How to nerf Mosaic without ruining the Martial Arts Assassin

Assassin
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On Youtube MrLlamaSC likes to talk about Mosaic. And I eventually got around to making a Mosaic assassin, which certainly melts through things like hot knife through butter, but can still die if you are not being careful enough. But the sad fact of the Martial Arts assassin is that without Mosaic, you really have no reason to play a Martial Arts assassin other than to punish yourself for the sake of some novelty experiment or personal challenge.

Therefore, MrLlamaSC suggested in the video linked above how all the Finishers Moves, Dragon Talon, Dragon Claw, Dragon Tail, Dragon Flight should just automatically refresh the charges. And I like this idea, because it would make Martial Arts assassin something playable from level one. But that would then make the Mosaic Rune Word utterly useless, hence my following suggestion would be that you can only carry one type of a Charge at a time by default. Which would mean that you would have to choose from having either Tiger Strike, Cobra Strike, Fists of Fire, Claws of Thunder, Blades of Ice, or Pheonix Strike charged up. And then I would change the Mosaic rune word to allow our assassin to carry one additional type of charge. Therefore, the Assassin with dual Mosaics could choose to have up to three different types of charges being active at any given time. Or if you want to just make do with one Mosaic rune word, you could potentially make do with just two types of Charges.

With this change the Mosaic Assassin player would not have to spend who knows how long to just build up all the possible charges. For example, depending on the area you face you could just choose Blades of Ice, Fist of Fire, and an appropriate charge up of the Pheonix Strike. Or perhaps you might choose to just wield one Mosaic and go for a full Physical Claw assassin, building up Tiger and Cobra strikes, and just cutting everything in half with your maxed out Dragon Claw finisher and Claw Mastery. Not to mention that with lesser amount of potential Charges stored up, the assassin would not manifest a re-enactment of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Disaster every time there was a kick on the screen.

And I think Mosaic Assassins would be pretty much about as good as they ever were, but players would not be limited to the possession of dual Mosaics for an Martial Arts assassin.

Oh well, my two cents.

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Anything changing other aspects of the game to support the current broken Mosaic mechanic may likely shape the game around a skewed dynamic.

What about this for Mosaic: Instead of the whole % chance of not using a charge, that instead when you attack or use a skill a random 1-2 charges is applied for the skills you have available or specced into? Or something along these lines, as it would also match the essence of mosaic building up a plethora of charges that look pretty. It would also get rid of the whole having to pre stack charges everytime u do something outside of town

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The martial arts skill tree of the Assa is simply not well done.

First of all, it would have been much better if the Assa had been made more of a physical fighter, who would then have distributed the whirling blades of her blade shield with a finisher as an AE effect. As a 2nd option, a whirling step, where the Assa would then have kicked up to 7 enemies within a radius of 5 meters at lightning speed with the Tiger Strike charge.

And then you should have dispensed with Phoenix Strike and only distributed the 3 elemental charges, of which you can only have one at a time.

But even then, the elemental charges would have to be reworked because the fire fists are far too weak if you look at the direct comparison. This may not be an issue with Mosaic now, because you then strike x times anyway and even the fire fists then increase, but in relation to Thunderclaws it is still subterranean, also in terms of radius.

Ice Blades are also far too weak in terms of DPS in comparison. The only difference is that charging them has the advantage of freezing enemies briefly, which makes them a bit safer to play.

I think the idea that a fighter also deals some elemental damage is quite ok for a game like this. But it’s currently too overloaded. The whole thing shouldn’t feel like a melee mage in disguise, but even with elemental playstyle, it should feel more like a real melee fighter and it doesn’t.

This is especially painful for the Frost Mage and the Meteor Mage in comparison.

The Assa rains down 20 meteors within a few seconds. As a real sorceress, the poor mage seems almost helpless here.

The same goes for the frost mage.

You have FO with 1 sec delay, Glacial Spike that doesn’t even penetrate enemies, a 1.8 delay Blizzard and a too weak Frost Nova and the Assa freezes everything with a huge amount of icicles at a decent range and at a maximum speed.
And we’re only talking about PS. The matching charges also maximize this enormously.

Only the lightning sorc can hold its own against the lightning variant of the Assa, or the Javazon, both of which are basically OP classes in comparison.

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Actually I have a level 82 Assassin, I made two Mosaic Suwayyah for her to dual wield, Didn’t work…So I made her a sanctuary shield to go with one of the Suwayyah…Didn’t work so I stole the Phaseblade Lawbringer off of one of my other toons still using the Sanctuary, That did work at least to some extent. Her biggest issues were mobs overwhelming her both regular monsters as well as the ghosts & wraiths who are often physically immune and mana drainers in close. Otherwise, it’s a decent weapon for attackers focusing on speed, as it offers Decrepify mod (somewhat offsetting the lack of Enhanced Damage) and a Sanctuary aura that allows all physical damage dealt by the character to ignore resistance on undead enemies.Physical Immune monsters (which certain melee characters cannot easily deal with) as well as the undead (especially Ghosts and Bone Fetishes). Result:

20% Chance To Cast Level 15 [Decrepify On Striking
Level 16-18 [Sanctuary Sanctuary_(skill)) Aura When Equipped (varies)
-50% Target [Defense Defense)
Adds 150-210 Fire DamageFire_Damage)
Adds 130-180 [Cold DamageCold_Damage)
7% [Life Stolen Per Hit
[Slain Monsters Rest in Peace Slain_Monsters_Rest_in_Peace)
+200-250 [Defense vs. Missiles wiki/Defense_vs._Missiles)
+10 To [Dexterity )
75% Extra [Gold From Monsters

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throw in Basic attack to the list of refreshers and coutnt me in…
the fun fact is basic attack has the least amount of fpa required on max breakpoint in order to perform 1 hit, and just letting assassin chew through mobs with basic claw attack enhanced with tiger strike would do the job far better than any boot damage. especially if you’d get some claws with decent amount of damage, like dual rare +450%ED ereps with +20/+20 dmg that would freaking murder stuff…

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Yup Mosaic is very overrated I’ve found Lawbringer far more useful and

unlike Mosaic it deals with Physical Immune Monsters where Mosaic will

not nor is that the only immunity it deals with

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Well, besides the fact that swords can only reach 8fpa including phase blade, the damage output from a grief phaseblade with phoniex monarch and lawbringer on swap for physical immunes (with bone brak), would murder stuff by tiger strike/basic attack combo far better than any finisher combo. On the other hand if you got problems getting lawbringer, you can simply go phoniex strike 2nd charge. Phoniex strike does not require claw class weapons like the left side of thd tree, although pumping claws of thunder seem a goid idea if you want to buff phoniex strike lightning dmg

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Doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t HIT And you can’t hit Physically immune

monsters and anymore it ain’t just Ghosts & Wraiths a lot of other

monsters turn up with Physical Immune Mod’s, Well that doesn’t matter

with a Lawbringer!

20% Chance To Cast Level 15 [Decrepify On Striking
Level 16-18 [Sanctuary Sanctuary_(skill)) Aura When Equipped (varies)
-50% Target [Defense Defense)
Adds 150-210 Fire DamageFire_Damage)
Adds 130-180 [Cold DamageCold_Damage)
7% [Life Stolen Per Hit
[Slain Monsters Rest in Peace Slain_Monsters_Rest_in_Peace)
+200-250 [Defense vs. Missiles wiki/Defense_vs._Missiles)
+10 To [Dexterity )
75% Extra [Gold From Monsters

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there is no problem with hitting PI monsters it’s that if you deal phys damage to PI You’ll deal 0 dmg, but you still have chance to hit it…

what i proposed instead was:
use lawbringer to proc lvl 15 decrepify this lasts quite a bit on lvl 15, weapon swap to grief and chop the damn PI away… bone break also helps a ton here, though even bone break + grief alone do nicely for plain attack with Tiger Strike 3rd strike charge. also if You want to deal with PI otherwise there’s still Phoniex strike which also does not require a claw class weapon, and does elemental damage, so quite handy for PI…