[Withdrawn] Phantom's blade

[Stmichael1989]

You're focusing entirely on the wrong aspect there. It's not the fact that the SM gets a 25% chance for 5 seconds of extra defenses, it's that those defenses extend to their group. Group utility, outside of whispering wind for very specific and coordinated groups, has always been the SM achilles heel.

As for how much they can stack, so what? If a tank class chooses to stack that much parry, they're giving up quite a bit else. Namely damage, toughness, wounds, and haven't done anything to boost survivability against ranged classes. On top of that, there's the opportunity cost of using PB for defense costing the SM the use of NB for stat steal.

We're talking about a buff to an unused skill, it should be enough to give reason to use it over the alternative, but not so much that it renders the alternative useless by comparison.

[roadkillrobin]

The parry/dodge/disrupt buff is a bad idea as it wouldn't scale with Mastery like all other Blade Enchants and War Bellows currently does and would be just as effective at 0 Mastery points as 12. Also Nature Blade allready cover this with WS, Initiative and Willpower stat steals increase those vallues by almoast 5% allready with 12 Mastery Points.

[7rere7]

You're focusing entirely on the wrong aspect there. It's not the fact that the SM gets a 25% chance for 5 seconds of extra defenses, it's that those defenses extend to their group. Group utility, outside of whispering wind for very specific and coordinated groups, has always been the SM achilles heel.

As for how much they can stack, so what? If a tank class chooses to stack that much parry, they're giving up quite a bit else. Namely damage, toughness, wounds, and haven't done anything to boost survivability against ranged classes. On top of that, there's the opportunity cost of using PB for defense costing the SM the use of NB for stat steal.

We're talking about a buff to an unused skill, it should be enough to give reason to use it over the alternative, but not so much that it renders the alternative useless by comparison.

I disagree and the topic is about phantom blade ,so I don't want to go into detail why defensive stats wouldn't suffer because of high parry .

I think 5% dodge ,parry ,disrupt boost is to low and 10% is to high for fair balance on phantom blade.

[Kallah]

If you dont like the changes suggested in 1.4.9, PB could be changed using Blessing of Heaven idea.

Something like... "When PB procs on an enemy, during 10 secs groupmates that hit the target will gain X ap's over 3 secs"

I think that there are enough dmg proc, another heal proc could be too much and I dont like the idea of giving a flat %disrupt/dodge/parry...

[Rebuke]

Hell you could even add morale gain for group memebers (like 2 morale points per proc) per proc to somewhat even out the discrepancy between order and destro morale gain.

[Morf]

I dont see how it could hurt to test this, phantoms blade sucks in group play however an internal cooldown may be needed as it would be easy to keep the absorb up by spamming aoe, would just need testing.

Slightly off topic but along the same lines, da toughest for blorcs should also get the same treatment imo.

[anarchypark]

Spoiler:

i use PB almost always. only exception is when assisting dps in premade(NB), i change to PB when tanking is needed
it's always been a good additional shield
i'm surprised that you found no reason to use PB, is your play style more lean to dps than tanking?
as a vaul spec tank i have no issue in PB

i suggest to check what each enchants are doing in their own tree
NB is helping dps , HB is same , PB is helping mitigation
all works well in their tree imho

I think like this, PB had sacrificed grp utility for good self shield.
your solution will certainly reduce vaul SM's tanking ability
then where will it be SMs stance among 3 tanks? (as a tank, not dps)
i can't compare their tanking, haven't played IB, Knight
maybe, current level of PB is mandatory of becoming tanky tank.. idk

Don't restate a debunked point. PB is NOT a good self-shield. Aza has given the numbers to prove this, while you just gave us "I think it is good" - Penril

i made a bad choice of word
my point is
it's the only enchantment that helps tanking
if change is necessary it should be a defensive one, not wound debuff etc

Nature's Blade is a useful offensive enchantment for physical damage groups. Heaven's is a useful offensive enchantment for non-physical damage groups. Maybe the remaining slot is "useful defensive enchantment for the group."

What are some of the options?
** Heal proc - not necessarily better than an absorb, prone to scaling issues (unless calculated as % of max hp?)
** Resistance buff - stacking issues unless the idea is to deliberately conflict with knight
** Clone Da Greenest! (incoming attacks proc resist or armour) from BO - mirror pushing but still an option
** A stronger bubble
** Increased healing received - would this stack with the Isha's Protection tactic?
** AP proc - not strictly defensive but I do not think SM's personal AP management options are great either
** Amour buff - stacking issues
** Toughness buff - clashes with Nature's Blade
** Wounds buff - would be in the spirit of the intended 1.4.9 changes. Liniment stacking might be an issue when they are implemented.
** Disrupt chance
** Reduced chance to be crit
** Flat damage reduction percentage - now I know I have run out of ideas

** Toughness buff - clashes with Nature's Blade - also sm M1, but it can be more reliable in PB
** A stronger bubble - simple and good

[Bozzax]

Spoiler:

I have problem with this
A sm does 100k+ or more damage in CW mostly ST while being hard to kill
A kotbs does 20k and reduce group damge
A soft 2h IB somwhere in the middle and buff one guy

I don't think they should be improved in any way until either damages goes up on ib/kotbs or sm is brought down.

Being able to swap for group migration with one gcd just like other tanks while having dps as a mdps isn't balanced.

This is becoming comedy especially as sms have long punt on proposal as well.

Having a viable spec/playstlye does not mean underperforming skills/tactics won't be changed - Penril.

[Ugle]

Whatever the changes should be it should be beneficial for the group on "defence only" basis powerful enough to actually make it a viable choice over natures blade.

I agree with several others here, make i perhaps a group buff like from redwind(10% buff to defences) , toughness buff like the M1, group wide bubble (renewable) or reduced chance to be crit.

Edit: Of course scaling with mastery points in the mastery tree. No problem if it dosent stack wth other skills/buffs/morales, the main element here being reliable uptime.

Amoeba

[Bozzax]

The problem with this is other tanks does 1/4 pf the damage a sm dish out. If a sm can change to a def enchantment when needed that gives same mitigation as others only to pop back as healers catch up you have created the 2xSm meta (provided proposed punt ofc)

Other tanks cant choose to output sm-damage when needed they are stuck reducing damage.