Hello! Seen a couple interesting comments on folks taking advantage of TB’s daze to trigger trick attacks knockdown (even combining this with concealment for a guaranteed crit).
My questions are:
I’ve experienced knocking mobs 5 times in like 2 seconds on ancestral gear.
Mobs don’t die instantly in high nightmare dungeons.
CCing bosses will build the stagger bar.
You really don’t want to run daze on TB honestly, find other ways like upgraded dash/mangler’s aspect.
Advanced twisting blades is too good.
I’m doing TB + Daze + KD with Aspect of Shared Misery at L90, and NM mobs still go down fast, but I’m also running Poison Trap + Toxic Alchemist + Arrow Storms aspects to keep targets grounded until they die. Also stacking lots of IAS, Crit-Chance, Crit-Dmg, and Lucky hit to make sure those knockdown and procs consistently trigger. My current set-up handles Butcher well so long as I keep him at close range.
I used to run Advanced TB, but the CD returns are no longer good enough post-nerf without huge crowd density. I’ve been using Preparation with lots of TB and resource recovery to compensate.
Eh it’s really not that great anymore it only returns on the path back.
You can get more than enough dazing from other sources. Free CDR is just better than no CDR
Post-Nerf, the CD benefit is barely there with TB – we’re talking about .10 seconds per target, no orbital blade dancer CD being counted. I also get plenty of CD-reduction from Preparation by constantly emptying and refilling my resource bubble with Innervation. Also, a 4 second ult cooldown that resets all other skills is much easier to hit using 4 TB attacks w/ Preparation than hitting 40 TB targets using ATB.
The main benefits from using Daze on TB is that it always Dazes its target, no lucky hit needed. It also frees an Aspect slot for more flexibility like Shared Misery to chain-KD-lock entire groups, not just one target. Check out Daze → KD → Trick Attacks for +12 crit chance for 3 sec, repeat. That stacking crit-chance means constant knockdowns with much higher DPS thanks to +36 or more critical hit chance on top of any other bonuses. I believe I’m hitting the 100% cap since I always knockdown targets after the initial Daze. This is one example where a shorter knockdown period is much more beneficial than a long one since it helps you build crit chance stacks so much faster.
So far this trick still works well at L90. I’ll re-evaluate once I hit L100.
Am I interpretting you correctly that the concussive talent (+crit on KD for 4s) stacks each time I KD a target? This talent looked mediocre to me as I interpretted as being max +12% crit on a single target that I have to KD first (I could consider taking at higher levels when packs of mobs live longer and I have Shared Misery.)
This sounds correct, though I run 3 points in Concussive, so it’s +12 crit chance for 3 seconds per knockdown.
I could not locate an active icon for the +crit chance bonus stacks after knockdown, so I do not know if the UI displays it. However, I do not know how else to account for the knockdown consistency after the initial daze since Concussive KD’s require critical hits.
My current build also uses Trap Mastery at 3 points, so that’s another +12 crit chance when the poison traps I drop activate.
It’s great and I’ve always preferred it over the CDR.
At ~30% crit chance I can knockdown lock other players and elites by spamming TB. The synergy with uncanny treachery is huge fun too.
The only downside is I only have my Shadowclone up for every other pack. Totally worth it.
Preparation spec FTR
Agreed, and if you have a consistent mana generator skill or aspect that allows you to spend 100+ mana resource every few seconds, then that’s 4 seconds ult-cooldown recovered per cycle, which far outperforms advanced twisting blades CD-recovery.
Not every build runs preparation though, in fact, most don’t.
And trading mangler’s for shared misery isn’t really freeing an aspect slot.