I doubt the assassin changes will kill Shade.
She’ll still have Cloak of Mist and invis cheese which honestly could go.
If the changes do cripple a few Shade BPs, Cruelty could be buffed to compensate but probably not necessary.
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Better not expect much for this summer.
Lol yeah but didn’t you also argue against p much all the shade nerfs?
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it’s a real fun time huh? 
big agree
@Frostysir @Rapax what I will say about Shade is changing assassin will serve as a baseline for further adjustments to be made to the class.
Once the lvl 5 and lvl 15 rows are left in a more balanced state it’ll be much much easier to balance classes accordingly without having things skewed by arbitrary system talents. We wanna make sure we aren’t putting the cart before the horse :^)
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Referring to the ones done to cloak of pain and cloak of mist? If so, not quite, i was always on the side stating the latter should be nerfed since i think it´s unhealthy for the game in a number of ways.
The one reason i have any leniency for it is just that it is the only truly “assassin like” build if that makes any sense…as for cloak of pain i never felt it in need of a nerf but i didnt think it was a big deal that it lost the assured crit on the second stealth either.
Not really a needed nerf in but not a dealbreaker either.
As for changing assassin to lose crit synergy in favor of just headshots or even better headshots? That i am in favor off even if it means Shade might need some help*
A very fair standpoint, i´ll drop the subject from here x)
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Shade ever being weak just doesn’t compute in my brain. And I doubt Assassin is the only reason why.
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Shade being weak ≠ Shade being disproportionately affected by the changes here.
Please do not misunderstand my feedback as screeching that Shade was now completely underpowered and in dire need of buffing.
This is feedback on the mod, namely that streamlining stagger talents will affect each class differentely and what consequences it might have.
That also explains:
Playing e.g. Huntsman with Assassin, One in the Eye, Hunter Longbow and a 1h sword with tmp hp on cleave being available felt like quite the buff to the class overall (even if that loadout might not necessarily be the most meta pick, just being able to play it in the first place is a de facto buff).
What I am pointing out is that Shade is the class that has the biggest focus on crits and changing how crits work will therefore have a stronger impact on this class than on others.
Whc for comparison still has Flense, +25% headshot damage, easier access to instakills etc. and thus is not as affected by the changes to Assassin.
He still gets “nerfed” just like Bh, Shade and Ws but the extent to which that happens is different.
Other classes benefit from this change or from other changes (Bh having better tmp talents is a buff in that area, other classes/weapons getting Smiter/Assassin is a buff etc.).
Whether some other changes lead to other classes being too strong is another topic that can be dealt with once the stagger&tmp talents are streamlined I guess.
Still, providing feedback on how that one specific aspect has a stronger effect on that one specific class/build (e.g. Cloak of Pain is far from meta) than on others serves to point out potential areas where future balance adjustments could be made.
Basically this 
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Small Update:
-Pyro now has Assassin
-HM now has Bulwark
-Fixed getting thp on corpses when shotgun bashing, shield slamming and fire sword heavies and similar attacks. (which is something that would be in live)
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Wait what? Can I seriously shield bash corpses for THP on official realm? Presumably that’s for cleave THP yeah?
It’s for THP on stagger. Basically for some reason “on stagger” talents/traits/passives will proc with some attacks even if they are dead, I just made a check to make sure they are not at 0 health (i.e. dead).
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“Vanguard (thp on stagger), Reaper (thp on cleave) and Bloodlust (thp on kill) replace all lvl 5 talents for all careers.
Changed the amount of thp you recieve from enemies when using bloodlust (see below).
The hand of shallya trait has been replaced with the heal share talent”
Completely agree. Never used the healshare talent in serious runs after my first 100 hours and some characters suffer from not having good thp talents for their playstyle (Bounty hunter for the most part). The crit/headshot thp talent is just too inconsistent most of the time or simply gets outclassed by other thp talents.
“Fixed getting unlimited thp on Vanguard when using slam. (approx. 8 thp limit)
Fixed Vanguard not proccing when you killed an enemy which is staggered.”
Didn’t think of these points as stuff that has to get “fixed”. At first i thought shields would suffer greatly from this but after a few test runs it turned out to not be that bad. You simply need a few extra seconds to build up the thp you need and that’s it (and i guess it is indeed a bit stupid how quickly you are able to get thp with slams in the current version, if i think about it). I don’t really care whether or not i can get thp from enemies that i kill with stagger focused weapons. It helps with keeping some thp with few enemies around though, which means you wont have to farm it on waves first to then start clearing them. This change gets problematic with other weapons, that typically would use thp on cleave though.
Changes to thp on kill:
These changes aim at making the talent more consistent i guess? If yes then they suceeded. But I dont really like the change. I like to view this talent an alternative to thp on cleave, where you have to be conservative with your hp most of the time until a pat gets pulled or smth like that. Then you can play more aggressive since you’ll be able to recover thp quickly by slaying the elites. Thp on cleave on the other hand lets you build up thp on hordes or on bosses, that you can then use to get through pressure situations in which you wont be able to get that much thp. These changes just make thp on kill more similar to thp on cleave/stagger imo.
“Mainstay removed: the talent is conceptually weak and without a complete rework, or nerfing to competitors, will always be realistically inferior to smiter and enhanced power
Bulwark buffed: 10% damage bonus now applies to all damage types and duration has been increased to 5 seconds. The intent here is to improve the supportive niche and make it an adequate alternative option for that playstyle.
Enhanced Power buffed to 10%
Assassin no longer applies on crits”
Don’t really get why so many people keep discarding mainstay as really weak. I would rank it ahead of bulwark (and ahead of enhanced power for most characters) and only closely behind smiter. It’s a solid choice on any weapon with cleave, especially on basically all swords, and is decent on those that can’t reach breakpoints with smiter. I would disagree with this change, but the buffed enhanced power gets pretty close to mainstay even on weapons that benefit mainstay, so its not really worth to keep around i guess.
On the topic of enhanced power: i think 7,5% is fine. It already is the best choice for builds that don’t focus on melee damage and allows you to hit some nice breakpoints. Those 2,5% extra won’t make a big difference though so do what you think is best here.
Assassin: Removing the extra crit damage hurts of course but is probably necessary. It definitly is the strongest talent in this row and only gets better on chars like whc and shade.
What i like the most about the changes to the stagger talents is, that many more chars will have access to assassin. its pretty much the only talent in this row that rewards skill and it will allow for some nice headshot breakpoints.
Bulwark,… well it needs a buff. Pretty hard to estimate the value this talent will get you/got me in my tests with bots, but 2 sec 10% more melee damage? Come on Fatshark…
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Can someone explain to me what is bad about mainstay? i can see that with the buff’s to EP it would be redundant, but in live mostly for all high cleave weapon i choose mainstey unless i really want some breakpoint that only smiter can give me.
so to the short version is, smiter is only a ~5% dps loss vs mainstay in hordes meanwhile the difference on single and/or stagger resistant targets is massively in smiter’s favour. Enhanced powe, similarly, is only a minor differential in horde dps whilst also offering QoL like better stagger, cleave and ranged breakpoints and better single target. This is all based on current official realm values; mainstay simply can’t compete.
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The problem with mainstay is that weapons that for light enemies that die in one or two hits it is worthless, and for elites you need a high stagger power. Attacks that are good at staggering are usually either too slow to capitalise on staggers or not very damaging in the first place.
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I see your point but i’m not 100% convinced. The math is only one factor in one bigger picture. With high cleave weapon often slower very often you hit enemies alredy in stagger 1, lot of weapons have the best horde clearing move tied to the pushattack, trash enemies may die in one or two hits if they take the full damage buth when the weapon has already cleaved 2 or 3 enemies the damage have fallen off considerebly while with the first enemies hit you have high chance to have wasted pert of the damage anyway. The advantage on hard to stagger enemies are there but if that 20% extra is not enough for reducing the hits needed to kill ar least one elite type then it has advantage only against monster and maybe CW when people gang up on them.
I have not really done much testing on this though so if someone with more data can actually show me what’s i’m missing i would be very interested to listen.
if the enemies are already staggered/being attacked by multiple players then the dps difference still remains negligible since horde trash simply doesn’t survive many hits
Yeah a lot of people see the numbers and get baited by the 60%. Understandable. Personally, I was part of very early wom guides made by royale with cheese and advocated for mainstay. Turns out, it sucks in practice. Whether you slog through the math or simply use dps tracker, it’s just really bad.
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Don’t blame the talent, blame the player 
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I would like to test this, is there a mod that can help me understand how much dps i’m performing in a controlled situation?
Dps tracker is part of UI tweaks