wargrimnir wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2020 11:06 pm
Let's calm down a bit and walk through it. Very easy to yell nerf, a lot harder to look at the implementation and say "oh right, this isn't working anywhere near intended"
Agreed.
Scout Tree
Reworked - Glass Arrow - Toggle Buff, while active: abilities deal an additional 50-250 Physical damage, but cost 15 more AP per use.
First pass - Didn't drain AP at all, worked on every damage tick. Clearly broken, nowhere near intended implementation.
Second pass - Drained way too much AP on AOE/channel abilities, applied on every damage tick. Draining your entire AP bar from casting a single AOE, also not intended, very disruptive for SW's.
Third pass - Moved to Scout with a 1s ICD. Scout doesn't have AOE and the 1s ICD really only applies to Rapid Fire (which was overperforming with 6 bonus ticks, now only 3), otherwise we would need several exceptions specific to this buff to avoid issues in the second pass.
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Replaced an instant-cast burst ability with a toggle that has significant downsides. Gives little extra burst to Scout in comparison with spamming Festering Arrow and Eye Shot. The current change makes it nigh impossible to use in an AOE fight, which seriously diminishes the SW's damage output. I understand the 2+million DPS cities by SWs in the first week of the patch may be a bit much (even though other DPS classes regularly do those numbers) but as it stands this ability has no viability besides some low ST burst.
Reworked - Guerrilla Training - After switching stance your action point costs are reduced by 25% and your movement speed is increased by 20% for 5s
Straight up buff if you use it. Provides a ton of mobility on demand, not the same as the goblin tactic, but arguably as effective. Replaced the AP reduction tactic in Scout, which if you're being honest was rarely taken for anything.
Agreed, good tactic option for those who wanted to skirmish.
Updated - Acid Arrow - remove stance requirement. This can now be used from any stance.
Straight up buff.
1 second cast on a single target, only really usable in Scout and only ever on tanks. Can be used by assault, but likely won't due to cast time. No AOE usefulness.
Updated - Enchanted Arrows no longer affects Flame Arrow
FA was moved to Skirmish, and in the second pass was buffed to scale much better with ballistic, which results in a small net buff to damage.
"Small net buff to damage" to an aoe ability = good.
Updated - Increased base damage of Fell the Weak, Acid Arrow, Throat Shot, and Eye Shot to match Eagle Eye.
All solid straight up buffs.
Good buffs for Scout, still no AOE - but questionably useful as these are utility/situational which would be used when needed regardless of base damage.Scout had other, better options for damage.
Moved - Move Glass Arrow to Scout Core
While some lamented the loss of the original function of range reduction, the bonus damage (as evidenced by the excitement over the broken implementation) is meaningful.
No problem with more risk/reward (closer=risk).
Moved - Move Eye Shot from Skirmish 5pt to Scout 5pt, remove stance requirement, remove buildup while moving, 100' range
Nerfed. Functionality stays the same, range goes up to 100', but it's no longer a mobile ranged knocked down. That takes it out of Skirmish viability as they rely on shorter range attacks. Can it be used? Sure. It probably still is. But the functionality is a clear shift from what it was before. Note here, Eye Shot was very long one of the few sore spots that people took issue with in SW.
I don't agree that it was OP to begin with, but I understand why it was changed.
Skirmish Tree
Reworked - Split Arrows tactic - Spiral Fletched Arrows and Broadhead Arrows now hit all enemies within 20' of your initial target, but their range is reduced to 65'
Mixed. While we intentionally increased range of the two skirmish spammable abilities to compensate for the overall range nerf with the loss of powerful draw, using this tactic brings these two back down to Skirmish range. However, there is no damage penalty, and they take full advantage of AOE cap. This is one of the trade-offs for increased power.
This tactic isn't paying off at all. It makes you close (i.e. at risk of dying) and leaves you with only mildly damaging physical abilities. Anecdotally I've ran this several times with a KOTBS guard (for max survivability) in a city environment and done equivalent/slightly more damage than a 2h tank (admittedly in invader/vanq, but a tank shouldn't be matching a pure DPS). BA takes a long time to stack and finally tick, and is often cleansed. Spiral Arrow hits for low-medium damage, has a 1s cast time so it's limited on spam and easily interrupted (unless forfeiting damage tactics to take expert skirm).
Reworked - Powerful Draw tactic - Skirmish abilities penetrate 25% armor.
Nerfed. This was the big nerf. 98' skirmish range cannibalizes the Scout tree, it always has. Without the range nerf, making significant improvements to Skirmish AOE/mobility would simply invalidate Scout further. The armor penetration bonus is pretty weak and may change to something more impactful.
As you said, pretty weak for the point investment.
Updated - Spiral Fletched Arrows base range increased to 100'
Buff*, previously you used PD for the increased range. By default this keeps it, but using Split Arrows reduces range.
This is nice, but a buff that only really applies to ST kiting SW... which is a very limited part of the class with a very limited playerbase.
Updated - Broadhead Arrows - Now stacks up to 3 times and base range increased to 100'
First pass, stacking 3x with the existing damage scaling was far too much.
Second pass, lowering the ballistic scaling at the same time as increasing Flame Arrow. Result should be 1 FA = 2 BA < 3 BA. You still get good efficiency on BA with three stacks, provided they're not cleansed, and again, there's no damage penalty when using split arrows.
Understand the balancing you're going for here, but it doesn't take into account the nerf in time investment. Setting up 3 stacks of BA takes a long time. IIRC someone calculated the time it takes for a full tick of BA as 7.5 seconds. That's just too long to be viable anywhere where a healer is around.
Updated - Keen Arrowheads tactic - remove Eye Shot duration, add Flame Arrow duration increased to 15s
Eye shot duration refers to the initiative debuff, which if you're using ES in a rotation additional duration shouldn't be needed to kill a target in Scout stance, also it was removed from the tree. FA was added as it's part of the tree.
This is fine, but I don't know if anyone will run it anyways.
Updated - Lileaths Arrow - Now has a 5 second cooldown
Nerfed, can still be spammed with a SM in group using Whispering Winds, but we wanted to reinforce that synergy and require other AOE.
So is there a plan to make Choppa/Slayer or Mara/WL spammable AOE dependent on having a specific class with a specific skill in the same party? Managing this is so much work for a skill with a low damage base when a party could just pick up a slayer/WL and have more damaging, spammable, AOE which still can take advantage of the WW.
Moved - Move Barrage to 13pt, reduce cooldown to 5s
First pass, Barrage was applying the full 300 morale drain on every cast regardless of VON, with Whispering Winds, it was doing this as a spammable cast meaning massive morale drain within 40'. Not intended, and overperforming.
Second pass, reduced to 100 morale drain pretty quickly before we realized it wasn't even being used during VON.
Third pass, once the VON interaction was fixed, this turned into a lower morale drain than what mara can do, while also being in a 10s/30s cycle. This may be adjusted upward.
Barrage was also a huge source of AOE when you could run glass arrow with it - in fact, with the added morale drain I'd argue it made the SW somewhat warband viable.
Moved - Move Flame Arrow from Scout Core to Skirmish 5pt, swap Scout stance requirement with Skirmish stance, increase primary stat multiplier by 20%, range 65'
Buff. FA was a bad skill aside from being an instant cast dot. The damage was sad, the initial hit was sad. Now it's comparable to similar dots.
No complaints here.
Assault Tree
Updated - Brutal Slash - swap Scout with Skirmish requirement
Buff, didn't really make sense to have this on Scout. QOL fix is all.
Nothing to add.
Updated - Sweeping Slash - add Skirmish requirement
Buff, access to this AOE was a low effort change that provides another AOE to Skirmish.
Nobody uses this in skirmish stance b/c you don't get the strength buff. This is basically a non-change. It's also on a whopping 20s cooldown for a moderately-hitting melee ability, pretty piss poor when compared to the mirror MSH/Mara AOE.
Core abilities/Tactics
Reworked - Steady Aim - Toggle Buff, while active: Cast time buildup takes an additional 1s, but you gain 25% bonus critical damage.
Feedback on this isn't great, and playing with it doesn't feel great either. Intended to provide more crit damage in exchange for cast time, it's too much even at 1s to be viable for the crit damage. Up for review.
Agreed.
Updated - Hunters Fervor - Changed 20% AP regen to 5 AP regen per second
Minor buff, but it is a buff. 5AP per second is actually more than what most people would get with 20% additonal base regen. Not a lot of feedback around it, probably not strong enough to matter yet.
Agreed.
Vengeance of Nagarythe
Buffs all around, no question about it. VON was targeted at the specline abilities, they're all fairly significant benefits.
Several abilities now have a "While Vengeful" modifier below
- Scout
Great buffs to Scout, which was, even pre-buff, a decent spec.
Fell the Weak - deals spirit damage
Festering Arrow - undefendable
Eye Shot - cooldown reduced by 10s
- Skirmish
Minimal buff to AOE/warband utility. So low that SW is not even considered for non-pug WBs.
Barrage - removes 100 morale from targets **
As noted above, 100 morale may be too low now that it's working as intended.
Shadow Sting - undefendable
Flame Arrow - increase radius by 10'
- Assault
Buffs to ASW, the strongest pre-buff mastery and the one that needed the least buffs - especially to burst. Crosscut didn't need to be buffed. How about a reduction/elimination on the cooldown of Sweeping Slash to give us more AOE potential on our melee spec (in line with MSH)? Or, if we don't want ASW to have viable AOE, how about a root/snare break on VON activation (to allow for more skirmishing)?
Exploit Weakness - cooldown reduced by 10s
Crosscut - hits an additional time
This is probably the only one that has any significant feedback for being too powerful.
Swift Strikes - lasts an additional 2s
Nerf Squig the same you say? Well we might.
If these are the buffs Squig gets, I guarantee you will have more torches and pitchforks.
