I personally would scratch the first charge up state and consume/output all charges but only remove one state of each charged up skill. That way, if you want to play e.g. claw of thunder, you would have to charge up two times. Hit with finisher, loose 1 charge state. Hit with charge up, be on max charge state. So: charge up - charge up, finish, charge up, finish. That would make it less clunky, more fluid, increase stability of damage output.
Sounds good for playthrough and when you reach endgame and get mosaic, you’d only have to charge up all 10-15 seconds IF mosaic gets buffed to 50/100%.
Okay that makes sense, over charging won’t really do anything that way. It makes it easier to implement since devs can just reuse the animations rather than coming up with new ones.
Mosaic is the wrong approach , i will say more these dev are the wrong approach for d2re , at this point i dont really care anymoe, how to have faith with this mess idk
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Exactly! Four potential unused skillsets/animations for repurpose then (mercs, monster; ctcs on items (claws e.g.^^), etc). My other thought on that: it makes MA easier/smoother to play on a walkthrough, while Mosaic can be an endgame goal in order to ‘complete’ the build.
It makes the worst part about MA sins (charging up) actually fun to play. I feel charge refund is a bandaid solution so you can avoid the actual skill mechanic (charging up) as much as you can. It’s bad design philosophy if your end goal is so you don’t have to use the skill. But if charging up was rewarding in itself I don’t think it’s necessary to try to avoid it. I think the devs are on the wrong train of thought by increasing the pay off to justify the effort it takes rather than just making the process of charging more fun.
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Give the item an option that does not consume consumption charge-up, but the ability must be added to the assassin’s skill itself. A corresponding option is added for each finish move skill. I don’t think it will simply change to one item between the Sorceress and B-nec who pays mani and uses it infinitely,
the Assassin who needs to break through the attack success rate, hit rate, and block rate. After all, charge-up is impossible in pvp, and there are many things that need to be improved in order to use MA skills in a stylish way in PVE.
If the charge ups always instead of the finishers it would solve that problem. I am not sure why they made the finishers always hit instead, they were never the problem.
The problem with refunding charges is it can be more a hinderance than helpful which has been mentioned a lot on here.
Completely agree with you the process of charge-up should be improved instead of increasing the output to make it worthwhile dealing with a clumsy mechanic. Saying that I do think the MA needs buffs or we need more ways to reduce enemy resistances on claws.
I suggested in another thread that instead of not consuming charges why not change it so that you have a chance to gain an additional charge on striking. I think this would make charge-up process better.
I and a lot of other people have said these type of mechanics (chance to not consume, etc) should be embedded in the skill tree and not on the item forcing us into using an item. I’m hoping this is what happens but I’m can’t see it happening unfortunately.
I’d rather them buff the un-used unique claws firelizard and shadow killer to be useable for MA builds and allow crescent moon in claws than have this runeword which doesn’t seem to offer much outside of something that as mentioned should be in the skill tree.
3 Likes
I posted a similar idea some 8 hours prior.
Props to OP for not having as much rambling as me.
IDK If it would be overpowered but it addresses concerns with duration, expenditure and DPS during charge-phase.
Up to those who know to work out the details.
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Another improvement they should implement is make charge up skills always hit rather than finishers. It’s much more annoying missing a charge up then 1 kick in a chain of 5. Not sure why they keep on trying to make finishers better when it’s the charge ups that are the problem. It opens up a lot more weapon options for kickers other than claws for a decent hit rate. Even if you’re using Dragon Claw as your finisher having to max out DC, CM to get a decent hit rate along your all the synergies for PH is not feasible.
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Yep missing when trying to get charges is annoying, really annoying. I found myself when not having optimal gear going extremely dex heavy on my build just to get a decent hit chance on charge-up swings. Obviously this mostly goes away once you get infinity but I’d rather not to have to wait that long into ladder and I still found myself running quite a bit of dex once I got infinity for diablo, baal etc.
Finisher’s only always hit when you have charges but I think having this and the charge skills always hit isn’t great. That being said finishers get better AR bonuses so if we were doing that it makes sense the charge-up always hits and then finishers use regular AR.
Personally I don’t like using weapons other than claws with assassin’s but I’m always for something that will improve variety in weapons used on a build. This why I’ve been arguing for more minus to enemy resistances on claws. Claws have no real options here and instead we have to use items like crescent moon, doom, phoenix, HOJ etc which rules out using fists of fire, claws of thunder and blades of ice.
Agree with the DC/CM, have really wanted to run this with PS but between NHD issues and hit chance haven’t really bothered with it.
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While almost on the topic, please allow crescent moon and lawbringer in claws. It would help dragon tail and CoT builds immensely, without needing a bunch of new runewords.
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How they can fix MA is to have each claw ability as an “Aura”. While it is on your right mouse your finishing moves gain that augment to its damage. Each hit adds a charge. These charges have durations that can be extended by slotting the charge up aura to right click or by an on kill effect from mosaic.
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Hm, interesting. The spender would charge up by itself, keeping the ramp up feeling from before. Maybe give the charges a short duration after changing ‘aura’, so that you can stack two different typea of charges.
It would definitely require some work, and some changes to phoenix strike, but it sounds very interesting.
Edit: dragon talon would become hilariously OP with this change though. They’d need to figure something out to keep it in line with other spenders, without killing kicksins and riftsins (these builds would probably become obsolete by these changes anyways, but a build being outclassed is better than a build not working at all anymore). Dragon tail would probably be fine and better than before, but dragon claw would see no use at all.
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How about the charge-ups deal 25% Elemental damage + physical and the finisher does 100%? That way the charge ups at least contribute.
Considering how weak the MA assassin feels right now, i don’t think it needs to be watered down at all.
We could even have an assassin casting fully charged finishers on every attack and it still wouldn’t outperform Hammerdins. So the only challenge is how to significantly buff her without ruining the playstyle.
That really is the issue, and it’s not supereasy to fix.
How about this:
*Finishers doesn’t use up charges (more dmg)
*Charges are lost after x.x seconds when not using either a charge up attack or a finisher (to keep charge attacks in rotation)
*No more than 6 charges at a time (to keep it form gping overboard)
*Adjust dmg numbers
*Do whatever with mosaic, give it stamina reger or -1 to teleport, just dont use it to fix martial arts assassins
Would that work, or would it just lead to annoyance once charges are lost?
The charge up part all in itself needs to go. While I am charging up with first few hits, a frenzy barb, Hdin, sorc, or druid comes along and kills my mob before I get to max charge. In Baal runs and TZ runs and lvl 35-40 skills I’m not killing anything but carvers. Things with more health all get killed by the other players and I just look like a noob that can’t kill stuff. Just a distraction for the mob while the other players get the kills, and exp from making the kills. It’s a leech char like WC barb. Charge ups are just dumb.
Imagine if the Hammerdin had to wait to charge up hammers? If cold sorc had to charge up blizz or orb? Fire claw druid charge up fireclaw?
It makes no sense at all to have the Assassin charging up to do damage. NONE
This is what I’ve suggested elsewhere, somewhat similar to what you mention:
- Make Phoenix Strike’s effects cumulative like other charge-up skills.
- This can be done by changing the prgstack column value for Phoenix Strike’s row in skills.txt from 0 to 1.
- Make finishing moves, except Dragon Talon, no longer consume charges per attack.
- This can be done by changing the prgchargesconsumed column value for their rows in skills.txt from 1 to 0.
- Make charge-up attacks automatically hit.
- This can be done by copying code already used by Impale.
- Make finishing moves require attack rating to hit again (for balance purposes).
- This can be done by changing the param8 column value for their rows in skills.txt from 1 to 0.
- Reduce the duration of charge-up skill charges from 15 seconds to whatever length is appropriate for balance.
- Change Mosaic’s affix/property to instead be “+25% to charge-up skill duration” or however it should be phrased to be clear what it means.
- Rework Next Hit Delay to apply to individual skill functions per cast, not an entire game-wide category of skills.
You’d have to hit once with a charge-up skill to get your first charge, but subsequent charge-up attacks would automatically hit. Then your normal attacks and finishing moves would apply your charge-up effects for the full duration of the charges, except Dragon Talon, which would still spend charges. This would help further differentiate Dragon Talon and Dragon Claw, with Dragon Talon being faster but consuming charges. Players would spend much less time charging up, both because of the automatic hits on charge-up skills and because the charges would apply to multiple attacks before expiring.
And all of that, except the NextHitDelay change, is either easily done through .txt editing or by copying existing code.
3 Likes
Track you from another topic (remove Phoenix Strike NHD topic).
I appreciate your solution.
Seems easy to approach except the individual NHD suggestion (actually, it should be a “must have” for a modern game).
However, I don’t think the D2R maintaining team would take the effort to change the NHD group mechanism. Thats why I suggest removing 4F NHD for specified missile in Phoenix Strike now.