The balance between at-will and encounter powers are bit of. At-will do so little demage that I have to wait until ecounter power is up to kill 5 mobs. Better would be to do less demage with encounter powers but with shorter cooldown and more dmg on at-will powers.
No, this is exactly what has brought the game to the state it's in now and made necessary the changes in Mod16.
When Encounters and to the same effect, Dailies, have lower CD's in exchange for lowering the damage they do it creates the endless slope of being forced to further decrease the damage they do as Power increases and eventually land right where we are now; weak Encounters that might help in killing things but are practically worthless overall and getting worse with every Module.
I get that it's difficult for some people to adjust to different concepts but that is what is needed right now, for people to have an actual understanding of their Class rather than relying on being overgeared and letting that carry you.
That's why the majority of players over 14.5k currently range from average to poor at best at the game.
I know you specifically want us to quit using dailies, but in an hour of running undermountain content today I was able to fill my AP guage and use my daily 3 times. I'm using a frankenslotted 10kish level 72 so far. Not super high end, I know, but think about it. That averages out to using my daily once, possibly twice, in an entire dungeon. I wasn't even able to fill it for use once every mission.
is really that bad
It's not "bad", it's how things are intended to work.
Being able to near freely spam our Dailies was a luxury that has spoiled us and created a warped view of how it should work for people who didn't realize this long before this point. The combination of not knowing how to gear, build characters and sub-optimal experience with Powers at this time won't do it justice yet but Dailies can and should equal approx 1/5 of your total DPS with a Single Use, equivalently.
Unloading an optimal Daily on a Boss will be what causes the large chunks of HP to vanish now, making their use actually mean something.
I understand we're not going to be spamming them anymore. I'm not basing my judgement on this. But, with the current AP build rate I'm experiencing, my daily isn't even available every time I fight a boss. It's not a matter of tactical decision for use when I never have it to decide on.
Shadow of Demise and Duelist's Flurry should be on the same paragon path. If Whisperknife is meant to specialise in damaging groups, versus Assasssin's single target, it doesn't really make sense to have SoD here.
The balance between at-will and encounter powers are bit of. At-will do so little demage that I have to wait until ecounter power is up to kill 5 mobs. Better would be to do less demage with encounter powers but with shorter cooldown and more dmg on at-will powers.
No, this is exactly what has brought the game to the state it's in now and made necessary the changes in Mod16.
When Encounters and to the same effect, Dailies, have lower CD's in exchange for lowering the damage they do it creates the endless slope of being forced to further decrease the damage they do as Power increases and eventually land right where we are now; weak Encounters that might help in killing things but are practically worthless overall and getting worse with every Module.
I get that it's difficult for some people to adjust to different concepts but that is what is needed right now, for people to have an actual understanding of their Class rather than relying on being overgeared and letting that carry you.
That's why the majority of players over 14.5k currently range from average to poor at best at the game.
Yes I really get that. But when I have to wait 10 or more sec for my powers to cool down standing in some corner beceause my at- will do almost non demage that is no good. How do quest on that matter or dungons? I am not saying that at-will have to get the same demage as ecounter but do anything with them would be nice since cooldowns are very, very long.
Bait and Switch, the AP gain we get from decoy taking damage is 0.
What is Path of the Blade supposed to excel at? Considering it's cooldown one would expect either high damage or high AP gain(well, as high as it gets in m16)... BTW, POTB gives 0 AP gain.
Bait and Switch, the AP gain we get from decoy taking damage is 0.
What is Path of the Blade supposed to excel at? Considering it's cooldown one would expect either high damage or high AP gain(well, as high as it gets in m16)... BTW, POTB gives 0 AP gain.
Path of the Blades is a suicide button now, cuz it aggros in a super wide range and if you don't have a healer player with you, your pretty much dead in solo play. Before it was great to tag events and running dungeons solo etc cuz you had leech and high survivability as Skullcracker and your daily gain was nice that you could deal with the aggro.
And yes the skill deals practically no damage nor any Ap gain, and it doesn't proc wep enchants at all either, which is another pointless thing, cuz all weapon enchants now are weak aswell numerically.
Nobody really runs the skill even now before m16 and they definietly don't run it in any dungeon groups(i got insta kicked quite a bit the moment i used PotB) as again massive aggro and low damage. I like this skill visually and i ran it for the high AP gain so i could use my daily more during solo play.
I don't see PotB fixed in any way as its mechanically non-viable now in m16.
Bait and Switch, the AP gain we get from decoy taking damage is 0.
What is Path of the Blade supposed to excel at? Considering it's cooldown one would expect either high damage or high AP gain(well, as high as it gets in m16)... BTW, POTB gives 0 AP gain.
Path of the Blades is a suicide button now, cuz it aggros in a super wide range and if you don't have a healer player with you, your pretty much dead in solo play. Before it was great to tag events and running dungeons solo etc cuz you had leech and high survivability as Skullcracker and your daily gain was nice that you could deal with the aggro.
And yes the skill deals practically no damage nor any Ap gain, and it doesn't proc wep enchants at all either, which is another pointless thing, cuz all weapon enchants now are weak aswell numerically.
Nobody really runs the skill even now before m16 and they definietly don't run it in any dungeon groups(i got insta kicked quite a bit the moment i used PotB) as again massive aggro and low damage. I like this skill visually and i ran it for the high AP gain so i could use my daily more during solo play.
I don't see PotB fixed in any way as its mechanically non-viable now in m16.
Well, considering the huge rework I am wondering what PotB is good for now... Before it usually was a sign for inexperienced player but it had one clear advantage, highest AP gain of all powers on single target and second to Bait'n'Switch and Dazing Strike on aoe. The only usage it had for me was on Arcolith fight because it had higher damage than Smoke Bomb(SB didnt hit Arcolith past 1st hit) and far higher AP gain.
With the changes in M16 the AP gain has been rekt so that power clearly needs a damage buff or some new effect which would make it useful. Procing Weapon enchants is a basic thing which it should do but I am aware of those issues as it had them even in the past...
I dont mind the aggro it has if there is something useful about it but for now I dont see it. Same case with Bait and Switch, it became pretty much useless now.
path of blades - would it be nice if it acted as a damaging barrier that mobs have difficulty entering. could create an interesting staggered combo with smoke bomb... smokebomb, single attack/atwills until smoke bomb enters cd.. path of blades to allow breather whilst other skills on cd.
path of blades - would it be nice if it acted as a damaging barrier that mobs have difficulty entering. could create an interesting staggered combo with smoke bomb... smokebomb, single attack/atwills until smoke bomb enters cd.. path of blades to allow breather whilst other skills on cd.
So like warlocks blade barrier? haven't tested lock yet in m16 but i doubt thew new one is still deflecting barrier, correct me if i am wrong.
Also overall in m16 non-damaging encounters are very very bad to slot as all damage is now shifted to encounters and AP gain is very low especially for rogues. You would simply reduce your damage massively, if you don't have a 3rd damage encounter slotted.
I know you specifically want us to quit using dailies, but in an hour of running undermountain content today I was able to fill my AP guage and use my daily 3 times. I'm using a frankenslotted 10kish level 72 so far. Not super high end, I know, but think about it. That averages out to using my daily once, possibly twice, in an entire dungeon. I wasn't even able to fill it for use once every mission.
is really that bad
It's not "bad", it's how things are intended to work.
Being able to near freely spam our Dailies was a luxury that has spoiled us and created a warped view of how it should work for people who didn't realize this long before this point. The combination of not knowing how to gear, build characters and sub-optimal experience with Powers at this time won't do it justice yet but Dailies can and should equal approx 1/5 of your total DPS with a Single Use, equivalently.
Unloading an optimal Daily on a Boss will be what causes the large chunks of HP to vanish now, making their use actually mean something.
I understand we're not going to be spamming them anymore. I'm not basing my judgement on this. But, with the current AP build rate I'm experiencing, my daily isn't even available every time I fight a boss. It's not a matter of tactical decision for use when I never have it to decide on.
Something I do on Preview while dedicated players handle individual statistic logging is to go over all Powers and Classes to ensure everything is functional at all Level ranges. If everything comes back reasonable, adjusting for any current bugs then I move on, if something does not, I report it.
Given your conditions, even in a relatively poorly optimized setup you should be managing a Daily every 3-4 mins within a dungeon environment.
Not everything Rogue is working as intended right now (like literally every other Class) so even that is a lowball estimate.
I know you specifically want us to quit using dailies, but in an hour of running undermountain content today I was able to fill my AP guage and use my daily 3 times. I'm using a frankenslotted 10kish level 72 so far. Not super high end, I know, but think about it. That averages out to using my daily once, possibly twice, in an entire dungeon. I wasn't even able to fill it for use once every mission.
is really that bad
It's not "bad", it's how things are intended to work.
Being able to near freely spam our Dailies was a luxury that has spoiled us and created a warped view of how it should work for people who didn't realize this long before this point. The combination of not knowing how to gear, build characters and sub-optimal experience with Powers at this time won't do it justice yet but Dailies can and should equal approx 1/5 of your total DPS with a Single Use, equivalently.
Unloading an optimal Daily on a Boss will be what causes the large chunks of HP to vanish now, making their use actually mean something.
I understand we're not going to be spamming them anymore. I'm not basing my judgement on this. But, with the current AP build rate I'm experiencing, my daily isn't even available every time I fight a boss. It's not a matter of tactical decision for use when I never have it to decide on.
Something I do on Preview while dedicated players handle individual statistic logging is to go over all Powers and Classes to ensure everything is functional at all Level ranges. If everything comes back reasonable, adjusting for any current bugs then I move on, if something does not, I report it.
Given your conditions, even in a relatively poorly optimized setup you should be managing a Daily every 3-4 mins within a dungeon environment.
Not everything Rogue is working as intended right now (like literally every other Class) so even that is a lowball estimate.
Which is precisely why I brought it to this thread to mention .... Imagine that.
I just had an Idea. Its just that so if you think of doing sth in that direction pls ask Janne first. What if Stealth would reduce cooldowns of powers used in it and reduce there dmg but make the next power used after that deal higher Dmg? You could also shuffle that around. Just to make stealth more impactful and make the gameplay more fluend and reward skill. You could also implement this as a passiv or a feat i guess
It's nice to see more interaction then the last time, hopefully it keeps going and all classes manage to get in a good state.
With that being said i have a few things that i have to say, I will be giving my feedback about a few of the new things regarding the class providing the reason for such opinion, you might find the boring stuff in the spoilers. Now most of the stuff i have to say is feedback, just opinions about stuff that seems out of place or straight up bizarre.
First of all i got to give credit where credit is due. I really liked that the paragon paths were really well distinguished in powers wise, one had ranged aoe while the other has melee single target, with that said i did find a few things that seemed to be really out of place.
1.Dailies
a) Bloodbath being in the single target paragon while lurkers assault being in the aoe one, that and the fact that LA did still block ap gain, even though that now it takes you an entire minute to get your daily back normally. So my suggestion here would be to swap those 2 and remove LA ap block
2.Encounters a) Bait and Switch was no deploying, only managed to do so when jumping and spamming it's encounter button , was weird, also it doesn't give any action points from it being hit. b)Talisman of Shadows doesn't seem to be proccing at all.
3.Class Features
a) Sneak Attack gives a run speed bonus of 15% and increases the cooldown rate of our powers by 10% while stealth. this class feature just seems straight up bad, you have to literally stay in stealth for the entire 6 seconds to get a reduction on the cooldowns of 0.6 seconds
( and u take 12 seconds to get your stealth back , however we do have feats that increased our stealth so it's hard to quantify it), if we don't count those said stealth increasing feats for every 18 seconds ( 6 in stealth + 12 out) we get 0.6 seconds reduced, that's 3.(3)% cooldown reduction, and our encounters seem to be around 40% of our damage, meaning that its around the same as a 1.(3)% damage bonus IF we stay stealthed those 6 secs not doing much, a comparison is that its worth around 2k power stat if u have 100k already( and that wont be easy).
I still think its really under powered comparing to the other ones and should get maybe double the reduction at least
b) First Strike increases the damage of your first attack in combat by 15%, this is probably the worse class feature and its the last one you unlock, doesn't make much sense to me, you need to kill everything withing like 5 attacks for it to be good, i just don't really get this one since its probably the most under powered and the last you unlock, maybe add a cooldown to it of some sorts. So my suggestion here would be that every 10 seconds your next encounter would give 15% extra damage, or make it so that when you attack from stealth you get a 10% damage bonus, this would help with sneak attack and make it more useful after all, would also make the feat Master of shadows more useful.
4.Feats
a) Toxic Blades, every encounter and daily does extra DoT for on average 10 magnitude per second for 9 seconds, this feat does work properly but doesn't show the 5th stack (its just a visual bug nothing much).
b) Shadow of Demise does 50% of the damage deal instead of 30% and double dips on debuffs however this is not the main thing i wanted to talk about, this feat is the one that seems the most out of place since it's on the paragon path that is mainly focused on aoe. So my suggestion here would be to fix this feat and exchange its place with Toxic Blades from the other paragon path this because it seems the most appropriate feat from there to exchange place with.
c) Knife's Edge makes it so that when you use a daily your cooldowns get reduced by 4 seconds, normally you could use a daily power every 60 seconds, i don't really know what to say about this one, sure you reduce a bit of cooldown but ... its just weird, its not something that is going to happen that much, i wanted to suggest a change to it but i can't think of much without its theme that could make people to want to slot it more.
d) Back Alley Tactics SHOULD make you deal up to 10% more damage with the less ap you have, however it makes it so that your damage can go from 110% when ap is empty, 0% when at 99.(9)% and normal at 100%
e) Hastily Sharpened Blades gives a random number of critical strike chance from 1 to 10%, don't have much to say about this one besides suggesting it to increase the critical chance by a fixed amount like 10% for example or maybe increase the maximum critical chance by 5% so that its not so under powered.
f) Execution makes it so that when an enemy is under 20% hp our attacks have a 5% chance to deal 200% of our weapon damage, so on average is 10% of our weapon damage per attack that's so little and its what we unlock at level 77, doesn't make any sense for me. So my suggestion here is to increase it to 100% chance.
g) Shadow's Flurry makes our attacks have a 5% chance to spawn a shadow that uses the final combo of duelist's flurry, I really liked the idea it is a bit clunky, when it spawns it does also the starting part of duelist flurry instead of just the final combo making it move a bit forward and possibly hit a target behind the one you are focusing IF it hits at all (at least on dummies), also it doesn't deal much damage, so maybe increase it's chance to spawn, maybe 15%-25% or so, so that it's not just a throw away feat.
h) Hidden Attacks, this feat makes your at wills drain 10% instead of 15% of your stealth and makes you be able to stay in stealth longer by 50%, but i don't it is working even if it was however doesn't seem to be that great even if it worked. so my suggestion would be to make it increase the damage while in stealth or make it increase stealth regen instead of the at-will part.
i) Shadowy Opportunity, not much to say about this one, again seems a bit underpowered unless its made so that it procs from potb and such, but again, i don't really know how much is the class in terms of balance so this one is just a guess.
j) Gutterborn's Touch, when dealing damage with combat advantage our accuracy is increased by 5k, well this would be ok ish if people couldn't get it capped so easily, so maybe increase your combat advantage damage by 10% or so above the cap, similar to what i suggested on the Hastily Sharpened Blades Feat.
k) Ambusher's Haste increases the damage we deal in stealth by 10% based on how full the meter is, well it could be good but its basicly only going to be used in one encounter power since at-wills deal so little, maybe make it increase damage when entering giving a damage bonus for a certain amount of time or as the name suggests make it so that the encounter that you use get right out of cooldown so u can use it again.
5. Ability Scores
a) Strength increases the rogue damage now MORE then dex will ever do, this is the bizarre part, doesn't make sense at all in my mind nor anyone I've talked to, same applies to ranger.
Final notes: One thing that would be really interesting would be to stick to a theme in each paragon, as in the whisperknife would to go get in and out out stealth a lot and on assassin to do high bursts of single target damage, i tried to focus on that with the suggestions and also making every feat being impact full and not just be there to be there. One thing that i don't know for sure is how much dps the class can do compared to other but something more important then doing damage is how the class itself feels, for example i really loved the in and out of stealth part since it gave cooldowns and such making it fast paced like how it was in past mods, but now dealing a much more balanced amount of damage, if it was possible i would say to take make it more fast paced reducing cooldowns and the magnitude accordingly but i can't speak for everyone, but i think that almost everyone agrees that we all really hate that you almost gotta do nothing for 13 seconds besides at-wills its just boring and probably the thing i hated the most this mod.
Shuriken Toss is terrible. The animation for it is really neat and I like watching my character flip around in her cool outfit all nimble-like, but the damage it's doing is pretty abysmal. I get that it ricochets off 2 additional targets and that all three are getting hit with roughly the same amount of damage, and yet the Cloud of Steel at-will still seems to be better by far. With a slightly slower cast time I thought for sure ST would have a higher magnitude but it's lower by 5 - which I'm attributing that to the ricochet effect. Yes CoS has a higher magnitude and slightly faster cast time of .3 compared to .43 and so you would expect it to be marginally better, but it's A LOT better and feels exponentially faster to use it to burn one enemy down than ST.
I was excited for a new nifty at-will but I'm not sure this will make the final cut in actual use.
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demonmongerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,350Arc User
<font color=cyan> After extensive testing of assassin here is my conclusion.
Shadow's Flurry This feat works fine for melee ranges powers, but when you use ranged powers the spawn just stands there and does not engage target. I would choose this over the current execution feat.
Execution This feat activates at 20% enemy health. It would be better to activate at 50% remaining enemy health. Why? As of now there is only a 5% chance that it works, and a 5% chance at 20% life means you wont hardly ever see this feat work. Then when it does it's only 10k damage. In groups this will never work, maybe once or twice on a boss. Increase the % change of activation to 50% at 20% life or 20% chance at 50% life.
Assassinate This encounter is semi ranged like lashing blade. Works great with vorpal.
Gloaming cut This at will has been reduced to next to useless... the damage is far too weak now for the activation time.
Might as well use deft strike, lashing blade, assassinate as encounters.
Deft to avoid attacks and deal good damage. Lashing and assassinate for heavy damage.
Use insignia bonuses to gain life. Use companion to gain life. Use high stamina recharge to avoid heavy attacks.
Nothing like mod 15...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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2
demonmongerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,350Arc User
Oh and I have no problem filling my ap for daily powers rapidly....
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I hate paying taxes! Why must I pay thousands of dollars in taxes when everything I buy is taxed anyways!
Started new rogue to test features. Hateful Knives (Daily), Blade Flurry & Path of the Blade (both encounters) are not on the powers tab. Further, Path of the Blade says it is an "Encounter (Paragon)", yet I received it at 8th level.
And while we are at balancing why do we tr not have any fireball or combo attack with flames? its really upsetting that SW has sth like that and we dont pls put it in instead of lashing blade
> @tgwolf said: > I know you specifically want us to quit using dailies, but in an hour of running undermountain content today I was able to fill my AP guage and use my daily 3 times. I'm using a frankenslotted 10kish level 72 so far. Not super high end, I know, but think about it. That averages out to using my daily once, possibly twice, in an entire dungeon. I wasn't even able to fill it for use once every mission. > > is really that bad > > It's not "bad", it's how things are intended to work. > > Being able to near freely spam our Dailies was a luxury that has spoiled us and created a warped view of how it should work for people who didn't realize this long before this point. The combination of not knowing how to gear, build characters and sub-optimal experience with Powers at this time won't do it justice yet but Dailies can and should equal approx 1/5 of your total DPS with a Single Use, equivalently. > > Unloading an optimal Daily on a Boss will be what causes the large chunks of HP to vanish now, making their use actually mean something.
20sec cd with 3 encounters and your atwills doing 1/6 of your pet dmg id not fun. Other games have this way but offers you tons of spells
- Master of Shadows : The feat is strong but the tooltip is unclear and, as far as I can tell, all wrong. Passive stealth drain isn't reduced at all and stealth regeneration is increased by 100%, not 50%.
- Tenacious Concealment : 10% less stealth loss from damage instead of 100%, is it a typo? the 5% extra stealth regen is either not working or too small to be noticeable.
- Sneak Attack : Not sure how the +10% cooldown rate in stealth is supposed to work. Does it apply to encounters you use while in stealth or does it increase the rate of all encounters currently recharging as long as you remain in stealth. I've tried both but couldn't see a difference probably because 10% is much too small. I'd suggest to begin with at least 50% and adjust it later if necessary.
- Oppressive Darkness : It only works with the very first hit of Smoke Bomb and Path of the Blade. It's probably intentionnal but the damage done by Oppressive Darkness is so small that I'd suggest enabling for each hit to try and make it worthwhile.
- Toxic Blades : Shows 4 stacks when at 5. Smoke Bomb multi-procs it but not Path of the Blade.
- Back Alley Tactics : Varies between +10% and -100% instead of +10% and +0%.
- Hidden Attacks : Doesn't reduce passive stealth drain at all. Stealth lasts 6 seconds with or without it.
- Dagger Threat : Gives 5% extra damage instead of 7.5%.
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited March 2019
I've posted crapton of posts about this, so I will not repeat ad nauseam, but still some points:
Stealth - After 15 mods of Stealth draining on at-will, and not, doing crit and not, we finally reached the point when it does nothing. Now it's mostly visual button. Especially for Assassin.
Assassin - Only viable due to Knife Edge + Whirlwind of Blades that procs per target. This creates a false impression that the paragon is ok, and with it the whole class, in terms of both damage and not boring gameplay. Having only single target at-wills that we are forced to use, while ~20 second CDs are counting is NOT fun.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
edited March 2019
Visual Aids:
Red = bad. Assassin: Whisperknife: Skill Damage Distribution:
This class has a lot of fundamental issues, so here is a list:
Stealth is a poor mechanic, it doesn't make a big impact to gameplay.
Whisperknife is themed to rely around stealth, Stealth is bad, Whisperknife is bad.
Assassin's feats don't have much of a theme to them, fortunately they are ok feats, but the path lacks an identity other then, "hits hard and has good encounters."
Whisperknife's encounters are bad. It has some theme with the feats, but it goes nowhere as stealth doesn't do anything.
Assassin relies on hard hitting single target powers, with long cooldowns. Whilst this is not by itself a problem, when there is no alternative useful playstyle for others who like TR, it creates a divide.
I don't know how to fix these, so I will not try, but I will outline why they are problems. Stealth: Stealth is an issue because it has no impact on gameplay. Players will position for CA, this means the only effect a TR gets from Stealth is the added effect. The added effect is essentially like the mastery bonus of a CW power, since you can choose only 1 power to get it at a time. Only CW can slot an extra power there and it gets a 20% damage boost. To put it simply, this is a butchered spell mastery.
Whisperknife: Whisperknife relies on Stealth. Stealth is a poor mechanic which doesn't do much. Whilst the feats have some theme, they are trying to patch an iceberg size hole in the tr ship. This is compounded by poor encounters, Blitz is AoE, Vengeance Persuit is AoE, Shadowy Disappearance is AoE. This is a path which screams to be used for AoE. The only problem is, these powers are bad to use and the feats do not complement this playstyle. This path seems completely lost, trying to be both ranged, Stealth and AoE and failing at all 3.
I won't list a rotation I used on Whisperknife, since unless this path gets given some serious love, it may as well not exist.
Assassin Assassin has no theme at all, but its encounters are good and it has a few feats to boost damage, so it does damage. It seems to be designed as a heavy hitter that does a lot of damage when it hits, but without the right amount of side mechanics to back this up, it just seems boring. To make this more fun in my opinion I would give this some sort of combo playstyle. Give Shadow of Demise to Assassin, add some short duration damage buffs to 1 or 2 at wills, encouraging you to stack them. Add some more short window buffs on feats that proc off specific conditions and then have the class be about holding your rotation until that window is up, then unloading all your encounters in that period.
The rotation I am using here is Duelist's Flurry, Smoke Bomb, Dazing Strike from stealth Blade Flurry and Whirlwind of Blades for AoE. Then for Single Target I am using Duelist's Flurry, Assassinate, Deft Strike/Wicked Reminder (depending on the fight), Lashing Blade from Stealth and Shocking Execution. As you will note, these are long cooldown powers so there are very long periods of at wills in between.
Unfortunately, unless many significant changes are made to this class, I think it will fail as a concept. It might do very good dps at the moment, but it is a class with no direction.
Shuriken Toss Nice idea, but this power is completely underwhelming (damage and/or utility). Currently I wouldn't choose this over another at will. CoS is a much better ranged alternative.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Lashing Blade Stealth: Strikes with 50% additional Critical Severity. Chance to trigger the stealth effect of LB is 50%, not 100%. Crit chance treshold (50%) break the Stealth bonus of this encounter.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Assassinate's damage bonus works regardless of which side of the enemy you are on, even outside of stealth
Comments
When Encounters and to the same effect, Dailies, have lower CD's in exchange for lowering the damage they do it creates the endless slope of being forced to further decrease the damage they do as Power increases and eventually land right where we are now; weak Encounters that might help in killing things but are practically worthless overall and getting worse with every Module.
I get that it's difficult for some people to adjust to different concepts but that is what is needed right now, for people to have an actual understanding of their Class rather than relying on being overgeared and letting that carry you.
That's why the majority of players over 14.5k currently range from average to poor at best at the game.
I did not select any feats after loging on new copy of my character.
- Lashing blade(+stealth) 2% ap gain 20s cooldown
- Smoke boomb 3 targets 1% ap gain 18s? cooldown
- Deft Strike 1% ap gain
- at-will - Cloud of Steel 1-2 hits 1%
Please confirm if this is normal?What is Path of the Blade supposed to excel at? Considering it's cooldown one would expect either high damage or high AP gain(well, as high as it gets in m16)... BTW, POTB gives 0 AP gain.
And yes the skill deals practically no damage nor any Ap gain, and it doesn't proc wep enchants at all either, which is another pointless thing, cuz all weapon enchants now are weak aswell numerically.
Nobody really runs the skill even now before m16 and they definietly don't run it in any dungeon groups(i got insta kicked quite a bit the moment i used PotB) as again massive aggro and low damage. I like this skill visually and i ran it for the high AP gain so i could use my daily more during solo play.
I don't see PotB fixed in any way as its mechanically non-viable now in m16.
Before it usually was a sign for inexperienced player but it had one clear advantage, highest AP gain of all powers on single target and second to Bait'n'Switch and Dazing Strike on aoe. The only usage it had for me was on Arcolith fight because it had higher damage than Smoke Bomb(SB didnt hit Arcolith past 1st hit) and far higher AP gain.
With the changes in M16 the AP gain has been rekt so that power clearly needs a damage buff or some new effect which would make it useful. Procing Weapon enchants is a basic thing which it should do but I am aware of those issues as it had them even in the past...
I dont mind the aggro it has if there is something useful about it but for now I dont see it.
Same case with Bait and Switch, it became pretty much useless now.
Also overall in m16 non-damaging encounters are very very bad to slot as all damage is now shifted to encounters and AP gain is very low especially for rogues. You would simply reduce your damage massively, if you don't have a 3rd damage encounter slotted.
Given your conditions, even in a relatively poorly optimized setup you should be managing a Daily every 3-4 mins within a dungeon environment.
Not everything Rogue is working as intended right now (like literally every other Class) so even that is a lowball estimate.
What if Stealth would reduce cooldowns of powers used in it and reduce there dmg but make the next power used after that deal higher Dmg? You could also shuffle that around. Just to make stealth more impactful and make the gameplay more fluend and reward skill. You could also implement this as a passiv or a feat i guess
With that being said i have a few things that i have to say, I will be giving my feedback about a few of the new things regarding the class providing the reason for such opinion, you might find the boring stuff in the spoilers.
Now most of the stuff i have to say is feedback, just opinions about stuff that seems out of place or straight up bizarre.
First of all i got to give credit where credit is due.
I really liked that the paragon paths were really well distinguished in powers wise, one had ranged aoe while the other has melee single target, with that said i did find a few things that seemed to be really out of place.
1.Dailies
a) Bloodbath being in the single target paragon while lurkers assault being in the aoe one, that and the fact that LA did still block ap gain, even though that now it takes you an entire minute to get your daily back normally.
So my suggestion here would be to swap those 2 and remove LA ap block
2.Encounters
a) Bait and Switch was no deploying, only managed to do so when jumping and spamming it's encounter button , was weird, also it doesn't give any action points from it being hit.
b)Talisman of Shadows doesn't seem to be proccing at all.
3.Class Features
a) Sneak Attack gives a run speed bonus of 15% and increases the cooldown rate of our powers by 10% while stealth. this class feature just seems straight up bad, you have to literally stay in stealth for the entire 6 seconds to get a reduction on the cooldowns of 0.6 seconds
I still think its really under powered comparing to the other ones and should get maybe double the reduction at least
b) First Strike increases the damage of your first attack in combat by 15%, this is probably the worse class feature and its the last one you unlock, doesn't make much sense to me, you need to kill everything withing like 5 attacks for it to be good, i just don't really get this one since its probably the most under powered and the last you unlock, maybe add a cooldown to it of some sorts.
So my suggestion here would be that every 10 seconds your next encounter would give 15% extra damage, or make it so that when you attack from stealth you get a 10% damage bonus, this would help with sneak attack and make it more useful after all, would also make the feat Master of shadows more useful.
4.Feats
a) Toxic Blades, every encounter and daily does extra DoT for on average 10 magnitude per second for 9 seconds, this feat does work properly but doesn't show the 5th stack (its just a visual bug nothing much).
b) Shadow of Demise does 50% of the damage deal instead of 30% and double dips on debuffs however this is not the main thing i wanted to talk about, this feat is the one that seems the most out of place since it's on the paragon path that is mainly focused on aoe.
So my suggestion here would be to fix this feat and exchange its place with Toxic Blades from the other paragon path this because it seems the most appropriate feat from there to exchange place with.
c) Knife's Edge makes it so that when you use a daily your cooldowns get reduced by 4 seconds, normally you could use a daily power every 60 seconds, i don't really know what to say about this one, sure you reduce a bit of cooldown but ... its just weird, its not something that is going to happen that much, i wanted to suggest a change to it but i can't think of much without its theme that could make people to want to slot it more.
d) Back Alley Tactics SHOULD make you deal up to 10% more damage with the less ap you have, however it makes it so that your damage can go from 110% when ap is empty, 0% when at 99.(9)% and normal at 100%
e) Hastily Sharpened Blades gives a random number of critical strike chance from 1 to 10%, don't have much to say about this one besides suggesting it to increase the critical chance by a fixed amount like 10% for example or maybe increase the maximum critical chance by 5% so that its not so under powered.
f) Execution makes it so that when an enemy is under 20% hp our attacks have a 5% chance to deal 200% of our weapon damage, so on average is 10% of our weapon damage per attack that's so little and its what we unlock at level 77, doesn't make any sense for me. So my suggestion here is to increase it to 100% chance.
g) Shadow's Flurry makes our attacks have a 5% chance to spawn a shadow that uses the final combo of duelist's flurry, I really liked the idea it is a bit clunky, when it spawns it does also the starting part of duelist flurry instead of just the final combo making it move a bit forward and possibly hit a target behind the one you are focusing IF it hits at all (at least on dummies), also it doesn't deal much damage, so maybe increase it's chance to spawn, maybe 15%-25% or so, so that it's not just a throw away feat.
h) Hidden Attacks, this feat makes your at wills drain 10% instead of 15% of your stealth and makes you be able to stay in stealth longer by 50%, but i don't it is working even if it was however doesn't seem to be that great even if it worked.
so my suggestion would be to make it increase the damage while in stealth or make it increase stealth regen instead of the at-will part.
i) Shadowy Opportunity, not much to say about this one, again seems a bit underpowered unless its made so that it procs from potb and such, but again, i don't really know how much is the class in terms of balance so this one is just a guess.
j) Gutterborn's Touch, when dealing damage with combat advantage our accuracy is increased by 5k, well this would be ok ish if people couldn't get it capped so easily, so maybe increase your combat advantage damage by 10% or so above the cap, similar to what i suggested on the Hastily Sharpened Blades Feat.
k) Ambusher's Haste increases the damage we deal in stealth by 10% based on how full the meter is, well it could be good but its basicly only going to be used in one encounter power since at-wills deal so little,
maybe make it increase damage when entering giving a damage bonus for a certain amount of time or as the name suggests make it so that the encounter that you use get right out of cooldown so u can use it again.
5. Ability Scores
a) Strength increases the rogue damage now MORE then dex will ever do, this is the bizarre part, doesn't make sense at all in my mind nor anyone I've talked to, same applies to ranger.
Final notes:
One thing that would be really interesting would be to stick to a theme in each paragon, as in the whisperknife would to go get in and out out stealth a lot and on assassin to do high bursts of single target damage, i tried to focus on that with the suggestions and also making every feat being impact full and not just be there to be there.
One thing that i don't know for sure is how much dps the class can do compared to other but something more important then doing damage is how the class itself feels, for example i really loved the in and out of stealth part since it gave cooldowns and such making it fast paced like how it was in past mods, but now dealing a much more balanced amount of damage, if it was possible i would say to take make it more fast paced reducing cooldowns and the magnitude accordingly but i can't speak for everyone, but i think that almost everyone agrees that we all really hate that you almost gotta do nothing for 13 seconds besides at-wills its just boring and probably the thing i hated the most this mod.
Thank you for reading.
I was excited for a new nifty at-will but I'm not sure this will make the final cut in actual use.
After extensive testing of assassin here is my conclusion.
Shadow's Flurry
This feat works fine for melee ranges powers, but when you use ranged powers the spawn just stands there and does not engage target. I would choose this over the current execution feat.
Execution
This feat activates at 20% enemy health. It would be better to activate at 50% remaining enemy health. Why? As of now there is only a 5% chance that it works, and a 5% chance at 20% life means you wont hardly ever see this feat work. Then when it does it's only 10k damage. In groups this will never work, maybe once or twice on a boss. Increase the % change of activation to 50% at 20% life or 20% chance at 50% life.
Assassinate
This encounter is semi ranged like lashing blade. Works great with vorpal.
Gloaming cut
This at will has been reduced to next to useless... the damage is far too weak now for the activation time.
Might as well use deft strike, lashing blade, assassinate as encounters.
Deft to avoid attacks and deal good damage.
Lashing and assassinate for heavy damage.
Use insignia bonuses to gain life.
Use companion to gain life.
Use high stamina recharge to avoid heavy attacks.
Nothing like mod 15...
> I know you specifically want us to quit using dailies, but in an hour of running undermountain content today I was able to fill my AP guage and use my daily 3 times. I'm using a frankenslotted 10kish level 72 so far. Not super high end, I know, but think about it. That averages out to using my daily once, possibly twice, in an entire dungeon. I wasn't even able to fill it for use once every mission.
>
> is really that bad
>
> It's not "bad", it's how things are intended to work.
>
> Being able to near freely spam our Dailies was a luxury that has spoiled us and created a warped view of how it should work for people who didn't realize this long before this point. The combination of not knowing how to gear, build characters and sub-optimal experience with Powers at this time won't do it justice yet but Dailies can and should equal approx 1/5 of your total DPS with a Single Use, equivalently.
>
> Unloading an optimal Daily on a Boss will be what causes the large chunks of HP to vanish now, making their use actually mean something.
20sec cd with 3 encounters and your atwills doing 1/6 of your pet dmg id not fun. Other games have this way but offers you tons of spells
- Tenacious Concealment : 10% less stealth loss from damage instead of 100%, is it a typo? the 5% extra stealth regen is either not working or too small to be noticeable.
- Sneak Attack : Not sure how the +10% cooldown rate in stealth is supposed to work. Does it apply to encounters you use while in stealth or does it increase the rate of all encounters currently recharging as long as you remain in stealth. I've tried both but couldn't see a difference probably because 10% is much too small. I'd suggest to begin with at least 50% and adjust it later if necessary.
- Oppressive Darkness : It only works with the very first hit of Smoke Bomb and Path of the Blade. It's probably intentionnal but the damage done by Oppressive Darkness is so small that I'd suggest enabling for each hit to try and make it worthwhile.
- Toxic Blades : Shows 4 stacks when at 5. Smoke Bomb multi-procs it but not Path of the Blade.
- Back Alley Tactics : Varies between +10% and -100% instead of +10% and +0%.
- Hidden Attacks : Doesn't reduce passive stealth drain at all. Stealth lasts 6 seconds with or without it.
- Dagger Threat : Gives 5% extra damage instead of 7.5%.
Stealth - After 15 mods of Stealth draining on at-will, and not, doing crit and not, we finally reached the point when it does nothing. Now it's mostly visual button. Especially for Assassin.
Assassin - Only viable due to Knife Edge + Whirlwind of Blades that procs per target. This creates a false impression that the paragon is ok, and with it the whole class, in terms of both damage and not boring gameplay.
Having only single target at-wills that we are forced to use, while ~20 second CDs are counting is NOT fun.
Red = bad.
Assassin:
Whisperknife:
Skill Damage Distribution:
This class has a lot of fundamental issues, so here is a list:
- Stealth is a poor mechanic, it doesn't make a big impact to gameplay.
- Whisperknife is themed to rely around stealth, Stealth is bad, Whisperknife is bad.
- Assassin's feats don't have much of a theme to them, fortunately they are ok feats, but the path lacks an identity other then, "hits hard and has good encounters."
- Whisperknife's encounters are bad. It has some theme with the feats, but it goes nowhere as stealth doesn't do anything.
- Assassin relies on hard hitting single target powers, with long cooldowns. Whilst this is not by itself a problem, when there is no alternative useful playstyle for others who like TR, it creates a divide.
I don't know how to fix these, so I will not try, but I will outline why they are problems.Stealth:
Stealth is an issue because it has no impact on gameplay. Players will position for CA, this means the only effect a TR gets from Stealth is the added effect. The added effect is essentially like the mastery bonus of a CW power, since you can choose only 1 power to get it at a time. Only CW can slot an extra power there and it gets a 20% damage boost. To put it simply, this is a butchered spell mastery.
Whisperknife:
Whisperknife relies on Stealth. Stealth is a poor mechanic which doesn't do much. Whilst the feats have some theme, they are trying to patch an iceberg size hole in the tr ship. This is compounded by poor encounters, Blitz is AoE, Vengeance Persuit is AoE, Shadowy Disappearance is AoE. This is a path which screams to be used for AoE. The only problem is, these powers are bad to use and the feats do not complement this playstyle. This path seems completely lost, trying to be both ranged, Stealth and AoE and failing at all 3.
I won't list a rotation I used on Whisperknife, since unless this path gets given some serious love, it may as well not exist.
Assassin
Assassin has no theme at all, but its encounters are good and it has a few feats to boost damage, so it does damage. It seems to be designed as a heavy hitter that does a lot of damage when it hits, but without the right amount of side mechanics to back this up, it just seems boring. To make this more fun in my opinion I would give this some sort of combo playstyle. Give Shadow of Demise to Assassin, add some short duration damage buffs to 1 or 2 at wills, encouraging you to stack them. Add some more short window buffs on feats that proc off specific conditions and then have the class be about holding your rotation until that window is up, then unloading all your encounters in that period.
The rotation I am using here is Duelist's Flurry, Smoke Bomb, Dazing Strike from stealth Blade Flurry and Whirlwind of Blades for AoE. Then for Single Target I am using Duelist's Flurry, Assassinate, Deft Strike/Wicked Reminder (depending on the fight), Lashing Blade from Stealth and Shocking Execution. As you will note, these are long cooldown powers so there are very long periods of at wills in between.
Unfortunately, unless many significant changes are made to this class, I think it will fail as a concept. It might do very good dps at the moment, but it is a class with no direction.
Nice idea, but this power is completely underwhelming (damage and/or utility).
Currently I wouldn't choose this over another at will. CoS is a much better ranged alternative.
Rogue needs a top end Single Target damage reduction.
Chance to trigger the stealth effect of LB