sorry but thats not true. think about why MA sin was terrible beforehand and now its op. the mechanic on the item made it to where you dont lose the effects of the skill. if the skill wasnt overtuned relative to this nature, it wouldn’t be op. is FoF op with mosaic? no, its reasonably balanced because the skill is not overtuned. phoenix strike and claws of thunder are both overtuned, moreso phoenix strike.
you’re probably thinking now “no warren, if the skill was overtuned, it would have been op before mosaic”. and my answer is you didn’t read what i said. it is overtuned relative to permanent uptime. the skills are absolutely awful if you spend 80% of your time charging and 20% of your time releasing. right now its maybe 99% releasing, and as such, the skills are overtuned.
just really think about it. the skills were balanced with the intent that you normally wouldnt be able to have more than 2 charge stacks active at a time, nor were they balanced for near permanent uptime. with permanent uptime theyre op. you’re probably thinking now “exactly, its the mechanic thats the issue” and thats where i say no, because if you remove the mechanic, the build is garbage again, even with the skills overtuned relative to permanent uptime. why? you spent significantly more time attempting to charge up than you do releasing.
here’s what separates MA sin from every other generic caster build in the game: you can multicast skills in rapid succession. it also happens to be that 1 of these skills is massively AoE. another one of them has so much life steal and mana steal that it overflows while borderline naked. if this isn’t overtuned, i don’t know what is. you just never realized it because the fundamental nature of the MA sin wasn’t able to be used due to how much time you had to spend charging them up.
remove the mechanic and you make the build terrible again. remember, the skills are not underpowered. using the skills is simply too hard, frustrating, and slow.
MA needs the mechanic. it doesn’t matter how overtuned the abilities are, without the mechanic the build is awful. the skills simply need to be rebalanced around permanent uptime. embrace MA’s current design where she can multicast skills. balance the skills relative to that concept. a single skill from her should not be as powerful as a single skill from any other caster build in the game. since she can cast more than 1 ability at a time, her abilities should not be as strong as other abilities that limited to only being cast 1 at a time.
nope, not even remotely in the same ballpark.
i’m pretty sure every single person in the existence of the world is in agreement that mosaic as designed was an awful introduction to the game. not sure if this part is still directed at me or you’re just speaking generally but i hope its just generally because youre repeating what i said in the quote you’re replying…
that just makes the build clunky as hell for no reason. its inferior up until you can max skills. this just means “play trapper until you can max the skills”
i think the mechanic that mosaic gives should be the default. no investment needed. just make all chargeups always persist. however, remove the timer refresh. the only way to maintain your charge stacks is by charging again. then, dont remove the entire stack when it expires, only remove 1 charge. this way, you still need to charge up occasionally, but not so much that its unbearable, and its not completely random which one you lose, youll know unless you have short term memory loss. it also promotes more skillful play. if you try to stack every single charge, youre going to spend more time charging than releasing, which is a trade off for having all of them. and then nerf some of them. cut off half the aoe of chaos lightning. lower base damage overall. nerf cobra strike into oblivion. then the build is not crazy overtuned while also not being awful to play. remove the mechanic from mosaic since MA has it by default now and just leave mosaic as is otherwise. it makes a decent, relatively cheap elemental claw. no longer mandatory.
i am personally in more of a preference to make the MA skills tree even more unique. take my above suggestions, but additionally, give a blanket 10-15% nerf and a 10-15% aoe nerf (and maybe like 30-50% aoe nerf for chaos lightning specifically). nerf cobra strike by maybe 75%. next, make aoe for phoenix strike scale with hardpoints. it starts relatively low AoE (comparable to claws of thunder maybe) and at max level its 50-80% what it can reach now. then, make it to where the damage the skills reach now at level 20 is obtainable instead at level 40, and you can level the skill up to 40 with hardpoints (meaning you need to spend 20 more points to achieve maximum damage and aoe), and reduce synergy power or remove synergies for MA all together. “warren, no, that is heresy, nothing is allowed to be skilled more than 20 skill points” why not? why is this an issue? MA sin is already unique in the fact that shes the only build in the game that can multicast several skills in a single animation. summon druid gets synergy benefits from soft points. why is 40 skill points wrong? if the only reason you can come up with is “its not how the game works” then i think youre just closed-minded and just want every character to be the same generic style build. open to solid reasons as to why 40 hard points into a skill is a bad idea though.
the above idea solves many things:
- charge-ups being too strong when stacked with other skills but too weak when by itself AND trying to balance having 1 charge stack vs 6 charge stacks. if you want to have all 6 skills, go for it! theyre going to be 30-40% of the power they give now though. if you want to specialize for 2 (meaning 80 skill points), great, youll get the max benefit. the rest of them will be basically useless (cobra strike and tiger strike right now are one point wonders even on elemental builds). this adds a lot of options for the MA sin, as you can mix and match skills at various skill levels as you please.
- keeps the identity of the build design. a lot of people want to limit the amount of charge stacks to 2-3, which doesnt solve anything and only removes options from the build. mosaicsin only needs phoenix strike and claws of thunder to be op. limiting to 2 charge stacks does nothing. limiting to 1 charge stack removes the identity of the build, as it just becomes a melee ranged caster with an extra step of charging up, boring gameplay and a bandaid fix. limiting to 2 charges and nerfing the build is just… illogical? why not JUST nerf the build and dont limit to charges so that the assassin can have more options instead of being limited.
- i could go on but u get the point
i dont think MA sin needs to be as generic as every other build in the game. let this be a unique, mechanically intensive build (by that i mean always needing to micro your charges, etc). dont make it a generic build because balancing its uniqueness is too hard.