[Review] [SW] Scout Tactics

[dansari]

1. Identify the issue.
Another Scout tree suggestion, in essence. Currently, Scout is underperforming via potential dps output. The damage you can deal is outshone by the utility granted from Skirmish tree or even the damage granted from Assault. The reason this exists is because most of your damage from Scout is centered around two builds: No Quarter + Eagle Eye or Enchanted Arrows + Fester Arrow. The No Quarter build requires substantial AP feed to be effective (while providing damage that is not much greater than a simple Skirmish build, not to mention Skirmish provides more utility and doesn't require standing still); the Enchanted Arrows build rotates most of your burst around Fester Arrow + Glass Arrow or Fell the Weak, but a substantial part of your burst can be negated by dodging, and your immobility again proves to be a risk that is normally not worth the reward. You're basically playing as a less effective physical damage mage class.

2. Explain why it's an issue.
The purpose of Scout is to provide ranged burst on a target. This is the identity of the tree, as can be seen from the speccable tactics and abilities within the tree (No Quarter is meant to provide faster burst; Glass Arrow is a high damage instant cast, Enchanted Arrows lets you burst more with Fester Arrow, and Fell the Weak is another high damage instant cast finisher). There is very little utility in this tree, and if its damage was higher, then it would be worth it as a main tree. Currently, with its sub-par damage, it doesn't provide much reason to spec into it aside from grabbing Glass Arrow.

3. Propose a viable solution to the problem.
By changing the effects granted from Enchanted Arrows and Guerrilla Tactics, you can start to make this tree worth it.

Enchanted Arrows Proposals
1a. Keep the 100% bypass on resistances for Festering Arrow and Flame Arrow. Add a reduction in cast time of 1s to Festering Arrow.

• This would turn it into a 2s cast, 5s cd ability.

1b. Change the bypass on resistances for Festering Arrow and Flame Arrow to 50%. Festering Arrow is now virtually undefendable.

• This would decrease each individual Fester Arrow damage, but would ultimately increase dps output given Fester would rarely ever miss. Fester would still be a 3s cast.

1c. Remove the bypass on resistances. Equipping this tactic changes Festering Arrow and Flame Arrow to spiritual damage. Festering Arrow and Glass Arrow are now virtually undefendable.

• This would make SM very desirable in Scout SW groups, and would give you more synergy with SMs overall (racially this is nice because then every high elf benefits from spirit debuffs). Your overall damage would decrease since you're not bypassing all resistances, but making Fester and Glass Arrow undefendable gives Scout much greater reliability in dps output while in Scout. Fester would still be a 3s cast.

Guerrilla Training Proposals
2a. Remove the AP cost reduction on Scout abilities. Guerrilla Training now increases the damage modifier of Fell the Weak to 50% and adds a 50% critical damage increaser to Festering Arrow and Glass Arrow.

• This would add a great damage boost on Fester and Glass Arrow, while allowing you to use Fell the Weak earlier (at 50% hp of your target rather than 30%).

2b. Remove the AP cost reduction on Scout abilities. Guerrilla Training now causes Festering Arrow to fester inside your target for 5s, causing your next instant cast Scout ability within those 5s to deal 50% more damage. Festering Arrow's cooldown is increased by 5s.

• This would give a substantial damage buff to either a Festering Arrow + Fell the Weak combo or Festering Arrow + Glass Arrow combo. Bumping Fester to 10s cooldown keeps this from proccing more than once every 10s at minimum. Devs could code this not to work with Whispering Winds since, in my opinion, it would be very strong at 5s cooldown.

Spoiler:

My preferred combo would be 1a and 2b: EA would decrease Fester to 2s cast, keep the 100% bypass, and keeping the potential that it gets dodged/blocked. Then 2b really opens up the potential burst of the tree with GT. This kinda acts like Assault tree where the combo of Sinister Assault and Merciless Soldier provide high damage output for your main skills (Enchanted Arrows + Guerrilla Training allows you to open up high burst on your main skills). And don't forget that the purpose is to make Scout viable over Skirmish. The best way to do that without giving SW more tools is to increase the potential damage output of Scout. SWs will need to choose between Scout tree, Assault tree, and Skirmish tree now, basically foregoing any valuable knockdowns (Exploit Weakness or Eye Shot), for the highest damage output with Fell the Weak + Festering Arrow. Even at rr70, there’s no possible way to obtain either knockdowns in conjunction with the combination of abilities from Scout you’d need to pull off such high damage output, but it would be more worth it to go Scout now since your damage is much more impactful, and would require at least two tactic slots (similar to Assault) to be successful.

[Penril]

Moving to discussions.

[Skalier]

1a. This is fine.

2. The main reason I have to play scout is Eagle Eye. If you remove the reduction action points costs from Guerrilla Training then Eagle Eye with cost 53 AP become useless (with No Quarter tactic ofc). Need also remove additional AP cost from No Quarter tactic if you want cheange Guerrilla Training.

[Panzerkasper]

1a. This is fine.

2. The main reason I have to play scout is Eagle Eye. If you remove the reduction action points costs from Guerrilla Training then Eagle Eye with cost 53 AP become useless (with No Quarter tactic ofc). Need also remove additional AP cost from No Quarter tactic if you want cheange Guerrilla Training.

1a is absolutly not fine. With wispering wind and a M2 this becomes the sickest burst the planet has ever seen.

1c is also completely overpowerd as long as stacking spirit res debuffs exist. This would give FA almost 100% res bypass and would just turn out as broken as option 1a.

Combined with the option 2a or 2b this would create extreme spike rotations that would make every BW look like a dumb school boy.
You people seriously need to learn to think outside of your pug perspective to see what monsters you would create. I admit, that scout is underperforming, but this "solutions" are absolutely ridiculous.

The only acceptable option for me is 1b. An undefendable hard hitting bomb just like Magus Bolt or snipe. That could actually work as a solid option. Build up-> bringing the target low with a fat FA hit and then dropping FtW after it. This would make a defensive reaction possible, instead of dying to a 2 shot.

[lefze]

1a. This is fine.

2. The main reason I have to play scout is Eagle Eye. If you remove the reduction action points costs from Guerrilla Training then Eagle Eye with cost 53 AP become useless (with No Quarter tactic ofc). Need also remove additional AP cost from No Quarter tactic if you want cheange Guerrilla Training.

I see 1a as a perfectly fine fix in itself for scout spec. I get that guerilla training is incerdibly bad, but that's mainly because eagle eye in itself is a terrible skill to use. So to fix this, I suppose it could be suggested that eagle eye had its AP cost reduced alltogether so guerilla training is open for changes, from this proposal or from somewhere else.

As for slapping 50% more damage/crit damage onto scout, I don't agree with this. The cast time reduction in itself fixes the core issue of the spec, which is the huge cast time on fester, not damage. Personally I don't want to see SW become a pseudo sorc with the added benefit of good kiting, CC and sustained damage in pretty much all situations (and from the looks of it a godlike double initiative debuff soon). I don't know if any of the discussed changes for steady aim are being implemented, but if all is added up you would get 50% crit damage, a pretty damn decent crit buff on top of already high crit, on top of the strongest initiative debuff in the game (Might just be the best debuff in the game against many targets.) The change to initiative debuffs stacking would already be an incredible buff.

[lefze]

1a. This is fine.

2. The main reason I have to play scout is Eagle Eye. If you remove the reduction action points costs from Guerrilla Training then Eagle Eye with cost 53 AP become useless (with No Quarter tactic ofc). Need also remove additional AP cost from No Quarter tactic if you want cheange Guerrilla Training.

1a is absolutly not fine. With wispering wind and a M2 this becomes the sickest burst the planet has ever seen.

.

It's already 100% resist bypass just fyi, this would only reduce cast time by 1 second.

[Toldavf]

1a with a swordsmaster and expert skirmisher = 1s spamables that hit around the fireball range. I would argue that its to much on the grounds of potential dps output.

1b actually seems fair unless i am misreading it.

1c seems unnecessary and bloated. While more synergy can be good I don't think undefendable glass arrows are the way forward, it's a bit to big of an an advantage over other ranged players.


2a 50% critical damage on a class whose entire ability set had its base damage balanced around not having any crit increases. How is it balanced to increase festering arrow is such a way?

2b another arbitrary massive damage increase on what is still a very reasonable skill even when its not fulfilling its bonus of striking below a threshold.

[Panzerkasper]

It's already 100% resist bypass just fyi, this would only reduce cast time by 1 second.

I know, but this doesn't make anything better

[lefze]

It's already 100% resist bypass just fyi, this would only reduce cast time by 1 second.

I know, but this doesn't make anything better

I'm very sceptical about most changes people are suggesting for the class because most of them would increase the actual dps output by a gaziollion times. But there is only so much that can be done with the skills so balance, and I see 1 second less cast as a far smaller threat to balance than slapping more damage onto it. The burst would remain the same infact, and while it can be abused like so much else, the class can already pull off 2k+ crits in succession with SM, without the drawback of a casttime, so I fail to see the relevance.

[daniilpb]

I feel okay only with 2a.
To be honest Festering Arrow is a bad skill itself. Its cast time is ridiculously long and can’t be justified by any other following rotations like mage classes have. So this skill and tactic should get a full rework to be viable in any group, until then SW can’t get a decent spot as ST-burst dps class (for now it’s better get BW for ST dmg or Engi in some cases).