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[Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

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saupreusse
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[Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#1 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:13 pm

[Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

EDIT: I edited the Whole Post again given the feedback of you all in the comments. I tried not to forget squig as best as i could but my main focus was on SW since this is the class I have been playing for much longer. Rather then introducint a lot of new stuff I tried a much more conservative approach this time that mostly focuses on reverting/cashing necessairy and unnecessairy nerfs that happened to rSW in the past and put it in the very bad spot it is atm. Most of the changes i am bringing up here probably wont help SW to replace BW in big scale, but I believe as a first approach to bring the ranged specs up to a common standard it would work well. Have a good read.

Short introduction:

I played a SW and Squig (not as much) on live and mained SW on RoR for about 3 years. I put the elf on the shelf about a year ago because the ranged specs just can't compete in most encounters.
RSW is really not that great for warband or smallscale play, and even not as good for pve dungeons which left me a lot of times without dungeon/city invites simply because im an RSW.
In warbands it lacks AOE dmg like BW or even Engi and doesnt bring much to the party. In smallscale it can't put out enough pressure because its dmg is too low, while every premade is stacking armor into oblivion. On top of that the ranged specs are outshined by the ASW spec, which was the only SW spec that experienced buffs on RoR.
Where at least the skirmish spec shines is roaming around the lakes in kiting parties. the 100ft knockdown and ranged slow are just awesome tools to prepare kills for the "real dps" in your party.
so, here are my suggestions to improve the ranged specs and give SW a little love after all the nerfs to the class in the past.



Tactics:

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Split Arrows/Splintering Arrers - Remove the damage penalty to give it more AOE dmg. As it stands, SFAs and RnSs tooltip values are already not great, further reducing its dmg output and pressure makes no sense at all, and renders the tactic completely useless. I would rather see a max players hit cap being installed.

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Smoldering Arrows/sharpened Arrers - Remove these tactics and buff Exploding Arrer and Flame Arrow by the same amount.

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Keen Arrowheads/Da Waaagh iz Strong - Move these tactics into baseline and remove them with a new tactic that reduces Lileath Arrow's and Shoot Through ya's cast time down to 1.5 seconds. This way the Nerf of Expert Skirmisher can be cashed.



Stances:

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Skirmish Stance - Toughness is a really bad stat for skirm since you will likely be running "instictive Aim" tactic which reduces your toughness. Replace it with a 7% movement speed bonus to help SW kite more effectively. ( I chose 7% because thats the value of the boot talismans you were able to slot in the live game).

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Scout Stance/Gas Squig - Set the Range of Yer Bleeding/Broadhead Arrow and Shadow Sting/Rotten Arrer to 100ft when you are in Scout stance or have a Gas Squig active. It's completely annoying that I can't use these two very important abilities on my full range when i am scout SW or Big Shooting SH.



Morale:

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Rain of Steel/Lots of Shooting - the dmg of Rain of Steel is low. It's lower than Hail of doom's and Lots of Shooting's dmg and the radius sucks hard. Instant morale dmg is of much higher value for RvR warbands, so I recommend to mirror it exactly to Squigs "Lots of shooting".

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Hail of Doom - Its not bad - Its better than Rain of Steel - Its radius sucks though. I suggest increasing the radius to 30ft for SH and SW like most other aoe dps morals. Everyone who has casted the ability will agree with me. often times you won't hit more than 3 ppl over the whole cast time simply because the radius is so bad.

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Ambush/Squig Goo - Make the dmg on these M2 instant to make them more useful to the Meta.

Last but not least I would like to suggest to increase the dmg of some abilities for both classes to cache the removal of the Unshakable focus M2. I'm not saying to bring back UF since its been way too strong, but without it most rsw and rsh simply do not have much burst if they arent extremely well equipped.



Abilities:

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Steady Aim /Hunters Fervor - Steady Aim is a bad ability - period. Hunters Fervor isn't bad in itself, but is it worth disrupting your dmg spam and wasting a global cooldown on a 20% ap increase? I think not. So my suggestion is to remove both abilities all together and incorporate their effects in VoN:
Make VoN increase your crit chance by 15% on all bow abilities on top of the +25% dmg bonus it already has, and increase your party members AP regen by 20% for its duration. Toss the buildup time penalty of steady aim in the trash completely (bye bye). I would also suggest to increase your party members chance to crit by 7% (in the comments it was suggested to increase this value to 7% to bring it back on par with the old leading shots tactic) while VoN is active. This may sound like a huge buff but let me explain the idea behind it: SW used to have leading shots tactic which increased your party members chance to crit by 15% whenever you critically hit. The Tactic was nerfed hard down to 8%. With my proposed changes to VoN, Steady Aim, and Hunters fervor, RSW will give the party a big buff and awesome pushing utility and increase its own dmg pressure all in one global cooldown instead of wasting 3 global cooldowns on 3 different abilities of which 2 are lackluster on its own. It's an attempt to cache the nerf of leading shots.

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Acid Arrow/What Blocka - Make it castable on the move for both SH and SW and change its really mediocre armor debuff value to a flat 35% armor debuff. Atm every armor stacking target will laugh at your really weak debuff value. Also both range SW and range SH have no armor piercing rounds as Engi. Make it available in scout and skirmish stance instead of scout and assault. ASW here was reworked so hard that it just doesnt make any sense for it to still have access to the armor debuff while Skirmish does not. Skirmish lacks dmg and you cant be arsed to stand still to cast the armor debuff, which you really need to ramp up the SFA spam dmg. Other than that it breaks your skirmish rotation to switch to scout or assault stance. (some might argue that stance dancing should be encouraged to get the most out of the class, but getting locked out of your bread and butter skill "spiral fletched arrow" for 5 seconds after switching stance is a huge bummer and I wholeheartedly disagree in this regard).

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Flame Arrow/Explodin Arrer - Increase Flame Arrows range to 100ft to mirror Exploding Arrer.

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Eye Shot/New Ability - Move Eyeshot back into baseline again where it used to be. This way Scout SW can use it aswell. (If it really should be too much of a buff to ASW, simply lock ASW out of using it if they specced more points into assault than all other trees). Fill the now empty 13pt slot with a new ability That works similar to ASW's shadow step just the other way round: You merge with the shadows and appear on your friendly target in the blink of an eye. 20 sec cooldown, 65ft range. I always though Shadow Warrior should have more shadowy abilities and this one could make SW a really annoying trickster/kiter.
Last edited by saupreusse on Sat May 09, 2020 3:02 pm, edited 10 times in total.
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Fatpig
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#2 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:15 pm

I don't play SW but well done, looks good!

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Ekundu01
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#3 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:18 pm

All of this sounds like a start but i would say some changes reverted back to live would probably be better for both the Ranged SW and Ranged SH. I played a SW alt on live and i remember it having much more aoe.

Glass Arrow used to be a second Aoe dot like flame arrow. I also remember focus fire not being single target and more Ground targeted aoe. We also had access to Unshakeable focus M2 that increased damage by 100% so you could double stack dots pop m2 to ramp up dot damage and use Focus fire to aoe the area you just dotted.

I also don't remember Split arrows reducing spiral fletched arrow damage down on live. Again with UF you could add aoe pressure as skirmish as well.

Maybe i am remembering wrong it has been a while.

Also as far as how clunky whirling pin is for SW, Sticky Squigs is just as bad for SH, if you don't stop moving it won't knock you back and it takes a sec to activate after pushing the button.
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zulnam
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#4 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 3:18 pm

Those are some good changes but i still don't think it would be enough overall.

Your damage would still be lower than BW and even engi only gets 1 spot(2 max if no BWs) thanks to magnet.

I'd change Leading Shots back to 15 on the next attack, only triggerable once in 5 seconds; instead of having to use a tactic + an ability just to get to 13%.

SfA without damage reduction has the opportunity to be OP, because of no limit to how many players you can hit. In forts i can cause so much havoc on my SW because everyone is so close together. But that's it.

So i'd change the tactic to AoE, 20% reduction and up to 9 players; similar to slayer.

Would be nice to see an AoE rework for SW, perhaps similar dmg changes as mara got, but without adding some good utility i doubt it would be taken in place of BW just on damage alone.

Also i think Hunter's Fervor works on you as well?
SW, Kotbs, IB, Slayer, WP, WL, SM, Mara, SH, BG

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saupreusse
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#5 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:24 pm

zulnam wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 3:18 pm Those are some good changes but i still don't think it would be enough overall.

Your damage would still be lower than BW and even engi only gets 1 spot(2 max if no BWs) thanks to magnet.

I'd change Leading Shots back to 15 on the next attack, only triggerable once in 5 seconds; instead of having to use a tactic + an ability just to get to 13%.

SfA without damage reduction has the opportunity to be OP, because of no limit to how many players you can hit. In forts i can cause so much havoc on my SW because everyone is so close together. But that's it.

So i'd change the tactic to AoE, 20% reduction and up to 9 players; similar to slayer.

Would be nice to see an AoE rework for SW, perhaps similar dmg changes as mara got, but without adding some good utility i doubt it would be taken in place of BW just on damage alone.

Also i think Hunter's Fervor works on you as well?
I disagree changing leading shots back to 15%. its too strong for one tactic and imo the nerf was deserved. SW uses VoN anyway, but ofc it would be possible to increase the 5% to 7% to be back at 15% when VoN is up.
I believe you mean Flame Arrow instead of SFA. the SFA Tactic has a 3 player cap (Edit: I just checked back and in fact it does not. im sure it had back when i used it last time. anyway, i would install a player cap of max targets hit so this wouldnt be an issue). But yeah, if Flame Arrow was a spammable ability with instant AOE i agree to the points you made about player cap/dmg reduction like slayer. Wouldnt say it would be too strong then. the tooltip value of Flame Arrow is still not high. But one would have to test it ofc. numbers can be tweaked later. it might be too strong if it surpassed all resistances using the tactic but thats just theorycrafting :). maybe you could even leave a cooldown timer on it to be a nice burst aoe in between SFA spam. would also encourage stance dancing.
And yeah Hunters Fervor works on you aswell. i corrected this in my post. mixed things up there.
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saupreusse
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#6 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 8:19 pm

Cleared up a few mistakes and added my projectile speed change proposal. Added a few icons so its easier to understand which ability Im talking about. Hope its easier to read now. Greetings.
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Manatikik
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#7 » Tue Apr 14, 2020 10:32 pm

I guess i'll just go through these 1 by 1 and kinda tell you why you're wrong.

Powerful Draw - No.. There is no reason to just buff a third of the skills by 50% range AND give a 25% bonus armor pen to your bread and butter skill.

Split Arrows - this tactic is awful and any rank 40 SW that takes it should feel ashamed. This is for leveling toons and what not. You want to double dip in making SFA better into AoE which is just dumb.

Smoldering Arrow - Pretty useless tactic, the idea behind giving FA more oomf is fine but not in conjunction with your later points

Scout Stance - Initiative is a super valuable stat and removing it for WS is just silly since realistically in a proper scout rotation FA is your main source of damage AND you can already stack WS harder than most classes due to what is essentially an added 360 BS with Scout + Tactics. The only change to Scout Stance that is needed is to readdress the range of Flame Arrow to mirror Exlpodin' Arrer at 100 ft range (which is logical for Scout) and potentially look at a change to BHA/SS to 100 or 85 ft base in Scout , though this one is controversial and more impactful.

Skirmish - Wow what an overpowered thought process... No, you shouldnt just get a free 50% range increase.

Rain of Steel - It is bad but so are a lot of morale 4's. There is no need to try and mirror Lots of Shootin' from SH especially when Order revolves heavily around M2 drops.

Hail of Doom - HoD is meh but its a fine Baseline for pRDPS; increasing its range has huge implications on Fort defenses.

Steady Aim/Hunter's Fervor - Steady Aim is traditionally a waste of AP now that Festerbomb's aren't a thing - but it synergizes extremely well with Expertise in letting you Festerbomb/EE spam very well. Hunter's fervor definitely affects you but it works that it increases the interval rate of your ap regen not the regen number (so you have to not use skill for it to actually increase your ap regen). Why would you ever take 25% crit over 25% damage one a class without a crit damage multiplier (in ranged)? This alone is just ridiculous. And in organized play you increasing Crit for a group just doesn't cut it anymore; on Live it worked because of the multiple crit stacking and you still had Outrider Patrol to add to a morale bomb.

Acid Arrow - it should not be castable on the move or in Skirmish. Ranged SW is all about Stance Dancing not choosing a Stance and sitting in it. The only issue with Acid Arrow is that the armor value is too low of a base.

WP - giving it a snare break component is crazy... WP is for positioning not a get out of jail free card. The delay could be reduced but thats the only tweak it needs right now after the huge buff it got a couple years ago.

Flame Arrow - Yikes... Terrible idea. You want a ranged, aoe, no cd, attack that bypasses defenses?

Eagle Eye - The only buff eagle eye needs is the over due pms modifier that all sw/sh need to compensate for the UF removal inb 2017.

These are some awful ideas man. You should really re-examine how you approach SW and it might increase your success rate already without any changes being made.
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saupreusse
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#8 » Wed Apr 15, 2020 12:46 am

Well I'll just go ahead and do the same since i guess its easiest to format.

"Powerful Draw - No.. There is no reason to just buff a third of the skills by 50% range AND give a 25% bonus armor pen to your bread and butter skill."
"Skirmish - Wow what an overpowered thought process... No, you shouldnt just get a free 50% range increase."

the buff to these skills is already there. its called powerful draw and is a tactic. i propose to shift this into skirm to free up a tactic slot. i agree the 25% armor pen might be to strong but its expected these kind of suggestions can go heavily in one side. thanks for the input though. any ideas what you would do as a new tactic if you had to create one? and pls dont answer you wouldnt, i got that, im still interested in your ideas IF you had to. Dont really get what you mean with bread and butter skill so would be nice if you could explain that.
About the 50% range increase i disagree with you. yes the number may be a bit high, but overall i dont think it would be too strong. i actually think having to waste a tactic on this is the real pain since lets face it. not one melee attack actually has 5 ft range. most of them fire on about 20ft to even more. the base range is lackluster to really be effective at kiting and since you dont have the mobility of squigs you will just have a bad time if you dont slot it. wouldnt the game engine be so **** crappy and ppl were unable to hit you over more than 30ft i wouldnt even need this tactic, imo its a bandaid to bad game design. we are also lacking the speed boost talismans that were available on live. No i believe it wouldnt be too strong to remove this tactic and free up a slot.

"Split Arrows - this tactic is awful and any rank 40 SW that takes it should feel ashamed. This is for leveling toons and what not. You want to double dip in making SFA better into AoE which is just dumb."
you dont say? This tactic is actually bad? Maybe thats why this I made this thread to collect ideas how to buff it? cool story tellin me dumb 11/10 IGN - too much salt.
So yeah since you didnt give any input i cant say much more.

"Smoldering Arrow - Pretty useless tactic, the idea behind giving FA more oomf is fine but not in conjunction with your later points"
"Flame Arrow - Yikes... Terrible idea. You want a ranged, aoe, no cd, attack that bypasses defenses?"
Yes its **** useless. thats why id like to simply have it removed and see FA buffed dmg wise. with the Flame arrow i actually agree with you. I didnt really know what to do with it so again, please give input other than "Yikes". really interested what you would suggest to make SW more attractive in this department.

"Scout Stance - Initiative is a super valuable stat and removing it for WS is just silly since realistically in a proper scout rotation FA is your main source of damage AND you can already stack WS harder than most classes due to what is essentially an added 360 BS with Scout + Tactics. The only change to Scout Stance that is needed is to readdress the range of Flame Arrow to mirror Exlpodin' Arrer at 100 ft range (which is logical for Scout) and potentially look at a change to BHA/SS to 100 or 85 ft base in Scout , though this one is controversial and more impactful."
I agree that the range of FA,BHA and SS should be 100ft range in scout and I actually believe its ridiculous that it isnt already. its the same for the weird range on grenadier abilities that i always hated. at least they end up with 80+ ft range on their skills while scout has to suffer 70ft gimp range. it just doesnt fit at all in a long range stance which scout obviously is supposed to be. Well if you get the Initiative through stance or weapon skill doesnt really matter at all. In my opinion having first/second priority stats on abilities is a bit more convenient. No hard feelins here.

"Rain of Steel - It is bad but so are a lot of morale 4's. There is no need to try and mirror Lots of Shootin' from SH especially when Order revolves heavily around M2 drops."
You didnt even make a point here dude. Its bad but so are others isnt how any of this works. Yes it **** is terrible. So please lets start fixing those damn useless M4 and if it has to be start with SW. Squig has literally 2400 dmg in a 20ft radius so come on why not start here and begin reworking this shitfest that M4 are for a lot of classes. Order revolves heavily around M2 drops and therefore dont buff it? I cant follow logic where there is none, sry.

"Hail of Doom - HoD is meh but its a fine Baseline for pRDPS; increasing its range has huge implications on Fort defenses."
Good. Thats what i was going for. pretty tired to see SW being called useless classes for forts. but actually i believe the implication wouldnt be as huge as you say. its more of a quality of live change than actually being a HUGE buff in my opinion. we are speaking of a m4. these better be good.

"Steady Aim/Hunter's Fervor - Steady Aim is traditionally a waste of AP now that Festerbomb's aren't a thing - but it synergizes extremely well with Expertise in letting you Festerbomb/EE spam very well. Hunter's fervor definitely affects you but it works that it increases the interval rate of your ap regen not the regen number (so you have to not use skill for it to actually increase your ap regen). Why would you ever take 25% crit over 25% damage one a class without a crit damage multiplier (in ranged)? This alone is just ridiculous. And in organized play you increasing Crit for a group just doesn't cut it anymore; on Live it worked because of the multiple crit stacking and you still had Outrider Patrol to add to a morale bomb."
steady aim has 1 use, yey! No im not sold just because theres like an opportunity to use this once in a full moon and it only really works for scout aswell. So youre saying you wouldnt choose SW because its crit chance buff wouldnt cut it anymore because of said changes in the past. this actually makes my point even more valid, not ridiculous. if you still wouldnt take a SW over BW or engi the only logical answer is to buff it even harder by giving it something new and shiny. any ideas what could be done to achieve this? thats why we're here.

"Acid Arrow - it should not be castable on the move or in Skirmish. Ranged SW is all about Stance Dancing not choosing a Stance and sitting in it. The only issue with Acid Arrow is that the armor value is too low of a base." disagree. its not giving anything in terms of gameplay, skill or fun to change to assault once every 15 seconds to be able to cast my lackluster armor debuff. skirmish is only fun if you can go with the flow and not stand still and swap stances only to use one skill. thats horrible desing and whoever invented this should feel ashamed. i agree that the armor debuff value is not great though. If you want ppl to stance dance you would have to build the class anew from scratch. the times you need to change stances are there and i guess good for the most part. like swapping to assault when you get caught to have more reliablity on disarm but i believe the armor debuff shouldnt be in there. its too vital and a core ability to disrupt your rotation for this. Id go even further and put acid arrow out of all stances so it has no requirements whatsoever, simply because its so important.SHs what blocka also doesnt have a squig requirement.

"WP - giving it a snare break component is crazy... WP is for positioning not a get out of jail free card. The delay could be reduced but thats the only tweak it needs right now after the huge buff it got a couple years ago."
the delay is pretty sure a bug because mythic couldnt get their **** right and everything they touched was a clunky hell. thats my opinion on it. yeah a snare break on ranged champs is debatable. but at this point im all in to say: damn it lets try it out. the amount of mobility that has been added to the game lately via squig melees makes kiting hard for SW. I do think reworking whirling pin is neccessary to make this skill useful. other classes have get out of jail free cards aswell so i dont see a problem here at all. take wl snare immunity + jump to another enemy to get out of jail. i do it all the time playing my wl. one could say declare anathema + stealth is just as cheesy. Sw is caught to easily so at least give sw something to effectively deal with it. because im tired to actually have to jump before using wp jus to get a bit more out of its self punt.

"Eagle Eye - The only buff eagle eye needs is the over due pms modifier that all sw/sh need to compensate for the UF removal inb 2017."
I have absolutely no idea what pms is but i hope youre not talking about premenstrual syndrome.

"These are some awful ideas man. You should really re-examine how you approach SW and it might increase your success rate already without any changes being made."
Ahh nothing better than to imply your opposite is worse than yourself by assuming my success rate is low and discrediting my ability to make a balance suggestion thread in the first place. always gives me joy when ppl break simple conversation rules. Its not saying "hey man you suck and shouldnt do a proposal", no its a much more subtle passive agressivity that i learned to enjoy about it. Ofc Im sorry to waste your time oh you great and mighty sw main please give me some advice so i can become like you when i grow up!
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Darks63
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#9 » Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:18 am

On tactics: I have to disagree with the PD idea due to how it will just cause rSH to fall behind rSW. On Split arrows sure but just keep in mind that if that was done they wouldnt be able to buff the ability after ince it would be too much. Smoldering arrows sure but again you would have to be careful what was done to fire arrow afterwards.

On the stances while i agree that 80 ough is pointless and it being something else would be nice the range boost would be to much. ls back to tactics w/o PD scouts spec can no longer use SS and BH at range anymore further weakening that spec.

On Morales again sure fix them. For all of fens concerns about HoD its rare you can even finish the whole channel in most fights before your interrupted. its so bad i just have whirling rage as my m4 although i usually just do the 1200 m3 instead.

ON WP yes please take off the delay but that is all that is needed.

ON HF keep it as is for now it can be useful especially since skirm is a ap hungry spec. On VoN a 25% crit buff is too much like bullseye won't really help maybe a crit amp but idk.

Making Acid arrow more useful would be nice. Even if you had to stand still to cast it it would still be nice to us it in skrim.

Also i agree that BH and SS need their speeds buffed.
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Ugle
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Re: [Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal

Post#10 » Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:24 am

Pms = psm; primary stat modifier i guess.. some good proposals here, some not so good, not gonna write an essay about it.

An easy approach to several of the problems the class have on skirmish side would be to revamp the extended dots tactic (useless) to a crit dmg tactic like merciless soldier, but for skirm abilities, then switch place with powerful draw.
Then you will have access to PD and SS when speccing high in scout alleviating some range issues on the dots while in scout, as well as some more oomph in skirm, which i needs. Still you will have to make some tough choices on tactics, preventing OPness.
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