[Shadow Warrior] - Ranged Proposal
Posted: 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:
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.
Smoldering Arrows/sharpened Arrers - Remove these tactics and buff Exploding Arrer and Flame Arrow by the same amount.
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:
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).
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:
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".
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.
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:
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.
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).
Flame Arrow/Explodin Arrer - Increase Flame Arrows range to 100ft to mirror Exploding Arrer.
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.
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:
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.
Smoldering Arrows/sharpened Arrers - Remove these tactics and buff Exploding Arrer and Flame Arrow by the same amount.
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:
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).
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:
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".
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.
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:
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.
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).
Flame Arrow/Explodin Arrer - Increase Flame Arrows range to 100ft to mirror Exploding Arrer.
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.