[Review] [SW] Steady Aim

[roadkillrobin]

My suggestion is to change it and make attacks ...

A: ... Ignore all armor but also lowers your own armor by 50% for the duration

B: ... Undefendeble but lowers your chance to defend attacks by 50%.

[Aceboltz]

Why do you want more burst on a class that is already:
-great for solo
-great for 6V6
-great for WB play
-survivable
-bringing a lot of good stuff to a group
It seems to me you just want your oneshot FA back and hit like a WL and be ranged and be a group support all at once.

If you want to have reliable sustain damage like a squig herder AND more burst at the same time you should consider abandoning your bomb morals or superior base damage.

[lefze]

Spoiler:

Sure, same range as Mara/Magus pull, m1 root... Ultimately having a crit % increaser won't change much (as has been said, the class already has immense access to crit boosters); neither will having 3 guaranteed crits (doesn't help Scout get around the Fester Arrow gimmick issue). I think having 3 guaranteed undefended attacks might be worth something. It would help Assault fulfill burst and it would help Scout fulfill burst; it wouldn't help Skirmish at all really (you could guarantee a knockdown or a flanking shot but wouldn't be OP in competent, organized fighting). Give it "the next 3 direct damage abilities in the next 10 seconds will be undefended, 25s cooldown." Cooldown starts when the buff expires.

I can get behind 3 undefendable attacks, even though I dislike making RKD and especially LA undefendable. The latter should be avoided like the plague actually. I also feel like this change kinda benefits other specs than scout the most in a lot of situations, but overall like the change a lot more than keeping SA a crit boost even if it doesn't bring scout into a playable spot.

When was the last time you played around with Scout? It's not in an ungodly spot right now and with minimal tweaking I think it can get decent. I think SA changes will really help it out more than the potential it gives Skirmish.

The three undefendable attacks sounds like a solid proposal too. It helps Scout with making the time investment into FA worth it and doesn't give too much power to skirmish (and using it on ES doesn't seem too broken now that ES is a 14 point investment imo).

Been running almost anything you can imagine on SW on and off for the last few months, and I can tell you it is in an ungodly spot right now, but you are still right about the minimal tweaking part. It's just that it has very specific problems, and crit has nothing to do with it. I really want to see SA made into the fix for scout, but I strongly disagree most of the changes discussed here will help out scout more than other stances, even skirmish.

The build is simply relies too hard on a successful Fester to get any reliabile damage from crit. Fester in itself has a way too long cast time and travel time to be worth speccing for, even though the damage is great already. Hell, slotting expert skirmisher and running into melee range to get it off is gonna net better results than trying to do ranged damage with it in most cases as it is today. So all in all scout is far subpar to just ruinning assault right now.

[Acidic]

Why do you want more burst on a class that is already:
-great for solo
-great for 6V6
-great for WB play
-survivable
-bringing a lot of good stuff to a group
It seems to me you just want your oneshot FA back and hit like a WL and be ranged and be a group support all at once.

If you want to have reliable sustain damage like a squig herder AND more burst at the same time you should consider abandoning your bomb morals or superior base damage.

Not quite in line with feedback but have to agree with this post.
Most proposed solutions here are not considered useful as they have them already, class has high crit so their base line damage includes crit damage when they look at changes.
The only thing left should be utility such as reduced chance for interrupt

[peterthepan3]

Would it be possible to make SA work differently depending on what stance is being used? That way we could discuss changes for SA relative to each stance , as opposed to blanket fixes that (as lef said) may work well for x but not so much for z.

[lefze]

Would it be possible to make SA work differently depending on what stance is being used? That way we could discuss changes for SA relative to each stance , as opposed to blanket fixes that (as lef said) may work well for x but not so much for z.

Definetly not opposed to the idea as I really want to see it act as a 1.5 second cast time decreaser for scout at least, but this in turn would do little for the other stances other than making scout way better to switch into for armour debuff etc.

As for how it should act for other stances I like the idea of x amount/x duration of undefendable attacks for anything but bombing, this would also benefit assault greatly in a way that makes the burst more reliable contra guaranteed lolcrits. Skirmish gets some pretty obvious benefits from this so could be slapped on either stance.

Other changes I could see being useful but not necessarily doable/fitting for the skill is letting it act as the missing snare breaker SW lacks in assault contra other mdps. Making it reduce the cooldown of the next skill used by 5 seconds would also open up more burst without relying on SM in assault, even though I personally don't think the class is lacking in any stance but scout and this might break the class a bit.

[dansari]

One way you could code it is to make it only work off of single target Damaging abilities. (not ailments, no LA, etc.) This means it wouldn't make your rkd, melee kd, armor debuff, melee disarm, ranged silence, or ranged snare undefendable. If you went this direction though, I think you would want to make some changes to some abilities to benefit Scout more. For example:

Current Damaging abilities
Scout
Festering Arrow
Eagle Eye
Rapid Fire
Flame Arrow

Assault
Swift Strikes
Sweeping Slash (aoe, wouldn't be affected)
Brutal Assault
Counterstrike
Grim Slash

Skirmish
Barrage (aoe, wouldn't be affected)
Flanking Shot
Lileath's Arrow (aoe, wouldn't be affected)
Spiral Fletched Arrow

I think you would want to add Fell the Weak and Glass Arrow to that (make them Damaging; currently they're Ailments). So, essentially you would enable the burst potential on Fester Arrow + Glass Arrow + Fell the Weak in Scout, or Brutal Assault x3 (with WW SM), and it ultimately wouldn't touch Skirmish at all unless you wanted an undefendable Flanking Shot.

This would, on paper, allow SW to be used to assist in bursting a target (in a burst meta) and has clear counterplay (punt, strip) and at a 30s cooldown wouldn't be game breaking.

Spoiler:

I still think SW needs more choice in their playstyle, i.e. more abilities that do different things based on what stance you're in, but that's for another proposal.

[Bozzax]

Sw already is an assist in a burst meta and going by kbs does extremly well (better then most dps)

[Penril]

It doesn't matter if SW is the best class at everything, able to one-shot whole warbands by itself. If there is an issue with a certain skill/tactic/morale, then it is valid to discuss it.

Though maybe it would be better to focus on a different buff/utility for Steady Aim.

[lefze]

One way you could code it is to make it only work off of single target Damaging abilities. (not ailments, no LA, etc.) This means it wouldn't make your rkd, melee kd, armor debuff, melee disarm, ranged silence, or ranged snare undefendable. If you went this direction though, I think you would want to make some changes to some abilities to benefit Scout more. For example:

Current Damaging abilities
Scout
Festering Arrow
Eagle Eye
Rapid Fire
Flame Arrow

Assault
Swift Strikes
Sweeping Slash (aoe, wouldn't be affected)
Brutal Assault
Counterstrike
Grim Slash

Skirmish
Barrage (aoe, wouldn't be affected)
Flanking Shot
Lileath's Arrow (aoe, wouldn't be affected)
Spiral Fletched Arrow

I think you would want to add Fell the Weak and Glass Arrow to that (make them Damaging; currently they're Ailments). So, essentially you would enable the burst potential on Fester Arrow + Glass Arrow + Fell the Weak in Scout, or Brutal Assault x3 (with WW SM), and it ultimately wouldn't touch Skirmish at all unless you wanted an undefendable Flanking Shot.

This would, on paper, allow SW to be used to assist in bursting a target (in a burst meta) and has clear counterplay (punt, strip) and at a 30s cooldown wouldn't be game breaking.

Spoiler:

I still think SW needs more choice in their playstyle, i.e. more abilities that do different things based on what stance you're in, but that's for another proposal.

This would be okay actually, only thing I could see being out of line is undefendable spammable brutal assaults with sm. But other than that this should be completely fine, although I would still see it as a wasted opportunity to bring scout up to par. It makes scout better, but won't be enough.