Warning: Just venting, some empathy will be welcome.
Here is my sad story:
Bought the game, play your way expectations, thought that would make a male melee poison based assassin.
On look the basic skills just 2 options, Invigorating Strike animation was certainly done by one animator that have no idea about how knife fencing works (you never stab in long open arcs dude…), Blade Shift is more beautiful, fast and mimics a direct blow, easy choice. As a side note, designers decided to give automatic imbue to Puncture (already the meta).
Twisting Blades implies on “throwing” is not a stab skill, so Flurry (that designers will never get at same strength of TB…) was the Core choice.
Shadow Step that would be D4 analogous to backstabs (assassin skills that does always a ton of damage) just have practical use to break CC and teleport.
Tried to get all equipment that favours Poison: Broodmother, 2 Splintered Wood rings and Andy, completed this with +poison armor, Deadly Venom + amulet and everything with the poison word on the Paragons.
In the end of S0 I did reach +650% poison damage, while this was not as efficient as invest on Vulnerable or Crit, could not deny it was fun and gave me some sense of accomplishment in the game.
S1, S2 and S3.
Poison nerfs, can barely reach 360% now.
Instead of adding Lucky Hit to Paingorger’s, decided to go with basic skill damage (something you can not make viable endgame until with +5 and +4 Shako).
Now, S4…
Elemental Surge was heavilly nerfed.
Broodmother and Splinter probably were not revised.
There are +Elemental Tempering to all elements, but Poison.
There are Tempering affixes to all Rogue basics, but Blade Shift.
Flurry got a radius increase affix and a LH chance grenade stun unique ring, let´s remember we already can easily trigger stun in the own skill tree, so why sacrifice one slot?
Edit: Ow! And just remembered that Hectic was also nerfed, decreasing Blade Shift efficiency to reduce CDs by half!
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tencent (440billion market cap vs blizzards puny 78billion) the company makes a diablo copy that surpasses this game just look at Arena Breakout Infinite literally ripped Escape from Tarkov but its better in almost every aspect.
I will try get something working on S4, if the build sucks because Mr Jackson’s idea of balance maybe I will try NRftW… I have seen some interesting stuff there.
Yeah, I’m hurt that Flurry doesn’t work either. It’s what I made when the game first released and I picked it up. Nowhere near Twisting Blades. That was disappointing. Have to agree with Blade Shift too. Though in the PTR it was fun for a pure Cutthroat build with tons of movement speed and the 15% Elemental Resist and Crowd Control Reduction came in handy when I was leveling up in the campaign before figuring out the Level Boost thing.
So while leveling 1-50, Blade Shift can at least work though it’s not optimal. I’m hoping they do something for it in future patches like a tempering option to give it the ability to apply Vulnerable or something like that.
There is an aspect on S4 that changed to Lucky Hit apply vulnerable, so, if we sacrifice an affix at least that we can to achieve, the same can be done with Accursed Touch on the Crossbow (LH 70% = Vulnerable).
Problem with that was lose the option of 80% corruption aspect, that’s the problem, if you are not using meta there is always huge trade ofs to pay for the “play your way”.
The other cutthroat basic, invigorating strike (?), can apply vulnerable I believe and can help with resource in the early game when you don’t have many items with resource cost reduction and what not. It can work too though it would be nice if it had a regenerate life as well as resource to it because of being so close.
At any rate, it’s a shame the Marksman basics are so much better than the Cutthroat ones.
edit:
I don’t think “play your way” should automatically mean everything works the same but I understand your thought. But you can play a build you like to a certain point. I’m not against improving lesser skills but trade offs are necessary in games like this. But basically, the cutthroat basics should at least be an option instead of an automatic dismiss out of hand.
just look at Arena Breakout Infinite literally ripped Escape from Tarkov but its better in almost every aspect.