How to properly buff martial arts assassin

PTR Feedback
1

Step 1: Double the damage of every elemental charge up skill except phoenix strike.
Explanation: The damage of those skills is already on the low end and doubly so, because you have to generate charges before you get to deal damage.

Step2: All Charge Up abilities except Phoenix Strike now gain a chance to retain charges after using a finisher and the chance linked to the respective skill. E.g. Fists of Fire have a x% chance for its own charges to not be consumed. Chance increases per skill point spent. Values can be extracted from the barbarians Throw Mastery and its chance to not consume quantity. 17% to not consume charges at level 1 going up to 55% at max level.
Explanation: The buildup remains, but the charges stay longer for enhanced gameplay. However this does not apply for phoenix strike.

Step 3: Tripple or quadruple the damage of Phoenix Strike.
Explanation: Phoenix Strike is meant to hit hard. As an alternative it might protect other elemental charges from being consumed as long as you have an active charge of Phoenix Strike remaining. In this case, the damage value shouldn’t be buffed as drastically.

Step 4: Make Venom work like Enchant. Make it castable on allies and give it a bonus to Attack Rating. Also double or tripple the damage of Venom or reduce its duration from 0.4 to 0.2 seconds.
Explanation: Venom is a level 30 talent and even though it deals damage incredibly fast compared to other poison effects, it cannot be scaled well and its duration is easily long enough to suffer from overlap. Especially with skills like Dragon Talon or Dragon Claw. Attack Rating is also very useful and being able to buff your henchman/party members is another boon.

Step 5: Cloak of Shadows has now a set duration of 12 seconds or can be reapplied before expiring.
Explanation: With enough +skills Cloak of Shadows fails as a defensive ability, because instances are often still active after moving to the next enemy and thus cannot be applied.

Step 6: Enable more Runewords.
Explanation: Crescent Moon for example is an excellent runeword for Assassins. Claws of Thunder benefit from the minus resistance, open wounds helps against physical immune and static field is extremely strong as a bonus or a pseudo crushing blow with Dragon Talon. And it’s cheap.

Step 7: Oskills such as Zeal or Berserk from the runeword Passion now act as Finishers.
Explanation: Enables the combination of Tiger Strike with Zeal/Berserk for a unique gameplay variant/combo to break physical immunes.

Step 8: The damage from Dragon Tail is now split up into two independent instances.
Explanation: Dragon Tail suffers from so-called “double-dipping”, which means the fire portion of the skil is directly tied to the physical damage you dealt to the main target. Since enemies in hell have innate physical and fire resistance your damage drops off drastically with increased difficulty.

Step 9: Double the base damage of all melee weapons.
Explanation: 1.10 changed the life values of enemies and introduced synergies, resulting in inflated monster hp. While spells received synergies to help deal with it, melee and ranged weapons never received an appropriate buff. By buffing base damage you help all physical melee builds, especially barbarians. Also the runeword Grief is also indirectly nerfed, which outshines all competitors in terms of value per rune spent.

Bonus: Redesign Mosaic. basic builds shouldn’t rely on a single runeword to be in an enjoyable state. It’s terrible design and mosaic isn’t even that good for a gul rune.

3 Likes
2

Step 2: For charge ups, I agree with the increase in overall damage. I think having them always hit or give charges even if they miss would be better and perhaps have them trigger when gaining charges as well. It makes charging way more consistent and rewarding. Having a refund% makes it unpredictable with PS and if you bump it to 100% it invalidates the charging mechanism.

Step 4: For venom I say make it 4 seconds and keep the same dps. You’re never gonna stay on target consistent enough to get the full use of a 0.2 second duration. With a longer duration you can play hit and run and not be forced to tank dangerous mobs to continue to do damage.

Step 7: For finishers I think adding a cleave mechanic to dragon claw might make it more attractive and differentiate it from the other finishers. Something like hitting 2 adjacent targets to your primary target with each claw swing. Talon is a great single target boss killer, while dragon tail is true aoe, dragon claw can be somewhere in the middle. Right now it’s just a requirement to use specific charge ups. If you hit 3 targets with DC you can trigger all 3 charges at once, right now it’s just flat out inferior to Dragon Talon for triggering charges.

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*Improvement Finishing move

1% chance to apply remove charge cosume per each finishing move(D-talone,D-tail,D-claw,D-flight) 1 skill lv

*cloak of shadow and Mind blast combinations

If an enemy with the cloak of shadow is hit by a mind blast at the same time, the enemy’s mana burn occurs with a chance and skill casting cooldown occurs.

*Mind blast skill

For ex, mind blast skill lv 45, physical damage is changed from 350-450 to magic damage 2500-3500 and cooldown is added by 0.5 seconds.

4

4F Next Hit Delay is the first thing which need to change!

2 Likes
5

I think your suggested changes are quite interesting, but having all of them might be a bit much. Not that i’d complain:)

Point 7 is very interesting, never heard anyone suggest that. Really, any attack that isnt a charge up should apply the effects. Don’t know exactly how zeal would be better than d-talon, especially when forced to use passion, but you never know.

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I specifically stated, that Phoenix Strike should not be granted the refund mechanic. I’m well aware of the inconsistent or bumpy gameplay when you want to focus on a single element. This is the reason the damage from Phoenix Strike should be more than doubled so it outperforms the other single element skills.
The inconvenience should balanced with damage.

7

I guess it’s a way around the issue, but now it’s inconsistent gameplay mechanics between charge ups. I think a solution that could be applied uniformly across the board rather than making specific cases for each skill is more elegant.