Improve Aimed Shot and Precise Shots flexibility/practicality.
-
Aimed Shot is now chargeable, without threshold, continuously and linearly from 1.5s (450% AP) to 2.5s (750% AP). Queuing another ability will not interrupt Aimed Shot to finish casting early; only movement or the target escaping line of sight will.
- At least 1.5s is needed to cast it at all, but one can fire it off in that minimum time for Precise Shots and other additional effects. No annoying Evoker-like timing. You just hold it as near to the normal full cast-time as you can.
-
Rehaul Precise Shots. It will now simply add 100% AP to your next normally instant shot’s damage to its primary target and reduce its Focus Cost by 10. Again stacks up to two times. Does not randomly massively nerf Auto-Shot.
- Now works on literally all instant attacks, including even Explosive Shot. Headshot not necessary for Kill Shot functionality even without necessarily making it an augment of Arcane Shot. QoL increased.
-
A new Crack Shot passive decreases Arcane Shot Focus cost to 30 and now notes the otherwise hidden MM modifiers to classwide skills’ damage.
- Smoothes out Focus concerns in relation to Precise Shots and provides greater transparency.
Bring back Explosive Shot as an option without making Kill Shot fall so behind it in AoE to be a non-option.
-
Return the Explosive Shot wing, and extend it and the Kill Shot wing into the capstone tier to again allow for 3 augmenting talents each.
- Replace Obsidian Arrowheads, Target Acquisition, and Critical Precision, respectively, with Kill Shot, Deadeye/Headshot, and Improved Deathblow. Roll Deathblow into at a 15% chance on Aimed Shot are generated into Kill Shot itself. Improved Deathblow then grants all other shots a 5% chance each to proc it (totaling a 50% chance on Rapid Fire).
- Replace Kill Shot, Deadeye, and Improved Deathblow, respectively, with Explosive Shot, Precise Detonation, and Shrapnel Shot.
- Pathing from Improved Deathblow and Deadeye/Headshot, Razor Fragments returns (but now just dealing Trick Shot % damage to all enemies near the Kill Shot victim, reduced after 6 targets) as a capstone talent to the left of Unmatched Precision.
- Pathing from Shrapnel Shot and Precise Detonation, Magnetic Gunpowder returns as a capstone talent to the right of Eagle’s Accuracy.
- Target Acquisition replaces Lethality, and Master Marksman increases from 10% to 15% in compensation for removing that nonetheless potentially numerically decent bloat-talent.
Alleviate Trick Shots / Volley annoyingness.
-
Trick Shots now triggers from any attack that strikes more than 2 enemies simultaneously, and now beneficially snapshots (if you start the cast under Trick Shots, it lasts throughout, but if Trick Shots is applied mid-cast, you can still benefit from and consume it if not already benefiting from a previous application).
- Yes, that includes Explosive Shot’s explosion and each individual strike of Volley.
-
Improve Volley QoL and talent sensibility.
- All skills should allow, directly via the Skillbook, for one to set the ability as @target, @focus, @release (place on ground upon button-release), @ground (snapping to nearest enemy if targeted only), @mouseover, @fieldunit, @unitframe, etc., and a ground-targeted Volley now creeps its fire towards enemy units alike to Desecrate while directly targeted volleys now track their target (akin to a Lunar Storm).
- Shrapnel Shot removed as a Volley augment, and Salvo is now a choice node with Volley, causing each Explosive Shot launched to also signal two additional shooters to stick the two enemies nearest your target also with an Explosive Shot at 60% effectiveness each. (This multi-target hit can trigger Trick Shots itself, in addition to the activation on the explosion.) Bullet Hell then reduces the cooldown of Volley by 33.3% and the effectiveness of the additional Explosive Shots to full.
Quick Answers to Likely Questions:
- Yes, tuning is TBR.
- No, I don’t see any need to return Streamline, since the damage tuning on Aimed Shot + the charge-up flexibility means we already basically benefit from it. Even a 1.8s Aimed Shot (540% AP) would still hit harder without Streamline than it does now (503% AP) when made uniquely possible by a double-Streamline (reliable only under a WRQ build). Even with whatever Aimed Shot nerfs come from improving our filler damage, it would still be tightly comparable. In this way we —rather than our Surging Shots RNG— control our Aimed Shot speed without needing to be pigeonholed into a ST-ish capstone wing. Simple, easy, clean, but still decently engaging in that we want our long casts.
- Yes, I’d ideally do more (such as in swapping out uninteresting obligatories like current Bulletstorm), but this is just focused for now on fixing what’s tacky and providing a bit more optionality. Solid core first and all that.