Tiger Strike + Dragon Claw Inefficiency

Assassin
1

Hi there, I recently respecced into Tiger Strike + Dragon Claw, full physical damage build, with maxed out Claw Mastery.

I was excited to have huge damage with my Tiger Strike charges, but what I noticed while playing was that the damage lost from attacking three times with TS at basic attack damage, then releasing, is that it seems to do about the same damage as simply spamming Dragon Claw instead, which is also a lot easier to manage, as seeing those white charges is quite difficult with everything going on, and just the general difficulty of timing your number of charges for each release.

This was underwhelming… and I decided to respec out of TS, as the damage throughput increase (if any) from using it is negligible as far as I could see.

I don’t see how this should be the case, but I guess the confusion stems from how TS calculates damage based on basic claw damage or something, instead of the final calculated Dragon Claw damage.

I am considering how to remedy this, if indeed people think it should be remedied… which I do…

Perhaps by adding base damage scaling on TS, which I don’t see any problem with.
Or by changing the calculations so that it actually multiplies the final damage of Dragon Claw.

If it says 1800% increased damage, but the total amount increased on DC was closer to 2.3x the full value, then it’s unclear how it calculates the damage. Changing this can solve the problem, but likely creates problems with other finishers.

Another possible solution could be to add a +% base attack damage synergy on TS, from DC, or perhaps even better (or also!) a +% damage increase synergy from Claw Mastery as well. This promotes physical damage builds for Assassin, by specifically making the increased physical damage for the solely physical skills alone, though Claw Mastery is always available for anyone, which is nice.

So, long story short, using TS should NOT be a net damage loss or approximation than simply spamming DC. It should be a clear damage increase.

Thoughts?

(Edited to slightly expand my ideas)

2

We could get into all sorts of discussions on how it could be changed, but any major buffs or changes to the base skills will likely make any Mosaic Sin spec even more insane, so that’s not likely gonna happen.

If you want to max out strictly a Dragon Claw spec, just use 2x Mosaic unfortunately. You’ll get lvl 3 Tiger Strike and Cobra Strike forever, the item solves pretty much all the issues you’re experiencing.

And just saying; I hate that this is the answer

1 Like
3

Have been theory crafting this for a while but wasn’t convinced that it would work that well, looks like you’ve confirmed this for me. The conclusion I came to was as mentioned in this thread mosaic is the answer.

I’d like it fixed as well but as pointed out at the moment all roads lead to mosaic for the MA sin.

If we assume mosaic doesn’t exist my thought would be for each of the MA charge up skills elemental/physical dmg is added for each charge up swing so you’re not straight up face tanking while building charges, you may even kill a few monsters while getting charges. for example

FoF/CoT/BoI - do x fire/light/cold dmg for each charge up.
Tiger strike - does x phyiscal dmg for each charge up.
cobra strike - does x poison dmg for each charge up.

Obviously this extra charge up damage is only when using the charge up skill so won’t carry over to the finishers. I sort of see it like using the charge ups for single target and then when you need AOE use the finisher and release the charges (obviously for the charges that have AOE).

As for your tiger strike/dragon claw build which I’ll add i’m disappointed to hear it doesn’t fare too well i’m not sure what the solution is. Part of the problem for dragon claw is the second claw swings much slower than the first so fixing that would help. I actually think dragon claw should be the assassins version of zeal, I feel like that would be a fun build.
Another problem is base claw dmg isn’t good so makes it hard to have single target physical dmg build, especially on high player counts.

I think increasing bonuses from claw mastery and improving dragon claw to be more like zeal would be a nice improvement.
Maybe improve venom, specifically the duration so it does a decent amount of dmg and does not get over written by other poison. I think running around with dragon claw hitting monsters quickly with high poison dmg that kills them over time after you’ve moved on sounds very assassin to me.

Finally reworking the unique claws would be a help, bartucs is fine I guess and maybe jade talon but firelizard and shadow killer are never used. Maybe they can be reworked to go with the MA tree.

To finish this long ramble of my assassin thoughts unfortunately we have mosaic and probably are stuck with it meaning these kind of changes probably wont happen.

4

You are spot on here unfortunately.

5

I appreciate your response.

I think primarily from your suggestions I like the idea of increasing Claw Mastery damage bonus. Mine is currently lvl 28, and only 143% dmg increase. You could definitely make it stronger.

I am not keen whatsoever on Mosaic as it is, but if everything will be balanced around it now… I`m even less so. Damn Blizz, why would you do this