The Assassin Questions

[DarthSpekulatius]

lol

 

Falver, I'd like to request a change to my name on the boards, I have changed my name to "Buff-shadows."

 

Here is proof.

 

soon we'll have the top parsing Shadow on torparse (right below every other class) named Buff-Shadows (lets hope he can actually break his own record)

Edited April 15, 2014 by DarthSpekulatius

[Evolixe]

Rofl!

[Aelanis]

lol! That's just too good.

[Xinika]

lol

 

 

 

soon we'll have the top parsing Shadow on torparse (right below every other class) named Buff-Shadows (lets hope he can actually break his own record)

Aha, wow...

[brainpsyk]

I think we're missing a big question here: Why is our force regeneration so random?

 

Madness:

• Lightning burn has a 50% chance... restore 1 force
  
• Raze: 60% chance to finish the cooldown on Crushing Darkness... and cost 100% less force
  

 

Deception:

• Duplicity: ... 30% chance... and cost 75% less force (e.g. restore 2 force)
  
• Saber Conduit: Your Surging Charge has a 50% change to restore 10 force... (Surging charge only procs 25% of the time)
  
• Voltaic Slash: ... gives Shock a 50% chance to automatically trigger your surging Charge.. off it's normal rate limit. Stacks up to 2 times
  

 

So our force regen, and by implication sustained DPS on BOTH specs is completely RNG dependent, and in some cases, RNG of a RNG dependent.

 

So a good series of procs, and we stay where we're supposed to, or you get a bad series of procs, and our DPS completely tanks.

 

Looking at the top Shadow Madness parse, for every GCD we don't get a Raze proc, we lose ~800 DPS, as we need to use Saber Strike to regen our force instead of a free Raze. So it's a double whammy.

 

It's impossible to balance a class like this because there is a cap on the proc rate, with nothing specifying the minimum proc rate. I've literally gone 2-3 full Death Field rotations with *zero* Crushing Darkness procs. (e.g. MC... DF...DF...DF...MC..). Any mean calculation is subject to the outliers, and with a Shadow/Assassin, the outliers are always dragging the class down.

 

And Madness doesn't just ignore Maul, it ignores Shock, Force Lightning *and* Maul, all the starting abilities, in favor of Thrash spam.

[Iona_Var]

Reason why madness lacks those abilities is because bw completely gutted the spec in 2.0. Madness is still slightly better in pve than deception but both specs def need help

[ShadowMudkip]

lol

 

 

 

soon we'll have the top parsing Shadow on torparse (right below every other class) named Buff-Shadows (lets hope he can actually break his own record)

 

Rofl, nice

[ShadowMudkip]

I think we're missing a big question here: Why is our force regeneration so random?

 

Madness:

• Lightning burn has a 50% chance... restore 1 force
  
• Raze: 60% chance to finish the cooldown on Crushing Darkness... and cost 100% less force
  

 

Deception:

• Duplicity: ... 30% chance... and cost 75% less force (e.g. restore 2 force)
  
• Saber Conduit: Your Surging Charge has a 50% change to restore 10 force... (Surging charge only procs 25% of the time)
  
• Voltaic Slash: ... gives Shock a 50% chance to automatically trigger your surging Charge.. off it's normal rate limit. Stacks up to 2 times
  

 

So our force regen, and by implication sustained DPS on BOTH specs is completely RNG dependent, and in some cases, RNG of a RNG dependent.

 

So a good series of procs, and we stay where we're supposed to, or you get a bad series of procs, and our DPS completely tanks.

 

Looking at the top Shadow Madness parse, for every GCD we don't get a Raze proc, we lose ~800 DPS, as we need to use Saber Strike to regen our force instead of a free Raze. So it's a double whammy.

 

It's impossible to balance a class like this because there is a cap on the proc rate, with nothing specifying the minimum proc rate. I've literally gone 2-3 full Death Field rotations with *zero* Crushing Darkness procs. (e.g. MC... DF...DF...DF...MC..). Any mean calculation is subject to the outliers, and with a Shadow/Assassin, the outliers are always dragging the class down.

 

And Madness doesn't just ignore Maul, it ignores Shock, Force Lightning *and* Maul, all the starting abilities, in favor of Thrash spam.

 

Shadow/Assassin is one of the few RNG heavy classes left in the game, as most others have had proc changes to get rid of said RNG.

 

Madness should be able to incorporate more of the base inquisitor abilities into its rotation, sadly there is no need for them as they either have a detrimental effect on our force (Maul, Shock) or don't provide enough DPS to warrant its use (Force Lightning).

[Aelanis]

I think we're missing a big question here: Why is our force regeneration so random?

 

Madness:

• Lightning burn has a 50% chance... restore 1 force
  
• Raze: 60% chance to finish the cooldown on Crushing Darkness... and cost 100% less force
  

 

Deception:

• Duplicity: ... 30% chance... and cost 75% less force (e.g. restore 2 force)
  
• Saber Conduit: Your Surging Charge has a 50% change to restore 10 force... (Surging charge only procs 25% of the time)
  
• Voltaic Slash: ... gives Shock a 50% chance to automatically trigger your surging Charge.. off it's normal rate limit. Stacks up to 2 times
  

 

Let's get a few things straight before we get started. With all talent points bought, Lightning Burns has a 100% chance to restore 2 force, which happens every 3 seconds. Raze may have a 60% activation chance per attack. Now, I don't remember if it's per actual hit or per activated melee ability, but if it's per hit, you'd have a 97.44% chance of triggering it after just 2 Thrashes. As for Duplicity, after a Voltaic Slash + Saber Strikes combo, you're up to an 83.193% chance to trigger it. Saber Conduit gets 100% chance with both points (and triggers at least every 12 seconds if you're keeping up your rotation), and Voltage stacks twice, for a 100% total chance.

 

So our force regen, and by implication sustained DPS on BOTH specs is completely RNG dependent, and in some cases, RNG of a RNG dependent.

 

So a good series of procs, and we stay where we're supposed to, or you get a bad series of procs, and our DPS completely tanks.

 

Looking at the top Shadow Madness parse, for every GCD we don't get a Raze proc, we lose ~800 DPS, as we need to use Saber Strike to regen our force instead of a free Raze. So it's a double whammy.

 

It's impossible to balance a class like this because there is a cap on the proc rate, with nothing specifying the minimum proc rate. I've literally gone 2-3 full Death Field rotations with *zero* Crushing Darkness procs. (e.g. MC... DF...DF...DF...MC..). Any mean calculation is subject to the outliers, and with a Shadow/Assassin, the outliers are always dragging the class down.

 

And Madness doesn't just ignore Maul, it ignores Shock, Force Lightning *and* Maul, all the starting abilities, in favor of Thrash spam.

 

Our Force regen isn't as random as you make it out to be. It's quite predictable, with a little bit of statistics. That aside, yes, we do have RNG problems, but it doesn't lie in the Force Regen issue. It's in how much damage our attacks do in combination with how much our regen is dependent on our basic attack. It's entirely possible, if you're good with Deception/Madness, to go for hours of parsing without running into resource issues.

 

Now, you're right, our dps is pretty RNG dependent (much less so for Madness than Deception, at that). I'm sure you're exaggerating with that 800 estimate, as having one global without Crushing Darkness doesn't cost you 800 dps overall. Maybe for that 1.5 seconds in your 4.5-5+ minute parse, but that doesn't amount to as huge an amount as you think.

 

TL;DR

Our DPS fluctuations are from RNG, but our regen rate isn't very RNG dependent.

[brainpsyk]

It's quite predictable, with a little bit of statistics.

 

The problem is statistics. Statistics wise, we are fine. The problem lies in actuality. Statistics are subject to outliers. A 1-in-1000 attack that does 3,000,000 damage is statistically balanced for 3K DPS. The problem is all those zeroes.

 

If our regen is as regular as you say (which it's not, as I've gone 2 full FiB rotations with no MC procs...), why don't we just take the randomness out of it. Lightning Charge has a 50% chance to proc. That doesn't mean you get 2 force every 3 seconds, it means you have a 50% chance to get 2 force. Which could mean you go 2 minutes regaining *zero* force. (Statistically unlikely, but still possible!)

 

Both DPS trees have at least 1 random factor just for force regen. Just take that randomness out.

• Make Voltaic Slash cut the cost of Shock by 5
  
• Make Lightning burn increase our force regeneration by 1/sec
  
• etc
  

 

You're right on the 800DPS, I forgot to add it's 800DPS for that second, not for the fight. But it starts to add up every single GCD we don't get the proc.

[MasterFeign]

Reading your guys' numbers on madness definitely makes it depressing.

 

I still think there should be some classes that do have that RNG factor (albeit balanced), however it does require a lot of wiggle room.

 

If they removed the requirement to have to melee a target that is affected by your discharge's lightning ability, in order to proc Raze, this could be a start. They could do it as a 3 count thing (similar to rage's shockwave/madness sorc's force lightning proc) or they could leave it to crit chance in that once a discharge dot crits, you automatically gain raze. This also leaves you to do other things while attacking the enemy. So that is to say, if they fix the other aspects of the tree, you could use maul, shock etc, as you wait for raze.

 

On another note though, my favourite playstyle while playing assassins has always been full Darkness, fairly early on, I went full darkness with dps gear, because I felt that I could do just as well, if not better, being able to hit harder, and still protect those who needed it, just the same as a regular tank. If indeed Xinika's calculation is correct in that a tank geared tank specced assassin has about 10% more survivability than a marauder, it's no wonder why peopel would have gravitated towards the dps gear while in tank stance/spec. What I'm hoping for is that there'd be some sort of change in that as a tank I can feel more survivable as I would be willing to use tank gear.

[Aelanis]

The problem is statistics. Statistics wise, we are fine. The problem lies in actuality. Statistics are subject to outliers. A 1-in-1000 attack that does 3,000,000 damage is statistically balanced for 3K DPS. The problem is all those zeroes.

 

If our regen is as regular as you say (which it's not, as I've gone 2 full FiB rotations with no MC procs...), why don't we just take the randomness out of it. Lightning Charge has a 50% chance to proc. That doesn't mean you get 2 force every 3 seconds, it means you have a 50% chance to get 2 force. Which could mean you go 2 minutes regaining *zero* force. (Statistically unlikely, but still possible!)

 

Both DPS trees have at least 1 random factor just for force regen. Just take that randomness out.

• Make Voltaic Slash cut the cost of Shock by 5
  
• Make Lightning burn increase our force regeneration by 1/sec
  
• etc
  

 

You're right on the 800DPS, I forgot to add it's 800DPS for that second, not for the fight. But it starts to add up every single GCD we don't get the proc.

 

No, Lightning Charge has a 100% chance to proc Lightning Burns. Read the talent again, and realize there are 2 points that can go into it. And while yes, I know outliers can have a very negative effect on statistics, we're not fine "statistics wise," even by the most optimistic averages. The cost of Shock in Deception in PVE should (unless you only use one stack of Induction or less) always be 19.5 (read: 20). If Voltaic Slash just cut the cost of Shock by 5, we'd have some pretty rough Force issues, but as it is, it's fine. And I've played Balance (Madness) on my Shadow, and parsed for hours before, and at most, I've gone 1 full Force in Balance (Death Field) without triggering Force Strike (Raze), and it's happened all of once. Madness RNG issues are nothing compared to Deception.

[Aelanis]

Reading your guys' numbers on madness definitely makes it depressing.

 

I still think there should be some classes that do have that RNG factor (albeit balanced), however it does require a lot of wiggle room.

 

If they removed the requirement to have to melee a target that is affected by your discharge's lightning ability, in order to proc Raze, this could be a start. They could do it as a 3 count thing (similar to rage's shockwave/madness sorc's force lightning proc) or they could leave it to crit chance in that once a discharge dot crits, you automatically gain raze. This also leaves you to do other things while attacking the enemy. So that is to say, if they fix the other aspects of the tree, you could use maul, shock etc, as you wait for raze.

 

On another note though, my favourite playstyle while playing assassins has always been full Darkness, fairly early on, I went full darkness with dps gear, because I felt that I could do just as well, if not better, being able to hit harder, and still protect those who needed it, just the same as a regular tank. If indeed Xinika's calculation is correct in that a tank geared tank specced assassin has about 10% more survivability than a marauder, it's no wonder why peopel would have gravitated towards the dps gear while in tank stance/spec. What I'm hoping for is that there'd be some sort of change in that as a tank I can feel more survivable as I would be willing to use tank gear.

 

The thing is that your target (or targets) should never not be under Discharge's effects. However, giving Raze a 6 second rate limit and making it require 3 hits, and bam, it's down for half a second each time it's applied, and you won't get better uptime without clipping. On top of that, it's a direction the devs seem very willing to go. And as for tanking stuff, tanking in PVP kinda sucks, and the devs have finally noticed, so maybe we'll see some changes.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Aelanis

[MasterFeign]

The thing is that your target (or targets) should never not be under Discharge's effects. However, giving Raze a 6 second rate limit and making it require 3 hits, and bam, it's down for half a second each time it's applied, and you won't get better uptime without clipping. On top of that, it's a direction the devs seem very willing to go. And as for tanking stuff, tanking in PVP kinda sucks, and the devs have finally noticed, so maybe we'll see some changes.

 

Oh yeah, I agree on the discharge always being there (which would lead to the reasoning as to why Raze would proc), instead of having to fight for it (both literally and figuratively, heh...). In the end though, I could see the deves making sin madness be more heavily proc based, as that seems to be the direction they're going. (of course it's debatable if it's the lazy route, but I'm not a math person).

 

Yeah, their acknowledgement in the PT questions was nice. I wonder if we'll have a bonus question round thing like was prepared last time.

[Aelanis]

Oh yeah, I agree on the discharge always being there (which would lead to the reasoning as to why Raze would proc), instead of having to fight for it (both literally and figuratively, heh...). In the end though, I could see the deves making sin madness be more heavily proc based, as that seems to be the direction they're going. (of course it's debatable if it's the lazy route, but I'm not a math person).

 

Yeah, their acknowledgement in the PT questions was nice. I wonder if we'll have a bonus question round thing like was prepared last time.

 

It's probably a bit more work than the proc + timer, but keeping a tally of how many time one (or more) ability is used works better, and leaves it to player skill, as opposed to RNG. And we need less RNG in our damage.

[brainpsyk]

No, Lightning Charge has a 100% chance to proc Lightning Burns. Read the talent again, and realize there are 2 points that can go into it.

 

Charges your lightsaber with lightning, giving your attacks a 50% chance to deal 238 energy damage.

 

Read my statement again. While Lightning Charge has a 100% chance to proc Lightning Burns, you only have a 50% chance to proc Lightning Charge. Thus, you only have a 50% chance of getting Lightning Burns.

 

No, Lightning Charge has a 100% chance to proc Lightning Burns. Read the talent again, and realize there are 2 points that can go into it.

 

Again, here's where the unnecessary randomness causes confusion. Voltaic Slash has a 50% chance to trigger Surging Charge, which stacks up to 2 times. Surging charge restores 10 force. So 2 uses of Voltaic Slash guarantees a return of 10 force on Shock. Taking the randomness out of it, and the use-this-to-trigger-that-and-that, just cut the middleman and make each use of Voltaic Slash cut the cost by 5, or combine with Induction and make it 10. Done. No random-proc-this-for-that.

 

And I've played Balance (Madness) on my Shadow, and parsed for hours before, and at most, I've gone 1 full Force in Balance (Death Field) without triggering Force Strike (Raze), and it's happened all of once. Madness RNG issues are nothing compared to Deception.

 

The point is, and you prove it, that it happens over and over and over, to the HUNDREDS of Shadow/Assassin players out there. Someone out there is getting it.

 

Yes, Deception has it worse, because it's based on 1) a Surging charge Proc and b) can only happen once every 10 seconds. Or, assuming perfection, 1 force every second. Have each point in Saber Conduit just restore .5 force every second. That, in-and-of-itself takes a LOT of the RNG out of the class.

 

Phasewalk can wait. It's generally useless but situationally excellent. That's a minor issue that can be worked around. Our RNG on our force regen is crippling.

[DarthSpekulatius]

keep the "randomness" on Raze it's the only random thing the spec has left

 

about that 3 Deathfields without a Proc, vid or it never happened (unless you didn't have Discharge on your target) it'll either proc right away or ~one GCD after the normal CD runs out (that would be one deathfield)

and that happens once per evening at most.

 

if you want to change the Raze proc alright (I'm not against a Complete overhaul I'd rather have the old 1.7 Madness or something like it, but I'd take a Complete overhaul over the current one), but slapping 100% Proc chance is not the right thing to do, it's the lazy way out trying to "fix" Madness you know what the Lazy "Fixes" we got with 2.0 accomplished? correct! it got much worse then it was before.

 

tl;dr Madness DPS Problems can be fixed without making it even more Boring.

 

Phasewalk can wait. It's generally useless but situationally excellent. That's a minor issue that can be worked around. Our RNG on our force regen is crippling.

 

this! a thousand times this! well for deception at least.

(Madness dosn't have RNG, not anymore then it needs in order to be fun (it has less then it needs actually))

Edited April 16, 2014 by DarthSpekulatius

[Xinika]

OP Updated.

- Added Force Regen randomness to the PvE section

[Evolixe]

Where exactly is the randomness in force regen for dec??

[Aelanis]

Where exactly is the randomness in force regen for dec??

 

I've been trying to point out that it's not random. Considering Deception triggers Surging Charge every 6 seconds without fail, meaning you trigger Saber Conduit every 10.5-12 seconds. I mean, that's a tiny bit random, but it's still very steady, and is a lot less random than, say, Lethality's regen mechanic. And considering Madness's rate of hits with all of its DoTs, plus Thrash on most GCDs, that's 3-5 hits per global cooldown, for a 87.5-96.875% chance per global cooldown to trigger Lightning Burns, which means it triggers very, very often. Our Force Regen is not very random at all.

[Xinika]

I've been trying to point out that it's not random. Considering Deception triggers Surging Charge every 6 seconds without fail, meaning you trigger Saber Conduit every 10.5-12 seconds. I mean, that's a tiny bit random, but it's still very steady, and is a lot less random than, say, Lethality's regen mechanic. And considering Madness's rate of hits with all of its DoTs, plus Thrash on most GCDs, that's 3-5 hits per global cooldown, for a 87.5-96.875% chance per global cooldown to trigger Lightning Burns, which means it triggers very, very often. Our Force Regen is not very random at all.

Little randomness is still random. There's been enough inquiries about the force from our community. Doesn't hurt to squeeze in a minor word or two about it. Not a bad idea to remain open to any possibility of fixing our damage, even if it comes from force.

[Aelanis]

Read my statement again. While Lightning Charge has a 100% chance to proc Lightning Burns, you only have a 50% chance to proc Lightning Charge. Thus, you only have a 50% chance of getting Lightning Burns.

 

Okay, I misread that. Still, you're getting anywhere between 3 and 5 hits per global cooldown once you get going, so you're getting around a 90% chance to trigger it every global cooldown, making it not very susceptible to RNG components.

 

Again, here's where the unnecessary randomness causes confusion. Voltaic Slash has a 50% chance to trigger Surging Charge, which stacks up to 2 times. Surging charge restores 10 force. So 2 uses of Voltaic Slash guarantees a return of 10 force on Shock. Taking the randomness out of it, and the use-this-to-trigger-that-and-that, just cut the middleman and make each use of Voltaic Slash cut the cost by 5, or combine with Induction and make it 10. Done. No random-proc-this-for-that.

 

It seems you aren't understanding what each talent does, so I'll explain. Voltaic Slash grants 1 stack of Voltage, which gives Shock a 50% chance to trigger Surging Charge off of its normal rate limit, and stacks up to twice. In addition, Induction (a talent 5 tiers earlier) causes Voltaic Slash to to build a single stack of Induction, causing Shock to cost 25% less, which stacks up to 2 times. Therefore, after the 6 cost reduction from Torment, using Shock with 2 stacks of Induction costs 19.5 Force. Each stack is worth 9.75 Force off your next Shock.

 

Now, in a separate talent, Saber Conduit refunds 10 Force when you trigger your Surging Charge, but has a 10 second rate limit. Now, if you've maintained your stacks and rotation, you should be using Shock every 6 seconds, which triggers Surging Charge on use, and so every other Shock you use will refund an additional 10 Force, unless Surging Charge triggers naturally in that time. Therefore, the only random part about Saber Conduit is whether it triggers 10.5 seconds later on a natural hit, or 12 seconds later on a forced hit from Surging Charge.

 

The point is, and you prove it, that it happens over and over and over, to the HUNDREDS of Shadow/Assassin players out there. Someone out there is getting it.

 

Yes, Deception has it worse, because it's based on 1) a Surging charge Proc and b) can only happen once every 10 seconds. Or, assuming perfection, 1 force every second. Have each point in Saber Conduit just restore .5 force every second. That, in-and-of-itself takes a LOT of the RNG out of the class.

 

Phasewalk can wait. It's generally useless but situationally excellent. That's a minor issue that can be worked around. Our RNG on our force regen is crippling.

 

Our Force Regen is far from crippling, it just requires you know your class inside and out, and understand how your series of abilities function with and play off of each other.

[Aelanis]

Little randomness is still random. There's been enough inquiries about the force from our community. Doesn't hurt to squeeze in a minor word or two about it. Not a bad idea to remain open to any possibility of fixing our damage, even if it comes from force.

 

Trying to fix our Force regen would be a huge overhaul, not a small fix. Sure, some of our damage is limited by having to use our basic attack in order to maintain our Force regen, and it's obvious the devs intend for it to be like that, or they wouldn't have tied it into our really lame 2 piece set bonus for PVE. I'll do the math later, but I don't think that even trading half of our Saber Strikes for either Voltaic Slashes or Thrashes is going to make a huge difference, as those abilities don't hit hard enough to really make a difference. They make up a large portion of our damage because we spam the abilities. In combination with other things, yes, it could bring a big damage increase, and yeah, I'd like to see a nicer 2 piece set bonus, but without needing to worry about Force regen, Madness would be even more boring, and it would remove a lot of the complexity of Deception.

[brainpsyk]

OP Updated.

- Added Force Regen randomness to the PvE section

 

Thanks Xinika!

[Aelanis]

Trying to fix our Force regen would be a huge overhaul, not a small fix. Sure, some of our damage is limited by having to use our basic attack in order to maintain our Force regen, and it's obvious the devs intend for it to be like that, or they wouldn't have tied it into our really lame 2 piece set bonus for PVE. I'll do the math later, but I don't think that even trading half of our Saber Strikes for either Voltaic Slashes or Thrashes is going to make a huge difference, as those abilities don't hit hard enough to really make a difference. They make up a large portion of our damage because we spam the abilities. In combination with other things, yes, it could bring a big damage increase, and yeah, I'd like to see a nicer 2 piece set bonus, but without needing to worry about Force regen, Madness would be even more boring, and it would remove a lot of the complexity of Deception.

 

Edit 1: Did a back of the envelope calculation, and the difference between the 12 second and 10.5 second "cooldown" on Saber Conduit is worth ~32 Force, or a single (~1.4) Thrash/Voltaic Strike over a 4.5 minute fight.