Curse

Symbol · Mar 19, 2007, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Taking a cue from Patccmoi's Dagger Skills thread I'm going to post some suggestions to fix deadly arts-currently a skill line with very few viable options. My goal is to make deadly arts a more viable support line for a dagger-using sin, making pure DA builds workable is a bonus. I'm also considering PvP only (both 4v4 and 8v8).

Update: Incorporated some suggestions from the thread.

Update 2: Added Mark of Death and Scorpion Wire to the list

[skill]Augury of Death[/skill]

Problem:
This skill is just a mess if you're using it as a way to get DW into a combo. The shadowstep can and does occur at the most inopportune moments, often interrupting you right in the middle of an attack. This is lame and should go.

Suggestion:
The shadowstep should only occur if you're not adjacent to the target.

[skill]Crippling Dagger[/skill]
Problem: Hex based snares are superior to conditions because conditions are easy to remove. Assassins have access to the infinitely superior siphon speed which is unconditional, has a better effect, and is a hex. Hexes also satisfy the black offhand prerequisites, and these are (currently) the best combo starters the assassin has. Only an idiot would take crippling dagger for snaring purposes.

Suggestion: Change to 5/.75/5. Change functionality to "Sends out a crippling dagger to target foe. Crippling dagger strikes for 15...51...63 earth damage and cripples for 3...13...16 seconds if it hits. If it hits a moving foe, that foe starts bleeding for 3...13...16 seconds. Now you always get a snare, and if you satisfy the condition you get a cover condition as well. I think this makes a viable alternative to siphon speed.

[skill]Dancing Daggers[/skill]
Problem: This is a skill that does nothing but some mediocre damage. It counts as a lead, but is still unattractive because doing lead - offhand - dual with a 1s cast spell as a starter takes too long, is too prone to interruption, and uses too many skill slots.

Suggestion: Change to 5/.25/4. You can't increase the damage too much, because of the interaction with deadly paradox. Making it inflict conditions or snare would be mostly redundant since there are plenty of ways to do that on a sin already. The above change make is a quick, reliable combo starter that is resistant to disruption-that makes it valuable even if the effect is nothing spectacular. The low recharge would also allow you to do interesting things, like marking 2 or 3 targets before you combo to prevent telegraphing a spike.

[skill]Disrupting Dagger[/skill]
Problem: This is most a pet peeve, but having a .25 sec cast interrupt which takes an additional ~.2 secs to land (even at point blank range) after casting is really annoying.

Suggestion: Fix projectile speed pls.

[skill]Enduring toxin[/skill]
Problem: It's cheap, it's fast, but it doesn't really do anything and the recharge is a bit too long if you want it as your sole hex for a black xxx attack.

Suggestion: 5/.25/8 and change the functionality to "For 5 seconds, target foe suffers from 1...4...5 health degeneration and weakness. If target foe is moving when enduring toxin ends, it is renewed for another 5 seconds". Now it does something useful, moderate degen and a constant cover condition. This synergizes well with any of the skills that apply cripple, in particular Black Mantis Thrust (at 5E) + enduring toxin would work very well for pressure.

[skill]Entangling Asp[/skill]
Problem: It's an expensive KD on a long timer (20s) that poisons. Yay?

Suggestion: 3sec KD. That way it's actually somewhat interesting as a form of disruption. Plus it's lame that warriors now have a monopoly on longer KDs.

[skill]Expunge Enchantments[/skill]
Problem: It's generally inferior to mass enchant strips available to other classes, the skill disable is extremely annoying, and tying the number of enchants stripped to the number of skills disabled on your bar is a bad mechanic.

Suggestion: 10/.75/25, 1...3...3 enchants stripped, non-attack skills disabled for 5s.

[skill]Iron Palm[/skill]
Problem: Bleh, another badly designed skill. You generally want leads to recharge fast, but because this one KDs you can't do that.

Suggestion: 5/.75/6. Change functionality to "Target touched foe suffers 15...63...79 damage. If target foe is suffering from a hex or a condition that foe is knocked down and this skill is disabled for an additional 15...9...7 seconds. Makes the recharge reasonable, but prevents you abusing the KD, with or without DP. The damage is now respectable on its own given that it always hits and is armor ignoring.

[skill]Lift Enchantment[/skill]
Problem: KD's are at a premium in this game, so even if the skill itself is cheap and fast recharging, tying it to a KD makes it expensive. Also, you want to be able to use single enchant strips outside of spikes, but you save KDs for spikes or when you want to play defensively (so you don't care much about enchant removal).

Suggestion: Change to "target foe and 1..3 foes in the area" lose an enchantment.

This one is tricky because the way the skill is designed means that it's pretty much only relevant during a spike-but the game already has tons of spike assists and I don't really want to promote spike gameplay any more than necessary by making it remove prot stacks or do extra damage or anything like that.

I also don't want to make the skill too gimmicky by making the conditional effect overwhelmingly strong. The above change gives you good enchant control, but you need to pay at least some attention to when you use it.. You also need to invest in deadly arts to get some value out of it.

[skill]Mantis Touch[/skill]
Problem: Uncovered cripple on a 15 sec recharge? Give me a break.

Suggestions: 5/.75/4, and change the requirement to "must follow a lead or offhand attack". Cripple needs to be at least semi-spammable to be worthwhile. You can also incorporate it into a standard lead-offhand-dual combo by casting it before you hit the dual in case the enemy tries to run, and the recharge means that it's always available when your attack skills are.

[skill]Mark of Death[/skill]
Problem: Decent effect on a bad recharge.

Suggestion: Change to 10/.25/10

[skill]Scorpion Wire[/skill]
Problem: Siphon speed exists. If you have to get close, you might as well get a guaranteed snare. Also potentially dangerous to you.

Suggestion: 5/1/25 and remove the half range limitation. This skill is only really useful in skirmishes and can backfire badly (imagine getting teleported behind the enemy's backline because your target decided to screw you over) so I don't think I'm making the recharge too aggressive. But the effect is strong so it's still viable compared to shadow walk,dark prison, and death's charge.

[skill]Mark of Insecurity[/skill]
Problem: Blargh. Why should anyone care about this skill when there are elites that are far more efficient at removing enchants and when you can remove stances outright with wild strike, wild blow, etc.

Suggestion: Make it so that enchantments and stances expire 50...74...82% faster. That way it's actually noticeable-a spirit bond lasting for for 3 seconds instead of 10 or a SoA lasting for 4 seconds instead of 12 actually matters when it comes to pressure.

[skill]Shameful fear[/skill]
Problem: 2 sec cast on a character casting hexes in melee. Unacceptable

Suggestions: 10/.25/10. This is a beefier version of enduring toxin that also stacks with it, now the cost reflects that.

[skill]Siphon Strength[/skill]
Problem: Too expensive and inflexible.

Suggestion: Change to "you have an additional 33% chance to critical strike" so you don't have to attack the melee you just gimped.

[skill]Way of the Empty Palm[/skill]
Problem: Dagger sins have plenty of ways to recoup energy without burning their elite, and you can't even keep the enchant up 24/7 in any case.

Suggestion: 5/.25/15 and change effect to all leads, offhands, dual attacks, and half range spells cost 1..3...3 less energy. Deadly arts finally has some e-managment and, uh, I guess you can actually use repeating strike with this now?

The most significant changes were to the "attack substitutes" (dancing daggers, iron palm, mantis touch). They will be slower and do less damage (or none at all in the case of touch) than the leads and offhands, but will be completely reliable. So if your build revolves around using fast recharging lead-offhand-dual combos for damage- then you might want to take one for utility. If you're using moebius then they might replace your opening dagger attacks entirely since your damage comes from chaining duals. If you're doing pure deadly arts then combining them with deadly paradox leads to strong disruption and quite decent damage.

The hexes were tweaked to making them attractive for a dagger user. The idea was to give sins more options than the holy trinity of siphon/expose/shadow prison.

In general I tried to avoid making skills into big spike threats and focused on utility that would be more useful to pressure builds. Assassins have plenty of tools for spiking as it is, so I'd like to concentrate on an area where they're weaker.

Nortos · Mar 20, 2007, 06:35 AM // 06:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

[skill]Mark of Insecurity[/skill]
Problem: Blargh. Why should anyone care about this skill when there are elites that are far more efficient at removing enchants and when you can remove stances outright with wild strike, wild blow, etc.

Suggestion: Make it so that enchantments and stances expire 50...74...82% faster. That way it's actually noticeable-a spirit bond lasting for for 3 seconds instead of 10 or a SoA lasting for 4 seconds instead of 12 actually matters when it comes to pressure.

That would be majorly overpowered, nr+mark of insecurity while buffed would be too overpowered in any pvp arena enchantments would go down 132% faster only with 12 deadly and the sins probably would be taking more then 12 deadly.
Although most the other skills seem acceptable changes although i still probably wouldn't use them and see them that useful.

Symbol · Mar 20, 2007, 04:20 PM // 16:20

Er how would that work? Enchantments end before they start? I'm pretty sure there's a cap on enchant length reduction, and in any case tranquility (not NR) + MoI is already 100% reduction (before cap).

NR + tranquility already screws over enchant builds, I'm not sure why you'd want to use a hex that does the same thing with it.

Thomas.knbk · Mar 20, 2007, 04:33 PM // 16:33

It multiplies. MoI would reduce it by 80%, then Tranq would reduce the other 20% by 50% for a total reduction of 90%. Or the other way around if you please.
The problem with Deadlly arts is that it's a hex line on a physical. The hexes are supposed to lift the physical damage to a higher level, and they do, but not nearly as efficient as simply taking more attack skills does. As long as that's the case, Deadly Arts will never be viable.

Symbol · Mar 20, 2007, 05:12 PM // 17:12

Quote:

It multiplies. MoI would reduce it by 80%, then Tranq would reduce the other 20% by 50% for a total reduction of 90%. Or the other way around if you please.

Ok, I wasn't sure about that since most % buffs/debuffs stack additively.

Quote:

The problem with Deadlly arts is that it's a hex line on a physical. The hexes are supposed to lift the physical damage to a higher level, and they do, but not nearly as efficient as simply taking more attack skills does. As long as that's the case, Deadly Arts will never be viable.

Uh, the three most used skills in DA line are hexes (siphon speed, expose defenses, shadow prison). The other hexes aren't terribly impressive, but with some tweaking could become viable.

No one takes a sin bar full of attack skills, that's just silly.

I'd like some more detailed feedback than just "deadly arts is just broken" or "Your changes look ok but I'd never take these skills anyway".

Lord Mendes · Mar 20, 2007, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

No one takes a sin bar full of attack skills, that's just silly.

Correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't played the game in a while, but last I checked every assassin build had 4 attack skills, an IAS, and hexes so you can use your lead attacks. Seems like an entire bar that relies on pulling a gimmicky 4 attack combo.

Symbol · Mar 20, 2007, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Mendes

Correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't played the game in a while, but last I checked every assassin build had 4 attack skills, an IAS, and hexes so you can use your lead attacks. Seems like an entire bar that relies on pulling a gimmicky 4 attack combo.

1) That isn't a "bar full of attack skills" unless you fail at math.

2) You're unwittingly supporting my point. Those hexes are there are to support your attack skills. You can't duplicate that functionality by replacing them with more attack skills, as Thomas is claiming.

Obviously DA hexes do have a place on a physical, it's just that most of then are mediocre. It's not some immutable game mechanic that forever prevents DA from being good.

Bobby Sox · Mar 20, 2007, 05:40 PM // 17:40

I like some of these suggestions, especially incorperating energy management for half range spells into Way of the Empty Palm and your proposed change to Augury of Death. Very nice ideas on both of those

.

I do have one concern after looking at your suggestions for Dancing Daggers and Crippling Dagger, though. With their cast times lowered so much, why have the lowered casting times on Deadly Haste and Deadly Paradox?

Symbol · Mar 20, 2007, 05:52 PM // 17:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby Sox

I do have one concern after looking at your suggestions for Dancing Daggers and Crippling Dagger, though. With their cast times lowered so much, why have the lowered casting times on Deadly Haste and Deadly Paradox?

TBH I've always though that deadly paradox was a huge hack to make DA halfway viable. Instead of going through and balancing each skill individually to make sure they're useful, they force you to burn a skill slot to buff everything across the board.

So if the end result is that you can spec heavily into DA without having to use DP then I won't be shedding any tears. Keep in mind that DP affects all assasin skills, not just the half range spells, so it's still useful even with a fast casting DD and CD.

Patccmoi · Mar 20, 2007, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

It multiplies. MoI would reduce it by 80%, then Tranq would reduce the other 20% by 50% for a total reduction of 90%. Or the other way around if you please.
The problem with Deadlly arts is that it's a hex line on a physical. The hexes are supposed to lift the physical damage to a higher level, and they do, but not nearly as efficient as simply taking more attack skills does. As long as that's the case, Deadly Arts will never be viable.

That's a good way to see it, but i would also wouldn't mind if Deadly Arts was just another way to play Assassin (or to use /A on other casters). Instead of relying on daggers, you rely on other tricks and magics. Before the nerf to Blinding Surge, the dual signet spike that could blind, knock and poison was actually interesting and i played it with pretty good success as GvG ganker (setup was BSurge, Dancing Daggers, Entangling Asp, Sig of Toxic Shock, Sig of Shadows, Feigned Neutrality, Deadly Paradox, Storm Djinn's Haste, with 14 DA, 10 Air, 9 Shadow Arts).

Reading the skill description of Deadly Arts skills makes me realize how many of them are horrible though and kinda seem pointless all in all, with no real aim at anything.

I think that the one thing that would be awesome and that i'd love to see (but have honestly no hope of) is implementing critical strike to thrown daggers. Instead of being 'spells', they could be something like 'dagger spells' (i don't care, w/e), being a sub-class of spells (like weapon spells). The difference is that they're half range, have lower after-cast (say .25s), and it would allow them to score critical hits (target would have -20AL against the damage and you would get energy from Crit Strike). Honestly, THAT would make all the thrown dagger spells sooooo much more interesting and would allow sins to use their primary for Deadly Arts, and throw dagger spells without slowing what they're doing much (with low aftercast), but as i said, i don't expect anything of the sort so let's work with what we have...

1) Augury of Death - i love your suggestion. Wouldn't have think of it this way, but that's EXACTLY what's wrong with Augury of Death. If i'm adjacent and i'm comboing (or attacking or w/e) I DON'T want to shadowstep. If Augury didn't do that, i'd love to use it as opening hex for combos, but right now it's impossible cause it interrupts your combo more often than not.

2) Crippling Dagger - i'd further raise damage to 15..63..79, reduce cast time to .75 (.25 is too fast imo) and leave cooldown at 5s. If the damage is interesting, then using a little time to use it is ok. If the damage is meaningless, then i'll cripple with an attack skill even if it's .75s cast. If all i want is a range snare that just snares, there is no way i would EVER consider this over Siphon Speed.

3) Dancing Daggers - Not sure i really consider anything wrong with them. They're more there for having a range/spell lead attack than anything else and they function as such. I think that .25s cast would actually be too good personally, there's already Deadly Paradox and Deadly Haste to reduce the cast time. The damage is now acceptable overall. What i'd really like is low aftercast, but i don't really expect that.

4) Disrupting Dagger - agreed, there's a weird delay between the cast time and the interrupt even at point blank. Quite annoying, even though the skill is good as a whole.

5) Enduring Toxin - i'm not too sure honestly. As you say, it doesn't really do anything and you have very little control over the conditional. For some reason Deadly Arts has all those skills as if you want to prevent people from running but as a whole the concept just doesn't work because the effect is often quite meaningless and you don't want them to suffer if they run, you want them to NOT run (so you bring snares and kds, not 'degen if they run' hexes). I'm not too sure what it could do, what i'd be interested in is something like 'if target is moving, they are crippled and hex is reapplied' to snare at the same time or it could cause weakness, i dunno. Or just reduce the cooldown to 5s and make it a spammable hex.

6) Entangling Asp - 3s KD could be interesting. Would be quite drastic with Deadly Paradox though (ya... always DP. It's annoying, was a skill i LOVED when NF came out, but now all i see about DP is that it prevents to make assassin skills good WITHOUT DP cause they'd be overpowered with it. The effect of DP is simply too big). Dancing Daggers-Entangling Asp in Deadly Paradox would be really powerful, but then again you're using a Deadly Arts sin so... could be fair. Another option would be target is kd and poison + cripple, or hexed with Entangling Asp which reduces movement speed by 50% for 1..8s or w/e.

7) Expunge - i guess i'm ok with your suggestion. I'm not a big fan of the skill disable. The main thing with Expunge is how it compares with Necro mass enchant removal. If i don't use my secondary on a sin, i'd rather go A/N and bring Gaze of Contempt or even Rend Enchants that can potentially blast my face than actually rely on Expunge with the skill disabling, etc.

8) Iron Palm - I kinda like your fix on this one too. I like the Shock effect with no exhaustion, but the recharge is just so freaking long. Then again, Deadly Paradox... ya. It's very hard to make a good recharge on the skill that won't make it totally abusive when DP comes into play.

9) Lift Enchantment - not sure i really like your solution, it seems weird. The skill as a whole is quite bad though. Enchant removal on a kd foe is kinda too conditional to be worth anything, but it's dangerous to buff it and then it becomes gimmicky. I can't really see how it can contribute to anything in the long run. All i see atm is like, leave it alone, it's quite useless but the design is just extremely poor and i don't see what it could be without TOTALLY changing the skill.

10) Mantis Touch - i agree, should have same recharge as Dancing Dagger. Cripple spamming is really not that powerful, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU COULD TAKE SIPHON SPEED INSTEAD. I'd even add some damage to it personally. I mean, not only is it nothing but an uncovered cripple, it must follow a lead attack on top.

11) Mark of Insecurity - not a bad suggestion, though i'm not sure it'd be that interesting still. What i'd personally do though is a rework to:

5/.75/12

Target foe loses an enchantment and any stance ends. For 5..13..16s, all enchantments and stances on target foe end 50% faster.

So this way you have a straight effect : it ends a stance and removes an enchant from target, likely opening the way for your combo. Then it hexes them so that further protection lasts shorter. The hex duration is shorter to make up for the direct effect. Now i'd consider this hex for an opener to combo or team pressure.

12) Shameful Fear - 10/1/10 would be fair i think. The effect is actually pretty strong. But what i'd like even more i think is to give a 20% chance of being kd every time you take damage from Shameful Fear (the guy runs faster but trips in his feet!). I'd even raise the effect on that : target foe runs 25% faster but has 25% chances to get kd everytime he takes damage from Shameful Fear (not any damage during the hex, only damage caused by Shameful). That'd be much more interesting to me. The hex would read :

Shameful Fear
10/1/10
For 10s, target foe moves 25% faster than normal. For each second, if that foe is moving, that foe takes 5..17..21 damage and has 25% chances of getting knocked down.

13) Siphon Strength - imo, it should simply be +25% crit, allow this crit to be applied against any target. That's all the hex requires imo. The effect is actually solid, but the higher crit rate against anyone is required if you want to manage the energy at all.

14) Way of the Empty Palm - i like the suggestion, it's pretty similar to what i hope for the skill personally. Something like 'dagger attack skills and half range spells cost 1..3..3 less energy'. If you want to prevent cross-class abuse (though there isn't much that could be done atm), you could even make it 'All Assassin skills cost 1..3..3 less energy'. I don't really see on what skill that would be broken considering you need to invest high in Deadly Arts for it. I'd leave the recharge to what it was originally though.

I agree with the skills being meant for utility more than big spike treaths. Assassins have no problem when it comes to spike treaths already. I think that skills like the Shameful Fear i propose would be interesting utility. Mark of Insecurity too, etc. I'm not sure those changes are perfect, but tbh i believe that the Deadly Arts line as a whole is ill-conceived, and you can only do so much tweaking a bad concept. I'd much rather create a whole new one (that i'd likely make revolve around throwing daggers and items like smoke bombs, flash bombs, etc.) totally based on utility and disabling, but since that's never going to happen...

Zuranthium · Mar 20, 2007, 05:54 PM // 17:54

All ASSASSIN suggestions should go here:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10115474

It's all there.

~Z

Thomas.knbk · Mar 20, 2007, 05:55 PM // 17:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

No one takes a sin bar full of attack skills, that's just silly.

My point was that hexes on a melee character is a pretty bad idea. Melee characters' job is to dish out damage through attacks. Casting hexes force you to stop attacking, lowering your damage. In order to be worth it, those hexes better be pretty damn powerful (ala Shadow Prison), which makes it a bad concept.
You shouldn't read 'a bar full of attacks' like '8 attack skills'. It's said figuratively.
You need an IAS, a res, a speed boost, and currently sins take 4 attack skills, so your bar is pretty full.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

Obviously DA hexes do have a place on a physical, it's just that most of then are mediocre. It's not some immutable game mechanic that forever prevents DA from being good.

They aren't great, but most are ok. The problem is they have to be wtfpwnage to be worth taking on a melee character.

Lord Mendes · Mar 20, 2007, 06:00 PM // 18:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

1) That isn't a "bar full of attack skills" unless you fail at math.

4 gimmick attack skills, 1 or 2 hexes so you CAN use your attack skills, and an IAS so you can use those attack skills faster.
It is an entire bar devoted to making your attack skills work. No-one carries the hexes only for their effects, but because they are needed to succesfully start the attack chains.
If you didn't NEED the 1 or 2 hexes to start your gimmicky combo, then no-one would run them because they suck compared to having more attack skills.
Don't get me wrong the hexes are good, but the assassin would be better with weaker attack skills that recharge faster and less "hoops to jump through".

Shmanka · Mar 20, 2007, 06:12 PM // 18:12

OP: your on the right track mostly, alot of sin skills need to be looked at, but Thomas brought up a good point as to why it would most likely never be viable. They need to be buffed IMO, some your on degree with others I could debate.

Symbol · Mar 20, 2007, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.Knbk

They aren't great, but most are ok. The problem is they have to be wtfpwnage to be worth taking on a melee character.

Is siphon speed "wtfpwnage"? Is expose defenses? These are two examples of hexes that are strong (very strong in the case of the former) but I wouldn't called them overpowered.

So I absolutely disagree that this is some sort of intractable problem. Yes there is a tradeoff between activation time and effect and melee characters are sensitive to this. You deal with this by balancing the effect appropriately. And clearly it is possible to do this.

IMO if there is an overarching problem with DA, it's not the presence of hexes, it's the lack of purpose.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Mendes

No-one carries the hexes only for their effects, but because they are needed to succesfully start the attack chains.
If you didn't NEED the 1 or 2 hexes to start your gimmicky combo, then no-one would run them because they suck compared to having more attack skills.
Don't get me wrong the hexes are good, but the assassin would be better with weaker attack skills that recharge faster and less "hoops to jump through".

But this isn't true. If shadow prison didn't have the 66% snare + shadowstep, would people still bring it? Also expose defenses is pretty much standard on BoA/SP nowadays and that's a hex where you care about the effect-if you just wanted something to spike with while SP is recharging you could bring a cheap trash hex like enduring toxin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

2) Crippling Dagger - i'd further raise damage to 15..63..79, reduce cast time to .75 (.25 is too fast imo) and leave cooldown at 5s. If the damage is interesting, then using a little time to use it is ok. If the damage is meaningless, then i'll cripple with an attack skill even if it's .75s cast. If all i want is a range snare that just snares, there is no way i would EVER consider this over Siphon Speed..

Problem is you have to balance the damage with the typical spec for a dagger using character. That means the a 9 DA crippling dagger is going to be competing with dagger skills that with 14-16 DM-what happens when you go 16 DA and throw DP into the mix?

IThere are a few situations where I've been annoyed at the 1s cast on siphon speed which is why I suggested a fast cast crippling dagger as an alternative. I don't know what else can be done with this skill-maybe make the cripple unconditional and apply bleeding on top if you catch a target while moving?

Quote:

3) Dancing Daggers - Not sure i really consider anything wrong with them. They're more there for having a range/spell lead attack than anything else and they function as such. I think that .25s cast would actually be too good personally, there's already Deadly Paradox and Deadly Haste to reduce the cast time. The damage is now acceptable overall. What i'd really like is low aftercast, but i don't really expect that.

This is one of those situations where the lack of granularity in the mechanics is really annoying. It would be better with a .75 s cast time and a short aftercast rather .25 s cast + .75 aftercast, but you can't do that so. That said I don't think it would be overpowered with a .25s cast. Even with DP and 16 DA the dps is nothing special (on par with flare spam), it's short ranged, and extremely energy hungry so what's the problem?

As it is now it's just not interesting for a dagger user. The only thing it offers is 100% reliability, but if leads are buffed to have short recharges, then even that isn't a huge deal. Otherwise it's slow (1.75s same as a hammer/scythe attack and can't benefit from IAS) and doesn't do anything beside ok damage while leads can have good side effects. I want to be able to use these things in dagger chains as opposed to them being complete jokes.

Quote:

5) Enduring Toxin - i'm not too sure honestly. As you say, it doesn't really do anything and you have very little control over the conditional. For some reason Deadly Arts has all those skills as if you want to prevent people from running but as a whole the concept just doesn't work because the effect is often quite meaningless and you don't want them to suffer if they run, you want them to NOT run (so you bring snares and kds, not 'degen if they run' hexes). I'm not too sure what it could do, what i'd be interested in is something like 'if target is moving, they are crippled and hex is reapplied' to snare at the same time or it could cause weakness, i dunno. Or just reduce the cooldown to 5s and make it a spammable hex.

The only use I can think off is a cheap hex to use with BMT. I agree with the 5s recharge suggestion. At 5/.25/5 it would be spammable and add some noticeable degen, which isn't too bad.

Quote:

7) Expunge - i guess i'm ok with your suggestion. I'm not a big fan of the skill disable. The main thing with Expunge is how it compares with Necro mass enchant removal. If i don't use my secondary on a sin, i'd rather go A/N and bring Gaze of Contempt or even Rend Enchants that can potentially blast my face than actually rely on Expunge with the skill disabling, etc.

I don't think a 5s disable is too bad. Mainly I'm concerned that if that goes away it will be too good compared to gaze or rend, it's a mass removal in sin primary and the touch range doesn't matter too much since you're right in their face most of the time anyway.

Quote:

8) Iron Palm - I kinda like your fix on this one too. I like the Shock effect with no exhaustion, but the recharge is just so freaking long. Then again, Deadly Paradox... ya. It's very hard to make a good recharge on the skill that won't make it totally abusive when DP comes into play.

Actually I've thought of a way to keep the KD and avoid DP abuse.

Iron Palm
5e .75s 6r

Target touched foe takes 15...63...79 damage. If that foe is suffering from a hex or a condition that foe is knocked down and this skill takes an additional 15...9...7 seconds to recharge. So you choose whether you get a KD or not, but it may not always be worth the longer recharge. Makes the skill more interesting to use IMO.

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9) Lift Enchantment - not sure i really like your solution, it seems weird. The skill as a whole is quite bad though. Enchant removal on a kd foe is kinda too conditional to be worth anything, but it's dangerous to buff it and then it becomes gimmicky. I can't really see how it can contribute to anything in the long run. All i see atm is like, leave it alone, it's quite useless but the design is just extremely poor and i don't see what it could be without TOTALLY changing the skill.

Yeah...I was trying to avoid anything that was a) too gimmicky and b) mindless and c) too much of a spike assist. AoE was the only thing I could think of. Seems like it could be useful to control party wide enchants (aegis and the like). But overall I agree, it's a badly designed skill that needs a complete overhaul.

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10) Mantis Touch - i agree, should have same recharge as Dancing Dagger. Cripple spamming is really not that powerful, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU COULD TAKE SIPHON SPEED INSTEAD. I'd even add some damage to it personally. I mean, not only is it nothing but an uncovered cripple, it must follow a lead attack on top.

I tried to be conservative with this one. If it still needs buffing then IMO it should either do 5...41...53 untyped damage (so lower than most offhands with 14-16 DM, but armor ignoring and always hits) or give it back the range (so if target tries to run you can quickly do DD - mantis without having to chase).

Another option is to allow it to follow any dagger attack, so you can drop it anywhere in your combo to reapply the cripple. This would also make it a ghetto moebius of sorts since you could use to chain duals (no damage, and 4s recharge instead of 2, but still...). Don't know whether that would be a problem or not.

djbartek · Mar 21, 2007, 05:54 PM // 17:54

[skill]Augury of Death[/skill][skill]Crippling Dagger[/skill][skill]Dancing Daggers[/skill][skill]Disrupting Dagger[/skill] - agree.

[skill]Enduring Toxin[/skill] - Huh? It already does 1...4...5 Degen. Anyway, 5/0.25/8 and adding Weakness effect would be better, because, like it was pointed out, it really does nothing right now.

I would like to add also few skills to discussion:

[skill]Deadly Haste[/skill] - add additional effect: "If there are foes adjacent to target foe, they are also affected by those spells"

Why? Because now in 99% situations Deadly Paradox is superior to it and it needs interesting effect to be worth taking.

(by "affected" I mean that, when there is foe A and foes B,C adjacent to A, and you cast, let's say, Crippling Dagger, TWO additional crippling daggers will be thrown onto B and C. The only problem would be Augury though...)

[skill]Sharpen Daggers[/skill] - bring back to the previous form and give it +1...6...8 dmg to all your attacks.

Why? It was REALLY bad before the nerf; additional dmg is to make it a bit more attractive.

I won't discuss here about most of Assassin Elites; Pat already did good summary of them here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...4&postcount=58

The only two I would like to talk here about:

[skill]Way of the Assassin[/skill] - add: "every time you critical, you deal additional +1...12...16 dmg".

Why? Effect is barely elite worthy and it does decent dmg only with scythes. With additional dmg, something like [skill]Disrupting Accuracy[/skill]+[skill]Keen Arrow[/skill] would be more attractive.

[skill]Shadow Form[/skill] - decrease Health loss to 25...61 remaining Health.

Why? Effect is powerful, yes, but I still think that drawback is just too high to use it(I never saw it in GvG apart from Dual Ganking Sins).

[skill]Entangling Asp[/skill] - make it able to follow and dagger type attack.

Why? More versatility.

[skill]Mark of Death[/skill] - decrease recharge to 10.

Why? I don't think this skill is so powerful that giving it 10 sec recharge would make it overpowered.

[skill]Scorpion Wire[/skill] - give it 15 sec recharge.

Why? Siphon Speed.

[skill]Signet of Shadows[/skill] - decrease recharge to 20.

Why? Signet of Toxic Shock deals a bit more dmg and is 20 sec recharge.

[skill]Blinding Powder[/skill] - make it able to follow any dagger type attack.

Why? More versatility.

[skill]Caltrops[/skill] - decrease recharge to 15 sec.

Leave also your comment about shadowsteps in this topic: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10129774

I'll post a few more suggestions(and bigger explanations) later.

- djbartek

Symbol · Mar 22, 2007, 06:38 PM // 18:38

Scorpion wire is a skill I wasn't sure about. Because the effect is quite powerful, but it's essentially out of your control. You get a shadow step, a KD, and hex fodder for your combo-so it's really quite good if you can get it to work reliably.

I'm thinking 5e 1s 25r, and remove the half range limitation. This would make it really useful against, for example, flag runners who usually have some strong speed boost like FDJ or SDJ which makes it almost impossible to catch up to them without a shadowstep of some kind. So you get within spellcasting range, throw it on them, and as soon as they try to head out-BAM!

Right now the half range bit makes it sort of lame, because if you're that close you can just put siphon speed on them and be done with it.

Narayanese · Mar 22, 2007, 08:51 PM // 20:51

The problem with your version of enduring toxin is that it would be too good for discord spike. I'd rather just increase the degen instead. Otherwise I agree with the proposed buffs by Symbol and djbartek (though I don't like a shadow form buff, it is good enough already).
I wonder why signet of shadows isn't in shadow arts, the other blind skills are.

Enduring toxin
5/.25/8
For 5 seconds, target foe suffers from 3...9...10 health degeneration. If target foe is moving when enduring toxin ends, it is renewed for another 5 seconds.

There is an easier way to buff Deadly Haste: Move it to Deadly Arts so eles can spec for it. That would give better pressure eles (ice spear spammers) which IMO is a good thing, adds diversity.

Symbol · Mar 22, 2007, 09:02 PM // 21:02

Discord spike has already been nerfed to hell with a 2s cast-and if you're discord spiking you aren't using melee, so your opponents can just stay in place to force enduring toxin to end-there's nothing making them kite.

The other option is just straight up higher degen, but that's not terribly interesting IMO. With weakness repeatedly applied as a cover it make all the other cripple options more attractive.