage from all sources" would work well.
I agree that mocking gesture is not strong enough to be a tier 5 feat though I would take this realization a step further. This feat should be taken out of the scoundrel tree period and replaced with something else. Mocking gesture is out of place for a scoundrel and its dependance on stealth makes it a difficult feat for a scoundrel, the tree with the least amount of stealth to work with. Its a good feat for a stealthyer TR so it could be given to the sabotuer tree as a replacement for bloodsoaked blades.
I agree with your general breakdown of what scullcracker needs. Here is an exerpt from one of my old posts that offers a more fleshed out fix for scullcracker:
"This feat stands out as being the only TR capstone that is almost completely useless. The only thing useful about it is the 15% speed increase but even this has a drawback. This speed increase is up all the time unless you have recently used an encounter power. This speed increase should be increased to 20% and made permanent. The rest of scullcracker needs a rework.
The suggestion in this thread's mother post was to change scullcracker to a 30% damage buff that lasts 6 seconds.
The daze would still occur but the damage bonus would be a separate effect from it. This way, the damage bonus applies to control immune targets.
The damage buff should be the same duration in both pve and pvp under this sugestion since it is no longer tied to the daze.
Both the daze and the damage bonus are triggered when you use an encounter power and can only be triggered once every 15 seconds.
This idea would work fine though I'm open to other sugestions. To further improve on this idea, the daze should be modified to simply last 6 seconds (less in pvp, 3 would be good) instead of being a 4 second extendable daze.
The daze should also be upgraded to a stun."
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
On the changes in general, I'd hate it if the difference between Whisperknive and Master Infiltrator became a "which flavor text do you like better". I'd rather see a clear difference in the way the paragon path can deal extra damage with passives, but not look similar (if that makes sense). Especially since Razor Action is already a sort of extra automatic attack, i'd hate to see it turn into random buff number.
That said, @rustlord, I like the idea if rogues had some sort of advantage by moving faster
Even tho only few people are making the suggestions there doesnt seem to be any agreement on how to make WK on pair with MI. I havent seen any suggestion so far which would make WK even to MI in PvE. You dont want flat damage buffs which you can probably always keep on? I dont think it gets any better than that.
I am open to suggestions but most of them dont have any balance and are not a clear solution. Only real difference between paragons from PvE point of view are those two Passives II and IA.
Right now I can spam it with bloodbath and get 60K AoE piercing damage out of it; In PVP I can dish out 3 bloodbaths back to back in a matter of 10 seconds with all the crazy AP gain items at my disposal. That doesn't make me any better than a SE abusing PVPer, so unless you have the overhealing to counter it I'd wipe out a team of 5 people in under a minute.
Now as the first person to discover that HAMSTER, I'll also be the first one to protest if it becomes encounter activation. Then I won't wipe 5 people in a minute, I'd do it in one rotation. Then for PvE, since piercing damage is meaningless, having it activate on encounter powers basically gives you nothing.
Scoundrel!
I'm totally digging that suggestion. So I'm thinking of this path making a comback, say if the current capstone "movement speed" also affected "attack speed" then we'd have the potential to pair it up with RA and see lightning rogues streaking across the battlefield! I'd even try Lightning enchant for a bit of role play in there haha!
PS: attack speed is a direct damage buff to scoundrel [low blows] wherein attacks that become stronger against controlled targets for a duration will be closer apart, dealing more net damage http://imgur.com/a/4R8Fa
+1 those who play Plants vs Zombies!
@blur I generally agree on keeping things simple. The thinking behind attack speed was in fact a matter of simplification because it's a potential copy-paste feature from the GWF Unstoppable. And as @pitshade nicely pointed out, so is my Dagger Threat suggestion actually, it's a template taken right out of CW's Focused Wizardry. With these, I'm saving them time in drafting and implementation so they could just jump into the numbers.
In the end I believe it will even out. 50% damage on ranged is acceptable, even without individual revisions to current ranged powers: DHS, CoS, VP, Impact. The reduction of -15% melee damage at 4/4 points is also fair, and also takes it straight from the Unstoppable handbook "your attacks are much faster but hit slightly less", which is already a well-rounded and time-tested tool, saving dev hours on further testing and balancing.
Additionally, an attack speed buff like RA eliminates the need to look at WK cast times individually, including powers like DHS, VP, HK.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong, or offer more insight so I can refine this. But my line of thinking is that, I want to focus the WK changes to a few select powers that solves a lot of problem in one go. I'm not a game developer, but a developer still and often in my work it's always best preferred to have an all-encompassing solution that is cost-effective and feasible.
On attack speed + DF, skipping bleeds looks like an issue with the internal ticker that is a part of DF, and it could be addressed restrictively to that power. I'd rather that gets resolved for itself, and not remain there to block improvements in other areas.
▶ Covering bases
* II offhand +5%
* IA +20% after a daily (net 25% peak)
▶ Special notes beforehand
* DT +50% to DHS bleeds brings it closer to DF bleeds
* DT -15% to melee but assuming you don't use DT, stay melee
* Advantageous Position unchanged for permanent CA as with Inf. Action (CA stands even, therefore excluded in calcs for simplicity)
▶ Assume the following
* 1,000,000 damage in one minute, 3 dailies a minute
* watered down buff modifiers to make things more readable!
Infiltrator II+IA
( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 3 * 5s ) * 1.25 = 312,506 // The damage dealt after a daily (IA) + II
( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 60 - ( 3 * 5s ) ) * 1.05 = 787,515 // The damage dealt normally + II (offhand)
31,250 + 75,750 = 1,100,021
Whisperknife RA+AdPos
( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 3 * X ) * 1.20 = Y // Increased attack frequency after RA buff
( 1,000,000 / 60s ) * ( 60 - ( 3 * X ) ) * 1 = Z // Normal damage when RA is not active
Y + Z = 1,100,021 // Solve for X, or the duration that RA buff needs to stay on in order to have relative outputs
DPS: ( 1,000,000 / 60s ) = 16,666.67
Try X = 5s
Y = 16667 * 15s * 1.20 = 300,006
Z = 16667 * 45s * 1.00 = 750,015
Y + Z = 1,050,021
Try X = 10s
Y = 16667 * 30s * 1.20 = 600,012
Z = 16667 * 30s * 1.00 = 500,010
Y + Z = 1,100,022 ✓
So I think it should be 10s or+ that RA takes you a little higher but it's also a little less forgiving when you have to keep attacking when this buff is on whilst you don't have things like ITC in your toolkit.
I cant agree with an ability which causes general attack speed increase with reducing melee damage. I'll explain why. We have no guarantee some other at-wills wont start skipping hits like DF does it. Some play the WK like MI which is normal for PvE, simply TR is more capable in melee than in ranged combat. Melee reduction would not only affect at-wills but Encounters and Dailies as well. Attack speed increase for what gain? For DhS and CoS at cost of potentially ruining many melee abilities? Like @archangelzorak01 said many abilities are clunky and slow attack animation needs to be increased to make them an option, its mostly at-wills. I dont have nothing against attack speed increase but its better if its done for each ability separately than how its suggested at cost of melee damage.
I know the suggestion is similar to GWF's Unstoppable but its not the same. It's not the Bleeds which are skipping its the hits of Flurry. If GWF would skip a hit on at-will no biggie, its just a hit, while if we skip a Flurry hit we skipped a chance to apply Bleed stack. Imagine if DF would be changed as proposed to apply all Bleeds from last hit and its skips exactly that last hit... It would be devastating even in current state.
If at-wills get faster animations they will probably get a small damage reduction to even it out but it should not affect other things. Some encounters and Dailies need more fluent movements as well, it can be done without changing their damage since they are not spammable like at-wills.
RA with attack speed increase would fix clunky abilities in WK but all those same clunky abilities stay the same for MI so its a better solution to do it for each ability separately instead for just 1 paragon with side effects and that brings us back to the gap of WK and MI which would not be fixed.
Something else that popped into my head just now is replacing Razor action's effect with an aura that makes people attack bleeding targets harder or faster. (scent of blood into party frenzy idea). That way you don't get a truly deal x% more damage permanently effect. Besides it would give Disheartening Strike an extra use as target painter.
Apparently I was bored enough that I made a graph of how attack speed improves damage output for WK in a different way than it does for MI! This assumes nearly identical stats and setup, a melee WK and a melee MI. Have a look at it then let me know
The 10s duration is the most balanced.
As opposed to this idea, consider that if you'd have to revise power cast times individually, then their damage, then effects, that's monumentally more work and has even less chances of getting through.
Then again, as I've had some playtime with MI in the previous mods, I'd say that removing the % chance of applying the DF bleed is better than either how it is now or applying it at the end of a flurry. You have to realize that if you dodge-cancel a DF that's essentially skipping it too. Given an attack speed increase, even if it skips some, you are doing more hits and combine those with a no-% chance bleed, it all evens out. From the WK perspective, attack speed solves so many problems for so little investment, I don't believe that a petty bug like skipping should prevent that. If there's a bug, it's better that it's brought forward and addressed on its own.
From what i see on that graph is that WK needs more time. Problem is, even MI is too slow for the content.
Still melee damage reduction would hurt more abilities than 50% ranged buff would help so i suggest only ranged increase if 50% is not too much. Also if we suggest attack speed increase damage needs to be lower to even it out, including DhS, otherwise its buff on buff. For the balance among TR abilities, DhS should not be on par with DF damage wise, having luxury of staying range and having same damage is not a balanced way.
Attack speed increase for each ability which needs it separately is more work, i agree with that, thats why i suggested Most important suggestions and Would-be-nice-to-have suggestions.
10 bleeds should currently be applied with 2-3 DF if nothing skips. Thats 4-6 bleeds applied per DF. This is already too slow, thats why its suggested to be applied from just 1 DF. Due to my PC lag which causes me to skip more than others im already at 2-3 bleeds per DF, theoretically its possible to apply 0-1 bleeds per DF for me depending how hard the lag hits me. My damage suffers because it takes me forever to get those 10 stacks. It was suggested to apply all 10 bleeds from last hit but that hit can be skipped as well so best option, even tho not "balanced", is to make it apply all 10 bleeds from 2nd Duelist Flurry Hit. Those 2 Hits are slow and they dont skip, not that i noticed at least. Disbalance in that suggestion is that Bleeds are available too early but its safest way to apply them.
DF1-DF2-DF3_Skippy > applies a single flatout bleed
So then cancel it with a dodge near the end and you'd missed out on those little prickly hits, not enough to be a concern of balance IMO, the dodge time itself wastes the half-second remaining of your DF3
PS: Supposing the DF skips due to its speed, no other at will or power is at risk of skipping from a 20% RA attack speed increase via a passive apart from Bloodbath and PotB. Skipping on BB is nothing of consequence, as with PotB which already hits 2x faster from stealth with neither skipping being observed nor being of any consequence to balance.
Going back to the subject of Dagger Threat +50% ranged (flat); Razor Action +20% atk speed It does have potential for double buffing, not for DHS, but for CoS. Then if we're pulling out melee reduction which is the only balancing component of a ranged buff, 50 is essentially becoming 60+ and this proposal should benefit from being toned down in % the distance scaling mechanic removed; IF we're to retain the +50 buff a different scaling method should apply like Archery T5 Stillness of the Forest (HR) "Your ranged damage is increased the farther you get from target" This implies the same balance that if one were to get a ranged buff he shouldn't be able deliver a killer blow in melee he'd be at max distance and thinking twice of losing the buff to get close
If everyone agrees for DF to be changed so any hit of the 6 Flurry hits can apply Bleed effect, a single Bleed equal in damage to current 10 (11) to remove the problematic stacking, we are done with DF.
Are we in agreement for VP marking to increase damage by 10% for 5secs?
DT increases ranged damage by 50%?
About RA, this should equal to 10% damage increase for 10 secs. Does 20% increased attack speed for 10 seconds achieve that? In graph it increases over time. If Daily is activated every 10 seconds does it increase endlessly? Put a limit if so. 5% run speed is fine as well.
I will suggest to be mentioned that bonus for DhS from DT and RA is checked if its too much or not. If it is too much DT should be lower than 50% then.
Edit: About that balance in post above. Which distance is when melee stops hitting? DT works only at distance 10'+ or something like that?
About DF hits its 8 hits total+Bleeds. 2 hits in Hit part, 6 hits in Flurry part and whatever is the number of Bleed ticks.
Therefore, 20% atk speed buff for 10 seconds after using a daily power, then buff gone, must never stack with itself. This is equivalent to 25% damage increase of slotting II+IA. For whisperknife, it will pair RA+AdPos to have exactly the same CA buffs.
From 1000K sample damage to 1.100K, both paragons now have 10% equal buffs from a combo of 2 passives. +permanent CA
p.s.
Dev's have no idea what all the abbreviations mean (according to the livestream) so you might want to at least mention it fully once at the start of your posts (higher succes rate of them understanding the suggestion, especially when the thread gets longer and longer)
blade flurry 15'
lashing 14'
dazing 3'
wicked 3'
sly 2'
duelist 2'
Interestingly, revisiting the question earlier of how "tiny number of powers" are ranged
hateful 82'
cloud 60'
disheartening 60'
deft 60'
VP 60'
CB 45'
shadow stk 40'
impact 40'
blitz 40'
whirlwind 30'
bloodbath 30'
shocking 30'
We still have to find balance for RA. MI has 25% buff only for 5 seconds, 15 seconds after that it is only 5% buff and it takes 2 Passive slots+offhand feature, while RA takes one passive slot and gives 25% for 10 secs (in PvE this can be permanent, PvP probably the same), other Passive slot would go to DT instead AdvPos and thats 75% buff for ranged powers only from 2 passives. This is huge.
These numbers need to be toned down a lot, 75% is 75% more than what we have now.
DT - increase ranged damage by 30% for abilities with range of 21'+ ?
RA - way too good to get 25% from one Passive. Lower attack speed to equal 15% damage increase or split it to VP 10% buff and RA 10% (fitting number for attack speed increase).
alone, RA is in fact giving a lot, though without pairing it with AdPos it loses on 15% (?) CA buff that II+IA offers, all things considered, RA + another passive like, say Tactics to have more daily uptime. we'd have to make up for that loss CA
I'd refer to the graph again. if it lasts shorter that brings the net relative increase in damage much lower. At 5 seconds it will be 5% dps increase instead of 10% (or 12.5% in relative terms of 25% of II+IA)