For the perusal of whomever is actually balancing things, this thread will serve as an easy access to all things Assassin.
With the PTR changes, Martial Arts has been given a large revamp, buff skills have been brought in line, and fire and blade traps have been buffed substantially.
What remains to be fixed or at least addressed are these:
Next Hit Delay
Blade Sentinel has a steep “next hit delay,” the window within which an enemy cannot be damaged by other projectiles. This makes the skill dramatically less effective, and if you spend your charges for some Martial Arts skills too fast, i.e., through the use of Dragon Talon to pop three charges of Claws of Thunder, or by layering multiples, like Phoenix Strike and Claws of Thunder, it makes parts of that damage not affect the enemy targeted by it.
The Next Hit Delay of Wake of Fire, Nova, and Chain Lightning are 4 frames (.16 seconds) while the Next Hit Delay of Blade Sentinel and Shock Web are 25 frames (1 second).
While Wake of Fire may be a bit of a lost cause owing to how it attacks when you have five of them going, I believe reducing the Next Hit Delay for Nova and Chain Lightning to 2 frames (.08 seconds) and Blade Sentinel and Shock Web to 10 frames (.4 seconds) would go a long way to making these skills usable.
Blade Skills/Attack Rating
In addition to Blade Sentinel’s sizeable Next Hit Delay, its pathing can be a bit screwy at times. This is less easy to pin down a cause for however. Might be worth a look. Pathing in Diablo 2 has always been just a little weird, and I’m sure fixing this will break everything else.
More importantly, is the general lack of Attack Rating on Blade skills. As of the time of this posting, Claw Mastery APPEARS, according to the Lying Character Sheet, to actually be granting Attack Rating for Blade Fury, Blade Sentinel, and Blade Shield, when before it would only fail to benefit Blade Fury. This is a good start and I applaud the change.
However, compared to traps that always hit, like any of the Sentry skills, outside of the aforementioned Next Hit Delay, even this is not quite enough to make them better in comparison; though the dramatically increased damage granted by synergies does go some way to papering over the problems, the necessity of stacking Attack Rating at incredible cost render this a moot point. With Blessed Aim, Demon Limb’s level 23 Enchant, and indeed, Claw mastery adding some more AR, we are still at generally low effectiveness, doubled by many enemies in Hell having Damage Reduction (between 25-50%), and sizable chances to block.
While the damage buffs are well received, the better way to go about this might be to add flat Attack Rating to synergies, or the skills themselves. My suggestion would be to change the synergies across all three Blade skills from
+10% damage per level
to
+8% damage per level, +25 Attack Rating per level
This gives us increased damage as you intended, but goes a ways toward fixing these skills’ Attack Rating. Should also be easier to implement than % Attack Rating if D2:LoD modders are to be believed.
This frees us from needing Angelic Set and sacrificing both Rings AND Amulet, or from requiring Ignore Target Defense to be effective, without adding so much that some consideration toward Attack Rating, be it from charms, Blessed Aim, etc. are no longer required. Prior to this change, a full complement of synergies gave you +400% damage. Now, it’s 320%. But Blade Sentinel, Fury, and Shield will hit more, especially when bonuses to Attack Rating are factored in, without needing to decimate important gear slots. This point is important, as every other class gets large boosts to attack rating from somewhere else, and we …do not so much.
While some will say that Blade Fury could use piercing, my thoughts on it is that, while Piercing would help tremendously, the existence of Blade Sentinel – especially if its Next Hit Delay was lowered as mentioned above – will solve the general lack of AOE damage, and encourage you to fight enemies in more enclosed spaces or bottlenecks to make the most of it. (Tricky cunning to win the day rather than overt action for class feel).
Lastly, unfortunately Blade Shield continues to use weapon durability, which makes it not effective if you are to lean on the damage of Blade Fury or Blade Sentinel (or both, as it were). Blade Fury and Blade Sentinel effectively require an ethereal weapon to have their effectiveness even WITH this buff (as the ED% you wear has a magnified benefit when weapon damage comes into play, even when at 75% effectiveness).
Martial Arts
Outside of the Next Hit Delay causing problems with Phoenix Strike+Claws of Thunder, Fists of Fire and Blades of Ice still feel slightly underwhelming. They may benefit from a little bit extra damage. Claws of Thunder, even WITH Next Hit Delay issues, still seems to hit harder; the others lack some oomph.
Otherwise, the changes here are quite fun to utilize and work much better than they ever have before.
As needed, I may edit or add to this thread, but since Assassin is my main and, realistically, the only class I like to play outside of weirdo melee Sorceresses, I can’t offer much more for the OTHER classes, and will leave that to others.
[This is the 4th edit I made to this thread; the first three cleared up my math/mechanics on how damage is quantified for Blade Skills, and two edits were made separate from each other, to clear up the language I used in order to not contradict myself. The last edit was to add this disclaimer, and all new edits will include disclaimers for what I added or changed and when.]
[Edit 5, more grammatical errors fixed.]