It’s hard to balance given that negative feedback is far more likely to get typed than positive feedback. I want to preface this by saying I play modded content pretty much exclusively and have done very little testing on official difficulties.
Having said that, Sister is still really good and legitimately provides a support niche. I’ve ran with two different groups and both groups have settled on sister as part of the strongest comp we could make. She provides great control, damage, and sustain to the party. She doesn’t get all the green circles anymore, but the buffs/debuffs she brings allows groups that would be struggling to sustain and/or meet dps checks to become really well-rounded. All in all, well done on this one.
Just the fact some Careers can avoid Shrapnel for Bosses is amazing. Bombadier on OE will do some crazy damage.
Her main two builds for me are double stacks with Bleed and Repel. There’s still some Talents I see as being a bit pointless, but she has some really unique playstyles available still.
Useless Talents:
Incandescence
Ironbark
The only testing I did was on dummies, and I didn’t see any changes. But still avoidable for some. Grenadier is so strong for certain Careers.
I’d be interested to see how C3+DWONS builds for the thorn elf look. Her build variety in normal Cata seems a little lacking to me.
But yes, overall I agree with your assessment. Sister went from being a massive problem that I hated ever seeing because of how unfun she made things to a welcome party member.
The fact that Blackvenom is a completely separate debuff from Shrapnel (and WHC ping/Off Balance/Open Wounds) should mean that they all stack, no?
Yeah apart from some nitpicky stuff like Arathi applying trough armor and wall still being bit gimmicky, it is a solid rework that i don’t have too many issues with.
She still needs nerfs. “support” kek dealing insane amount of damage is support? Having inbuild stuff that other characters need to take as talents, yes sure.
Her damage is only really strong in melee right now due to the new bleed talent being ridiculously overturned but that´s about it. In principle nothing else is actually particularly wrong with her although she does flat flat in some regards.
Why is the improved version of Ironbark just a bigger bush?
12% (or 24,rest of talents on that tier is just joke) more damage from all sources, thp just because teammates and boon for everyone is too much and thats just passives, one of those would be enough but all 3 are stupid.
By spreading the poison around during a fight it means that any target you hit will be affected by the bleed without any fuss. Its excellent for clearing multiple targets.
And really…24% damage boost is mainly against elites or bigger who´d survive AOE but…WHC exists and applies a similar boost just by tagging them. The extra 4% SoT has isnt needed but its not a big deal either.
This passive is kinda bipolar, powerful when you got a strong generator on the team but kinda useless otherwise.
I dunno really, 25% more healing vs 15%+ damage reduction from a FK feels pretty comparable and holy hecking handmaiden gives 100% more stamina regen to teammates, typical boost is 30%. And wild hunt WHC spams a 25% teamwide critboost during hordefights…I cant really say SoT feels really out of line here like, drop it by 5% maybe but that´s kinda nitpicking too.
nah really.
Problem with SoT is that her bleed talent is flense multiplied by four, that´s THE problem.
Auras are auras this is alltime working for everyone and its even more boosting that “thp just because” talent. Wild hunt works for elites and is on cd (small but it is) and that you know is passive that teach good gameplay values (like taging specials etc) rather than run to smack everything.
So you say its comparable to whc ulting, yes indeed “balanced”, even whc crit for elites have some condition that don’t make it 100% uptime like you said aoe 12% for everything.
Sott is one of 2 careers that can take healshare because of how their kit works and dont suffer at all.
Some auras are indeed bigger or smaller and thus more limited, however, if a team is actually skilled enough to let SoT benefit from leeching then they will certainly stand close enough to eachother to have aura´s running too.
Witch hunt is the tagging passive, wild hunt is the thing that makes his ability cooldown refund 40% instantly if he hits 10+ targets with it and an extra 25% critchance works on everything abundantly well.
Especially for a career that usually runs high crit to start with.
Which is really not bad considering how most traits arent used unless something like this allows or prompts it.
SoT´s healboost is an Aura, all her teammates can run healshare if they so wish if premade or just playing more than 1 match together. And some careers just got so high innate THP generation that they can get away with it even without her if they actually want to.
more like stupidly strong. If thp and boon were auras that would help it a lot
It would promote a better gameplay aka “Stick to your team” and not typical wutelgism
And I’m pretty sure “thp just because” is not aura, I had few situations where I healed wutelgi with bomb balms or kruber shouts from half a map.
Boon, no idea but pretty sure if its aura its way bigger than FK big aura
i would also say that her abilities have several equal strong counterparts. If you search for something you dont like or for something overpowered you can find something at every career. But all in all she is fine now like any other career
Idk if it’s intended or not, but Blackvenom is applied ‘before’ the actual damage is dealt from the hit, and it’s applied on melee ‘and’ ranged attacks when it crits with Lingering Blackvenom. In short, SotT atm has built in +12% dmg boost on her melee attacks which can be boosted to 24% from second hit with Recursive toxin.
I’m much more in fond of her now than pre-patch as devs successfully added lot more supportive aspects which I really appreciate, but it’s still hard to say that she is balanced with Blackvenom behaving weird and that otherworldly bleed talent; namely Atharti’s Delight.
Bigger bush was a frequent request (behind walls not stopping projectiles, no walls, and SoTT being deleted from game)
Same thing with Shrapnel and Hunter (damage bonus applied to the proccing attack)
Assumed working as intended until dev says otherwise or someone discovers a crazy OP interaction.
SoTT doesn’t suck the game dry like an anti-fun blackhole anymore, 10/10. I’m seeing more staff users and less jav, and the amount of ff/team killing is finally calmed down, rightfully returning to Sienna.
Playing with someone using the push wall is just great. Glad to see more CC, glad to see abilities with readable benefits to the team (as in, you can see it). Glad to see stuff that’s not breakpoint dependent and works out of the box. And most of all, I’m glad there’s stuff for me to do besides watching someone else play.
Hunter and Shrapnel requires specific condition, namely crit and use of nades, while Blackvenom is flat +12% no condition asked, and it’s not even a talent nor a trait but a built in passive. I agree that she is way much better to play and play with now than before, but it’s hard to say that she is well balanced overall. Is it a big issue? No, because Elf is and always has been a strong class overall. Is it still worth mentioning? I believe so, because that’s how we’ve got SotT fixed.
Slayer passive is also applies its damage bonus on the hits that proc them. I doubt we’ll see a special exception to that rule just for thorn elf.
Really, apart from Atharti’s being big dumb, a few dead talents, her healing buff aura being effectively global, and walls still being a bit suspect, thorn elf feels like she’s in a good spot.
There are two builds I’ve been seeing in our group. Some people go for recursive and some go for lingering. Everyone takes the bleed, which isn’t nearly as powerful as some in this thread have made out. In our groups, sister is usually near the bottom of damage dealt. The group comp is Sister/merc or FK/WP/Bolt Wizard. We’ve been playing Dutch Spicey, which is quite a bit more dense than OS+, so idk how that changes things.
About what I expected. I am a little sad to hear that Tanglegrasp doesn’t get used though. I thought it might be a little more impactful with higher density.
