So having just posted my thoughts on the SoT changes i decided to just also do it for Shade, and thus here goes .
Shade
REBALANCED PERKS & PASSIVE
Main Pass…"
At least it finally seems like we might have a functional Shade kit in sight, the boosted backstab damage plus the parry+dodge into stealth and 100% crit for the next attack from stealth is a complete system that works. And it might not even be horrendously overpowered even given its just a one-hit deal per parry-dodge.
Its also thematically fitting with the assassin being slippery and sneaky!
I am massively in favor of this even if it seems like it could have some excess power at times for it at last means that the weapon trait parry has someone who will love and care for it…and it also seems like it does actively engage the player in good ways.
Talent 2-3 Exquisite Huntress : Increased duration of the headshot damage buff to 10 seconds, up from 5.
A buff to the not so sneaky assassin build? It seems fine enough.
Talent 4-1 Ereth Khial’s Herald replaced with: Chain Killer - Successive Charged Backstabs increase Backstab Damage by 25% for 5 seconds. This effect can stack up to 2 times.
Talent 4-2 Vanish replaced with: Focused Slaying - Killing an enemy with a Backstab grants Cooldown reduction for 3 seconds.
Bloodfletcher where art thou?
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Well both choices seem competitive which is nice, i worry they might be a little too strong but it seems easily fixable with number tweaks if it comes to that.
Talent 6-2 Shadowstep replaced with: Hungry Wind - Leaving Infiltrate grants Kerillian 10% movement speed and 15% Power with the ability to pass through enemies for 10 seconds. Infiltrate no longer grants bonus damage.
This…seems really lame, not bad, but boring.
Talent 6-1 Cloak of Mist replaced with: Shimmer Strike - Leaving Infiltrate grants Kerillian Stealth for 3 seconds. Killing an elite or a special enemy extends this effect by 1 second.
So Cloak of Mist has at last taken a big hit, perhaps its reign of terror in cata+ will be a bit muted from hereon. But it doesnt seem excessive given the shift of power from there to her base kit.
I really do like that change a ton.
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Overall i think this is a big improvement to Shade, even if the sneaky assassin niche is a bit weird in this game. This because i do think it is nice to have a functional one that can be reigned in with number tweaks which is something that the old kit didnt really allow for given that it was just “100% crits into crits instakill”. Or the “one big hit then big downtime playing really safe”
I really love the change, but I hope for some cue when the parry effect is possible, for casual players (I don’t know for expert in legend and cata), the time difference between a block and a parry is rather hard to get so it might be difficult in the middle of a fight to know if you can dodge and get to stealth or if you only did block.
Maybe having shadows around the screen so you know you can enter it with a dodge.
Hoping a CDR Movement Speed build with Hungry Wind and Dual Swords will get the most of it. Thank god they removed the Light Attack spam deleting Patrols though. rofl
I wonder if such a build can really be good, personally i do not have a particularly good headshot ratio on DS so for me only having 15% power is a bit little to roll the ball with.
Aye, the combination of talents+traits that made that possible made it impossible to do anything nice for the rest of her kit while also being impossible to balance without gimping it entirely. Shifting some of that power around into her base kit while cutting down on ability upgrade+reshaping vanish feels like the optimum solution.
Then one can argue that the whole idea of an assassin doesnt quite fit into the game which is fine, however, if we are to have one then i think this might at least not be the wrong way to do it.
I’m a bit concerned about the invis interaction. Currently going invisible immediately re-aggros enemies, and if they were in the middle of an attack sequence they will instantly turn and finish their attacks on another player if they can. This is even worse with monsters who ordinarily will not re-target and re-aggro without ample warning. I think the worst of all though is simply how enemies look when a player is rapidly going in and out of invis and you lose all semblance of immersion as the enemies instantly react in an extremely mechanical way.
Hopefully they are making some improvements to how enemies react to invis mechanics alongside of this.
yeah it would be awesome to have them be confused by stealth doing nothing for a second and then trying to hit the stealthed target by atacking the last known location furiously (kinda like monks would)
Blur is pretty much useless. It’s supposed to be like 1.5 or 2 seconds of invisibility. And it’s nowhere near that. Half the time I don’t even see her hands go translucent. It doesn’t even give you time to reposition for a backstab. Needs buffed bigtime.
Abit sad to lose cloak of mist, but with the buff to cloak of pain, it’s a mitigation. Everything else seems decent but i am not a fan of the new perk which makes you need to parry and dodge.
Thats not how i want to play shade, and i don’t like being told to have a niche playing style just to activate a perk.
Other than that, no issues.
The stealth on parry is nice. It can save your life quite often, especially on high difficulties + twitch mode. It makes also dual dagger safer to play
Cloak of Pain now lives up to it’s name; it brings PAIN. Shade can become a proper anti-boss now. The changes overall for me is satifying. Never liked old CoM tbh.
Well you still kill bosses faster on average with it. Might not be the most exciting thing ever. It could also open some really obscure breakpoints but i really haven’t done any math with this talent to say if its actually useful for that.