Uchoo wrote: ↑Wed Jun 17, 2020 12:26 pm
Hello all. I don't know if there's an official thread for this, so please redirect me if my post is misplaced.
I played my Shadow Warrior from 31 to 40/43 so far post-rework as Scout and here are my results as follows:
Scout is way too strong in midtier. It very consistently kills a person with a 3 ability combination that is very hard to read, very hard to react to and the target dies in about 3 seconds.
Festering Arrow > Rapid Fire > Fell the Weak. You don't need to connect crits. The only reason you use Vengeance is to make Festering undefendable and FtW spirit damage. So if you want to kill tanks (Yes this spec will kill a tank, add an extra Fester or Rapid Fire as needed) then add in VoN before the rotation.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png Fairly typical result of a scenario where Scout can have free reign; Black Fire Basin, Toonfish and I were both Scout.
https://i.gyazo.com/thumb/1200/b0034592 ... 2c-png.jpg Damage potential; This one was Rank 32 SW against a Magus. The results don't vary much, the crits didn't matter, Broadhead didn't matter, VoN was not active. Note the timestamps and order in which the abilities hit. The Modus Operadi for achieving a 2s kill from their PoV like this is as follows: Identify target selected for extermination, Cast Festering Arrow > Immediate follow up with Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire's first hit and auto attack will hit first, Festering Arrow will hit. If target hits 30% or lower and you are predicting target might react with a potion or a healer will react in the next 1 second, immediately interrupt with Fell the Weak. Rapid Fire is enough damage on very soft targets, so you can hold Fell the Weak. Every one of these hits will also apply Glass Arrow. This is a 5-6s rotation for the caster, but the damage hits in 2-3 seconds.
You are achieving near maximum potential on Festering Arrow with some Ballistic talis due to Bolster in midtier.
The easiest way to fix this in my opinion is to give Glass Arrow and Festering Arrow weapon DPS scaling and rebalance around that. Festering Arrow goes from being a 30-60% HP chunk to just okay at 40 in gear. As far as I have seen, it has 0 weapon dps scaling but very strong ballistic/ranged power scaling. I have an idea that the weapon rework coming up is being done in part to address some of these kinds of issues but I won't be presumptuous and assume as much.
Steady Aim I'm very unsure about. The drawback is very large and I would personally rather see it as a cooldown that applies to the next few attacks with no drawback, or a proc effect; or even better, an ability that give the class a stronger tool against block and/or dodge. A little history of Steady Aim: Shadow Warriors had very slow flight times on live because you fired your abilities, hit Steady Aim while they were in the air and never suffered the drawback. Shadow Warriors here didn't like the long flight times (even if they offered advantages at times) so they are much faster now. I tried using it twice and it made my damage way too easy to outplay so it wasn't worth it. That being said, 25% crit damage is a lot of damage and if someone has an efficient way to make it work, please let me know.
40 has been okay thus far, Scout is still a 110 foot spec, which is far shorter than Engi/Magus and they have Undefendable attached to their main attack. It's a bit harder to be as successful but the rotation is still very, very effective at the medium 110 foot range against targets with low dodge/block and armor mostly because it is very, very fast damage and there's no way to predict it with a leading DoT attack or something like that.
Some Establishing Facts:
One of the biggest problems that classes with targeted aoe have (and part of the reason why BW/Engi and their counterparts have been so strong) is that unlike live, targeted AoE abilities do not AoE if the first target avoids the attack. If you fire Flame Arrow at a tank and he blocks/dodges, the attack does nothing and does not try to affect other targets. I haven't tested to a point of certainty, but I'm pretty sure that Spiral-Fletched Arrow and Broadhead Arrow with the AoE tactic respect the same rule. RoR has much higher avoidance than we ever saw on live, even from very low gear and RR, so this problem is compounded. Engineers can apply Pierce Defenses easily due to their ground target effects not following the above rule, which is probably balanced because Destro shield tanks tend to have much higher avoidance, but a Shadow Warrior can't apply PD too easily, Lileath's is a 5s cooldown now at 65 feet and Barrage is 40 feet. Squigs I believe still have 0s CD Shoot Thru Ya at 65 feet so that's Destro's best option to apply PD.
I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other regarding those statements, they are just establishing facts.
TL;DR: I would recommend weapon dps rebalancing on Festering Arrow and Glass Arrow to make the spec not so overpowering in midtier and perhaps a bit stronger in late game; Allowing targeted AoEs to apply their effect regardless if the initial target avoids the attack might be a welcome test; It might be worth considering an option to have a stronger way to deal with massive amounts of block/dodge to the Shadow Warrior as well.
Thanks for the read and sorry for the hastily constructed wall of text,
Uchoo
Edit 1: Grammar and Clarification
Edit 2: More Grammar, more clarification
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