SW feedback 2026/7/23 Patch Nite

[ponko22]

SW has been completely destroyed.

While the weakening of AoE is understandable, the changes to SW are so terrible that you really need to read them carefully. Has any other class been weakened this thoroughly? The developers' adjustments focused solely on damage reduction, transforming it into a high-risk, no-return class.

[Skirmish has gained nothing and is simply weaker]
Not only has AoE been weakened, but the removal of TACs that increase Armor Penetration has weakened all Skirmish skills. Furthermore, the damage of the skills themselves has been reduced.

- Main skill adjusted from 100ft to 65ft.

- Powerful Draw's Skirmish's 15% Armor Penetration has been changed to a 15ft range increase. Other TACs still increase Armor Penetration, but only Barrage and Lilith's Arrow. This means all other Skirmish skills have had their damage weakened.

- Steady Aim (+25% critical damage) effect changed to target-only, weakened. Barrage and Lileath's Arrow weakened.

- Spirit Arrows weakened from 20% less damage to 30% less damage. It was weakened by the Powerful Draw changes, but is it being weakened even further?

- Lileath's Arrow damage adjusted, weakened. It was weakened by Steady Aim, but is it being weakened even further?

- Flame Arrow's attack power decreased, and it moved to Scout, further reducing the damage increase from points.

- Glass Arrow's damage decreased. Furthermore, it moved to Scout, further reducing the damage increase from points.

- However, the AP cost remains high.

[Scout]
- Festering Arrow: This is also terrible. It was changed to a skill that deals damage at the beginning and after 9 seconds, but to get the damage increase from the final attack, you need to attack with another skill, making it a very cumbersome design. It may also be removed. And just when I thought I could finally deal the same damage as before, the resistance ignore of Festering Arrow due to TAC's No Quarter was changed, and now TAC reduces the resistance of Acid Arrow. Did you know? Festering Arrow is the only skill that deals Corporeal damage. This means that to deal the same damage as before, you have to use Acid Arrow for 1.5 seconds and keep landing skills until the damage activates, which is a tedious process. Actually, it's even lower damage.


[Assult]
I won't say anything more. Armor increase and Disarm are gone, and skills that increase 5-second AoE Detaunt and 5-second Parry by 35% have been added? This just makes things more tedious, and you melt away in about 5 seconds.


[Minimum Request]
-If Steady Aim isn't applied to AoE, increase the AP Cost from 25% to 15%. This also causes problems with the use of Festering Arrow.

- Regarding Powerful Draw, since you nerfed Steady Aim, please keep the Armor Penetration at 15%. How much damage reduction are you going to do? It's ridiculous to reduce the range of your main skill and then change it to TAC, which increases the range to compensate. SH increases by 15ft just by using Pet, but it's not a mirror at all.

Alternatively, change Keen Arrow Heads' Armor Penetration increase to affect the entire Skirmish.

- Flame Arrow is AoE, so please keep it as Skirmish. Why make it so cumbersome to use?

- Is it necessary to increase the damage reduction of Spirit Arrows from 20% to 30%?

- If you're going to apply the No Quarter effect to Acid Arrow, please reduce Acid Arrow's cast time to 1 second so it can be used while running. Nobody uses it normally.

- Please don't remove Assult's armor increase and Disarm.

[Cullenn]

SW has been completely destroyed.

While the weakening of AoE is understandable, the changes to SW are so terrible that you really need to read them carefully. Has any other class been weakened this thoroughly? The developers' adjustments focused solely on damage reduction, transforming it into a high-risk, no-return class.

[Skirmish has gained nothing and is simply weaker]
Not only has AoE been weakened, but the removal of TACs that increase Armor Penetration has weakened all Skirmish skills. Furthermore, the damage of the skills themselves has been reduced.

- Main skill adjusted from 100ft to 65ft.

- Powerful Draw's Skirmish's 15% Armor Penetration has been changed to a 15ft range increase. Other TACs still increase Armor Penetration, but only Barrage and Lilith's Arrow. This means all other Skirmish skills have had their damage weakened.

- Steady Aim (+25% critical damage) effect changed to target-only, weakened. Barrage and Lileath's Arrow weakened.

- Spirit Arrows weakened from 20% less damage to 30% less damage. It was weakened by the Powerful Draw changes, but is it being weakened even further?

- Lileath's Arrow damage adjusted, weakened. It was weakened by Steady Aim, but is it being weakened even further?

- Flame Arrow's attack power decreased, and it moved to Scout, further reducing the damage increase from points.

- Glass Arrow's damage decreased. Furthermore, it moved to Scout, further reducing the damage increase from points.

- However, the AP cost remains high.

[Scout]
- Festering Arrow: This is also terrible. It was changed to a skill that deals damage at the beginning and after 9 seconds, but to get the damage increase from the final attack, you need to attack with another skill, making it a very cumbersome design. It may also be removed. And just when I thought I could finally deal the same damage as before, the resistance ignore of Festering Arrow due to TAC's No Quarter was changed, and now TAC reduces the resistance of Acid Arrow. Did you know? Festering Arrow is the only skill that deals Corporeal damage. This means that to deal the same damage as before, you have to use Acid Arrow for 1.5 seconds and keep landing skills until the damage activates, which is a tedious process. Actually, it's even lower damage.


[Assult]
I won't say anything more. Armor increase and Disarm are gone, and skills that increase 5-second AoE Detaunt and 5-second Parry by 35% have been added? This just makes things more tedious, and you melt away in about 5 seconds.


[Minimum Request]
-If Steady Aim isn't applied to AoE, increase the AP Cost from 25% to 15%. This also causes problems with the use of Festering Arrow.

- Regarding Powerful Draw, since you nerfed Steady Aim, please keep the Armor Penetration at 15%. How much damage reduction are you going to do? It's ridiculous to reduce the range of your main skill and then change it to TAC, which increases the range to compensate. SH increases by 15ft just by using Pet, but it's not a mirror at all.

Alternatively, change Keen Arrow Heads' Armor Penetration increase to affect the entire Skirmish.

- Flame Arrow is AoE, so please keep it as Skirmish. Why make it so cumbersome to use?

- Is it necessary to increase the damage reduction of Spirit Arrows from 20% to 30%?

- If you're going to apply the No Quarter effect to Acid Arrow, please reduce Acid Arrow's cast time to 1 second so it can be used while running. Nobody uses it normally.

- Please don't remove Assult's armor increase and Disarm.

Sadly that's the state of it, hopefully they change SW to less worse before release. But what to expect? Teefz is on balance team, Squig doesn't seem to have been nerfed a fraction like SW was.

[gersy]

reminder that people said the same thing last time SW was undergoing big changes and after those changes (which everyone thought to be hard nerfs that would ruin the class) SW proceeded to be the strongest aoe dps throughput on order for like 2 years and fester continued being one of the strongest surfing/ST builds in the game for pug farming and routine gameplay

for reference about my thoughts - SW is my 2nd highest RR character and I've played it quite a lot. I have 65% SC winrate on it and a 7+ KD ratio.

aoe skirm nerf was justified. the aoe throughput of skirm when played in an organized setting with proper party buffs such as winds was obscenely high. i understand that at uncoordinated pug level most players did not realize this or have never seen it but most top farming 12/18/24mans in open rvr have been abusing aoe skirm for a while now. it does feel a little too heavy handed but it was deserved overall.

ASW buffs were justified - it got a lot of interesting buffs overall. i'm not concerned with the survivability changes - getting an aoe detaunt is amazing.

scout (fester) changes were justified but based on some basic mathematics and a little testing it still looks very strong - just the burst will have more counterplay now. it's VERY easy to reach 10 stacks of the fester buff and using the tactic for it is necessary. it's a bit more like ST sorc/ST BW style now with a focus on timestamping the damage which gives enemy some time to react instead of just blasting them for 3-4k fester damage on impact combined with an auto and execute to add another 2-3k. it was fun while it lasted and i enjoyed deleting unguarded pugs with ease but it was toxic for the game and needed the rework

[Farrul]

aoe skirm nerf was justified. the aoe throughput of skirm when played in an organized setting with proper party buffs such as winds was obscenely high. i understand that at uncoordinated pug level most players did not realize this or have never seen it but most top farming 12/18/24mans in open rvr have been abusing aoe skirm for a while now. it does feel a little too heavy handed but it was deserved overall.

They butchered Skirmish in all senses of the word, not only for AOE. Nice try.

A reminder of your own words :

i think ST skirm and ST assault will either be buffed or remain similar but fester (either the ability itself and/or the full resist ignore tactic) and aoe skirm (lileath's arrow, barrage and split arrows) are definitely getting the nerf bat if i had to guess. spamming 1500+ damaging lileath's arrow every gcd with no cd (winds), which has a massive and forgiving aoe, from a safe range is pretty imbalanced. against pugs it's basically like spamming WL's m2 over and over lmao

Do you honestly feel ST skirm was buffed? No armor pen tactic, less range( even with new tactic, still lost 20ft range otherwise from 100 to 65ft). No more armor pen on dots etc, the list is long.

I find assault ST dps skills interesting, i will try it more before complaining, however Skirmish was butchered, there is no way to sugercoat it.

[ravezaar]

Iv mostly tested Magus/Engi but also tested some SW and I do like Assault changes mostly. Think it will have some intresting builds but I do have a rr82 SW and I will say Skirmish got butchered and its not even close to a main clas for me.

Whats even wierder it feels like SH goes out of same patch as the rdps Winner

[gersy]

aoe skirm nerf was justified. the aoe throughput of skirm when played in an organized setting with proper party buffs such as winds was obscenely high. i understand that at uncoordinated pug level most players did not realize this or have never seen it but most top farming 12/18/24mans in open rvr have been abusing aoe skirm for a while now. it does feel a little too heavy handed but it was deserved overall.

They butchered Skirmish in all senses of the word, not only for AOE. Nice try.

A reminder of your own words :

i think ST skirm and ST assault will either be buffed or remain similar but fester (either the ability itself and/or the full resist ignore tactic) and aoe skirm (lileath's arrow, barrage and split arrows) are definitely getting the nerf bat if i had to guess. spamming 1500+ damaging lileath's arrow every gcd with no cd (winds), which has a massive and forgiving aoe, from a safe range is pretty imbalanced. against pugs it's basically like spamming WL's m2 over and over lmao

Do you honestly feel ST skirm was buffed? No armor pen tactic, less range( even with new tactic, still lost 20ft range otherwise from 100 to 65ft). No more armor pen on dots etc, the list is long.

I find assault ST dps skills interesting, i will try it more before complaining, however Skirmish was butchered, there is no way to sugercoat it.

Yes, it's quite unfortunate that ST skirm managed to get touched as well. Not really sure why - it was far from overpowered. Rest of changes and my opinions on them I stand by.

[Adelmar]

Yeah, scout took a hit for sure, no question about it. In my opinion, I always found it the least entertaining spec for me so, as far as I'm concerned, it's no big deal to me personally.

Now skirmish- it's definitely understandable why the aoe portion got nerfed but single target too? Why devs? I would LOVE to hear an actual good reason why. Just bring OG Powerful Draw back (+50% range to all Skirmish abilities) instead of this +15 feet welfare version we got. Single target Skirmish has always been my favorite spec from both Live and here before the first major patch with the stackable BHA when PD was changed to pen. Again, an actual explanation would be great here.

And assault- theoretically it is better in some ways compared to what we have currently, but losing the armor really doesn't make a lot of sense. All for 100 initiative...bad trade off imo. Further testing will hopefully bring forward some more positive views, but I'm not so sure honestly.

[salazarn]

Im 80rr sw and ive played a lot of ptr today

-Assault I had a lot of fun with.
-The new m2 is inspired.
-I have no idea how new fester is gonna perform and is requiring 2 tactics for a 'nerfed' fester still fair? I guess put a pin in that for now.
-Skirm seems have been kinda nerfed singletarget as well as aoe with loss of range and 15% penetration. I thought the nerfs were meant to target aoe rather than single.
-New lileath's forgiveness should go back to restoring ap rather than giving mr/armor
-I'm not certain if new guerilla training will see much use. 5s duration is quite short.


BUGS I HAVE NOTICED
-Draw blood tooltip needs changing to reflect new vengeance effect
=I swear to god the teleport sometimes makes me lsoe my target

Overall i actually like the changes, especially the emphasis on stance dancing. It feels like how the class should have always played. Not bad.

[rorswar]

I'm not sure, to be honest. Difficult to judge without properly testing.

AOE Skirmish definitely got nerfed. Hard. Too hard - likely, but uncertain.
Unfortunately, ST Skirmish got nerfed as an innocent bystander, which is odd.
Scout could work. It'll take more effort, but I think it'll still be potent.
Assault... really difficult to say. I like the changes on paper, but am unsure if loss of passive defenses will be offset by M1, AOE Detaunt and +35% defense - all now tied to abilities or morales, with shorter durations.

[Shineobi]

I like what the Devs are cooking; but it needs more time in the kitchen. (Leave Teefz alone)

Scout - Creating a Longer rotation simply give MDPS and easier time to get on top of you and clap your cheeks.

Skirmish - AOE nerfs may have been a bit too much and MAY make this class unwanted in WBs. LA, barrage even with WW may not even be worth it. Would have rather had LA and barrage have 8-10 second cooldown but keep the dmg. (Still it might be fine).

Assault- Changes seem interesting. You are not gonna be able to compete with Mara/witch elf/blorc in scs with an ASW of equal playing skill.


Conclusion: None of the concerns of Dodge and parry have been addressed. There is too much Dodge (morales/RR) to counter Rngd dps. As an ASW you are going to have to survive the Morale 1 Dodge/parry) window and without double armor it's going to make it more difficult.

I think you can make SW work, but other classes are going to be easier to get more consistent results. The skill ceiling will be high but the results of reaching that skill ceiling will be not be worth it.

Thoughts may change.....