Mosaic Update and Trap/MA Elemental Dmg Fix (Patch 2.6 Announced)

Assassin
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Assassin

  • The Assassin’s trap skills now benefit from -% to Enemy Resistance.
  • Fixed an issue where missiles created from Martial Arts charge up skills would not gain the benefit of +% To Elemental Skill Damage modifiers.

Mosaic
Mal + Gul + Amn

  • +50% chance for finishing moves to not consume charges
  • When a finisher is executed this way, it now refreshes the expiration timer of the stack
  • +2 to Martial Arts (Assassin only)
  • +20% Increased Attack Speed
  • +200-250% Enhanced Damage
  • +20% Bonus to Attack Rating
  • +7% Life Steal
  • +8-15% to Cold Skill Damage
  • +8-15% to Lightning Skill Damage
  • +8-15% to Fire Skill Damage
  • Prevent Monster Heal

Gotta say, I’m really happy the devs were listening to the feedback and put the effort into fix things relating to the elemental dmg flags for MA and Traps.

I feel a bit conflicted with 100% chance to not spend and refresh atm, but still need to think about it. I’m curious if +% Elemental Skill Damage also works for traps now, but over all I think this is a good start to helping the assassin out.

Here’s my thoughts on Mosaic so far:

Finishing Moves:

Dragon Talon:

Arguably the best finishing move in almost all cases, maybe a little unfair to Dragon Claw. It’s extremely easy to hit max aps of 6.58 kicks per second, even without BoS. The only draw back, imo, is the knockback on the last hit, making it less ideal for Phoenix Strikes Meteor and Fist of Fires burn dmg.

Dragon Claw:

It’s possible to hit 5 aps but requires a lot of ias, or the use of Burst of Speed. It is slightly slower but doesn’t have the knockback affect, which might be preferred for some skills and players. Maybe it will be possible to make a pure Dragon Claw spec now with Tiger Strike.

Dragon Tail:

The constant knockback and much lower APS potential is going to leave this skill relegated to only Tiger Strike, but I don’t think that’s an issue. The AoE is a little small in radius compared to PS or CoT, but it doesn’t have any NHD, is going to hit like a truck being locked in at max power, and the life/mana steal from Cobra Strike is going to be huge

Dragon Flight:

will still just be a mobility skill, but might be handy to have to keep your charges timer refreshed and a good first initial strike. I still think Engima’s teleport is more useful, but this is definitely another reason to use DF now.

Charging Skills:

Cobra Strike:

This skill is incredibly powerful now with Mosaic’s new mechanic. At just lvl 3 CS you get 100% Mana and Life Steal, it’s going to be an extremely useful and powerful qol mechanic and make the MA assassin much more durable.

Tiger Strike:

Tiger Strike + Dragon Tail just got much stronger with this change. It can also be used with Dragon Talon or Claw, it’d be a massive dps increase to single target. Adding in Cobra Strike with either combo is going to work well with Tiger Strike.

Fist of Fire:

Being able to stack a ton of burning pyre’s is going to be really powerful, but unfortunately it still converts all physical dmg to fire, so leaching resources is still impossible. I think they should make it so it only converts 50% of the physical damage to fire. Overall, I feel like this will just be skipped in favor of Tiger Tail.

Claws of Thunder:

You’re going to be able to unleash a torrent of Nova’s and Charged Bolts, I have a feeling there’s gonna be so much on screen that NHD might not even matter that much. You’re gonna be guaranteed to deal dmg pretty much the moment the 4 frames passes. I do wonder if this means most monsters will only ever be hit by the Nova, leaving the bolts to travel way off screen, but we’ll see.

Blades of Ice:

With 100% chance to not consume and it constantly refreshing, it’s going to be fairly easy to lockdown at only 2 charges and maintain constant aoe, while also avoiding the freeze. This should allow us to add in Death Sentry, but I still think it’s damage is fairly lacking. It already benefited from both +/- Cold Damage, so it’s not benefitting from the other bug fixes as much as the other skills.

Phoenix Strike:

Being able to lock into just 1 specific charge forever is going to be extremely useful if done correctly. Although, switching elements seems like it will be impossible without waiting for 15 seconds. I’m also not to concerned with NHD conflicting here, because you’re going to be able to unload a lot of dmg. Picking 1 element with a sunder charm might be much more viable, 6.58 Meteors or Chaos lightnings per second sounds interesting

I’d like to hear others thoughts and critiques as well, maybe I’m not seeing certain things, but I’m fairly happy wih Mosaic and what it’s doing for Martial Arts. I do wish the power wasn’t tied to an item, but I think we’re well past that now.

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Maybe they also snuck in visual indicators of the charge count on each of the chargeups like they show arrows, etc. on skills using item quantities.

:crossed_fingers:

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thats a great question , im wondering the same thing about + elemental dmg, i want to say yes, but without it being officially mentioned its hard to just assume.

if you click on the link, it iwll take you to a video clip someone made of an assassin not consuming his charges while he has i believe 4 different skills charged to be released with his finishing move on an enemy he created with all resists so he could spam it and it wont die.
this could be something we might see from MA assassins , which looks like alot of fun and damage.

the link takes you directly to the point in time of the clip

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I made a char with hero editor for the ptr that had mosaic and high end gear to support it:

Mosaic Runeword Feedback - #85 by TastySouP-1157

I had a fair bit of fun with it in the PTR and I was fairly happy with how it played. I did like the item in it’s PTR form, but with 100% chance to not consume and refresh I feel like there’s a lot to unravel and think about now.

Here's my thoughts so far:

Finishing Moves:

Dragon Talon:

Arguably the best finishing move in almost all cases, maybe a little unfair to Dragon Claw. It’s extremely easy to hit max aps of 6.58 kicks per second, even without BoS. The only draw back, imo, is the knockback on the last hit, making it less ideal for Phoenix Strikes Meteor and Fist of Fires burn dmg.

Dragon Claw:

It’s possible to hit 5 aps but requires a lot of ias, or the use of Burst of Speed. It is slightly slower but doesn’t have the knockback affect, which might be preferred for some skills and players. Maybe it will be possible to make a pure Dragon Claw spec now with Tiger Strike.

Dragon Tail:

The constant knockback and much lower APS potential is going to leave this skill relegated to only Tiger Strike, but I don’t think that’s an issue. The AoE is a little small in radius compared to PS or CoT, but it doesn’t have any NHD, is going to hit like a truck being locked in at max power, and the life/mana steal from Cobra Strike is going to be huge

Dragon Flight:

will still just be a mobility skill, but might be handy to have to keep your charges timer refreshed and a good first initial strike. I still think Engima’s teleport is more useful, but this is definitely another reason to use DF now.

Charging Skills:

Cobra Strike:

This skill is incredibly powerful now with Mosaic’s new mechanic. At just lvl 3 CS you get 100% Mana and Life Steal, it’s going to be an extremely useful and powerful qol mechanic and make the MA assassin much more durable.

Tiger Strike:

Tiger Strike + Dragon Tail just got much stronger with this change. It can also be used with Dragon Talon or Claw, it’d be a massive dps increase to single target. Adding in Cobra Strike with either combo is going to work well with Tiger Strike.

Fist of Fire:

Being able to stack a ton of burning pyre’s is going to be really powerful, but unfortunately it still converts all physical dmg to fire, so leaching resources is still impossible. I think they should make it so it only converts 50% of the physical damage to fire. Overall, I feel like this will just be skipped in favor of Tiger Tail.

Claws of Thunder:

You’re going to be able to unleash a torrent of Nova’s and Charged Bolts, I have a feeling there’s gonna be so much on screen that NHD might not even matter that much. You’re gonna be guaranteed to deal dmg pretty much the moment the 4 frames passes. I do wonder if this means most monsters will only ever be hit by the Nova, leaving the bolts to travel way off screen, but we’ll see.

Blades of Ice:

With 100% chance to not consume and it constantly refreshing, it’s going to be fairly easy to lockdown at only 2 charges and maintain constant aoe, while also avoiding the freeze. This should allow us to add in Death Sentry, but I still think it’s damage is fairly lacking. It already benefited from both +/- Cold Damage, so it’s not benefitting from the other bug fixes as much as the other skills.

Phoenix Strike:

Being able to lock into just 1 specific charge forever is going to be extremely useful if done correctly. Although, switching elements seems like it will be impossible without waiting for 15 seconds. I’m also not to concerned with NHD conflicting here, because you’re going to be able to unload a lot of dmg. Picking 1 element with a sunder charm might be much more viable, 6.58 Meteors or Chaos lightnings per second sounds interesting

1 Like
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I think I’m getting it wrong.

If I use dual Mosaics, does it mean I can charge all six Build Up skills, and then keep spamming them until I Save and Exit my game? (since the timer also resets)

Or is only the timer for ONE type of charge reset?

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If you equip 2x Mosaic, you charge up all skills, and you then successfully hit with a finishing move the following occurs:

  • you unleash the effect of every charge you have stacked up
  • the charges are not spent, and you stay at your stack count for all skills
  • the timer for all charges you currently have gets reset back to 15 seconds

so basically you always have 15 seconds to find the next pack of monsters before you have to recharge any skills.

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But… This would allow us to keep hitting bosses constantly…with a fully geared Sin, even Ubers would melt after a few seconds

Still thinking bosses, just spamming Cobra Strike with 5 or 6 hits in Dragon Talon would heal us faster than bosses are able to dmg, or not?

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Most likely yes. Stack a ton of Crushing Blow; use Cobra Strike and Tiger Strike on some trash mobs to obtain max power and the finishers always hits mechanic, then just kick until the cows come home. Never spending any charges in the process, or having to worry about life tap.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

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No, not bad at all; I think it’s rather OP! At least it sounds like. I would have to try it out in practice of course.

MA is my main and fav char. In Non Ladder I have a fairly well equipped one, including Infinity and skills up to Lvl 44.

I once tested attacking Hell Meph with all five charge up skills charged… With Infinity applied, my charges NUKED (one hit killed) Hell Meph.

I know it will likely take a couple of years until this RW reaches Non Ladder, but still, when it does…

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Why is everyone missing the fact you could essentially run around with one corpse explosion trap down, have high phoenix strike, high tiger strike, high claws of thunder, or do whatever 3 or 4 skills you want, and then just spam your finishing move to take out an entire room with utter ease. It seems to me that the changes make martial artists very very strong potentially. Am i wrong?

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Possible. But I think running pure Martial Arts would clear whole levels faster than a hybrid requiring time to deploy even a couple of Death Sentries.

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No you’re not wrong, and I do agree with you. I mentioned how powerful this will make certain skills, and mentioned death sentry as well too. I’m definitely thinking of those things too and agree with you.

For me it just the minutiae of each individual skill. For example, stacking up every charge and just unloading isn’t likely to result in max dps. Many skills have a thing called Next Hit Delay which would stop certain skill from overlapping and they end up dealing no dmg at all. Some finishers have knockback, or convert your dmg types, etc. Also I’m not sure how I feel about Dragon Talon basically being the best 99% of the time now, but it’s not a big deal.

But yea, the goal is pretty much always use a MA skill to kill something and then just let death sentry go to town. And I’m excited for it, I do like these changes overall and think the martial arts assassin just got a lot stronger

This is why I use the Shadow Warrior. Just leave Death Sentry on Right Click, while you charge and release with hotkeys and the quick cast skills setting on Left Click, and let her cast them for you.

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I am sure this version of the martial assassin will be great to play and very fun.
My takeaways for now are (I am thinking at the final build):

  • we use tp with enigma now, the main challenge will be to keep on finding enemies every 15 sec. Reaching 65 with griffon+arach+2rings(or 2/20 amulet)
  • 60%ias (amulet, glove, mosaic)
  • using fade
  • we can ignore life and mana leech since cobra strike will do the job
  • we can ignore the entire trap tree. DS is a plus in my opinion and we can always hope to get it from the claw base
  • greater talons are the best in slot now to save attribute points (are they?)
  • AR is important to charge everything at the start, I am curious to see how much we need to speed up the process
  • are the sunder charms really necessary here? thinking aloud
  • maybe we can max claw of thunder, phoenix, tiger strike and dragon tail? Or better to stick to all phoenix tree in one version and tiger strike-dragon tail on the other?
  • the final mercenary will still use infinity
  • finisher is dragon talon or dragon tail, so I need to re-look how kicks works again (I keep on forgetting, expecially after I play other classes)
  • upped gore rider or shadow dancer? the first one will kill bosses faster
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As much as that would be extremely useful, I don’t think it’s fully necessary. You can always obtain a reasonable teleport speed using spirit on switch, for when monsters are that sparse that you need the speed. Switching weapons doesn’t take away charges fortunately too.

But yea I agree, if you’re using Lightning, that’d definitely be the ideal setup. I’d personally aim for the 2/20 ammy so you can squeeze in more + skills on the ring slots. Fade will take care of any missing Resists.

Yeap, totally agree. I think it also makes Verdungo’s a bit more valuable than String of Ears as well now.

I think having the charges timer refreshed when spent will be enough, I feel like we’ll rarely have to charge up. But if it is becoming a huge issue, you could always use the new Hustle and Bulwark on an act 1 merc for inner sight until you get infinity. I do wish they would add a “-% Target Defence” buff to claw mastery though, be better if we could solve this issue without the merc

I think that will depend on the skill and personal preference. Using two elements can be nice but you’ll have to focus on +/- elements for two things, potentially missing out on some dps compared to single element. Some skills, like tiger tail or Phoenix strike would probably better if you just focus on 1 element. I think it’ll come down to a few factors.

You could definitely do that, but I personally think it’s to many Hotkeys and Skills to manage. It’d also be super annoying if those charges ware off, and the dps might be overkill. It also makes for some complicated gearing choices, I’m not even sure where you’d begin haha.

I think this will only matter if you plan on using kicks as the main dmg source; ex. Uber kick sin or Tiger Tail. All other skills dps comes from the charges, so any boots will do fine here, but most likely one with resistances counter acting the sunder charm. 15% crushing blow and max kick dmg isn’t a deal breaker for most charges imo

There’s definitely a lot to think about imo, I’m curious to see how this will all shake out in the end

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I don’t like buff like Mosaic.
Locking the core option is what they have done for D3.
Sigh…

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I hate the idea of them trying to bandaid a problem with a RW, what a terrible way to go about it!

I hope the Devs realize this and add the Charge Refresh mechanic baseline to how the skills function. Maybe even all charges have a chance to not be consumed too baseline.

Because now, if you want to go MA, you HAVE to go Mosaic. So I guess before we build one, we are a severely neutered version of a MA Sin.

Just like in D3. That game relys too heavily on items to make a certain playstyle better.

Not a good way to go about the future of D2R, and I know many others are not happy about it either.

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Need to be able to charge these kind of skills up by shift+clicking and swiffing at the air. You’re still doing the movement, I don’t see why it shouldn’t charge the character up just the same. It’s too bad this runeword didn’t allow that to be done 50% of the time each or something.

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But how is it gonna act with Mosaic? With double Mosaic and Phoenix Strike for example and lets say Dragon Talon with 3 kicks, is it gonna be the third charge, lightning one, that will be done 3 times? That seems bad, I would have prefered the 3 different ones that we now can spam. And isnt this NHD thing prevent the 3x lightning charge to hit on the target?

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2x Mosaic for “100% chance to not consume and refresh all timers” will lock you in to an element and it wont expire until you stop attacking for 15 seconds. So if switching elements with PS is preferred, you might want to stick to plague.

There’s a really good post in general forums about how NHD will affect the lightning skills with mosaic:

The videos are great demonstrations of all the interactions. TLDR; it’s not a massive conflict, they don’t overlap as much as you would expect. But kicking at 3 frames per kick, with a 4 frame NHD, does mean that it skips dmg to the main pack with every other kick for some skills. Those lightning storms and charged bolts can still go out and hit other monsters though, so it’s not a total waste.

On the flip side of that coin; skills without next hit delay, like the Phoenix Strikes meteor, can be used at 6+ attacks per second. So you could technically drop ~6.25+ meteors per second with dragon talon.

One thing that I think might be kind of fun; now that traps and martial arts +/- elemental skill damage is fixed, you can lockdown into one element and compliment it with a maxed out trap:
Claws of Thunder + Lightning Phoenix Strike + Light Sentry
Meteor Phoenix Strike + Wake of Fire/Inferno
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/en0206vn

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Thanks for the answer. Hmm thats kinda sad, I mean, it will be fun and I’ll try many things for sure, but I would have loved so much to finally be able to spam PS and its 3 charges without having to recharge between each…

Yes I’ve seen and read this post for like 60% but not gonna lie, it was really long and I’m not english native speaker so that was too much for me, I just didnt understand everything but this guy for sure put many efforts in all that. Can just hope the devs will indeed read this.

Oh good to know that about PS’s meteor, I do like it but is also so annoying in the same time, you just dont see anything anymore, it’s really a problem, and fire stays on the ground for literally an entire year. I love the ice bolts from PS, I’ll prob start by testing it but I would assume their damage alone clearly wont be enough. Well I’m in singlerplayer so this update will be insanely huge anyway and I’ll have all the time to test all that!

I yesterday evening was thinking right about that lmao, 60 skills point in Light Sentry and 40 for Claw of Thunder, this might be fun, definitely something I’ll give a try too

edit: little edit for my first post, third charge of PS is the ice one of course, not the lightning one as I said