A reflection on stealth classes

[Farrul]

Witch elf specs for Witchbrew Defensive because the game literally begs you to do it. If you are playing offensive spec you probably are not taking witchbrew because it's dmg is not increased by Taste of Blood or Flanking + It cannot do critical dmg. So they force you to use Frenzied Mayhem(Which they should revert to be More crit when having 1-5 Frenzies to 3-15% Crit increase) because all the ways of doing dmg with WB is blocked, except one tactic.

Of course, none def WE is a worse version of the WH, more or less a ''free'' kill for any order regen tank etc. I don't blame the player, but the current mechanics and balance.

I'm interested in solutions to improve the game and not the def/regen smalll scale status quo that has been and most veteran players should be sick and tired of by now, with the DPS patches coming up next there is an opportunity for the dev team to do something about things which has begged for attention a long time, this topic being one of them.

[nat3s]

Did you just say WH deadly?! I exclusively solo roam and WHs are my bread and butter, can be full sov/tri with fort/bl/armour pen gun, it doesn't matter, they're free renown.

I think you're viewing it from your lens running strictly offensive setups with high crit/primary stat, but that's a woeful setup for solo play. To someone geared like that, you might get the mistaken impression that WHs are deadly I guess.

I am referring to how the ''assassin'' type of class is supposed to behave if balance is to be considered.

But thanks for pointing it out so clearly how far off from a good spot the balance currently is, of course the solution is not to make WH like a def WE but vice versa.

Then work on improving both classes from there in a context which makes sense for their archetype/toolkit.

Ok I get you, WH/WE will never be WoW rogue-like in terms of big burst, RoR has evolved into a defensive meta, at least for solo roaming. Devs would need to neuter a lot of stuff from tough stacking to hp/s to allow a WH/WE to fill that role or give them something like Rampage to cut through it.

[storm]

W/E and WH should be high risk / high reward. Very high burst with limited sustain. What is frustrating is that they get everything.

[Farrul]

Ok I get you, WH/WE will never be WoW rogue-like in terms of big burst, RoR has evolved into a defensive meta, at least for solo roaming. Devs would need to neuter a lot of stuff from tough stacking to hp/s to allow a WH/WE to fill that role or give them something like Rampage to cut through it.

I don't know why you refer to the WH in this same context. WH is squishy and behaving like the WoW rogue with big burst ( Bal - also check patch notes) but squishy once CD( repel, cloak etc is off cd). When was the last time you saw a ''Def WH'' and how effective was it? WH needs str Crit and WS to be effective = glass cannon.

The only outlier is the Def WE. Now it seems buffed even from the latest patch notes with a new snare, lol. At the very least her 600/3 absorb tactic should have been looked at since it is clearly overtuned.

[tazdingo]

yea that's not an extreme example ib, bg and chosen full def/regen specced can handle 3 stealthers at once, chosen maybe 4. you won't kill any but if you play properly they can't kill you

There is always option to go 80parry/redarpen high regen and just weather down every opponent. But if everyone does that it will be the end of this niche. I recently made def engi clip, you can check it if you want a taste iofdef/def duels.

Spoiler: it takes a while and nobody dies

engi is good but dude try chosen its hilarious. nobody touches his survivability thanks to absorb proc, str aura and m3 absorb. i used to make groups chase me to cliffs and then punt them off

[nat3s]

Ok I get you, WH/WE will never be WoW rogue-like in terms of big burst, RoR has evolved into a defensive meta, at least for solo roaming. Devs would need to neuter a lot of stuff from tough stacking to hp/s to allow a WH/WE to fill that role or give them something like Rampage to cut through it.

I don't know why you refer to the WH in this same context. WH is squishy and behaving like the WoW rogue with big burst ( Bal - also check patch notes) but squishy once CD( repel, cloak etc is off cd). When was the last time you saw a ''Def WH'' and how effective was it? WH needs str Crit and WS to be effective = glass cannon.

The only outlier is the Def WE. Now it seems buffed even from the latest patch notes with a new snare, lol. At the very least her 600/3 absorb tactic should have been looked at since it is clearly overtuned.

Like I was saying, BAL does big burst on offensive spec'd players, it doesn't hurt half as much on a solo roaming setup 1v1 char e.g. def regen mag, regen chosen, dual hot dps 1v1 sham etc etc

If you want WH and WE to be big burst classes, you'd need to remove AP reduction items, hp/s, regeneration renown, going massive neg crit, nerfing high parry builds and so on.

For the record, I'm with you, I'd like WH/WE to be primarily played as burst classes, but right now the WH is just meh because it can only spec for burst and doesn't really deliver that burst and WE is forced into def regen setup because it's burst sucks.

[Faction69]

I agree that WE/WH shouldn't have effective tank or regen specs. But your solution to remove their only gap closer when they have no slow is just very dumb. The result of that would be that any class can turn around and stun, slow, etc a WH/WE, walk away, and then they can literally never catch back up again.

Your conception that speed vanish is the only WE/WH gap closer is so technically wrong that I would even consider throwing around the word "dumb" that you so lightly use.

If WE shadow leap, if WE/WH ranged KD, if weapon procs that snare the target undefendably, if stealth itself, probably the best gap closer ever) are not gap closers, what is? Are you playting your char in the right way? I wonder how for so many years WE/WH was such an effective class in the lakes before the implemenation of speed vanish. Mysterious indeed.

ANYWAY I WOULD HAVE ZERO ISSUES OF SPEED VANISH AS A GAP CLOSER

The problem is speed vanish is (yet another) alt f4 legal card that allows the WE/WH to avoid losing after they had all the advantage to begin with. As if stagger for 6 seconds + backflip wasn't enough.

How about make speed vanish a skill that requires a enemy target to activate? Woudl you cry less? I'd be OK with that.

Shadow leap barely qualifies as a gap closer, when you arrive at the target they've already moved, and you can only use it from stealth. If you vanish, you don't want to break it and get rid of your speed boost just to shadow leap, you're better off walking right up to the enemy and attacking them with another opener. WH also doesn't get a mirror ability of this.

Weapon procs are only when YOU ARE HIT, not when you hit. These are good for regen builds which can survive long enough to get a proc reliably and then walk up to the target, but terrible and so unreliable as to be useless for any other build.

Ranged KD is only for 1 spec, it's 30 yard range, and is on a 20 second diminshing return. It's ok but it's certainly not a "gap closer" per se. If you don't KD during your opener you have pretty much no chance of beating a decent player, so it's going to be on immunity timer in most situations where you might be able to use it as a gap closer (if you can even get into 30 yard range that is, which you have no way of doing outside of vanish speed boost)

"The problem is speed vanish is (yet another) alt f4 legal card that allows the WE/WH to avoid losing after they had all the advantage to begin with. As if stagger for 6 seconds + backflip wasn't enough."

If you're fighting a (non regen) WE or WH, you should very easily be able to get them to burn vanish so that they can't use to run away, unless you started the fight at some sort of substantial disadvantage.


Vanish is absolutely mostly a gap closer for any build, this is just completely uncontroversial, a temporary stealth is not nearly as useful as a speed boost. You could remove the vanish from the ability and buff wh/we in some other area to compensate and no one in their right mind would complain. The only situation where it'd really lose utility from that is when you use it to escape from like 5v1 situations.

btw here's me playing, please try and tell me I don't know how to play. Watch how I use vanish and you'll see it's usually very confidently to stay on a target because that's the most effective way to use it in most situations. and let us know your IGN so I can search for you in my solo kills.

Click here to watch on YouTube

[Ruin]

Shadow leap barely qualifies as a gap closer, when you arrive at the target they've already moved, and you can only use it from stealth. If you vanish, you don't want to break it and get rid of your speed boost just to shadow leap, you're better off walking right up to the enemy and attacking them with another opener. WH also doesn't get a mirror ability of this.

Could I ask you to confirm that WE new Shadow Leap works like WL pounce now, with added Slow?
i see the changes include:
- increased Range from 25 to 45 ft
- the requirement for Invisibility is removed
- and it has added reseting CD mechanic