[SW] Scout (and some Skirmish and Assault)

[lefze]

Scout hasn't really been all that good, ever. The latest changes somehow still managed to make it feel even worse. Obviously the issues are many, and making a proposal on it is hard, but still gotta try.

First issue is that you now have an even longer burst rotation than before, which deals way less damage.

Second issue is that said burst rotation was already extremely unfeasible to get off.

Third issue is that scout doesn't work at all on its own merits- You can literally only take FtW, No Quarter and Enchanted Arrow. Why? Look at the above. (And to take FtW you need to drop Eye Shot)

Fourth issue is AP starvation. Scout plays around one skill, Eagle Eye. This skill has an insanely high AP cost of 53 AP with No Quarter. In other words, to spam it reliably you are forced to take an AP tactic, two if you plan on doing anything but pugfarm.

Fifth issue is tactic slots. You can't take a single mainstat tactic or any other goodie like Leading Shots or whatever, as your tactics are more or less set in stone. You need No Quarter, you need Enchanted Arrows, you need Powerful Draw and you need Replenishing Strikes/Guerilla Training/both.

Sixth issue is burst. You have none. And FtW itself is extremely weak when taking into account that it's the only skill that deals damage apart from Eagle Eye.

Seventh issue is more or less the overall effect of the rest. You bring nothing of value to any sort of play. Sustained damage is too poor to assist with, costs too much to sustain for long and has nothing to back it up with. The end result is that you basically do whatever Skirmish does, but without moving. It's so bad that even DPS AM is now leaps and bounds ahead of scout in utility, sustained damage and even burst.

I'm not gonna propose solutions to every single of these issues, as I intend this post to be feedback as much as an actual proposal. However I will list a few steps I believe will help.


Acid Arrow

Problem:

Acid Arrow is the skill the spec relies on the most. The issue with this one is simple, it has a 1.5 second cast time, which makes the prep time when switching targets or trying to burst unnecessarily long.

Solution:

Remove the cast time.



Fell the Weak

Problem:

The recent fix to make this skill only deal bonus damage if the target is below the threshold when hit rather than when the skill is cast hurt the current scout. If the tree was still able to play around Fester this would have helped immensely, but seeing as the skill is purely cast as a reaction and not as part of a rotation in current play made the change hurt the spec. a lot.

Seeing as scout is basically just spamming Eagle Eye and putting two debuffs on the target, I think it would make sense for Fell the Weak to get a more integral role.

Solution:

Increase the threshold for bonus damage to 50% missing health.


No Quarter

Issue:

Puts Eagle Eye at a 53 AP cost. Further the spec suffers from lacking any kind of burst, and the only ability able to provide this is Fester. After the nerf, it deals significantly less damage, with significantly less reliability as well. It has always been hard to get off in the first place due to an insane 3 second cast time. The current power of the skill and the spec makes this cast time completely unnecessary.

Solution:

Remove the AP cost penalty. Also affects Festering Arrow.


Powerful Draw

Issue:

The two dots of the class are mandatory skills for scout. Eye Shot is arguably mandatory aswell. The problem arises when you need a tactic to use any of these in the already struggling and tactic heavy Scout spec.

Removing the tactic is also problematic, but at this point the only reason to keep it in the game is to limit Assault SW. Skirmish also needs a replacement that warrants going to that point in the tree. And no, I do not think Skirmish is in any kind of great place at the moment, so a minor buff won't hurt at all. Rapid Fire which was part of the finisher rotation in Skirmish was also taken away for mysterious reasons.

Solution:

Tactic is removed, and all Skirmish skill are changed to 98ft range. Merciless Soldier in Assault tree also adds a 50% range penalty to all ranged skills. New tactic in Skirmish: Removes the positional requirement from Flanking Shot, and adds a small crit damage scaler in addition to the crit chance scaler.



Scout Stance

Alternative to removing Powerful Draw. Scout Stance grants the effect of Replenishing strikes. The ultimate objective is to free up a tactic slot, and the Powerful Draw proposal is rather extensive, in lack of a better word.


Flame Arrow/Smoldering Arrows

Problem:

First up, Smoldering Arrows. Make it go away please, would rather not have to think about it as the base skill is already so damn bad. Also makes it easier to fix Flame Arrow.

Onto Flame Arrow. It's just... Unbelievably bad. No matter how you look at it, it's a garbage skill to pop for literally any reason. Also as I might have mentioned, scout is struggling. So here goes.

Solution:

First of all revert it to be Scout exclusive. Then make it single target only. Triple the damage of the instant damage, and increase the dot by about 250%. Yeah, the skill is that bad.



Conclusion

I lost track of everything about halfway through, good luck reading it. Anyways, I understand this can simply seem like too much, but who really wants to play scout if the skills in the tree are just too bad to be used, so you basically play Skirmish with the addition of Eagle Eye.