[Review] [SW] Steady Aim

[Manatikik]

Danii why would we need even more crit? Even if the target has put rr points into crit reduction, 50% are easily achievable for sw with bullseye.

No good SW would run BE in a group setting. Leading Shots IS a must in a competitive group.

[daniilpb]

Danii why would we need even more crit? Even if the target has put rr points into crit reduction, 50% are easily achievable for sw with bullseye.

Agree. But how much crit reduction and defenses would you have? I've said already that okay you can get those numbers but you will sacrifice a lot. Tbh I can't imagine myself without full parry or dodge/disrupt and full futile strikes. Even with 90% armor, -10% chance to be critically hit and 6400 hp I got killed by WE in 3 seconds yesterday evening. And what if I would have Bullseye on me and zero defenses? 2 gcd kill?
Again I can't see why high crit values or guarantied crits might be dangerous : you can't melt enemy front line with it in ORvR especially after defensive buffs for tanks. In small scale it's quite rare to catch an enemy w/o guard and other buffs like BG's Force of Fury (-40% chances to be critically hit with 100 hate) and also debuffs on your very self like BG crit debuffs and Chosen's Crippling Strikes.
I just can't see why it can break the game anywhere else than just pug/l2play environment where people play with bad gear, builds and proper setups.

[lefze]

I can't understand why 3 crits idea is bad.

Scout tree? Steady Aim -> FA -> double Eagle Eye or FtW -> profit. 3 crits buff should have a logical duration limit because of long casts of the scout tree skills and projectile speed. It also would help with counterplay : SW pops up SA -> stagger/punt/shatter.

Assault tree? I know what you are afraid of @lefze, we've played with you and I want to remind you that when we met an organized enemy group, your BA+SA with armor penetration wasn't "over the roof". WE/WH have the same access to spammable armor ignore skill and it doesn't make them OP. If you want to say that something is OP, you should test it in competitive environment, against proper setup. <400 crits are maximum what you can get with BA+SA on guarded target. And it's no where close to be OP for me. Since melee SW lacks defensive options like aoe-detaunt and snare breakers, you should gain defense through items which logically leads to lower damage values. Mara+WE just won't let you deal "over the roof" damage while being glass cannon. Btw never underestimate good enemy healers, they usually are very tough. So bad enemies will suffer anyway, it's basically their l2p issue tbh. Also melee range opens you to enemy CCs and hard debuffs much more than in the case of Scout. Buff head monitoring -> be ready for counterplay -> profit. Assault tree is supposed to be bursty and SA changes can help with it.

Skirmism tree? It won't be anywhere close to UF damage values. Also I want to remind the basics of ORvR tactics : moral bombing. You always should be afraid of moral bombs in 24/24 environment and not 3 chain LA crits which can happen even without SA. If your tanks got killed by moral bombs, it's 95% lost team fight and LA is just an instrument of harassment and finishing down enemy's backlines which deaths are just a matter of time if frontline is already dead.

That first part is the exact reason why the 3 crit stuff won't fix scout. Even if all the skills crit the usability of the scout tree is just too unreliable and clunky to be able to assist properly with. Most of the time targets die/get out of range/get healed even before the fester hits. And sure, the damage would be good, but fixing the playability has a lot more value than just slapping a little more guaranteed damage on it in my eyes.

As for the assault damage not being over the roof is very much due to not critting on every cast of BA. The particular build I was testing that night can reach crits almost as high as 2,1K on unguarded targets. Of course we got our asses handed to us in that one SC, but it still doesn't change the fact that SW CAN burst VERY hard in melee while still having acces to good sustained ranged poke and good disengage in place of what other mdps get. And the free crit would also enable short windows of even better ranged poke while specced assault making up for the lack of ranged crit by just popping one skill. As for using that particualar SC as an indication of performance for the class is kinda wrong as I have never played with you before and I only have a few hours of play on assault SW meaning our play wasn't even close to optimal. And bad enemies already melt, we completely wrecked most things we faced.

As for the whole ORvR part, I'm going to assume that the change of this skill will in no way affect lilieaths arrow as it's already at a point where it's way more than harassment, enough SWs in a warband can output damagelevels far beyond what anyone should be able to considering the spammy nature of the skill. Not only that but a LA+barrage burst can already be really damn good when popped at the right time, put even more crit let alone guaranteed crits onto that and it's a recipe for disaster.

[saupreusse]

Danii why would we need even more crit? Even if the target has put rr points into crit reduction, 50% are easily achievable for sw with bullseye.

Agree. But how much crit reduction and defenses would you have? I've said already that okay you can get those numbers but you will sacrifice a lot. Tbh I can't imagine myself without full parry or dodge/disrupt and full futile strikes. Even with 90% armor, -10% chance to be critically hit and 6400 hp I got killed by WE in 3 seconds yesterday evening. And what if I would have Bullseye on me and zero defenses? 2 gcd kill?
Again I can't see why high crit values or guarantied crits might be dangerous : you can't melt enemy front line with it in ORvR especially after defensive buffs for tanks. In small scale it's quite rare to catch an enemy w/o guard and other buffs like BG's Force of Fury (-40% chances to be critically hit with 100 hate) and also debuffs on your very self like BG crit debuffs and Chosen's Crippling Strikes.
I just can't see why it can break the game anywhere else than just pug/l2play environment where people play with bad gear, builds and proper setups.

It prolly wont, but sw dont need any more crit imo. You chose to play yours defensive, you pay with gimped crit chance.

[daniilpb]

I can't understand why 3 crits idea is bad.

Scout tree? Steady Aim -> FA -> double Eagle Eye or FtW -> profit. 3 crits buff should have a logical duration limit because of long casts of the scout tree skills and projectile speed. It also would help with counterplay : SW pops up SA -> stagger/punt/shatter.

Assault tree? I know what you are afraid of @lefze, we've played with you and I want to remind you that when we met an organized enemy group, your BA+SA with armor penetration wasn't "over the roof". WE/WH have the same access to spammable armor ignore skill and it doesn't make them OP. If you want to say that something is OP, you should test it in competitive environment, against proper setup. <400 crits are maximum what you can get with BA+SA on guarded target. And it's no where close to be OP for me. Since melee SW lacks defensive options like aoe-detaunt and snare breakers, you should gain defense through items which logically leads to lower damage values. Mara+WE just won't let you deal "over the roof" damage while being glass cannon. Btw never underestimate good enemy healers, they usually are very tough. So bad enemies will suffer anyway, it's basically their l2p issue tbh. Also melee range opens you to enemy CCs and hard debuffs much more than in the case of Scout. Buff head monitoring -> be ready for counterplay -> profit. Assault tree is supposed to be bursty and SA changes can help with it.

Skirmism tree? It won't be anywhere close to UF damage values. Also I want to remind the basics of ORvR tactics : moral bombing. You always should be afraid of moral bombs in 24/24 environment and not 3 chain LA crits which can happen even without SA. If your tanks got killed by moral bombs, it's 95% lost team fight and LA is just an instrument of harassment and finishing down enemy's backlines which deaths are just a matter of time if frontline is already dead.

That first part is the exact reason why the 3 crit stuff won't fix scout. Even if all the skills crit the usability of the scout tree is just too unreliable and clunky to be able to assist properly with. Most of the time targets die/get out of range/get healed even before the fester hits. And sure, the damage would be good, but fixing the playability has a lot more value than just slapping a little more guaranteed damage on it in my eyes.

As for the assault damage not being over the roof is very much due to not critting on every cast of BA. The particular build I was testing that night can reach crits almost as high as 2,1K on unguarded targets. Of course we got our asses handed to us in that one SC, but it still doesn't change the fact that SW CAN burst VERY hard in melee while still having acces to good sustained ranged poke and good disengage in place of what other mdps get. And the free crit would also enable short windows of even better ranged poke while specced assault making up for the lack of ranged crit by just popping one skill. As for using that particualar SC as an indication of performance for the class is kinda wrong as I have never played with you before and I only have a few hours of play on assault SW meaning our play wasn't even close to optimal. And bad enemies already melt, we completely wrecked most things we faced.

As for the whole ORvR part, I'm going to assume that the change of this skill will in no way affect lilieaths arrow as it's already at a point where it's way more than harassment, enough SWs in a warband can output damagelevels far beyond what anyone should be able to considering the spammy nature of the skill. Not only that but a LA+barrage burst can already be really damn good when popped at the right time, put even more crit let alone guaranteed crits onto that and it's a recipe for disaster.

Part 1. I have to agree that the scout stance and FA are in a bad spot today. I've tested full scout and hybrid Scout+Skirmish builds and problems, which you describe, really exist. But! I don't agree that we should use SA as a band aid for only Scout tree's problems. It's a core skill, it should be usable in EVERY stance. This is about class in general, not only about Scout tree. Scout should be fixed somehow but not this way. And SA just can help Scout which is very good for me. Small step in right direction.

Part 2. Let's get back in time when we had UF and compare two imaginary situations only for NUMBERS, you will see the difference:
Example 1 with UF:
1000 (brutal assault crit) + 1000 (100% UF) = 2000 damage.
Example 2 w/o UF, nowadays:
1000 (BA crit) + 250 (crit bonus tactic : you have 500 base damage, crit hit gives you 500 more damage, the tactic gives a 50% bonus damage from your crit which is 250) = 1250 damage.

3 hits:
Ex. 1 : 2000 (crit) + 1000 (not crit : 500 base + 500 UF) + 1000 (not crit) = 4000 (3000 if ALL hits aren't critical)
Ex. 2 : 1250 + 1250 + 1250 (all crits) = 3750

Can you see what I mean? (Explanation might be very rough, sorry)

Tbh I didn't see a lot of Melee SWs when UF was here. And as you can see, they could deal much more damage but it wasn't OP. We did try Melee SW with UF one trick and we didn't have super success, it didn't break the game.

Part 3. I don't know what to say any more here. Current meta is moral bombing, meta class is BW. BWs fast morals > SWs without UF, even LAs with guaranteed crits not gonna change the situation here. Case is closed for me. 24/24 environment is about killing tanks first (which is the main part) and then going for backlines. Situations when you get to backlines first are easy predictable w/o SW's possible changes. Pugs/bad players reaping is not a subject of discussion for me.

EDIT: Fixed some typos, sorry.

[lefze]

Part 2. Let's get back in time when we had UF and compare two imaginary situations only for NUMBERS, you will see the deference:
Example 1 with UF:
1000 (brutal assault crit) + 1000 (100% UF) = 2000 damage.
Example 2 w/o UF, nowadays:
1000 (BA crit) + 250 (crit bonus tactic : you have 500 base damage, crit hit gives you 500 more damage, the tactic gives a 50% bonus damage from your crit which is 250) = 1250 damage.

3 hits:
Ex. 1 : 2000 (crit) + 1000 (not crit : 500 base + 500 UF) + 1000 (not crit) = 4000 (3000 if ALL hits aren't critical)
Ex. 2 : 1250 + 1250 + 1250 (all crits) = 3750

Can you see what I mean? (Explanation might be very rough, sorry)

Only thing I have to add to this imaginary example is that Ex. 2 can look like 2k+2k+1.5k as it is now, which is a 5,5k burst not 3750. Now this obviously requires a SM, but still. Making that line of crits GUARANTEED is what I'm opposed to, especially as you can drop crit from gear/renown in favor of defence and still have windows of burst that a def spec shouldn't have. And what you are missing with the comparison of UF vs non UF is the reliability of a 50% crit damage modifier vs a 7 second morale.

And as for the actual damage numbers as a whole, you are making them out to be way lower than they actually are. Actually, my Grim slash is more or less around those numbers on squishy targets. Now I don't know how defensively you have built, but the numbers are several hundreds lower than the averages I have gathered in my log. The question is, do you want SW to be a tanky damage monster or a balanced, well rounded assassin with clear weaknesses? I feel like if you opt for full defence, you should expect to not be given much room for bursting.

Edit: With SM that first line would actually be 2k+2k+2k etc. There would be no way to guarantee 3 BA crits with the change mentioned unless you wait out the CD on the skill without popping anything between casts.

[daniilpb]

Part 2. Let's get back in time when we had UF and compare two imaginary situations only for NUMBERS, you will see the deference:
Example 1 with UF:
1000 (brutal assault crit) + 1000 (100% UF) = 2000 damage.
Example 2 w/o UF, nowadays:
1000 (BA crit) + 250 (crit bonus tactic : you have 500 base damage, crit hit gives you 500 more damage, the tactic gives a 50% bonus damage from your crit which is 250) = 1250 damage.

3 hits:
Ex. 1 : 2000 (crit) + 1000 (not crit : 500 base + 500 UF) + 1000 (not crit) = 4000 (3000 if ALL hits aren't critical)
Ex. 2 : 1250 + 1250 + 1250 (all crits) = 3750

Can you see what I mean? (Explanation might be very rough, sorry)

Only thing I have to add to this imaginary example is that Ex. 2 can look like 2k+2k+1.5k as it is now, which is a 5,5k burst not 3750. Now this obviously requires a SM, but still. Making that line of crits GUARANTEED is what I'm opposed to, especially as you can drop crit from gear/renown in favor of defence and still have windows of burst that a def spec shouldn't have. And what you are missing with the comparison of UF vs non UF is the reliability of a 50% crit damage modifier vs a 7 second morale.

And as for the actual damage numbers as a whole, you are making them out to be way lower than they actually are. Actually, my Grim slash is more or less around those numbers on squishy targets. Now I don't know how defensively you have built, but the numbers are several hundreds lower than the averages I have gathered in my log. The question is, do you want SW to be a tanky damage monster or a balanced, well rounded assassin with clear weaknesses? I feel like if you opt for full defence, you should expect to not be given much room for bursting.

I see your point.
Numbers were taken just for example. If you want to look at the situation with 2k crit, okay then:
UF case: 1600 base crit + 1600 UF = 3200
Today: 1600 base crit + 400 tactic = 2000
3 crits:
UF = 9600 (case with one crit: 3200+1600+1600 = 6400)
Today = 6000
I don't think that it was super hard to get to moral 2 especially with moral pumping, you had easy access to 7 sec buff with 1 min cooldown. And imo it was more dangerous than reliable bonus crit damage which we have today.
And you mentioned it right if you want a "defensive monster" you will have lower damage values then, because your crit is based on your base damage. Damage won't pop up from nowhere and 3 guaranteed crits won't change it. And it's just 3 guaranteed attacks, not 7 seconds for ALL your damage. I believe that 3 attacks even with crit hit bonuses won't beat UF burst damage windows which we had.
That's my point of view. I'm up for 3 guaranteed crits and don't see this possible change like something gamebreaking.

[lefze]

Part 2. Let's get back in time when we had UF and compare two imaginary situations only for NUMBERS, you will see the deference:
Example 1 with UF:
1000 (brutal assault crit) + 1000 (100% UF) = 2000 damage.
Example 2 w/o UF, nowadays:
1000 (BA crit) + 250 (crit bonus tactic : you have 500 base damage, crit hit gives you 500 more damage, the tactic gives a 50% bonus damage from your crit which is 250) = 1250 damage.

3 hits:
Ex. 1 : 2000 (crit) + 1000 (not crit : 500 base + 500 UF) + 1000 (not crit) = 4000 (3000 if ALL hits aren't critical)
Ex. 2 : 1250 + 1250 + 1250 (all crits) = 3750

Can you see what I mean? (Explanation might be very rough, sorry)

Only thing I have to add to this imaginary example is that Ex. 2 can look like 2k+2k+1.5k as it is now, which is a 5,5k burst not 3750. Now this obviously requires a SM, but still. Making that line of crits GUARANTEED is what I'm opposed to, especially as you can drop crit from gear/renown in favor of defence and still have windows of burst that a def spec shouldn't have. And what you are missing with the comparison of UF vs non UF is the reliability of a 50% crit damage modifier vs a 7 second morale.

And as for the actual damage numbers as a whole, you are making them out to be way lower than they actually are. Actually, my Grim slash is more or less around those numbers on squishy targets. Now I don't know how defensively you have built, but the numbers are several hundreds lower than the averages I have gathered in my log. The question is, do you want SW to be a tanky damage monster or a balanced, well rounded assassin with clear weaknesses? I feel like if you opt for full defence, you should expect to not be given much room for bursting.

I see your point.
Numbers were taken just for example. If you want to look at the situation with 2k crit, okay then:
UF case: 1600 base crit + 1600 UF = 3200
Today: 1600 base crit + 400 tactic = 2000
3 crits:
UF = 9600 (case with one crit: 3200+1600+1600 = 6400)
Today = 6000
I don't think that it was super hard to get to moral 2 especially with moral pumping, you had easy access to 7 sec buff with 1 min cooldown. And imo it was more dangerous than reliable bonus crit damage which we have today.
And you mentioned it right if you want a "defensive monster" you will have lower damage values then, because your crit is based on your base damage. Damage won't pop up from nowhere and 3 guaranteed crits won't change it. And it's just 3 guaranteed attacks, not 7 seconds for ALL your damage. I believe that 3 attacks even with crit hit bonuses won't beat UF burst damage windows which we had.
That's my point of view. I'm up for 3 guaranteed crits and don't see this possible change like something gamebreaking.

I guess it's a matter of perception, but the amount of damage we can put out now in melee in the course of say 20 seconds is so much bigger than what we could do back then even with a UF pop in there. And saying 3 guaranteed crits isn't a big boost with the crit damage tactic slotted on a build with a base crit of let's say 10%, is silly. I'm not saying the damage in a tanky build would be absurdly high and broken, but relative to the high tankiness a SW can build it would be too high in my opinion. And again, this is taking into consideration that you always have access to ranged abilities, if the spec were to be without ranged capabilities I would be all for buffing it in some way.

Not necessarily gamebreaking for the most part, but it still doesn't change the fact that it brings buffs to the stuff where buffs are least warranted while still benefitting the stuff that needs buffs the least. All in all a change like this would put SW at a point where I personally think they have too much of the good stuff in the hands of good players, and feels like something that would be done purely on the basis that SA is useless instead of the class lacking something.

But all in all we are both viewing this from different points, you play tanky while I don't even have the gear farmed for a tanky build yet, so obviously coming to a sound agreement about how it's gonna affect assault respectively is impossible.

[Acidic]

3 crits at 2k seems fairly game breaking. If this was done it won’t take long to find a party made up of them with half decent targeting to wipe out opposition .
Think I have a different view of game breaking than u

[lefze]

3 crits at 2k seems fairly game breaking. If this was done it won’t take long to find a party made up of them with half decent targeting to wipe out opposition .
Think I have a different view of game breaking than u

Just keep in mind that 3 consecutive guaranteed 2k crits would require WW SM and unguarded targets, so there is that argument.

Edit: And also a glass cannon spec which relies only on avoidance for defense. It's a pretty cheesy build aswell, not something you can pull off whenever.