[Review] [SW] Steady Aim

[Acidic]

After thinking a bit more around the way that this skill is designed and how it was used in live .

Background: skill was primarily used to generate a guaranteed crit for getting the crit proc of of tactics. In live this was not used directly for damage.
Issue: the skill drops effective dps even after a crit is achieved and after a crit is done the procs are likely on internal cool down so rest of the duration of the skill is only negative.
Suggested use: on demand ap regen,group crit bonus.
Possible solution: make the skill dissipate after first crit.

This would guarantee the caster a crit while reduceing the impact on dps reduction.

[lefze]

Suggested use: on demand ap regen,group crit bonus.

The class already has both, why doubletap?

[Pacso]

Issue

Steady Aim is a terrible skill that no longer synergizes with any strategy/skills that SW has. It has too high of a cost for its reward, especially with key changes to SW ST spec.

Why an Issue

SW is class based around consistent damage that has a few core tools (VoN, Steady Aim, and UF) at its disposal to give it damage spikes in small windows every minute or two. With certain RoR changes (crit cap making Festerbomb irrelevant and UF removal) SW has lost its ability to spike damage and coupled with the DoT changes leaves SW in a wonky state in smaller scale PvP and ST line ups (LA bombing is still viable for ORvR WB fighting) where they can neither burst nor lay down consistent pressure. Improving Steady Aim could also breathe some much needed life back in to Scout SW's.

Solution

1) Steady Aim changes to increase your chance to critically hit and be critically hit by 25/50% for 6 Seconds on a 30/60 second cooldown. This is my preferred change because it gives equal risk/reward to the SW and rewards good play by the SW if they use it under safer circumstances to mitigate the risk.

or

2) Keep it the same but instead of a flat 1.5 second increase to cast times change it to a +50% buildup time and keep the +50% critical chance for 6 seconds on a 30 seconds cooldown. This way it still affects its mainly "exploitable" skill, Festering Arrow, the same amount but gives other damage moves like Eagle Eye and SFA effective cost /reward for damage spikes. This also would help ST DPS because instant cast skills would benefit from it without becoming long cast moves (mainly FS, FtW, and GA; though a balance to this could be reducing the critical chance increase down to +25% for instant cast skills and DoTs).

I agree, that Steady Aim is terrible right now, but i dont think that these solutions would the the best to make this skill useful - but not OP - again.

SW-s have already good potential to increase their own crit chance with the bullseye tactic, so the solution 1 would be OP if its stacks with bullseye.

Solution 2 will be affect the LA bombing. LA is currently 2 sec cast, but with expert skirmisher tactic it will be 1 sec cast (the distance of the target doesn't matter when you use this tactic.) With +50% buildup time, the sw-s could bomb with 1,5 sec LA +50% crit chance. This sounds OP too.

Spoiler:

I'd like to propose a 3rd solution: increase the CD to 60 sec, and increase the AP cost to 45 AP, and change it: "for the next 10 seconds, any time you critically hit any enemy all of your groupmates within 100 feet receives 125 points of Morale but this will not affect you".

With this change the dmg output would be the same, but their group utilites would be better. (And with 60 sec CD, it wouldnt be gamebreaking.)

No.

[Manatikik]

Spoiler:

Issue

Steady Aim is a terrible skill that no longer synergizes with any strategy/skills that SW has. It has too high of a cost for its reward, especially with key changes to SW ST spec.

Why an Issue

SW is class based around consistent damage that has a few core tools (VoN, Steady Aim, and UF) at its disposal to give it damage spikes in small windows every minute or two. With certain RoR changes (crit cap making Festerbomb irrelevant and UF removal) SW has lost its ability to spike damage and coupled with the DoT changes leaves SW in a wonky state in smaller scale PvP and ST line ups (LA bombing is still viable for ORvR WB fighting) where they can neither burst nor lay down consistent pressure. Improving Steady Aim could also breathe some much needed life back in to Scout SW's.

Solution

1) Steady Aim changes to increase your chance to critically hit and be critically hit by 25/50% for 6 Seconds on a 30/60 second cooldown. This is my preferred change because it gives equal risk/reward to the SW and rewards good play by the SW if they use it under safer circumstances to mitigate the risk.

or

2) Keep it the same but instead of a flat 1.5 second increase to cast times change it to a +50% buildup time and keep the +50% critical chance for 6 seconds on a 30 seconds cooldown. This way it still affects its mainly "exploitable" skill, Festering Arrow, the same amount but gives other damage moves like Eagle Eye and SFA effective cost /reward for damage spikes. This also would help ST DPS because instant cast skills would benefit from it without becoming long cast moves (mainly FS, FtW, and GA; though a balance to this could be reducing the critical chance increase down to +25% for instant cast skills and DoTs).

I agree, that Steady Aim is terrible right now, but i dont think that these solutions would the the best to make this skill useful - but not OP - again.

SW-s have already good potential to increase their own crit chance with the bullseye tactic, so the solution 1 would be OP if its stacks with bullseye.

Solution 2 will be affect the LA bombing. LA is currently 2 sec cast, but with expert skirmisher tactic it will be 1 sec cast (the distance of the target doesn't matter when you use this tactic.) With +50% buildup time, the sw-s could bomb with 1,5 sec LA +50% crit chance. This sounds OP too.

I'd like to propose a 3rd solution: increase the CD to 60 sec, and increase the AP cost to 45 AP, and change it: "for the next 10 seconds, any time you critically hit any enemy all of your groupmates within 100 feet receives 125 points of Morale but this will not affect you".

With this change the dmg output would be the same, but their group utilites would be better. (And with 60 sec CD, it wouldnt be gamebreaking.)

This doesn't address the issue of a lack of ST burst and would give order a ridiculous morale pump on a already strong bomb dps class.

[Acidic]

Suggested use: on demand ap regen,group crit bonus.

The class already has both, why doubletap?

The change that I mentioned is close to nerf the steady aim duration , so that it stays as is today except that it cancels itself after first crit. So yes as today but you don’t have to wait the rest of the time with steady aim up after you achieved your crit.

[lefze]

Suggested use: on demand ap regen,group crit bonus.

The class already has both, why doubletap?

The change that I mentioned is close to nerf the steady aim , so that it stays as is today except that it cancels itself after first crit. So yes as today but you don’t have to wait the rest of the time with steady aim up after you achieved your crit.

If you are suggesting it dissipating after one crit with the same functionality it has now, sure, might be an improvement actually. But what if you don't crit on the first shot? would be stuck with the cast bonus for several casts regardless making it just as bad as today.

And while it's a potential improvement, it wouldn't fix anything really. My opinion is that assault is really strong right now, skirmish is overperforming because of bugged tactics. This leaves scout, and while additional crit is nice and all, crit isn't the thing the build struggles from, and the proposed change will not make any difference in improving the usability of the skills in the scout tree.

[Acidic]

Yes I meant it as a slight improvement, where by it fulfills a role. And yes no crit means a pain, pros and cons.
I would strongly suggest that one skill should not buff too much else it’s UF2.0

[saupreusse]

Maybe making the next 3 abilities 100% crit. You give up one gcd for 3 crits. Would allow for a bursty spike in combination with dots applied.
Edit: yeah this would be a huge buff compared to how it works now for basically no drawback and super cancer if used for sinister assault spam in a sw/sm comp. So maybe it would be better to stick with a 50% increase.

[Acidic]

Double post

[Acidic]

Maybe making the next 3 abilities 100% crit. You give up one gcd for 3 crits. Would allow for a bursty spike in combination with dots applied

The problem with this is that the cast time vs increased damage is not good. Also the utility of crit should be good enough. No reason to have too big an opening on the cookie jar