Killing spree and the refusal to make it a real spell

In the most recent ptr patch we got some new changes to killing spree, most of these are great, unfortunatly i think it falls short a little bit:

  • Developers’ notes: Much of Killing Spree’s value is the combo points it generates, so when players can spend more combo points on Killing Spree than their maximum, such as through Supercharger, the value of those extra points is diminished. Killing Spree’s duration now maxes out at the time required to generate maximum combo points, and any extra combo points spent increase the damage of the ability by a proportional amount.
  • Killing Spree has been updated – Duration no longer increases from spending combo points beyond your maximum. Each combo point spent beyond your maximum increases damage by 15%.

This change seems to want to adress the issue of killing spree overcapping combot points and energy while channeling it, unfortunatly it is not accounting for a core passive of outlaw rogue, ruthlessness giving us 1/2 cps after a finisher, so we are still overcapping for a few ticks after reaching full combo points.
The reduced channel time at higher combot points, and especially with supercharger is however very welcomed, and does feel a lot better to play with.

  • Adrenaline Rush now speeds up the execution of Killing Spree by 20%, the same rate it increases the speed of your other attacks.

This does make killing spree feel a lot better to press in adr now (as a sidenote adr increase our speed by 25% since our gcd goes from 1 to 0.8s inside it)

  • Killing Spree prefers targets that are not immune to damage or taking less than 5% physical damage.

This change tho I do not understand, how many “half fixes” will it be until killing spree finally just target your main target? This doesn’t fix the actual main issue with the spell which is killing spree going on targets you do not care about, a few examples:

  • Academy first boss this season, whenever the adds are spawned, my killing spree damage is basically all going on the adds instead of boss, so right now on live I prefer to not press the ability at all during add waves, which are up the vast majority of the fight.

  • Next season also has a great example of this, first boss ruby life pool, the main mechanic is a dps check where you need to break a shield, only issue is the boss spawns a bunch of adds, so most of your killing spree damage, during the most important part of the boss, would be completely wasted.

  • In general, any boss where you bring non important adds that do not need to die immediately or funnel (oultaw pressing blade flurry on 2/3 targets cost us a good chunk of single target so its often preferable to not press bf, especially if you do not want to kill the funnel mobs), you are losing most of your killing spree damage, and not even blade flurrying it on the boss. (This is basically every 2nd boss in m+ nowadays)

Still the changes are very much appreciated and I’m happy to see our feedback is getting heard ty :smiley:

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