[SM] Phantom's Blade

[footpatrol2]

What phantom blade does do is help mitigate guard damage and allows healer's to focus heal more.

[Tesq]

Spoiler:

Bubble work pre crits so vs classes that work with crits aka sorc/bw they are very good as they negate 3x their value.

Stat steal while strong is rng and have not 100% update time on what buff.
Any buff to any xxx blade mastery buff should follow this line imo,when you can remove as said 100% of the time the best raw DD in game on oppo realm (sorc).
If absorb bubble is made group wide what it need is a ICD which give a max of 50% update time the value can be adjusted later on.

I was here on ror originally against it because it can pretty much became a 4th party's kobs aura...unless it get as i say an ICD and.a 50% updatetime.

Phantom's Blade has only one buff instead of 7 like nature's blade, doesn't provide debuffs. Phantom's blade cannot be refreshed while the absorb is active, but has no ICD. So whenever the absorb drops either by taking the extent of its damage or the end of the duration, that is when it can be reapplied. This is triggered by a 25% chance on hit. This means that it will not have a 100% uptime under most circumstances.

Without ether dance, a swordmaster will usually hit a target 6x in 4.5s. (2x auto attacks, 2x 1 hit ability, 1x 2 hit ability) 6 hits gives you an 82% to proc a blade enchant. Ether dance is 9 hits in 6s (2x auto attacks, 2x 1 hit ability, 1x 5hit ability) which is a 92.5% chance to proc.

Far too potent: a Khaine SM could easily enchantment dance, maintain 10% of X if needed, go back to stat steal. Yes, lots of micromanagement, but incredibly potent.

5 second duration could alleviate that somewhat.

In regards to OP: is current absorb underperforming? Would it be considered sufficient if it, as per this proposal, affected group members (naturally we don't want a superstrong ST bubble affecting group members, for reasons Aura has already listed).

The 55ap cost of per cast of a blade enchant would likely be enough to keep anyone from stance dancing mid combat. Personally, I only ever switch on rare occasion mid fight and that's when im pugging, all healers die, and there's only one enemy left. I know that part of your post was towards Aura's 10% to different defensive procs idea.

At 15 points in vaul, the absorb is 487. The absorb is viable for yourself when stacked with other absorbs (vaul's buffer, PoH) and having high amounts of toughness. But this self survivability is not much better than stealing 75 offensive stat, 75 init, and 75 toughness that nature's blade (with no points in khaine) would get you. And nature's blade helps out the party offensively and defensively. Most of your party is not going to have the toughness to make the absorb mitigate more than half a hit. (Might give you a reason to cast our 'unique' m1, but I doubt it)

I think as I originally proposed, share with group, nerf duration to 5s, with no change in potency is a good start towards balancing the blade enchant with little risk of being unintentionally over-powered.

this math is all wrong; first, you can hit 9 targets for base and even if you go 2h and you use ether dance you can anyway even just spam aoe phoenix wing/wrath of hoeth...... with out any ICD hitting 9 ppl with a 25% proc chance will be = to perma have buble on when it end, the fact that is just 1 buff, mean you remove the rng component other 2 blade buff have; all blade buff have a 25% proc chance this wont change, it change that you know for sure what gona be buff how and with an update time near 100% in close combat.

even if you restric the bubble to only work in s+b (so cya phoenix wing and ether dance), you will still have access to wrath of hoeth, which just requrie a ap tactic to profit for blade ench proc and debuff AND aoe dmg spam.

even regarding the value, it is not fine; warped flesh tactic and other tactic which have icd 3 sec or similar present values FAR worst (minus 100points).

ultimately all depend how the update time will be and to how many ppl apply; for exemple:

soul shielding from dok and wp counterpart are skill and give at max scaling give 1162 work on 6 ppl and have 60 sec CD

if you divide both CD and value by 6 = 1162 and 60 you get 192:66 and 10 sec cd

so this is the value you will have 192 every CD/ICD. rougly this mean that phantom blade it is currently think as ST abosrb and not a group wide absorb, use the same value would be foolish the difference between phatom blade and tactic like warped flesh is given as compensation for active working; these were all exemple; you need to cut the value half as any st stuff which became aoe /groupwide to make it balanced.

So ICD 10 sec , last 5 sec 243 (max value) absorb for all group.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Since ppl think they are very rubbish lets debunk this; they are not vs crit classes; with let's say a 500 dmg exemple....

500 dmg critted became = to 500x3.5= 1750 aoe dmg

how abosrb work=??? -> it work pre crit this mean that before do 1750 dmg bw/sorc base dmg go minus x value for absorb so for exemple if is 400

(500-400) x3-5= 350
so 400 absorb prevented 1400 DMG

if you had like 500 toughness (because toughness stack with absorb value) which also gave 100 dmg reduction you would had 0 x 3.5 which give 0 dmg , so 400 absorb prevented 1650 dmg from happening.

[Ramasee]

First the math is not wrong, it is against a single target. An AoE hitting 9 targets would have a 92.5% chance to proc the shield same as hitting a single target 9x would (however, the ST 9x has chances to proc more than once if the shield drops)

Also BOTH AoE abilities are improved balance. Accounting for sudden shift once every other balance rotation. 2,3,1,2,3. That's two AoEs every 5 GCDs (6 w/ ether dance).

If you are in combat and able to hit 9 targets consistently, how long is a 487 absorb going to last? I have tested this ability on myself in orvr trying exactly what you are suggesting. AoEing to proc the enchant as often as possible while stacking upwards of 800 toughness. The absorb rarely stays up longer than half a sec in bomb environments.

No one uses emperor ward/warped flesh because of the crappy 375 value with the 3s ICD. Thats more of a reason to buff those tactics (and a few other racials one really). But thats another discussion. Also you are comparing a racial tactic with the 15 pt investment PB. The 0pt investment PB is 325.

Phantom's blade is exclusive with nature's blade. This means that you lose out on nature's blade benefits when using phantoms blade so it would be as you say foolish to blindly compare it to a an active skill of another class that doesn't exchange that skill availability of use with another ability without taking into account the loss of nature's blade.


==========
Now I do not think that absorbs are rubbish. That's why I have been arguing against potency increases in addition to target change. However, the variables you use in your math are wrong.

Sorcs/BW have +100% critical damage on top of the base +40 - 60% critical damage (so 50%). Thats a critical damage multiplier of 2.5; not 3.5. And of course you use the most extreme example rather than displaying all classes.

Tooltip value from a 1050 intelligence bright wizard is ~650.

Quick inquiry into the toughness values of online, well-geared guild mates nets me a rough average of 275 toughness for non tanks. Also toughness would mitigate the damage anyways, so including it into calculations doesn't show the reality unless you also mitigate the non absorb damage by resistance/armor.

650 base damage.
BW/Sorc crit = 650 x 2.5 = 1625
+50% crit damage tactic class crits = 650 * 2 = 1300
Everyone else = 650 * 1.5 = 975
No crit = 650

After 40% mitigation, and 275 toughness:
650 - 55 (toughness) = 595
BW: 595 * 2.5 * 0.6 = 892.5
Tactic: 595 * 2 * 0.6 = 714
Else: 595 * 1.5 * 0.6 = 535.5
No crit: 595 * 0.6 = 357

Phantom Blade Values:
325 = 0pt
357 = 3pt (amount dipped into for parry/block tactic)
400 =7pt (amount left over if WW bot build, and dumping all extra points into vaul)
466 = 13 pt (full vaul build, lets be honest no one is pushing to the m4)

595 - 466 (bubble) = 129
BW: 129 * 2.5 * 0.6 = 193.5
Tactic: 129 * 2 * 0.6 = 154.8
Else: 129 * 1.5 * 0.6 = 116.1
No crit: 129 * 0.6 = 77.4

Damage 466 Bubble Can Mitigate:
BW: 892.5 - 193.5 = 698.5 (150% of bubble tooltip)
Tactic: 714 - 154.8 = 559.2 (120% of bubble tooltip)
Else: 535.5 - 116.1 = 419.4 (90% of bubble tooltip)
No Crit: 357 - 77.4 = 279.6 (60% of bubble tooltip)

(edited to reduce amount of white text, sorry dansari!)

[footpatrol2]

absorbs do a ton of work but since they don't show up on the SC scoreboard the community undervalue's them.

[dansari]

Friendly reminder not to use colors in a block of text, as it can be mistaken for a team member's.

[Ramasee]

Actually the only thing that seems to modify how much damage the bubble itself actually mitigates is critical damage and mitigation percentage changes.

The more critical damage your opponent has the more valuable an absorb is (if they would have crit).

The less armor or resistance you have the higher amount of value you get from an absorb.

I took my formulas in the above post and placed them into this google docs spreadsheet for quicker maths.

(Anyone can edit B1:B5 and see the values change)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Methryel]

Well, it looks like you want to demonstrate that bubbles are strong for groups.If it's THAT strong why don't we see bunch of SM using WW to spam PoH(815 abso or something closed)?
You've shown that it can be strong against ONE hit . And you're right.
But this is a team's game, when you hit a target :
1)you're most of the time not alone
and 2) you hit many times. That's why PoH didn't disrupt the game and why bubbles are useless in Vaul's tree.
It's good for very little fights or duels but not for SC or WB.
The bubbles will still absorb less than the dmg avoided wit the buffs (from IB or Knight for example)

The goal of this thread is to improve Vaul's tree which almost dead.
How many Vaul's SM are playing? Not many.
Improve PB is a good Idea, if you think that Share thé bubbles with thé entire party IS too much , do it for the SM and the player you're guarding .
If you keep the PB bubbles so low , nbdy will play it...

[Tesq]

650 base damage.
BW/Sorc crit = 650 x 2.5 = 1625
+50% crit damage tactic class crits = 650 * 2 = 1300
Everyone else = 650 * 1.5 = 975
No crit = 650

rdps crit multipelr is 100% base (while melee is 50%)+ 150% from bw/sorc meccanic is 250% which you add 100% which is base dmg = 350% because you cant multiply by 1 so is 650 x 3.5 not 2.5 as i said. this is wrong, just wrong.

proof:

base dmg =650
+100% =650+650=1300
+100%+150%=650+650+975+=2275

a base skill dmg of 650 can crit for 2275 this is the correct vaue; aka 650 absorb+tough can negate over 2k of dmg



After 40% mitigation, and 275 toughness:
650 - 55 (toughness) = 595
BW: 595 * 2.5 * 0.6 = 892.5
Tactic: 595 * 2 * 0.6 = 714
Else: 595 * 1.5 * 0.6 = 535.5
No crit: 595 * 0.6 = 357

this is wrong aswell, toughness work on int not post total skill dmg skill with higer cast time get mosr econtribution from the primary stat so tough could negate more value depending on skill rather than always a fix value; again wrong this would work even better by stack with bubbles.



Damage 466 Bubble Can Mitigate:
BW: 892.5 - 193.5 = 698.5 (150% of bubble tooltip)
Tactic: 714 - 154.8 = 559.2 (120% of bubble tooltip)
Else: 535.5 - 116.1 = 419.4 (90% of bubble tooltip)
No Crit: 357 - 77.4 = 279.6 (60% of bubble tooltip)

wrong x above

Well, it looks like you want to demonstrate that bubbles are strong for groups.If it's THAT strong why don't we see bunch of SM using WW to spam PoH(815 abso or something closed)?
You've shown that it can be strong against ONE hit . And you're right.
But this is a team's game, when you hit a target :
1)you're most of the time not alone
and 2) you hit many times. That's why PoH didn't disrupt the game and why bubbles are useless in Vaul's tree.
It's good for very little fights or duels but not for SC or WB.
The bubbles will still absorb less than the dmg avoided wit the buffs (from IB or Knight for example)

The goal of this thread is to improve Vaul's tree which almost dead.
How many Vaul's SM are playing? Not many.
Improve PB is a good Idea, if you think that Share thé bubbles with thé entire party IS too much , do it for the SM and the player you're guarding .
If you keep the PB bubbles so low , nbdy will play it...

that is an active which require a GCD to be use where you better stay hold the line, and you will get less dmg for the healers to heal, the blade ench would be a "passive" buff which dont requrie ICD which you will proc just by use your skill for whatever reason you want to, froma core skill which can potentially negate 3x the bubble value in dmg as i show in formula since it work pre -crit.

The more critical damage your opponent has the more valuable an absorb is (if they would have crit).

""""""""""""""""""(if they would have crit).""""""""""""""

do we play the same game=?????

this ia a game based on crit and multiplers in generals......

[footpatrol2]

Well, it looks like you want to demonstrate that bubbles are strong for groups.If it's THAT strong why don't we see bunch of SM using WW to spam PoH(815 abso or something closed)?

You can build several absorb's on a SM. The blade enchant is just one out of his kit.

There is a TON that is overlooked by the community so that whole "why don't we see bunch of SM using WW to spam PoH" comment is meh.

It's probably partly because SM's are not seen as defensive tanks although they can be built as such. Also likely because when people ask what to roll as a dps tank they get told to roll a SM. So you have a absurd amount of khaine SM's comparatively. The defensive kit really isn't that bad on a SM. Again it depends on what your goals are.

[GodlessCrom]

Bubble spec SM might be one of the tankiest toons in the game.

Problem with it is that is its only perk: it doesnt die. It doesnt really have the impact of other, slightly less tanky specs and classes cuz it lacks the afk auras of knight, the utility of IB and the damage of either a Khaine SM or a 2h IB. So its not terribly optimal to run it.

Pretty funny to see one trolling people in 1v1 though. You can just see their spirits wilt when the SMs health bar doesnt even move.