I want talk a bit about the Condemnation rogue dagger.
Condemnation has 2 parts:
Aspect A: Core skills do [20-40]% more damage when used with 3 combo points
Aspect B: Basic attacks with this weapon have a 30% to generate 3 combo points (aka fill you up to the maximum of 3)
So the overall direction is to incentivize building full combo (Aspect A) and accelerating the rate of combo generation (Aspect B). The problem is that Aspect B is too unreliable to take advantage of, so it’s still in the player’s best interest to do exactly what they were doing before – 3 basic attacks, then a core. The end result is that Condemnation ends up feeling very similar to the Aspect of the Expectant (basic skills increase the damage of your next core skill, up to 30%). That’s not a good look for a unique item! Before we go any further, we need to acknowledge that it’s pretty much impossible to read condemnation’s proc “on the fly” – it’s not feasible to keep one eye on the combo meter (and attacks can happen too quickly to process anyways) and there’s no other cue to indicate the effect has procced – so that means we have to keep our eyes on our character, play the odds, and hope for the best. Speaking of which…
Some numbers:
Since I’m making the case that Condemnation doesn’t actually reduce the optimal number of attacks between core skills, let’s back it up. First up: odds of having 3 combo points after n attacks.
After 1 attack: 30%
After 2 attacks: 51% (.3 + .3*.7) (I’m going to call this 50% later for simplicity’s sake)
After 3 attacks: 100%, obviously
So if you had a max-rolled Aspect A (40%) and moved from a 3-hit combo to a 2-hit combo and hoped that Aspect B would proc, you’d be getting that 40% bonus 50% of the time, so a 20% overall damage boost (switching to 1-hit combos comes out to a 12% boost instead). Adding in the (possibly redundant) 3rd basic attack guarantees 3 combo points and the 40% boost, which represents a ~17% damage boost over the 2-attack gamble (1.4/1.2). I’m willing to go one extra basic attack for 17% on my next core, which is exactly the point – Aspect B doesn’t change my behavior at all!
Next up, there’s the built-in per-point combo bonus to core skills. Each point increases a core skill’s damage by ~25% of its base amount (that’s pretty good!). So let’s see how much extra damage that nets us from Aspect B. Here’s the average number of combo points we have after n attacks with Condemnation:
After 1 attack: 1.6 (70% chance we have 1, 30% chance we have 3)
After 2 attacks: 2.5 (50% chance we have 2, 50% chance we have 3)
After 3 attacks: 3
So for the attacks that matter (1 and 2), we get ~+.5 combo, which comes out to about a 12.5% boost to our next core skill. This effect is completely wiped out by the extra damage guaranteed by building all 3 combo points by hand, which isn’t a hassle at all if you’ve got good attack speed (Close Quarters passive, Flurry combo, etc.), and this is before considering energy concerns – you might need that little extra time between core casts. You’ll get a little more value if you’re running the paragon node that offers +25% damage to alternating basic/core skills, and we haven’t accounted for the non-damage combo point bonuses or the fact that short-selling your combos can result in more core casts per second, but I’m not convinced those would move the needle enough to make Aspect B really pop.
So hopefully the case has been made: Condemnation, as is, doesn’t incentivize new behavior in a way we would want from a unique, and the only functional part of Condemnation is already covered by Aspect of the Expectant.
Proposed Changes (pick one)
There’s plenty of chatter around here about improving the overall QoL for combo points, which might make it possible to actually read Apsect B in real time, but barring that, here are some proposals to help Condemnation fulfill its “build fast, cash in harder” role:
- Guarantee 2 combo points per basic attack (or something like “when you hit 2 combo points, gain one combo point”). Anything that removes the guesswork from the new combo cadence.
- Change Aspect B to “+[a lot]% attack speed to basic skills with this weapon while you have fewer than 3 combo points”. My only concern here would be the possibility of running afoul of the alleged attack speed cap if used with Flurry. Note that this change would essentially give Condemnation the added power of a supercharged but contextual Rapid Aspect, which provides a modest boost to basic attack speed.
Thanks for reading!