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

Assassin
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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.

2 Likes
13

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
1 Like
14

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

1 Like
15

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

4 Likes
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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.

3 Likes
18

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

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I agree, I have some mixed feelings about the affix; how it was implemented, what it does in terms of gameplay. But at least it seems like it could be fun, and we kind of have our own “grief” runeword now, for better or worse.

You could also charge up Blades of Ice to compliment it. It doesn’t have has much range, but it still brings some extra damage, especially at 6+ attacks per second and no NHD getting in the way

Yea, I’m excited to mess around with it in Single Player as well, should be fun to see what works

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Will definitely try that !

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yeah running single element builds on assassin might be fun :slight_smile:

only thing i was wondering about is on the : Meteor Phoenix Strike + Wake of Fire/Inferno build.

won’t putting wake of fire with 4 frame NHD in the fire build ruin some of your damage out put, if multiple skills hit the same target at the same time?

or have i misunderstood next hit delay, do it only work for next hit on “that one skill” or “any skill”?

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So just to clarify, with dual Mosaic, the fact that PS will use only the charge currently obtained (lvl 1 - Meteor, lvl 2 - Chain Lightning, lvl 3 - Chaos Ice Bolt), then if you have 3 charges of CoT for example you will unleash only Charged Bolts and never Novas. Right?

Also, Gul rune just became more expensive now :slight_smile: Mals will be in high demand though…

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You almost got it. NHD only affects other skills with NHD and this is shared amongst all classes. A monster that is in NHD invincible frames, will not take dmg from any skill you or any other player uses that has NHD.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php?title=Missile#Next_delay

Wake of Fire is the only thing with NHD in that combo, so only shots from other WoF sentries would be cancelled. Your meteors would still deal full dps all the time

1 Like
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Nope, not quite. Let’s say you had 3 charges of CoT and 2 charges of Phoenix strike. You would release:
A nova, charged bolts, and your claws/kicks would have charge 1’s lightning dmg from CoT. And you’d also release a chaos lightning storm on top of all that.

All this occurs with every single hit and the charges won’t fade away until you stop attacking for 15 seconds. You could add in more charges if you wanted, and they’d all go off at once.

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I’ve just thought to something bad concerning a potential future fire martial build, with Fist of fire and Phoenix Strike meteor. With dual claws, assuming you hit both hits, you get 2 charges per use so technically it wont even be possible to get only 1 charge for PS and spam the meteor. And obviously if you wear only 1 claw and a shield then you dont have 100% chances to not consume charges so the build isnt even possible this way. It’s late for me and I’m tired so maybe I’m missing something but I’m afraid not.

Only solution I can think about is to build the one charge with your secondary equipment, so let’s say with your CtA but first, it will be annoying to have to do that all the time (because in practice there will be many times where we lose the charges), and second, I’m not even sure if PS is usable with something else than a claw. I think yes but not sure to remember correctly

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I’m firmly in the camp that the skill tab gameplay fix should be in the skills themselves, not gated behind a specific runeword.

That said, to engage with one point from the OP:

You can work around this by going to your weapon swap to spend down charges.

2 Likes
30

Tiger strike, cobra strike, and Phoenix strike only swing one weapon and charge 1 stage at a time, so won’t have any issues with this. Only FoF, BoI and CoT swing both weapons

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Good call on weapon swap to spend, didn’t think of that. And I agree, I hope they don’t make a habit of Mosaic like affixes and runewords.

If they were dead set on Mosaic having that affect, maybe they could have met us halfway and implemented it like the Amazon’s Pierce:

  • claw mastery has a chance to not consume. When maxed out and a ton of + skills, make it possible to get something like 90-100%
  • leave it on mosaic, but at somewhere between 25-33% chance to not consume

Make it possible to hit a very high/100% chance to not consume naturally, but items make it easier to achieve if you want to use them.

There’s a ton of ways they could have done it, but alas, this is where we’re at. Might as well theorycraft the best we can with it

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Damn that’s very true. And I played PS way more than the rest what a shame lol. But most recently I played CoT so my mind stayed on that 2 charges per use. Was definitely tired but really happy to be wrong, I really want to try a fire version too