When can we expect to see a nerf of the Hybrid Sin/Shadow?

[Smashbrother]

Top end assassin in Dark Charge will have 41% armor mitigation. Top end jugg in dps gear with dps stance will have about 30% and in tank stance 47%. Juggs can still stance dance, assassins cannot.

 

You realize we lose all our focus when we change stances right?

[BDutch]

You realize we lose all our focus when we change stances right?

 

of course he didn't

[Slurmez]

With all this crying I jumped on my assassin, its not 50 yet but having precious little range, needing to melee to build up force in order to use my juicy skills was annoying when people are running away .

 

Of course it may simply be that the class just isnt a good fit for me or my playstyle but I found it much harder than my vanguard and my vanguard doesnt have an issue with these "cheese spec" assassins anyway and no Im not assault/HIB spam spec.

[Rasheth]

If you been playing shadow/assassin from the beginning you know the timeline.

 

2/31/8 was standard play for a while when stance switching was allowed you could adjust on the fly and off tank effectively.

 

They NERFED stance switching and made some talents impossible to work with other stances killing the majority of the hybrid specs.

 

By nerfing stance switching it really brought the light of how squishy infiltration is.

 

So majority switched to kinetic for a loss in DPS, but increased survivability and utility.

 

one hybrid spec really remains viable.

 

 

Infiltration dies fast- deals alot of damage on single target

 

31/0/10 kinetic- owns in 1v1 against most classes but thats because it has OK damage (single target) but has the worst mitigation and defense rating of all the tanks. (this isnt a 1v1 game and isnt balanced around it see sentinel/marauder)

 

Balance tree will give you good scoreboard numbers but anyone with have a brain that knows how the class works, realizes that those are mostly dot/aoe numbers. Many people will argue that dot/aoe damage isnt as effective as burst to kill - debatable

 

Balance shined when you need someone to hold a point by themselves when DOTS stopped capping but that isnt the case anymore

 

 

 

So it all comes down to preference shadows/assassins are balanced but there is no possible way to increased survivability for infil and balance with out making them truly OP.

 

TL&DR

 

If BW did a nerf/buff to any of the trees for shadows/assassins something would break

 

If survivability was increased on Infiltration and Balance tree why would anyone play a kinetic? out side of guard or force pull?

 

Decrease survivability of Kinetic and you have a totally worthless tank class that already is the worse tank when it comes to pure tanking. Have to think of pve here also people.

 

Increase damage on infiltration? not a option

 

Increase damage on balance? not a option

 

So since some people think the class needs a change I have yet to see anyone propose anything that doesnt ruin it completely.

[darkenwolf]

Didn't read the whole thread - it gave me a headache around page 5.

 

Stomping undergeared opponents, poorly skilled opponents, or people who just don't know how to play their class well (farming Valor in Ilum doesn't teach you anything but how to Facebook and base hump at the same time - rendering pronouncements of BM or WH essentially meaningless) does not mean the class is OP.

 

Could the class use a bit of tweaking? Sure. Tweaking does not translate into OP.

 

Darkness can be troublesome, but so can any heavy armor when played well. As far as Deception and Madness go? We're in light armor (with a small bump if you take 2/2 Insulation, most don't) and have to be in melee to be effective. Do the math. We're nasty when played well and geared well, but we squish something fierce.

 

Also, if you complain of ridiculously high burst, you've just run into an alpha strike of adrenal/overcharge/reckless/relic pop. A tactic available to everyone.

Edited March 26, 2012 by darkenwolf

[Smashbrother]

I could go on about how you have the most potent (aoe) CC in the game, more mobility than anyone and so on, in exchange for what you consider our advantages.

 

Uh vanguards and smugglers have better aoe cc. Vanguard one is an aoe STUN which trumps aoe mez which breaks on damage. The smuggler one is same as ours but lasts longer and is ranged (ours is melee). I believe our aoe cc is a base JK ability, so sentinels have it too. Try again.

 

Shadows have just as good mobility if not better. You get a skill that makes you immune to CC for christ sakes, and it's on a short *** cd. It seriously one of the most overpowering skills ever.

 

It's a pointless debate. At least pointless, as long as so many people keep quoting numbers and warzone end statistics and make their world depend on them. Rated warzones are not about them. Having a high uptime where you make a difference in a rated warzone is very important I agree with you there, but a dps shadow certainly won't be at the top there.

 

Having shorter cd defensive cds and MORE of them than a dps guardian means a dps shadow will die less. Dying less is good.

 

Because a sin wandering about in stealth waiting for his teammates "to get opened on" is about the most useless person in an entire warzone. GG there.

 

Yea cause playing smart is bad...

 

Dps in the midst of fights, doing actual damage. That's uptime, that's what matters (If you're talking from a dps perspective anyway). Focus Guardian may have a shorter life span there even, if what you're saying applies, but hell, he only needs 5 secs to dish out twice the damage a shadow does in 15 seconds anyway. Fair trade off.

 

All that aoe damage is just fluff. It's like a sage spamming his aoe damage. It does a lot of damage but no one ever really dies from it.

 

Also, our sweep bombs have a 5m range. So if the enemy team isn't full of baddies, I'll only hit 1-2 guys with it at most. Sweep will also not hit anyone that is moving away from me due to it's crap range and latency. Target has to be standing still and me on top of them for sweep to hit regularly. Focus guardian dam is so easy to avoid.

[Crawelc]

Question as a sent, do your mele hits have to connect to add stacks or do you get stacks for just using the attack?

[Ravenolf]

Question as a sent, do your mele hits have to connect to add stacks or do you get stacks for just using the attack?

 

Don't know the answer to that unfortunately.

[Smashbrother]

They NERFED stance switching and made some talents impossible to work with other stances killing the majority of the hybrid specs.

 

By nerfing stance switching it really brought the light of how squishy infiltration is.

 

This was needed. Guardians lose all focus when switch stances so yea.

 

So majority switched to kinetic for a loss in DPS, but increased survivability and utility.

 

Except the loss in dps isn't that much of a loss if you're still wearing dps gear. You gain all that surv/utility, but still maintain quite good dps. A guardian tank in dps gear cannot do as much dps as tank shadow in dps gear. They're utility is about the same, while tank shadows have higher surv.

 

Infiltration dies fast- deals alot of damage on single target

 

Dps guardians die faster.

 

31/0/10 kinetic- owns in 1v1 against most classes but thats because it has OK damage (single target) but has the worst mitigation and defense rating of all the tanks. (this isnt a 1v1 game and isnt balanced around it see sentinel/marauder)

 

Except voidstar, most of the fights that happen in WZs are small. 2v2 or 3v3. And though tank shadows may not shine in a big *** fight, there really aren't that many in WZs.

 

If BW did a nerf/buff to any of the trees for shadows/assassins something would break

 

If survivability was increased on Infiltration and Balance tree why would anyone play a kinetic? out side of guard or force pull?

 

Decrease survivability of Kinetic and you have a totally worthless tank class that already is the worse tank when it comes to pure tanking. Have to think of pve here also people.

 

Increase damage on infiltration? not a option

 

Increase damage on balance? not a option

 

So since some people think the class needs a change I have yet to see anyone propose anything that doesnt ruin it completely.

 

I think dps shadow surv is fine since they do so much dps, but since people think otherwise, I'd be ok with giving them force armor on a 45 sec cd.

 

Tank shadows need a nerf to their damage.

[Astarica]

If you don't have 11 points in Darkness (and no pure Madness/Deception builds can have 11 in Darkness) you won't have Disjunction. It's really not a stretch to say that Disjunction alone doubles your survivality (+2s duration on Force Shroud, Force Speed now breaks all movement impairing effects). An Assassin without Disjunction is very easily killed, even if he's for some reason in Dark Charge. But virtually no Assassin plays without Disjunction. In particular there's no way the 31 point Madness talent is worth giving up Disjunction, so the only Assassins without Disjunction tend to be Deception which is now rarely seen.

 

I've been saying for a while that Disjunction needs to be made into a 11 point Deception talent instead of 11 point Darkness. It'd help the spec that's weak and nerf the stronger specs at the same time.

 

The fact that people are skipping Wither for non stylistic issues perhaps illustrates why the opinion on Darkness is divided. Wither is in the running for the strongest talented skill in the game and the only reason to not get it is if you don't like the playing style of Wither. It does Maul-like damage on a single person (the 1 stack of HD, unless you died immediately after using Wither, translates to a lot of extra damage) and it's an AE. If you taunt on every possibility you can reduce one person's DPS by 12% over the duration of the match, and Wither does 5% permanently on a decent area.

[Astarica]

Except voidstar, most of the fights that happen in WZs are small. 2v2 or 3v3. And though tank shadows may not shine in a big *** fight, there really aren't that many in WZs.

 

Not sure why people think Darkness is no good in large fights. Force Shroud negates pretty much any kind of focus firing. Wither and AE taunt gets more powerful from fighting a large number of peoplle. Because the enemy really doesn't want to focus fire on you (you just pop Force Shroud and waste their entire team's DPS) whoever you attack is still basically a 1on1. Yeah in a large fight people tend to die slowly due to the large number of healers/taunts involved, but that applies to everyone. I've seen battles in Voidstar that's like 6 on 8 and virtually no one died and it's not going to change if you sub the Darkness for a Marauder. You'll still get a stalemate if there's 3 guys healing full time on each side.

[Crawelc]

Don't know the answer to that unfortunately.

 

The reason I ask is because i pop pacify in the one on ones i have with sin/shadows I only use it at the start of a fight when they seem to do more mele moves. It mitigates some damage and if missing hits makes them not get stacks then it is a double win I guess.

[Boarg]

There's a reason why 90% of the people playing Assassin/Shadow are now playing hybrid.

 

Hybrid specs got gutted a few patches ago.

 

People are mostly playing full Kinetic now (31/0/10, etc), not hybrid.

[Lexlo]

I used to melt them on PowerTech (because of the super spikes) but I don't think that will be the case after the update.

 

 

Ahh well. Guild Wars 2 is coming out soon.

[Exilim]

Losing the utility you get from Wither (-30% AoE speed debuff for 18 secs and -5% dmg debuff) is not worth the extra damage you get from Deathfield/thrash crits IMO.

 

That's a matter of opinion though. A 30m ranged AoE from a melee focused class is huge the way I look at it. I would already have a slow and an AoE taunt, so I feel comfortable passing on 31 pts. +50% crit damage on your primary attack is nothing to disregard either.

 

This isn't a thread about debating specs though, this is a thread about how these specs with that gear matches up with what other classes have to offer. I think it's pretty high up there.

 

I've met healers who were very specific about teaming up with shadow tanks because they are the only tank really capable of killing off someone who is harassing them. Certainly that is an over-statement but I don't think it is that far off.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Exilim

[Astarica]

The reason I ask is because i pop pacify in the one on ones i have with sin/shadows I only use it at the start of a fight when they seem to do more mele moves. It mitigates some damage and if missing hits makes them not get stacks then it is a double win I guess.

 

Stacks of what? Energize (crit shock) procs require a hit to trigger so Pacify affects that. Harnessed Darkness stacks is built by attacks not affected by Pacify, so it's useless there. Most Assassin skills trigger on use. Energize uses to proc from hitting nobody until it was changed, so I assume other skills work on per cast, not per hit.

[Crawelc]

Thanks for the feed back, i dont play a sin/shadow. I was just reading this thread and the question popped into my head.

[kyuyu]

Easy fix would be to do what pretty much every other MMO that had dual-role classes do - but a 30% damage reduction on when you're running in your tank form. It's really not that hard. Tanks sacrifice damage for survivability, and vice versa for DPS classes.

 

To be honest, I really don't understand why things like this wasn't implemented from day one given the amount of hybrid class specs out there across all the trees.

 

 

I agree. The tank stance buff should have damage reduction.

 

I also don't understand why tank tree has so many dps talents. They should add threat increase, rescue, etc talents.

[Astarica]

I've met healers who were very specific about teaming up with shadow tanks because they are the only tank really capable of killing off someone who is harassing them. Certainly that is an over-statement but I don't think it is that far off.

 

Good DPS is never neutralized by just Guard. You got to be able to remove them permanently at some point to protect your healer and that requires DPS. I actually don't Guard healers very often, because I just kill whoever is trying to attack them instead.

[Exilim]

I agree. The tank stance buff should have damage reduction.

 

I also don't understand why tank tree has so many dps talents. They should add threat increase, rescue, etc talents.

 

 

Definitely because of PvE threat mechanics.

[Astarica]

Definitely because of PvE threat mechanics.

 

Easily fixed by changing Dark Charge from -5% melee damage +50% threat to say -30% all damage +100% threat or whatever is needed to get the numbers to work.

[Slurmez]

I agree. The tank stance buff should have damage reduction.

 

I also don't understand why tank tree has so many dps talents. They should add threat increase, rescue, etc talents.

 

lol thats a rediculous suggestion given that the whole shield mechanism in PvP is absolute junk. The reason "tanks" hit hard is because defence isnt even functional in this game

[Arikon-]

Easily fixed by changing Dark Charge from -5% melee damage +50% threat to say -30% all damage +100% threat or whatever is needed to get the numbers to work.

 

No thanks.. not until deception is a more viable option to dps with.

[Ravenolf]

I keep thinking of this in a pvp situation. It is good to think how proposed changes would effect PVE as well.

[AMKSED]

hy·brid/ˈhīˌbrid/

Noun:

A thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture.

Adjective:

Of mixed character; composed of mixed parts.

 

 

For those people aren't sure what the definition of hybrid means. If I'm in a TANK spec but wearing DPS gear. That is a mixture of 2 elements in an MMO therefore making it a hybrid spec.

 

spec·i·fi·ca·tion/ˌspesəfiˈkāSHən/

Noun:

An act of describing or identifying something precisely or of stating a precise requirement.

A detailed description of the design and materials used to make something.

 

Now for the people who needed help with the definition of specification(spec). As a whole, with DPS gear and the Tank talent tree. By definition the hybrid build is a specification of Shadow.

 

 

Just because I don't defend this thread 24/7 doesn't mean anything I've said isn't any less true.