Aelanis
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Posts posted by Aelanis
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Why do you say bad ? Are you speaking about DPS output vs DPS checks ? I haven't been playing the game since long enough to know what it was before, but in 3.0 even if Infiltration was one of the 3 worst parsing spec in the game, I've never had any problem when faced with a DPS check and it was from a time period where BW truly hated melee.
The DPS checks have dropped on most HM instances since they released, on a relative scale. The game is about as easy as it ever has been.
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Both specs are still viable for Nim Content. Did deception need to get nerfed as hard as it did? No. But the class is hardly under performing. We were much worse off when Nim DF/DP first came out, and although he was also extremely good, MKnightrider made deception work in both operations, even against Nim Brontes and Council.
NiM DF. When NiM DP came out, Madness Assassin was one of the best specs in the game.
MK also only played Infiltration on Council because he'd get one shot as Madness (16 man damage scaling isn't broken, right?).
As for now? If you can't clear NiM content, you simply aren't putting enough time into it (there are these horrible crystals you can gather together to more or less cheat your way to victory). If you can't clear HM content, you need more practice, none of the instances are as bad as they used to be.
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I don't see why waiting is necessary sort of moot point whether at beginning of rotation or end out come is the same.
So I : Spike|Maul|Recklessness|Discharge|Phantom Stride|VS|ball|Assassinate
you: Spike|Recklessness|Discharge|Phantom Stride|VS|Ball|Assassinate|Maul
Except it's not. Maybe it wouldn't matter if relic procs didn't exist, but they do. The damage boost is huge when combined with an autocrit (which is basically another 40% more damage, multiplying everything beyond your surge), and you're losing out on it. There's nothing else to it.
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I wish I would've pvp'd when I started playing around 1.5ish so I could have all the centurion and battlemaster shells
Those can be crafted (Battlemaster, at least). Also, they've released numerous reskins of the PvP armor.
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It was ridiculous. I think MH/OH was 3500 ranked comms (1 ranked comm = 3 regular comms) compared to the 2k comms it is now. We couldn't even share them across different classes because of the 4 different main stats.
Yeah, I remember that. It was really discouraging, and a big part of the reason I never got serious about PvP. It used to take, what, 2 months of grinding at a couple matches a day? It would be more if there hadn't been the old weekly quest. I guess perspective makes it hard to see how the new system could be considered "grindy."
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Yes. You should be doing damage, not wasting time casting a move that doesn't work against any boss and most adds in boss fights (while even fewer need it, it breaks on any damage, and it only lasts 8 seconds for your 2 second time investment).Forcelift seems useless to me as a PVE Infiltrator and I'm guessing it can be left off my bar?
Only if you want to be able to respond to emergencies with them. As a heads up, Battle Readiness can be used offensively, though the effect is marginal compared to Potency or Blackout.I count 3 defensive cooldowns that all seem useful to varying degrees, Deflection, Battle Readiness and resilience. I suspect they all deserve a hotkey but I'm just double checking?Could I get a description of how I might find Low Slash useful?(I have read the available guides but couldn't find anything relating to these questions)
In PvE, it's only really useful while you're closing a gap or being forced to stay at least 10 meters away from your target for at least a GCD. It's highly situational, but any damage is better than no damage. You won't use it for the mezz, really, since not much can be stunned in PvE, and of what you can stun, there is only a mild benefit for doing so, and it costs you a global of what could have been much better damage.
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Thanks for the feedback, this was helpful for a pvp pov.
Well, to be fair, I don't mind a grind, but it's kind of maddening that they make you buy gear filled with utterly useless mods, and then make you rip them all out and replace them. Eventually you'll be BIS, but the real issue is, there's no inbetween. You are either wearing garbage or have BIS, and it's a long time between garbage and BIS, since you need to buy basic, then advanced, and then mod it all. Very time consuming, lots or warzone accommodations.
Then it's really good you didn't play a year ago, when ranked gear costed 3x as much as it does now. Or was it 4x? It was a lot worse.
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Just so we're clear, I'm going to say, upfront, that my entire response is only relevant to PvE.
Yes, especially if you're playing Hatred, in which case you typically end up as a smear across the ground when a boss looks at you.So just to kind of grasp the idea, do they squish easy when not in tank spec?
There's this preconception that Assassin tanking is significantly more difficult than either of the other 2 tank Disciplines. While it certainly has a slightly steeper learning curve, I wouldn't say it's drastically so (especially since tanking isn't especially tough to begin with).And when they are in tank spec, you mentioned they seem to perform better than jugs but are harder to master?
...you're playing an MMO, were you expecting a non-grindy experience? Tanking in PvE is a little better, since you typically only need to grab 1 of each set piece and another 10 mods from Mk-2 or Mk-4 pieces to get the B Mods. Then again, you also have to roll against 7 other people per piece and rely on them to not suck so that you can kill the bosses, so there is that.I'm not sure if I'd want to play tank spec, but it does sound kind of interesting. I tried my jugg as immortal but got a little demoralized by how expensive it is. The piss poor pvp gear itemization means you have to play for weeks (it seems) to get a full set of 208 and then fix the terrible armor mods on it. -
It crits for decent damage. 99.99% of the time though, If I'm PvE'ing on my Sin, it's with Hatred.
Spike is literally worthless in PvE. In PvE, if you're not stealthing on an exact timer, you're losing damage. You have 1 chance every 102 seconds to use the move unless you want to gimp your damage, and so you'd use it against what, trash? No, it's completely useless, and I have never used Spike in PvE as Deception.
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For pvp, yes. For pve, never.
Fixed that for you.
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I thought you'd talk about it, Aelanis, but here you can see what exact numbers you need of each stat compared to your total stat budget.
That looks familiar. I even fixed it so people can see ridiculously high gear levels based off an averaged linear extrapolation.
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I am trying to gear up for HM ops and wondering if my stats look correct . I feel I need to swap out some Aug but not sure what stats are more important then others . I currently have:
Defense Chance 36.71% (2697) (with Stim 37.07% 2787)
Shield Chance 36.34% (993) (with Dark Ward 54.34%)
Shield Absorption 44.24% (1085)
I am using 8 Advance Redoubt Augment 40's & 7 Advance Shield Augment40's , which i feel i need to change around.
Any input would be great ty
Trade all your Redoubt augments for Absorption augments. You have way too much defense: you shouldn't use any Defense outside of what you're forced to.
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I agree with Aelanis. Serenity is a bit more mobile than Infiltration since it can use its gap closer as a gap closer where Infiltration is forced to use it as an offensive cooldown and can only use it as a gap closer if all the stars have aligned.
The design is wrong for Infiltration, not Serenity.
And since you speak about that, Aelanis, is tying the 3 stacks to Black Out really a good idea ? Force management is fine as it is, but I always end up really low on force before my BO - Force Cloak - BO combo and forcing us to delay BO a few seconds could be bad since you would end up delaying Force Cloak more and more on longer fights. And what about the opener ? Would you sacrifice a Shadow Respite in order to have 2 back to back FB ? Or would you delay BO in order to have 2 back to back FB ?
It just doesn't feel right tying it to BO. I don't know what to tie it to, but I don't feel BO is better than SS. Maybe add another offensive CD, I don't know (even if I don't have any room left on my offensive/defensive CD bar ^^).
Delaying Blackout at all would be a loss of DPS due to your Force regeneration taking a hit, and we just can't have that. You would simply have to potentially waste a couple of stacks of Static Charge each time you use it. It's not the end of the world. Also, in the opener? Absolutely, I would most definitely waste 4.5 seconds of Shadow's Respite for another Discharge under Recklessness.
Besides, while tying it to Blackout is still a little bit clunky, we literally can't tie it to anything better, and the developers adding another ability isn't going to happen.
I agree with you that there is something problematic here and if this is not serenity, then it is infiltration.Aelanis, I dont see why you give up mobility with infiltration shadow stride, Using it not only you are closing a gap between you and an opponent (boss/add, it doesnt matter), you also get to strike it hard with force breach. And its short cooldown allows you to use it pretty fast soon.
You're losing mobility because 30 seconds isn't really a short cooldown and most of the time you use it you're already right on top of the boss, beating its face in. You literally don't change position. As for the speed boost tied to using it? If you need that speed boost to keep up with the boss, your group is using a pretty weird strategy for whatever boss that is.
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No, this situation is fine as is. 3 stacks of Static Charge should have been tied into Blackout with a lockout, rather than forcing us to use the ability that's supposed to make up for the jump in Force Speed cooldown. We shouldn't have to voluntarily give up mobility to increase our damage to barely competitive levels (though it used to be pretty strong). No, I'm quite happy with Hatred how it is.
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Well to be honest it very well could have been a mara , though I am sure i have encounter a Jug every now and then and when ever I used overload it knocks them back 15 meters and I have to wait till they close 5 meters before lightning will even become active.
As for Alacrity how much should one stack for PVP then?
None. The fights are too short to really benefit from it much as opposed to getting lucky with some extra crit. Sure, you'll do less DPS not using the Alacrity, but the chance of getting some lucky crits and having some extra surge is worth it in such a short fight due to the very high variability of damage over the short fight.
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As for alacrity in our gear: it is absolutely not a DPS loss: it's a DPS increase. It just causes your abilities to not hit as much for a fractional speed increase that you can't really benefit from in a 30 second long fight you do realize you just contradicted yourself. Causing ones abilities to not hit for as much is a DPS loss it seems to me but i will have to look into it.
not sure you even read what i was saying about lightning to clarify when a jug leaps you can knock him back. Now knock back is a 15 meter ability a sin's lightning is a 10 meter ability so you have to wait for Jug to close 5 meters before you could even use it and your absolutely right its serves you no purpose to use it as things stand so at the very least give us the dam extra 5 meters which would allow me to hit anyone I knocked back and thus slow them giving me a dam reason to use the ability and making it a not so bad ability to use. Other wise it just sits on my bar collecting dust.
So here's the thing. There are these things called "limits". If you make your time period go really small, you can use these "limits" to look at things on really small time scales. If you then sum up these "limit" things, you can see the results of complex changes happening on a small time scale with some pretty good accuracy.
So now if you trade an almost imperceptible loss in damage (I just didn't think it needed to be stated that losing 4% Surge out of 72% or so would be very noticeable, nor the ~2% crit out of almost 40%, inflated further by auto-crits) for a slightly more perceptible boost in attack speed (oh, roughly 3% or so), and you sum the result up over a series of a) lots of small fights or b) a long fight, you'll see that the damage you deal over time (literally damage per second) goes up as you trade critical for alacrity. It's actually really really simple, and you don't need calculus to look at it. It's actually some pretty easy algebra because it's not actually time-dependent.
Also, just because you can hit someone with Overload at 15 meters (because the measurement of distance in this game is SO ACCURATE) doesn't mean you automatically push them back to 15 meters. The actual distance you knock them back is really more like 4 meters (maybe 6?). So if you tried to knock back a Marauder as they leap to you, you'd probably end up with them within 10 meters of you, unless your reflexes and timing are really good. Besides, you can't knock back any Juggernaut (your specific example) worth their salt while they're leaping: Unstoppable is arguably the best utility in the Skillful tier, and I'd be surprised to hear people don't take it. If you had said Marauders, I could see you having a point, but you said Juggernauts pretty specifically.
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So you'd rather waste the proc'd maul ?
I am not sure I get that. I usually spike|maul (because its proc'd) then recklessness|discharge etc etc.
You don't waste it. How is holding it for a few seconds wasting it?
Duplicity triggers off of any damaging ability you use, can only trigger once every 10 seconds (10.5 divided by 1 + alacrity percentage in reality), and lasts long enough to be able to be replaced by the next Duplicity trigger if you don't use Maul in time. If you hold the Duplicity buff for 9 seconds (6 abilities) before using Maul (which is basically fitting in all of your possible other damaging moves, other than Assassinate, in before it plus another stun), you still get to use Maul under Duplicity, and your next move after Maul triggers Duplicity again, and there's no wasted Mauls.
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Well I would like to see a bit of a reduction in casting time for crushing darkness, or at least give us a boost to alacrity when we're in surging charge similar to what darkness gets with its accuracy boost when they are in dark charge. Because putting alacrity into our gear is so not worth the loss of DPS just so I can cast one ability faster. I would like to see a better or unique ability replace lightning seeing as it's short distance makes it useless, hell I can't even use it on a Jug when I knock him back. Finally, fix phantom stride so that it fricken works! Tired of trying to teleport to a target and getting nothing but speed buff because the dam terrain was a bit high or a pebble was in the way.
The accuracy boost is not a Darkness thing: it was made so each tank class would no longer have to worry about their high threat moves being resisted/dodged and losing aggro simply because they can't afford to run accuracy at no fault of their own.
As for alacrity in our gear: it is absolutely not a DPS loss: it's a DPS increase. It just causes your abilities to not hit as much for a fractional speed increase that you can't really benefit from in a 30 second long fight. It's very frustrating to see so many people incorrectly categorize it as a DPS loss when it really only causes them deal less damage at a fractionally faster rate than which they lost that damage.
You can certainly use Force Lightning on a Juggernaut when you knock them back: it's just a terrible idea. Force Lightning is a bad ability for Assassins to use, and it's extra baggage from when you could have become a Sorcerer. That said, it's still situationally useful, you just can't use it at terrible times and expect it to be good (like when someone's speeding up to you to punch in your face). The same thing goes for Crushing Darkness, it's not a general use ability. You have all the time you need to use it when you hit a target with Electrocute, and another half-second to spare, even. No class should expect to be able to get a 2 second cast off without getting hit, why should we?
The only valid thing you say in this post is that you wish Phantom Stride worked. Because it really should.
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So on those fights, especially Tanks and Brontes, might running power mods be desirable to help out on dps?
No, B Mods will give you health, which will at least buy you some time before you die.
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try it - dps increase
Yes, because your word is law. Look: you can deny the math, and be wrong, or you can do something other than say "I said so" and prove you have some idea about what you're talking about.
Now, I can't vouch for the math: it was a very odd way of doing it and I'm certainly unhappy about the lack of examination of the effect of relic procs, but that's the only time I've ever seen anyone give a concrete argument as to why any one given way of gearing is better than another. So for now, I would tentatively stick with that.
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No, it actually boosts every ounce of Mastery you add via gear as well as your base Mastery. Compare your Mastery in full gear with buffs on and off and it's pretty easy to see. As for "way better," you get 0.03 more Bonus Damage per point of Power, pre buff, versus the same point of Mastery, and only 0.02 more after the buff. So you would end up with 30 (20 with buff) more Bonus Damage if you could swap 1000 Mastery for Power, and you would then lose the critical chance increase from Mastery. Of course, there's then the 5% Bonus Damage buff from Warriors, but that just starts to get complicated.Lmao the buff increases your base stats not 5% increase for how much mastery you add. And the overall power gain from power is way better then mastery.Power augs gives the most dps 2.8 % more then crit augs and mastery is almost 1% less then crit , so Gg u wasted time on your comment.You appear much more credible if you quote your information rather than throw out seemingly random numbers. Especially when you clearly don't understand game mechanics that you can check with 2 button clicks.
Besides, going back and reading the post, the math for Mastery augments is a little bit sketchy, and I almost want to go and verify them for myself... if the end result wouldn't be so minorly different.
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See the discrepancies? Use Maul after VS. Use it befirhand. Dont open with Spike. Open with Spike. Oh boy. 10 differential opinion
I mean, people can have their opinions about a fact, but if they really have an opinion about it, rather than proving they're right, they're wrong. What I'm saying does more damage isn't opinion: it's fact.
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Soa does a single melee attack if you get close to him on the third floor, but its coefficient has been bugged for four years and does almost zero damage. He is sort of infamous as a purely force/tech boss.
If you run a zero-swap strategy on Firebrand and Stormcaller, the Stormcaller tank will never take any melee/ranged damage (though they will take kinetic/energy damage from the barrage while kiting spires). The Sunder tank in Cartel Warlords will take no melee damage, and the only ranged damage they will receive will be from Horic cleaves or from Horic/Sano random single-target attacks (and sane Sunder kite patterns are well out of Horic's singlet-target range). Brontes has astonishingly little melee/ranged damage (only sources I can think of are p1 tentacles, kephess, droids and Fire and Forget which shouldn't be on the tanks anyway).
Broadly speaking though, you're absolutely right. :-) I'm just picking nits because it's fun. Trading away some mitigation for no mitigation is never the right choice, even if the some mitigation is marginal.
Wait, Soa has a melee attack?
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Maul Sunders the target for a 20% AR reduction.
Why not spike > recklessness. > Maul. > Discharge > PS > Discharge > VS > Low Slash > Maul > BL
Low slash should auto proc and be on crit on the second maul.
Because +40% damage on Maul under a double relic window is worth more than ~+7% damage on VS and Low Slash during the same window. Not to mention you're also missing +2% damage on your opener by not using Ball Lightning in your opener. In addition to this, you can't use Maul a second time when you try to: there's no more Duplicity trigger off the rate limit on Low Slash or Spike. Using Low Slash like that also wastes 2.5 seconds on the mezz by immediately hitting the with Maul (ignoring the fact that that doesn't even work).
Spinning Kick
in Shadow / Assassin
Posted
I think you missed the part where this guy isn't a tank. He's playing Infiltration. If he wanted to gimp his damage hardcore, he'd do what you suggest.
Oh, and by the way: the best way to run dailies is in a group of 4 burst DPS, at least one of whom has terrific AoE. Coincidentally, 3 DPS and a healer is the best way to run all of the HM flashpoints (because the SM ones aren't worth running any more, ever). And if you're going to say: "Oh, but what if they can't get a group?" I'm going to respond with: "Despite BioWare's best efforts, this is still an online multiplayer game, if they can't get a group they simply aren't trying."