Next Hit Delay is hindering MA Assassin to shine at the moment, hope they address this before 2.4 launch or MA ll still bad because releasing multiple charges at once makes half+ of the skills to not deal damage because the NHD.
10 Likes
could you be more specifc, what exact effect has the next hit delay and why exactly do you think that it’s detremental
Skills affected by NextDelay
25-Frame Delay (1 second)
- Shock Web
- Blade Sentinel
- Twister
- Tornado
10-Frame Delay (0.4 seconds)
- Volcano (initial eruption)
6-Frame Delay (0.24 seconds)
- War Cry
- Grim Ward
5-Frame Delay (0.2 seconds)
- Fissure
- Volcano (small fireball)
4-Frame Delay (0.16 seconds)
- Multi Shot
- Strafe
- Lightning Strike
- Chain Lightning
- Nova
- Frost Nova
- Poison Nova
- Shock Wave
- Fist of Heavens (Holy Bolts)
- Wake of Fire
- Claws of Thunder (only 2nd and 3rd charge charges have Next Delay. 1st charge does not trigger Next Delay)
- Phoenix Strike (only 2nd Chain Lightning and 3rd Chaos Orb charge have Next Delay. 1st charge does not trigger Next Delay)
- Dragon Flight
- Battle Cry
- Battle Command
- Battle Orders
- Any other piercing missiles
2 Likes
All the skills listed by Genesh does no damage if the enemy had been damaged by that spell or another in the last x frames, making some Phoenix Strike and Claws of Thunder charges to do no damage. I.E. releasing two charges of Claws of Thunder with Dragon Claw or Dragon Talon cause the “second” Nova to deal no damage or if you release the PO with three charges the lightining ll do no damage because the enemy got hit by the caos icebolt.
—>Now imagine if you get three charges of PO and CT and release all at once with three kicks from DTalon, almost all lightining damage ll be lost.
7 Likes
Charge-up skills are not affected by “Next Hit Delay”.
If Chaos Ice Bolt is released by Dragon Flight, the enemy hit by Dragon Flight will freeze.
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Totally agree! We hope this will be fixed.
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Right. Dragon flight is a finisher that hits once. Try using the dual claw finisher skill: you lose two charges and see the graphics for both effects but only one charge worth of damage occurs. It may even be possible to see this with plain attacks releasing charges (assassins can attack really fast). Dragon flight is just hilariously slow compared to anything else she can do.
I personally avoid Dragon flight and blade fury because they are so slow and awkward compared to anything else used by the assassin.
These no-damage limitations also have more detrimental effects on other skills higher on the list, such as blade sentinel and tornado.
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So the issue is specifically with the dragon claw\talon where they release a charge in a 2nd strike\kick, but it has no effect due to next delay? Yes, that sounds broken indeed. I assume that started happening because they now remove only 1 charge instead of all at once
3 Likes
Are you forgetting that dragonflight also has a “next hit delay”?
Why can dragon flight release chaos ice bolts?
I have hit Dragon Claw many times and verified with PTR that Chaos Ice Bolt and Chaos Lightning hit at the same time and both do damage.
Well, where you said casting delay, it should be NHD but yes. I don’t recall how it was like 15 years ago or something, but I’m guessing it’s slightly better now, yet still not good. Currently on Live, you release all charges at the same time so I would think releasing let’s say Phoenix Strike with Dragon Talon is slightly better now but I might be wrong. Thinking 5 kicks with 3/3/3/3/7 frames. Phoenix Strike’s charge 3 (Chaos Ice Bolts) and charge 2 (Chain Lightning) flies around in circles pretty much so it’s very hard to determine which one is gonna hit a particular enemy and then put them into NHD.
It’s very awkward and inconsistent. Don’t get me wrong, I love MA sin with the changes that they made and I’ll be playing PS on ladder, but still feels bad knowing that a certain amount of my damage will just do nothing to enemies even if they do hit them.
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yeah you are right I misspoke
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If they dont fix the NHD from MA assassin ill play Spearzon or Hydra/Orb Sorc when ladder kickoff.
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If we are already at that topic, pls also fix next hit delay on blade sentinel - completely kills of the build.
So…considering I have 3x PS charges, if instead of DTalon or DClaw, we finish with DTail or DFlight…then there’s no issue, right?
With 2.4 changes, using DTail or DFlight once, I’ll release Chaos bolts. If I hold the button to reuse DTail/DFlight as soon as possible - the next attack would release Chain Lightning, then one more would release Meteor - these would happen outside the frame limit that nullifies damage. Meaning, until NHD is fixed, it’s kinda better to use Tail or Flight instead of Talon or Claw?
That just means that dragon talon and dragon claw are unusable for charge ups, I hardly call that a fix. Charge ups are nowhere near op, not sure why nhd is on them at all.
3 Likes
If you release your charges at 5 frames you ll be fine. Main problem is releasing mult charges I.e. 3 charges of PS and 3 charges of CT into a DFlight ll make the whole CT lighining to deal no damage on targets hit by the ice bolts in less than 4 frames. You ll still have 2 charges of PS and CT but you wasted a lot of damage.
Another problem is that even if it is released 5+ frames later, both Chain Lightning and Chaos Ice Bolts fly all over the place over the course of maybe 20-35 frames
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I tried that with dragon flight. I got excited when I read that they eliminated the casting delay, and then I cried a little when I saw how painfully slow the animation still is 
Going from the other assassin skills to dragon flight feels like I just got decrepified.
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Lets keep up the topic and hope a dev read this and fix before 2.4 goes live in a few days.
I believe 2.4 is going launch in 3 days, plz address this Blizzard!
If MA skills removed their next hit delay, it would massively improve their damage with no other changes added.
Small mechanical changes > % increases to damage.
2 Likes