You could always just run smiter instead if you want that guaranteed damage. Its not like you lose 40% damage all the sudden. The options are there if you are confident with headshotting or not.
I donāt know who to respond to here so just gonna make a general comment that I think the Shade concerns are a bit overblown. Crits add a lot of damage to a lot of elf weapons even without assassin. Itās not like their value suddenly disappears without assassin. Seems reasonable that a finesse class with very high damage potential actually, yāknow, needs a little bit more finesse than currently to achieve high damage.
Also I just find it kind of funny that on one side we have someone saying that assassin is clearly still too strong and others calling it an overnerf. Not trying to be reductionist to either side here, but Iād find these takes a bit more believable if they were backed up by a good few sessions actually trying the mod with these classes. Itās not currently clear reading this thread how much of this speculation is based on playtesting, which is kind of the whole advantage of discussing the balance of a mod over pure hypothetical balance discussion.
If we are talking theory though, raising the skill cap while keeping damage potential mostly the same seems like the most sensible way to nerf a glass cannon while largely retaining their playstyle. A nerf like this could mean further nerfs to CoM isnāt even necessary, though that remains to be seen.
I wholeheartedly support the endeavour of finding a better middle point with less variance for the stagger/thp talents. So far from what Iāve played things feel pretty good overall.
I run EP on FK for stagger breakpoints, so I disagree ranged break points is all current EP amounts to. Either way Iād rather see some ranged weapons tuned down over nerfing EP. I think it would throw the balance out if EP lost its ranged advantage. Itās a significant melee damage loss for most weapons compared to smiter or assassin.
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Even with Smiter, you lose 20% of the ult damage, thatās still pretty significant, e.g. you lose out on a somewhat important breakpoint by not being able to kill 2 Cws with one ult.
Base Shade ult is anything but in need of a nerf.
Why should it suddenly deal less damage just because Assassin got changed? There is no decent argument to be made why the base ult should lose a big chunk of power.
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I donāt know man, I just did one run to clear any potential biases I might have and at least mistshade is perfectly fine, maybe even better with the new thp generation.
I would suggest you try it out if you havenāt.
I have and I was talking about non Cloak of Mist in particular.
I mean she can get the exact same damage if she headshots out of Ult right? She still insta kills anything shy of a CW or Wargor with the backstab crit right? I mean shadowstep is shadowstep and needs something entirely unrelated to this mod to be done about it, but is this really such a big nerf to CoP? Iād be curious what breakpoints you actually miss out on because of it, and whether or not they could still be achieved with power/crit power properties.
Headshotting some bosses, the most important targets, is extremely difficult for a dual weapons shade, itĀ“s risky as heck and itĀ“s prone to problems due to hitboxes.
Why should shade deal less damage than a grail knight on a higher cooldown with higher requirements to deal that damage to boot? Having a higher cooldown is already enough which is the present.
Comparing with the GK boss killer option*
And heck GK isnt even the most amazing boss killer there is by default either, nerfing that aspect just seems plain wrong.
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Because it doubles as an incredible escape, clutching, and reviving tool as well as having good damage? Heck with CoP you can go assassinate a target then safely walk away if you want to, GK doesnāt really have that luxury.
I donāt know all the numbers though so maybe CoP loses too much damage or some incredibly important breakpoints, in which case it would be fair for its damage to be tuned up a bit, but that discussion shouldnāt be based around stagger talents IMO.
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Further arguments that the stagger damage system doesnāt help anybody.
Yo I just stumbled onto that mod very recently and itās got a lot of cool ideas. That BH rework is still pretty rough but has an interesting and potentially solid foundation.
Even after trying Cloak of Pain shade, I still disagree. If I were to agree to something it would be slightly buffing cloak of pain and shadowstep itself but I personally did not miss assasinās extra damage at all.
(Funnily I actually did more dmg on the non mist run, but that can be really anything)
Its versatile but not particularly amazing for anything iĀ“d say, 4 seconds of invis is a lifesaver if you get cornered but it isnt a spammable dash or something that makes it impossible to corner you in the first place.
And itĀ“s an awfully unreliable revivial tool, enemies will go for the guy you are trying to help and kill him. I see newbie shades do this waaay too often.
And i mean, while i do think itĀ“s an overall deserved change to focus more on headshots its pretty undeniable that it still hits shade CoP by removing the 40% bonus damage it was balanced around having.I think someone mentioned it removes the ability to kill 2 chaos warriors in 1 heavy backstabb with some weapons and another application of that trick is using a heavy on those weapons on a clustered enemy group in a horde, which also gets nerfed.
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Well overall i am in favor of the change to reward headshots more than random crits but i do also think that cloak of pain could use some ā¦ehm, vitamin boosts? To help it along if that does take place.
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I donāt disagree enough with your other points to contend them but this one strikes me as a little strange. Doesnāt CoP predate the stagger system? I may well be wrong here but thatās my memory. Also if you go smiter instead technically youāre not even losing 20% damage in reality. Youāre dropping from 140% damage down to 120% damage.
20/140 = ~14% damage youāre effectively losing with smiter over the current version of assassin. Not unnoticeable, but nowhere near as drastic as your stated ā40%ā.
Even if you still go Assassin and you miss a headshot youāre losing out on 40/140 = ~29% damage, still a far cry from 40%
Though ā40% bonus damageā is unclear, so Iām not sure exaclty how you meant that, but wanted to throw that light math in there for clarity regardless.
Old ones were, 15s duration increase, You could shoot ranged without breaking stealth and 30 % cooldown reduction.
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I mean is there a particular reason it should get nerfed even more after the recent Cloak of Pain nerf, the one where the 2nd hit no longer crits, so your effective elite&horde damage is halved?
Like I said, you lose the 2 Chaos Warrior bp with dual swords/sword & dagger.
You can still reach it with Smiter and 4 properties (2 on melee, 2 on charm), which is excessive imo since it lowers your regular melee damage without Assassin and kinda ruins your build to have 4 properties dedicated to a single bp - regardless of how good that bp is.
Comparing it to Gk, Gk has lower cd, has (boss) stagger and a safe double kill on Cws with no investment.
Frankly, nerfing the damage on the base ult/adding a headshot requirement feels unjustified.
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To be fair even GK:s ability cooldown is probably too low for what it is currently.
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Everything you said seems fair and well thought out, and this part in particular is very helpful info. Fair enough if you think CoP ends up too week with these changes, I do think thatās something that needs to be addressed with the Ult/talents themselves rather than stagger talents though. I have no issue with what they did to CoM, but removing the crit on the second hit of CoP always seemed like a questionable change. Hopefully your feedback can go towards this follow up balance mod thatās been teased.
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Shade got rebalanced at some point post or even around the stagger system implementation, i dont recall exactly when but her big stab did gets itĀ“s damage nerfed.
Was it around when cloak of mist was added?
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And well indeed you are right that the losses can be cut with smiter so itĀ“s not all too bad even if i suspect the loss is a bit bigger if you also run cruelty (50% more crit damage)
but what i mean to convey is that the ability is already considered not terribly strong by any means. It has a cooldown on the higher side for a melee damage boost and the best target, chaos warriors, get demolished by plenty of other things ontop of not being all to common to start with.
It doesnt even hit bosses all that hard.
āEditā
@Rapax nails it perfectly, he even has the math to back it up as you saw x)
Most annoying thing about the GK ability is the fact that it by baseline isnt too powerful either so the cooldown there is justified. Its the level 30 options that really bring it to speed and so hitting it with a cooldown nerf overall will be right but also wrong.
Hopefully, there will be a BBB soon. If shade needs to be buffed to compensate then it can be achieved through talents and passives. No need to have a talent that would make for meaningful choices on the other 16 careers. Just test it and if shade is underperforming, it may need crit power as a passive or something to compensate. I find it highly unlikely, but itās not a complicated solution.
Didnt fatshark say that itĀ“s next summer at the best somewhere since they had been busy?
How do you define underperforming though? Best i can do is compare her to another elite/boss killer that also operates in melee like GK, at which point i even now thinkĀ“s she comes up a mite bit short in live.
Even more so if we compare her to the ranged ones, notably but not overwhelmingly.
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And with these in mind, even if the unintended nerf isnt major and sheās still playable the question to me is more ādoes she deserve it?āā¦my answer is probably predictable at this point : P