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Trickster Rogue Class Balance Suggestions

sirjimbofrancissirjimbofrancis Member Posts: 348 Arc User
Hi All,

When the subject of TR balance comes up, it stirs up a lot of feelings all around. TRs suffer from several significant disadvantages in PVE when compared to other classes and this post is an effort, by several experienced TR players, to bring attention to those disadvantages, and to offer some solutions which will hopefully be taken into consideration for the upcoming rework of the TR class. These are only a suggestions and it is up to developers to use or not. Our goal is to help the developers balance the TR in such a way that opens up the viability of a variety of different builds without sacrificing what currently works. At the same time, we also want to make TRs more competitive as a DPS class in PVE and elevate the class to be a desirable addition to a party in endgame content which, right now, they are sadly not. And, finally, fix the numerous bugs that have plagued TRs for years. Thank you for your consideration!

Lilia Drakon
Janne Moonmist
Blur
Quilla
Haxxident
N0t0ri0us


Known Bugs:

Stealth: When Soulforged activates under the effect of Lurker's Assault our Stealth gets stuck and is not recharging unless we change instance or relog.

Duelist Flurry: When refreshed, it only resets the timer, NOT the damage. So that, for example, as the life of a boss goes down, if the bleed stacks are continuously applied from the beginning, they will not reflect damage bonuses from feats, companions, the Orcus set, etc. Are they shared when 2 or more TR's attack the same target? Bleed icon on target is shown only once, other TR's cant keep track of how many bleeds they stacked.

Shadows of Demise: It doesn't register the SoD owner correctly. If more than one TR applies SoD to same target only one TR gets the credit for the damage. When counting the TRs damage in the 6 second window, some of the damage doesn’t count in, for example, weapon enchantment damage except Vorpal and Aura of Courage.

Shadowborn: As of now, this upper level feat procs on any at-will or DOT attack. A lot of the time, it is wasted on a single at-will hit, bleed tick, smoke bomb tick, etc. Basically, ANY attack procs it, and that makes it nearly impossible to use consistently after the first attack in combat. Note: See the Executioner section for a rework of this particular feat.

Twisted Grin: It suffers from the same problem Shadowborn suffers from where it procs on any damage you deal at all and is easily wasted.

Lurker’s Assault: Action points are not generated from damage done while using it. However, fixing this has the possibility of making Shocking Execution ridiculous in PVP. Exclude SE from the damage bonus from Lurker's Assault.

Smoke Bomb: This power does NOT proc weapon enchantments, and does NOT grant Combat Advantage against enemies under control from it. Also, it’s buggy with its interactions with Feytouched. Sometimes it will proc the +18% damage, and sometimes not. Also, it is buggy when dealing damage to test dummies as it stops hitting them altogether after a short time.

Impossible to Catch: If struck as it is enabled or if pressed in conjunction with a dodge, ITC will fail to work although it will go on cool down.

Path of the Blade: This power does NOT proc weapon enchantments or the owlbear cub.

Bait and Switch: The bait doesn’t hold agro.

Not a bug but will be mentioned here. Activation animation time of Courage Breaker and Whirlwind of Blades could be a bit faster.


Tab Mechanic (Stealth) issue:

The stealth mechanic is the primary TR skill, and it has a unique problem. Although, the main advantage granted by stealth is automatic critical strike and combat advantage, it doesn't last long enough for TRs to abandon allocating points in critical strike, because a high percentage of TR damage comes from attacks performed outside of stealth. This creates a situation where stealth provides very little in PVE since most of time TRs already have combat advantage, and already have a high critical strike percentage. Because of this, the TR's tab mechanic grants the smallest advantage when compared to every other class in PVE content.

Proposed Solution:

As of now, stealth adds 100% critical chance as a direct rating modifier. For example, when the stealth button is pressed, a TR with a 70% critical chance will then have a 170% critical chance. Obviously, 170% critical chance is in no way better than 100%.

This suggestion originally outlined in this post by @hoperuby, offered an interesting solution. In short, it suggests taking the extra percentage in stealth over 100%, and add that to the critical severity percentage. So a player with 70% crit would receive 70% crit severity when they enter stealth. A more simple solution would be to simply add 50% crit severity while using stealth. This also allows a nice scaling as it will help lower leveled and lower geared TRs much more than BIS TRs.

In PVP, it would have to be changed to either work only on at-wills and encounters to avoid making dailies (notably Shocking Execution) not over powered.

At-will: Duelist's Flurry

The biggest proportion of the damage TRs do in PVE comes from duelist's flurry. Depending on the build, even conservatively, it accounts for greater than 30% of TR's overall damage. Some bosses like FBI (Drufi), or MSVA, either move a lot, or appear for short phases of time, limiting the effectiveness of this power. No other class is as handicapped with their at-wills, and consequently their damage, as TRs are by this mechanic.

The reason this is a problem is because it takes long time to set up a full stack of bleeds on a target (about 3 flurries). In addition, the randomness of the flurry bleed stacking makes it much more difficult, when compared to other classes, to have a single rotation. It forces TRs to try to watch for the stack numbers, which is nearly impossible with the tiny text in the moving debuff list. Also, the length of the mechanic is not forgiving for mistakes or extended dodges. For example, if the TR is caught in ice, the full bleed is not applied. Or, if the TR dodges too far, or makes a rotation mistake, the full bleed is not applied.

Our suggestion is to make a single flurry add all 10 stacks of bleed. This makes adding bleeds not a "chance", but a reliable system. This allows TRs to have higher overall burst, less time to set up the damage, and an easier mechanic as TRs can make a fixed rotation. Since duelist's flurry is only 8 hits in total, each hit applying 1 bleed would not be enough. So perhaps adding all 10 bleeds from last hit could be easiest solution.


(Continued in comments)
Lilia Drakon - PVE Executioner TR
She Looked Lvl 18

Here is my Blog
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Comments

  • sirjimbofrancissirjimbofrancis Member Posts: 348 Arc User
    edited May 2017
    After 14(!) pages of suggestions, we decided to compile the best suggestions in a separate thread. Please continue the discussion here so we can leave that thread easily readable for the Devs.

    https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1231317/tr-compiled-balance-suggestions/p1?new=1
    Post edited by sirjimbofrancis on
    Lilia Drakon - PVE Executioner TR
    She Looked Lvl 18

    Here is my Blog
  • dopecloudsdopeclouds Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    A lot of good ideas. I know one of our main issues is how enemies die so quickly that our SoD doesn't have a chance to tick it's final damage.

    I was thinking it'd be a nice fix to say, if the enemies health reaches </= the amount of damage built up, SoD could tick off and kill that enemy.

    That way our built up damage during those 6 seconds wouldn't go to waste.
    Post edited by dopeclouds on
  • pitshadepitshade Member Posts: 5,665 Arc User
    The ship sailed a long time ago, but I still hate the Mod 5 change to have At-Wills drain stealth. The solution that was proposed by the playerbase for ending Perma builds was to remove the refresh powers, but the devs chose to nerf the mechanic for all rogues instead. This was in addition to a long term trend to make dungeon and lair bosses see through stealth, allowing them to ignore the TAB power of the class in a way that would never happen for any other (spell mastery, unstoppable, divinity etc...) Probably a moot point now, but it has irked me for a long time.

    I've also felt that a lot of the problem that TR has is that the devs chose to add damage buffs from feats and building stacks, etc... rather than just buff damage (PvP concerns, I remember the when people posted 1 shot videos to the forums and not just from SE) The situational nature of these buffs works against the class, where the rotation based buffs of the GWF strengthen it. TR needs to hit harder than any other class single target, due to being both melee and squishy. Building stacks of X, or meeting condtion Y is always going to be more difficult when you are always forced with decision to dodge or not, to give up damage or maybe die. Given the amount of AoEs that some bosses (and dragons) tend to spew everywhere, it can be hard enough to find a place to stand, much less worry about a hundred technical details. And I haven't really mained a TR since before Stealthed ITC got nerfed. That was the only way for a TR to be useful in places like the old Spellplague where everything could be red at any given moment.

    Vengeance Pursuit, did this ever get fixed? When I came back to the game last August, I didn't put any points in it. The power was so broken back in the earlier days of the game and WK doesn't have much of a resource to look at for builds...

    When you say, make Disheartening Strike an AOE, do you mean to remove the DoT or in addition? While it's clunky to use in groups, the power does a fair amount of damage. Also, Blitz doesn't need to be targeted but I would hope that the proposed rework would retain a requirement for a target (like Split Shot does) or else it would likely cause issues in PvP.
    "We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
  • twitchdigit1twitchdigit1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 62 Arc User
    I agree with everything you've written @sirjimbofrancis. The only addenum I would add would be to wicked reminder, which I'm sure your already know; it only stacks for one TR at a time, and therefore requires coordination with multiple TRs using it, rare as it is to have two or more TRs in a party. It's basically our (MIs at least) only debuff encounter to add for fights, and frustrates me that only one person can use it.

    Proposed change: Multiple stacks by multiple TRs cause a DoT effect, even if it's a small one, in addition to it's regular damage reduction.

    For the only TR in the party: Possibly up the damage reduction for a single stack, to bring it inline with other classes debuff abilities.
  • blur#5900 blur Member Posts: 490 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    About Disheartening Strike, Blitz-like area is addition to its current effect. We are aware of the impact PvE suggestions can cause on PvP and we already mentioned that Devs should check all and separate PvE and PvP if possible if our PvE suggestions are too good for PvP.
    About WR, we discarded the idea of it being Defense reduction ability because DR has a limit and its easily reached even without WR. It would be useless so we turned it into party buff, something compared to HR's Longstrider.

    Thanks for your suggestions.
    Post edited by blur#5900 on
    image
  • sirjimbofrancissirjimbofrancis Member Posts: 348 Arc User
    I'd like to add that this was not just me who wrote this. This was a collaborative effort from 5 very experienced and knowledgable TRs, and me. ;) In all sincerity, I hope that some of the devs and mods take the time to read it as a lot of thought went into this.
    Lilia Drakon - PVE Executioner TR
    She Looked Lvl 18

    Here is my Blog
  • lordseth1985lordseth1985 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 319 Arc User
    just warding for future posts lol
    Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
  • issssshoisssssho Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 105 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    I do appreciate your effort, but gentleman, no offence - you lack some of the basic class wide and general combat knowledge.

    Disheartning strike deals around 25-30% of total dmg in dungs - make it aoe - instantly doubting any of you played wk longer than 15 mins.
    Duelist flurry isn't forgiving on moving bosses ? Maybe not use it on moving bosses then ? (sly ain't that bad)
    Vengeful Pursuit is already very deadly in pvp and you want to add piercing dmg to it ? (Deadly as Pursuit > Lashing blade)
    Shadowborn - really ? 5 sec ? What stops me going pvp - using stealth - smoke bomb - shadow strike - stealth - se ? infinite damage yeeey
    Wicked reminder - I kinda have feeling none of you plays buffer or debuffer support class - if you did you would know how unnaturally much is 30% dmg buff - cw renegade capstone only grants a chance for geting such buff and it requires sacrificing whole build toward it. Longstrider's shot requires hr to be at least 30' away from target to proc the buff and frankly, its quite tricky to use it properly.

    I am sorry if someone feels offended by this or feels disconfort - in my opinion I just stated the obvious and pointed out some of the things you should have paid attention to. There are more flaws but those are most eye catching ones. I did like some suggestions but sadly they are not that game changing they would fix the class.

    *edit* take into account your stealth changes, sod changes, shadowborn - good, now imagine this - stealth>smoke>shadow strike> stealth > vengeful pursuit = just stack all that power and severity and tell me who survives it lol (if possible add whirlwind of blades on combo start for extra spicy taste)
    Post edited by isssssho on
    With great power comes great electricity bill.

    THC
    http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
  • demonmongerdemonmonger Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,350 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    Also speed up the combat animation for gloaming strike.... in pve some enemies move out of range before it hits. In pvp people just walk away and you miss...
    Post edited by demonmonger on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    I hate paying taxes! Why must I pay thousands of dollars in taxes when everything I buy is taxed anyways!
  • ug2bkug2bk Member Posts: 59 Arc User
    Fine ideas, especially about stealth.

    Still, are razor action, hateful knives and dagger threat good as they are?
    Imo, DT - 20' limit should be removed, let it be 3/6/9/12% instead.

    RA - as I recall, it's 'piercing' damage now and it's not WAI.
    If I'm not that wrong, when damage is not piercing, it can use both crit chance and CA (similar passive powers of other classes). That would be something at least, not sure about damage amount, though.
    HK - it's just awful. The only way for TR to prone a thing, yet CC time is way too short. Also, pve-wise, almost 100% party has CA - let it be crit. severity /crit chance or damage bonus instead - that would be something.

    Also, how many of you ever slotted 'talisman of shadows"? Some damage/x2-x3 healing amount for all in party/7% of TR power added to all party in 30' - otherwise even for WK there's always something better than that one.
  • demonmongerdemonmonger Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,350 Arc User
    Tr should have a way to give stealth to others. Those under this shared stealth should be granted 100% critical chance on on first strike.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    I hate paying taxes! Why must I pay thousands of dollars in taxes when everything I buy is taxed anyways!
  • tom#6998 tom Member Posts: 952 Arc User
    +1 hope the devs read this
  • thegurupandit#0671 thegurupandit Member Posts: 22 Arc User
    +100
    >:) Life is like a train journey. Someone gets in, someone gets off and someone switches the wagon > :)
  • blur#5900 blur Member Posts: 490 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    isssssho said:

    I do appreciate your effort, but gentleman, no offence - you lack some of the basic class wide and general combat knowledge.

    Disheartning strike deals around 25-30% of total dmg in dungs - make it aoe - instantly doubting any of you played wk longer than 15 mins.
    Duelist flurry isn't forgiving on moving bosses ? Maybe not use it on moving bosses then ? (sly ain't that bad)
    Vengeful Pursuit is already very deadly in pvp and you want to add piercing dmg to it ? (Deadly as Pursuit > Lashing blade)
    Shadowborn - really ? 5 sec ? What stops me going pvp - using stealth - smoke bomb - shadow strike - stealth - se ? infinite damage yeeey
    Wicked reminder - I kinda have feeling none of you plays buffer or debuffer support class - if you did you would know how unnaturally much is 30% dmg buff - cw renegade capstone only grants a chance for geting such buff and it requires sacrificing whole build toward it. Longstrider's shot requires hr to be at least 30' away from target to proc the buff and frankly, its quite tricky to use it properly.

    I am sorry if someone feels offended by this or feels disconfort - in my opinion I just stated the obvious and pointed out some of the things you should have paid attention to. There are more flaws but those are most eye catching ones. I did like some suggestions but sadly they are not that game changing they would fix the class.

    *edit* take into account your stealth changes, sod changes, shadowborn - good, now imagine this - stealth>smoke>shadow strike> stealth > vengeful pursuit = just stack all that power and severity and tell me who survives it lol (if possible add whirlwind of blades on combo start for extra spicy taste)

    No offence but you dont know what you are talking about, because ironically you didnt play TR more than 15mins and those 15mins you spent in PvP, where your only valid point lies.

    You have to understand that these changes are coming from PvE players, 1 PvP player contributed but obviously not enough to satisfy everyone. Also no matter how hard we would have to try we will never be able to satisfy everyone so we wont even try. It is up to developers to take these ideas into consideration and implement if they think they are worthy and balance them for PvP (make them work differently vs players like they did so far).
    About your valid point, it is about the PvP part ofc, interaction of Shadowborn and Shadow strike. Once again we are PvEers and Shadow Strike never came to mention and its possible abuse. All because of SE, we already mentioned that devs should take a close look to interaction of all our suggestions with SE.
    We were fine with keeping Shadowborn as is but excluding procing on dots and atwills and excluding SE but we thought that might be too complicated to implement so we changed it in effort to make it unusable for SE, but we didnt calculate in Shadow Strike.
    If they can exclude dot, atwill and SE from Shadowborn we welcome it with open arms.

    Another thing, Vengeance's Pursuit, we did not know that it is bugged, since WK lacks SE we thought of it as main damage dealer for PvP. Thanks for adding one more bug to our Known bugs section.
    Disheartening strike, it is ability from WK paragon path, it is behind MI in PvE quite a lot, so yes it is meant to be better, like Scoundrel and Saboteur from feat trees as well, because we wanted to make other options a bit closer to MI Exe.

    We should not use our DF on moving targets, sure lets accept that our highest source of damage is useless and deal almost 50% less with Sly. *sarcasm*

    Funny that a WR complaint is coming from HR, who has Longstrider with 45% party buff and 100% up time (your words, not mine).

    I dont mean to insult anyone just trying to explain things better. Every criticism is welcome and it helps us see mistakes and improve our suggestions.
    image
  • issssshoisssssho Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 105 Arc User
    I am aware that current one is a debuff and that its barely used, but I was referring to the suggested change of it - ''charge gives a 10% damage bonus for the party'' which as described I imagine would have some sort of ITF activation upon delivered hit on target. :)
    With great power comes great electricity bill.

    THC
    http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
  • flensburger99flensburger99 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 8 Arc User
    I like the idea, that few TRs ingame try to adjust the TR Situation.
    How it is adjusted.. well thats up to the devs.
    But before I write a longer comment, I wanted to ask the creators of this thread about how much damage percentage the TR class should be buffed to make it more 'viable'?

    @sirjimbofrancis you seem to be the more active one about the suggetion, thats why the tag :p
  • jermosh#8155 jermosh Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    Nice 3sigma approach :D .

    I think much of the issue with this class is the learning curve, its very technical and gear based. I am finally now able to hold my own in PUGs with similar IL DPS Classes, but if I run with my Guild, I am always behind, even beat by much lower IL char. I have to own my rotations flawlessly, I have to setup SoD on my boss and constantly stay on target, any miss of my Rotations and I am on the bottom of DPS.

    I have not seen this learning curve to be as harsh with other Classes. On top of only BiS Builds being viable, other classes have some leeway and Build variability. This has led to a lot of bad TRs, and we have to deal with the stigma of being low DPS, even though we add to the team dynamic. I think adjusting this technical curve would be better as you stated, it would allow for more diversity and still allow for well performing TRs to still be top performers.
  • issssshoisssssho Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 105 Arc User
    Alright :)
    @micky1p00 Thank you for reply and I have to praise your observation ability as you pointed out to some of my obvious mistakes.
    Before I start - my intention wasn't really to give constuctive criticism yet - at that point i was just a bit dissapointed because i know you were preparing those suggestions for quite some time and I admit that I was salty because to an extent I was dissapointed, sorry (just being honest as much as i can) :)
    I do agree that current pve TR needs a buff, but buffs that you presented are in my opinion too big and barely useful for devs as they would make pvp tr even more deadly and that might present a problem (very sensitive topic imo)

    Disheartening is dot - and you probably are familiar that dots maintain buff spike of the moment they are casted at without changing before expiration. Time it right at disheartening strike does wonders - sadly all other powers in WK I tried were underachiving a lot therefore dps pie chart made a lot of space for ds.
    As for most other your observations they are correct.
    I do not agree on WR change however as I find it too powerful - even the idea to take longstrider as source of idea is wrong as its far more trickier to maintain than wk applying is - and you should not take other classes powers as an example since in my opinion all classes are quite unique and require different approach.

    Now before doing changes if we limit at PVE only as Blur says that was your goal - there are 3 steps what needs to be done.
    1 - pinpoint broken / underachiving / problematic powers
    2 - determine the % rate in which each TR path is underachiving
    3 - make changes that are likely easy to impelent in code and not likely to become bugged if possible

    Once again in my opinion I think tr MI needs around 20% single target boost and 35% aoe boost in damage in executioneer tree. Scoudrel needs to tackle issues with CC immune mobs while saboteur also needs buff in damage however I am not sure how much since I do not possess enough information about it.

    However some of my suggestion that I find more fit are following :
    - SoD : on encounter target gains debuff that lowers mitigation to TR attacks by 50%-60% which lasts 8 second and after that if target don't die goes on a 10 sec cooldown (not sure about length), but don't go on cooldown if target does die. In case multiple targets are hit each target will be applied with mitigation debuff of 30%. Mitigation debuff as you know is not affected by effectiveness cap.
    - Shadowborn - After entering stealth next used encounter power will be applied with 100% damage buff.
    - Stealth - While in stealth TR deals increased damage - base power increases the amount of bonus damage dealt - 1 power = 0.00054 increased damage for example

    Now sorry for not presening more ideas - and for typos - I am fairly drunk so trying to keep it as simple as I am able to.
    With great power comes great electricity bill.

    THC
    http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
  • blur#5900 blur Member Posts: 490 Arc User
    edited April 2017
    Quite a politician you are, you spoke a lot but almost said nothing in most part of your reply. :p

    I hope you are joking because every single one of your suggestions is far more than we were asking (first Shadowborn suggestion aside).
    image
  • sirjimbofrancissirjimbofrancis Member Posts: 348 Arc User
    blur#5900 said:

    Quite a politician you are, you spoke a lot but almost said nothing in most part of your reply. :p

    I hope you are joking because every single one of your suggestions is far more than we were asking (first Shadowborn suggestion aside).

    ^ This. So much this. Most of our suggestions are not really buffs, but changes to mechanics. The only real buff is in the stealth. Which offers a very modest boost at BIS levels. I mean, I like your buffs. They'll make us super powerful. But, the idea here is not to overpower TRs. What we want is balance with other classes, PVP, and to have other viable TR builds, not to be the next FOM.
    Lilia Drakon - PVE Executioner TR
    She Looked Lvl 18

    Here is my Blog
  • sirjimbofrancissirjimbofrancis Member Posts: 348 Arc User
    Also, @isssssho your stealth buff is dependent on the base power. My guild just hit rank 12 and my base power is right at 36000 power. Your buff would give me a + 19.44% damage buff. That is higher than our suggestion with the crit severity. But, my bigger objection is that it disproportionately benefits endgame BIS TRs in big guilds. The lower geared TR gets less than half the damage increase, and they need the buff, perhaps, more than we do. Adding crit severity is nice because, by endgame, our crit severity is so high it provides less of a buff, but for lower geared TRs, if will help them more.
    Lilia Drakon - PVE Executioner TR
    She Looked Lvl 18

    Here is my Blog
  • issssshoisssssho Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 105 Arc User
    But @srijimbofrancis :disappointed: , just think it through with severity - next logical move would be for end game trs to kick vorpal for feytouched or some other non severity enchant as well as severity companions - resulting in dropping your severity to 100% or so, so you profit maximally from that mechanism (same as medium or beginer trs), making tab button adding 30% + dmg to tr via severity which is in my opinion ridiculous for a single tab button.
    Also the damage increase i presented would be necessary as some other skills would need rework but for less dmg overall, such as duelist flurry which would in my case - reduce max stacks to 5 making it easier to apply but also halving the speed of the ticks of bleed caused by this power - if stacks expire and target is not dead, tr will automatically teleport behind the target which had bleed stacks. (needs placement adjust for stuff like turtle in fbi where behind target is a no go :) ) This would affect tr to have more fun mechanism and more attractive playstyle that suits tr better than current one.
    There are more of similar changes to be done before real balance achieved but tr being too op would be out of question in the end.
    With great power comes great electricity bill.

    THC
    http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
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