103 réponses à ce sujet

[TormDK]

What Mortiel was referring to, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the Warrior ability Rally, currently only available in the single player. He's advocating creating a new Warrior subclass that would be able to build party-wide Guard. He mentioned Keeper only as a parallel, as in a Warrior-support that can provide party protection.

 

Yes, that makes sense - and in essence what I also wished for.

 

I just hope the power creep is slow on these new characters, in ME3MP It did get bumped up quite a bit even "midlife".

[Drasca]

You're telling me you look at the AW/Elementalist and the Katari/Reaver and think to yourself, "Looks good, what's next?"

 

Can't speak for him, but since I pwn with all four. Yep, looking forward to the next kit / class to be revealed instead of worrying about relative class power.

 

Of course the classes need tweaking. It shouldn't have taken me quite this long to get good at the melee classes I have, and I've started some resources to help others require less time. However change occurs on BW's schedule, not mine, and at their determination. I feel my efforts are better suited toward how to make what I have work.

 

 

quirkiness with enemy threat priorities

 

I really really need to write my post on how Threat/Aggro works... and I wish I had data-mining abilities.

[Kjubaran]

I would love to Katari have more defenze, like not 1 guard = 0,25% health but 0,6% health....

[TormDK]

Well, my pet pieve about the Templar is that I feel the cards are very stacked in that the Divine tree overshadows the Sentinel tree from an efficiency perspective.

 

My current build is shieldwall, payback strike, upgraded horn and upgraded line in the sand. And while it works ok in PUGs (There's a few PUG Archers that owe their recent Immortal badges to me ), the lack of threat management stops it from being truely great, and that to me is a little disappointing.

 

Well, that and the 100 stamina limitation (I don't have any amulet that gives +stamina unfortunately). I honestly think Bioware should have considered the various abilties more, so that the defenders (Going by your definition ) could get things like +movement speed, or 25-50 stamina extra just from talent choices, hell even an ability to regain 5-10 stamina whenever a mob within 5 feet of you died would go along way to keeping that shieldwall going.

 

Building a templar to block is something that means your stamina will be gone very fast, even if you do nothing but time the shield blocks to regain a little stamina between swings. Plus, there's the whole question on the simple value of blocking damage over all, rather than WoH/Purging, since dead mobs don't do dps.

[Robbiesan]

You might be right, maybe I played it wrong. I used the build of Penguin and he seemed to think as I thought too. Could you share your own build? Would appreciate your suggestions. 
 
For the daggers, both are above 20 (a rare and a unique), and my DPS was always very decent, so they're not the problem.
 
The problem was that any small mistake (or the DC showing up, or the Red Templar boss earthquake hit when I was killing an archer) I was dead. Even during the momentary switch from flank attack to invisibility, I could find myself with 10% of health vs beginning of the move. I could show up in the 1st of 2nd place if the team was good (because I was doing lots of clean up), but I never felt like I could solo even in Threatening difficulty. This class seemed always like a suboptimal assassin to me...

Dont get me wrong, I know how tricky it is and the smallest mistake can really cost you. I also tried out Penguin's build and it kicks butt. I think this character, as with the Assasin, it is about placement and timing. When it comes to RTC and DC, here you need situational awareness. I do not mess with them. I see my job as focusing on the adds, while keeping tabs on the boss, and players, should they need a revive. With RTC do your best to keep an eye on his ground attacks, using movement and jumps to avoid (same with DC).

When I am playing I stealth, run to back of enemy group, and begin my attacks, taking full advantage of the 0 threat flank passive. Sometimes you don't get the kill and so you have the option to run for cover, or try for a quick kill that will bring stealth out of cool down.

For accessories I tend to use: amulet of cunning, ring of life drain, attack ring, +health belt. They help, but if you don't have them you can still do well.

A couple of build tweaks you may want to try as well.

Stealth, twin fangs/death blow, flank attack, knock out bomb

Stealth, fire flask, death blow, knock out bomb

To recap, positioning and timing are key. Risk management: which enemy can I take out with the least amount of risk.

Granted, no matter which character you play, the team composition does make a difference. If an archer for instance is long shotting everything, you may be hard pressed to get the kills to bring stealth of cool down.

Practice that: risk management, position, timing. To me they make all the difference.

Keep at it. With enough practice, mistakes and successes, you'll. Be rocking the Alchemist in no time. Once again said by someone who once upon a time thought her a weak character with cool lines.

All the best.

[Altruismo]

Yes. Wasted damage. Just phrasing it as a question doesn't constitute a response. And I'm really not sure what the second...question?...is supposed to illustrate.

 

Look, at risk of ressurrecting this debate (we'll just have to agree to disagree). My point there was that you keep using terms like they're relevant when they are not.

If it was possible for an AW to kill things as fast as a Reaver (it's not) then you can start talking about wasted damage: "My AW kills everything in one hit anyway, a Reaver doing more than that is wasted damage"

The second question was essentially parodying the idea that an AW is going to get a killing streak on every single pull from door to door - you know, like a 15 kill streak for 1/5, 20 for 2/5, etc

 

In a confusing balance choice, the Templar did not get the Balanced Combat passive, where the Legionnaire did. It regenerates stamina if you hit an enemy right after successfully blocking with Shield Wall.

The confusing part of that is, that if both are optimally built for Defender roles, the Templar leans heavily on Shield Wall, whereas the Legionnaire is better if not using it at all.

Does any BioWare Dev want to comment on that design choice? I had forgotten how much that setup was bugging me...

 

The Templar has a lot more build options available than a Legionnaire though.

That's not to say that a Legionnaire has only one build, but Lego builds that are not centered around a traditional "agro tank" role don't work very well at all; it's pretty much a given that all Legionnaire builds will include Walking fortress, War Cry and/or Counterstrike because without at least two of those abilities, you spend most of your time chasing mobs around like some kind of ineffective Templar or falling down because you've pulled agro and you're squishy.

In comparison, a Templar has a great deal of freedom to experiment with builds and be of benefit to a team because of Horn of Valor. No matter what the other three skills are, a Templar can add 35% to everyone's damage for every pull, that's huge (my Horn of Valor ring is the only thing I take HoK off for). And the Templar still has ok builds that don't include Horn.

To make one of those build choices essentially an "agro tank" as effective as a Legionnaire would practically invalidate the Legionnaire as a class (which is why Unbowed instead of War Cry, for example). To that end it makes sense to me that a Legionnaire can have a "better" Shield Wall than a Templar can. Both can do it, but a Legionnaire who wants to spend the extra skill point get's more out of it, even though some particular Templar builds might be "locked into" Shield Wall for effectiveness.

 

Not trying to cite this as an example of an ideal build for either class, but both a Templar and a Lego can build:

Shield Wall, Payback Strike, Combat Roll, Challenge.

I'm cool with a Legionnaire as a class being "better" at that than a Templar is, and just being "better at" shield wall in general.

[TormDK]

The legionnaire has much better threat management options, even if we were to discard War Cry, not to mention the near permanent state of invulnerability they have on top of that.

 

I don't have a particular problem with the Legionnaire being top dog aggro tanking wise, but I do have a problem with the fact that #2 is so far down the list it might not even be there.

 

Also;

 

"it's pretty much a given that all Legionnaire builds will include Walking fortress, War Cry and/or Counterstrike because without at least two of those abilities, you spend most of your time chasing mobs around like some kind of ineffective Templar or falling down because you've pulled agro and you're squishy."

 

Thats funny, because that is exactly what I do ever single match. Chase mobs that make it past my Line in the Sand, because I have no options to manage threat. I've started to like Line in the Sand more in recent times, in part thanks to Mortiel's suggestions to challenge my mindset, but I worry more about the future than the past.

 

Mob damage will continue to increase once they make a Platinum difficulty, without better threat management abilities, they might as well remove the Sentinel tree, because the Templar will be pigeon holed into always having to bring WoH/Purge in order to keep up. Why would you want to bring someone that couldn't positively keep mobs busy? The WoH/Purge combo would at least keep mobs stunned for a decent amount of time, where as Line in the Sand is a mild deterrent because the Templar can't control aggro accordingly to help back it up. While the Horn of Valour is nice (And including Shieldwall, is always part of my builds), in the end the buff will get you killed due to the long animation required to start it up, which means you have to use it pre-fight, which again means the time where it is actually being used gets lowered.

 

War Cry instead of Unbowed is the solution to the problem that requires the least work from Bioware, and would also open up to some interesting build combinations with Cutting Words, but the main challenge for the Templar "tank" will always be stamina management, at least in the event that aggro is obtained. (Old tank maxim; First you control it, then you tank it) 

 

Unlike the Lego that doesn't really care about stamina because he doesn't need shieldwall, and can spam his attacks every chance he gets, the Templar must be super efficient with her stamina because of how fast it gets used by blocking even a few attacks. A little balance in that regard wouldn't be a bad thing.

[Altruismo]

My view is a Templar doesn't manage agro, they manage space.

A Lego can create a choke point centered on himself, a Templar has to spot them, use them, and hope the group actually lets them do it.

A Legionnaire's biggest strength is that they can fix other people's agro management mistakes, a Templar can't, and if you want to give that ability to a class that can also boost everyone's damage by 35%, a Lego starts to look very redundant.

Because a Templar currently can't absorb damage like a Lego does, they don't want the agro - I mean you might, but you'd then want more damage mitigation, you want more stamina, you want to be a Legionnaire... but you're a Templar.

I guess the question is, what are you hoping to build if you could rebalance/redesign the Templar the way you want? If the answer to that question is something like, "a Legionnaire with Horn of Valor" you've probably identified why Templars are not the way you want them to be.

[TormDK]

I actually like the idea behind Line in the Sand, and active blocking with Shieldwall, and I feel my damage absorbtion to be alright, obviously not in the league of the Lego since that would be impossible thanks to their Walking Fortress, two massive AoE Threat abilties, plus Unyielding but it gives the DPS enough time to do their thing. You don't manage space if you can't control where mobs are going, putting a Line in the Sand somewhere requires that there are doorways or Red Templar lyrium crates around all the time, which there isn't, and even then mobs will happily bee-line for someone other than the Templar, not to mention the fact that the Champions summoned disappears if players move into their space (likely to avoid a trolling situation similar to what we saw Bioware describe Icewall's potential as)

 

I would answer your question, with a question of my own; Why would you want to bring a non-WoH/Purge templar if you could get a lego?

 

The Sentinel focus'ed Templar do not bring anything specific to the table. Bodyguard is a nice ability on paper, but why would you want to absorb part of the damage your team gets, when you could simply bring the Lego and not worry about any other than him getting hit? Plus the radius it and Blessed Blades provides is far too short, and you'd need some sort of self-healing to make up for the damage absorbed.

 

Unyielding is again a nice ability on paper and on the Lego it works well with Walking Fortress thanks to that and Flow of Battle you are 95% of the time able to recycle your abilities fast enough to avoid a situation where you would need to chuck a potion, but for the Templar would need to have a Heal on Kill item or weapon in order to truely use it for anything other than an "ooooh shiiiiiiit!" ability, and if it really was only intended as "Oooh shiiiiit!" for the Templar, then why is it all the way down the Sentinel tree?

 

Keepers and Arcane Warriors have their their similar ability available much much sooner. If it's a matter of Bioware not wanting to let Templars have WoH/Purge and an "Ooooh shiiiiit!" ability, then move things around in the Sentinel tree to reflect it. Ideally the Templar should either be a glass cannon if going down the Divine tree, or a stout defender able to keep the enemies attention, and through active absorbtion from Shieldwall live to see another day. That is not the current state of affairs because of a lack of AoE threat management tools.

 

If I had the superb stamina necklace, and a heal on kill ring/weapon, I would be able to absorb a couple of archer shots (enough to get close enough to WoH/Purge without worry) on my way to the group of mobs I would engage, and would then be able to WoH/Purge my way out of the problem. Thats the optimal design right now because dead mobs do not require tanking, but it requires RNGsus' favour where as the legionnare has everything he needs from abilties alone.

 

So ultimatively, in a thread where we are discussing class balance, I would make aware that the Templar Sentinel tree needs some love as things are right now, especially compared with the Lego, but even if we discard him, then still compared with the Divine tree.

[Altruismo]

So ultimatively, in a thread where we are discussing class balance, I would make aware that the Templar Sentinel tree needs some love as things are right now, especially compared with the Lego, but even if we discard him, then still compared with the Divine tree.

 

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow on your whole post. Largely I agree with your sentiments, and especially with this last bit.

The Sentinel tree needs some love, it's hamstrung by the design decision that the Divine tree is "offense" and the Sentinel tree is "defense". All the damage is in the Divine tree, and the decision to include zero real healing in the game greatly devalues defensive powers vs. offensive powers unless they preemptively augment your health, where a Lego and AW excel, or provide complete immunity: Walking Fortress/Unyielding. For that reason you get way more value from an "all Divine" build than you do from an "all Sentinel" build.

Two things I'd do to the Sentinel tree straight up is swap the position of Turn the Bolt and Trust the Steel, being "forced" to get Trust the Steel to progress down the tree is a waste of a point, and Turn the Bolt which is effectively a vital passive should not be a dead-end. And I'd also swap the position of Unyielding and Bodyguard, this may result in almost zero Templars taking Bodyguard anymore, (and I know some people like it) but it doesn't make sense to me that the two are not already swapped. Aside, Unyielding isn't ideally an "oh ****" button, the cooldown is long and the guard doesn't go away unless it gets damaged, it's best to use it as often as possible (without wasting it on too few enemies nearby, or when you have full guard anyway).

Personally I'd swap a few things around in the Divine tree too, I'd put Mage Slayer where Bear Mauls the Wolves is (and actually move Bear into Sentinel), and I'd swap WoH and Spell Purge around; I just think WoH by itself should be cheaper than the Payback Strike/Spellpurge combo (which is awesome) and it would open up more flexibility for WoH as an Aoe Stun without changing the point investment for the WoH/Purge combo.

 

As for your question; why I would want to bring a Templar who doesn't have WoH/Purge instead of a Lego?

Well, if I don't actually "need" a Lego: ie everyone is high damage ranged and/or we have solid Barrier, a great reason would be Horn of Valor for one. Look, the combo is great, but it's not doing more killing that an promoted Archer or Reaver with +35% damage.

I mean, it's possible to build Horn, WoH, Line in the Sand, and then either Unyielding or Shield Wall, or even Blessed Blades and play a positional blocking game with Line and that sweet AoE stun while handing out +35-50% damage. You're not going to get many medals yourself, but it's actually a helpful build (not necessarily ideal) for a ranged team with a lot of damage and the sense to stay behind you.

[poloboyz93]

There is no sense of balance in this game, warriors that aren't the legionaire or Templar are completely shoved out of perilous unless you're absolutely PRO with one of the other 2. Ranged attackers are decently balanced although I'd say it's not so much an issue with their classes as much as how broken some of the bows in the game are. Mages Ofc. Run this game at the moment. Specifically the keeper and arcane warrior. Id say the ele but he's the "bad guy" in DAMP right now...

Anyways, I think people get this confused with the arcane warrior, he's nowhere near overpowered, it's just that the other characters are underpowered. I'd say the only 2 classes ingame right now that can top a pro arcane user are the keeper and archer. And that's upsetting.

Buffs pls bioware

[Drasca]

Buffs pls bioware. . . unless you're absolutely PRO with one of the other 2. .

 

Totally, my only useful answer is to make people Pro (as I'm not BW and can't change the game). Hopefully that helps a bit.

 

Some classes are so hard to use right, and require gear on top of that. Grrrrrrr. At least I got chicken.

[haxaw]

Id say the ele but he's the "bad guy" in DAMP right now...

 

I guess it depends on what platform/patch you're running on right now, but I haven't had any FireDogStorm issues since the latest update on PC. Other than that, a level 7 Ele can be as good a Barrier caster as a Keeper (minus the mana/stamina regen bonus). Then you add on the absurd AoE, CC, escape tools, not to mention Death Siphon and a FRIGGIN FOCUS ABILITY. Every time I think about the Ele skillset I shake my head.

 

 

Totally, my only useful answer is to make people Pro (as I'm not BW and can't change the game). Hopefully that helps a bit.

 

It certainly does help. But openly discussing and analyzing balance issues in the official forums carries with it the glimmer of hope that Bioware personnel will come across it and take reasoned argument into consideration. A lot of recurring talk about one thing or another tends to draw attention, which could very well result in the corresponding change.

[TormDK]

I guess it depends on what platform/patch you're running on right now, but I haven't had any FireDogStorm issues since the latest update on PC. Other than that, a level 7 Ele can be as good a Barrier caster as a Keeper (minus the mana/stamina regen bonus). Then you add on the absurd AoE, CC, escape tools, not to mention Death Siphon and a FRIGGIN FOCUS ABILITY. Every time I think about the Ele skillset I shake my head.

 

Thanks for that comparison, I haven't really played any of the mage classes, as I tend to enjoy Warriors the mostly, and the Keeper just irks me wrong, so I think I will give him a try from a support perspective.

[haxaw]

Thanks for that comparison, I haven't really played any of the mage classes, as I tend to enjoy Warriors the mostly, and the Keeper just irks me wrong, so I think I will give him a try from a support perspective.

 

If you plan on diving into the world of...Keeping?...a few friendly tips: when you enter the game, identify who is likely to need Barrier the most. If you have Reaver/Katari, that's the one. If you have a Legionnaire/Templar, then depending on how proficient the player is, Barrier won't be needed except for rare situations. If you have glass cannons teammates like Archer with very little survival/escape ability, that might be your top choice. My preference is to always stand close to the priority Barrier targets. This is because I use a controller (though I'm on PC), and the default cast location for Barrier is at my own character's feet. If I'm close to my squishy allies, I can very quickly cast Barriers that cover everyone that needs it. The trick is to develop an intuition on where you can safely stand while being on the edge of the fray and close to your ally.

 

Most importantly, don't wait until someone is dying to cast your first Barrier. This point can't be emphasized enough. I often see newer Barrier casters hold off and use it only when they see someone taking damage. Unfortunately, you often won't react in time, which leads to chain deaths as people scramble to revive each other.

 

Intermediate tip: if you hear someone screaming due to burn damage, throw a Barrier on them; it could save their life.

 

Oh, and if you have an AW teammate, just let him die. Or something.

[Kenny Bania]

If you plan on diving into the world of...Keeping?

 

I think I see what you did there, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Dieb]

10. Hunter: maybe I just didn't manage to play it very well, but didn't feel like I added too much to the group.

 

Feeling the need to try and speak up for my favourite character.

 

I'm fairly certain that the most common misconception about the Hunter is that he's somehow an Archer with slightly different/inferior archery skills. That's... well, I won't say wrong (I hate it when people tell others how to play, so stay tuned for me doing just that in the following paragraph), but I'm playing him pretty much like a shotgun Infiltrator in Mass Effect. You're using a bow, but you're at your best in a crowd. Last** one in, last one out.

 

I'm doing pretty well ("feeling" & score wise) on Perilous, and I only have one single active offensive skill mapped, Leaping Shot. The others are Toxic Cloud+, Evade+ and, yes, Fallback Plan. The Toxic Cloud cast in a group of enemy archers does very much "add something to the group" :]

 

 

**Speaking of aggro. Responding to what someone else mentioned, dealing with aggro comes with dealing insane damage. No balancing required there.

[Shelled]

I just wanted to know what people are thinking about classes.  Who's too powerful, not powerful enough, and what solutions they think would help.

 

Personally, I think the 2handed warriors are a bit too fragile.  They go down very quickly if you make even a minor mistake.  I'm not sure what the limits are as far as adding talents in the game, but I feel like the Katari needs some way to get back health slowly or better guard.  As is, the guard is largely to weak to be of much use on higher difficulties.

 

I think the archer needs some sort of passive agro reduction.  With a good team, it's not an issue, but it's very easy to pull tons of heat if the other party members aren't doing as much damage (which they rarely are)

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts.  Feel free to eviscerate them. 

So I'm rank 27 on the leaderboards (Shelledfade), here are my thoughts on balance. (I play perilous exclusively and have done so for the last 200 hours I've played the game).

There's some things that need to be taken into consideration though. There is no healing class, Guard is absolutely worthless in perilous difficulty, barrier is just way too strong, and enemies hit way too hard in perilous. I think one archer shot in perilous is the equivalent to 45 or 50 constitution. So maybe archers/ranged in perilous need a slight damage reduction while melee enemy damage could stay the same.

1. Arcane warrior is only insanely strong because barrier is insanely overpowered so maybe the fix here is to make a barrier on an arcane warrior weaker than other classes, even if a barrier is cast on it by a keeper it should be weaker than normal, maybe its mana regeneration could also be nerfed because its basically unlimited as long as there's 2-3 enemies nearby. There's fast mana regeneration, then there's what the arcane warrior has which is unlimited mana. lol.

Also people saying arcane warrior is balanced because it doesn't kill fast , well... you're wrong. You are flat out dead wrong. I can kill things as fast if not faster than a reaver with my arcane warrior due to my willpower being at 89 (not the only reason). Pull of the abyss + fade cloak + spirit blade will kill things faster than a reaver if we're comparing each class against each other if I was using a reaver with my willpower compared to my arcane warrior, because you don't have to hunt enemies down one by one on an arcane warrior, you just pull them in the center and kill everything nearly instantly with spirit blade and fade cloak, combine that with a 15% cooldown amulet and its gg. I can literally sit there and tank templar commander until its dead. It's why I feel bad every time I see chain lightning arcane warriors. Fade step / fade cloak / spirit blade / pull of abyss / is the best possible combination you can use. Your spirit blade does more damage than chain lighting and you're aoeing with it because of abyss, making chain lighting absolutely obsolete which is why you take fadestep instead so you don't get hit by archers when you drop an abyss on a group of enemies. It also makes the runs incredibly faster using abyss for the entire group with fade step because you can act as a tank by taking agro first.

But what do I know, I've only promoted my arcane warrior 44 times.

2. legionnaire is a boss but you need the best gear to be able to be effective with it. Guard is useless but not that big of a deal for legionnaire. I think the legionnaire is actually a balanced class, although guard definitely needs to be improved in perilous.

3. Katari, only decent with barrier. It's guard needs to be WAY more effective, because right now guard doesn't help it survive whatsoever making a lot of its skills and passives pointless. Maybe giving the katari rampage would be a good decision for it. It's just overall weak and without a decent keeper or ele casting barrier it really isn't worth playing it at all.

4. Reaver is an interesting case. I don't think its frontal armor works at all right now which is why it goes down in like 2 hits in perilous. Rampage and dragon rage is honestly too strong if we're being serious about balance, because you're basically 100% more effective than an assassin at that point and can't die, making the assassin obsolete as a class. If they fixed its armor and the old rampage bug properly and you have a 15% cooldown reduction amulet, a heal on kill ring, decent cunning from promotes and use sulevin blade or axe of the dragon hunter I can see it being stronger than arcane warrior. The problem is if you take away the ability to use rampage with dragon rage, its basically the same thing as a katari that can heal from normal swings. Yes you can use rampage and do normal swings but that just makes classes uniqueness as a berzerker pointless. I think the reavers armor should be fixed, and I think you should be able to use rampage with dragon rage. I think the real problem is that dragon rage + rampage does WAY too much damage and it heals the reaver too much. Make the class effective, but only once they get decent gear.

5. Elementalist is pretty balanced, only problem I can see is that firestorm is too strong. Firestorm meteors need to be CHANCE of knockdown, not a 100% knockdown if a meteor hits an enemy. That's the only balance recommendation I would make here. Maybe 40% chance of knockdown from meteor would make it more balanced.

6. Keeper is balanced as a support class, although using a improved static cage ring makes static cage last longer than intended. Once they fix that problem with static cage, I wouldn't change anything about it.

7. Assassin is balanced when you get good gear in my opinion, the problem here is that enemy A.I is broken regarding a lot of things and it needs to be improved.If an assassin goes stealth it should break all current agro from enemy a.i however it does not. If they are being targeted by a despair demons ice beam and they stealth they still get targeted by it. The same thing happens from any ranged attack with the current a.i, if an enemy a.i is currently in the animation of casting any type of ranged attack and you stealth, it won't break their targeting, they will still go for you until the attack is finished. There's also some issues of enemies somehow being able to spot the assassin and swinging at them when they shouldn't be able to. The last thing about the assassin is that its kind of annoying to play it in perilous because it only becomes truly effective as a combat class at around level 15-16. Shadowstrike has problems as well. It's hit range is way too short and it doesn't reduce cooldown of stealth when you kill something with it. I don't even think the damage bonus from being in stealth and using shadowstirke actually works. Also I've killed things with the assassins normal attacks and twin fangs and sometimes it doesn't reset the cooldown of stealth, some kind of lag bug I'm guessing.

I'd rework its skill tree a bit so it can be a bit more viable at levels 10-12 in perilous, otherwise it feels like you're being carried/playing as dead weight until around 15-16 unfortunately. I have two red birth blades and two 20% flank damage bonus rings for my assassin and its honestly one of my favorite classes to play but the skill tree is designed to only make it very effective at a higher level and unfortunately there are big problems with stealth and the a.i like I explained, as well as stealth cooldown bugs due to lag. Other than changing where some skills are placed within the skill tree I wouldn't change anything about the class itself though. Just improve stealth/a.i and fix shadowstrike.

8. Necromancer is good. Blizzard however, is not. It's a useless waste of a skill. I wouldn't nerf anything about the class but I would increase the damage of blizzard or make it actually freeze enemies faster so that blizzard is not a completely useless skill. Spirit mark is also useless, and the summon it makes is equally as useless. If anything blizzard and spirit mark need major buffs.

9. Archer is good. Wouldn't really change anything about it.
 

10. Hunter, honestly I don't really like this class at all. Poison/toxic is ridiculously useless (worse than blizzard) and stealth is meh. It's bomb doesn't do damage enough for it to be worth it. It's basically an archer without longshot which in my opinion makes it bad. If anything this class needs to be buffed.

11. Alchemist is freaking terrible compared to assassin lol, I hate this class more than I hate hunters. Poison weapons and toxic cloud is as worthless as blizzard is. The only thing it has going for it is to spam shadowstrike or twin fang with flask of fire but so what? May as well play assassin at that point. Shadowstrike also has some big problems. It doesn't reset the cooldown of stealth and its range is ridiculously short. Shadowstrike needs a bigger hit radius because its way too damn short and misses way too frequently. Poison weapons and toxic cloud need a massive buff. They are totally useless. Spamming bombs is weak as hell as well, I've done it with two red birth blades and it just seems weak.

12. Templar, wouldn't really change anything about it other than giving it bonus XP for when it uses horn of valor. They don't generate much xp in a group at all. You buff your allies but you gain no xp for doing it. That is kind of lame and i always thought it was lame. The class itself is not that amazing in perilous either. Most of the time groups of enemies in perilous die before the templar can even get a decent dispel combo off anyway. I think its a balanced class for the most part. Horn of valor not giving you any support xp is really lame though. If someone gets a kill with horn of valor on them it should give the player who is playing the templar some additional XP. They just don't generate good XP compared to other classes in perilous difficulty.

Anyhow that about sums it up. Also there are various rings other than static cage that do not stack when you use two of them and some of them don't even work properly at all with just 1 of them. Rings are way too buggy and they need to fix them.

[haxaw]

[snipped]

 

In general, I agree with your assessments, with a few exceptions:

 

5. Elementalist is pretty balanced, only problem I can see is that firestorm is too strong. Firestorm meteors need to be CHANCE of knockdown, not a 100% knockdown if a meteor hits an enemy. That's the only balance recommendation I would make here. Maybe 40% chance of knockdown from meteor would make it more balanced.

 

I think Ele is one of the worst balanced classes by virtue of it having "the best balance" within class. What I mean by that is it can do pretty much everything, and do it well: Barrier, AoE damage, AoE CC, health/mana regen (lulzdeathsiphon), both mage escapes (Fade Cloak/Step), Flashpoint, etc. The overall toolkit available to the Ele is just absurdly well-rounded. It's not a jack of all trades, it's a master of all trades, and that's an imbalance. There's no reason why a nominally nuking/control class should be able to cast Barrier as well as the primary support class (minus the added mana regen bonus). From a pure defense perspective, Ele is actually better at Barrier than Keeper, thanks to Flashpoint. Giving it the necromancer's quintessential passive in Death Siphon makes little sense. And having a Focus ability on a class with Flashpoint is just silly.

 

 

8. Necromancer is good. Blizzard however, is not. It's a useless waste of a skill. I wouldn't nerf anything about the class but I would increase the damage of blizzard or make it actually freeze enemies faster so that blizzard is not a completely useless skill. Spirit mark is also useless, and the summon it makes is equally as useless. If anything blizzard and spirit mark need major buffs.

 

Have you tried using Spirit Mark has a heal/death buffer more than anything else? With even a single piece of HoK gear, your SM minion becomes a free revive, or an on-demand heal. It's not what we were promised in the skill description, but I no longer classify the overall skill as "useless". Agreed on Blizzard: the mana cost and upkeep are way too much to justify how little it currently does.

 

 

10. Hunter, honestly I don't really like this class at all. Poison/toxic is ridiculously useless (worse than blizzard) and stealth is meh. It's bomb doesn't do damage enough for it to be worth it. It's basically an archer without longshot which in my opinion makes it bad. If anything this class needs to be buffed.

 

I think the Hunter is actually okay (maybe a little weak) just by having Stealth, annoying as the threat issue can be. To me, the Hunter fits in two roles: a close range shotgun blaster more sensitive to positioning, and a PuG-friendlier archer. For the first, trading Stealth for Longshot+Opportunity Knocks means the Hunter forgoes spamming in lieu of positioning and assassination of high priority targets; you can get in, out, and around the fray without constantly relying on teammates to cover you or use taunts/Barrier. The second has to do with the survival ability the Hunter has (mainly Stealth, but Fallback Plan works too). I definitely prefer the Archer hands down for maximum pewpew, but if I'm PuGing and the rest of the team either seems questionable or doesn't excel at threat management/barrier, I might go Hunter instead. You can clutch some close games with Hunter, but is much harder to do with Archer. Though I admittedly do abuse Stealth-crit Full Draw off a Trepanner's, so maybe I have it better than a lot of people.

 

Your Guard vs Barrier comments I've voiced many times now, and I think most people agree that it's a big issue leading to the imbalances we're experiencing.

 

Overall, nice analysis. I enjoyed reading it!

[Shelled]

Thanks haxaw, also regards to your ele comment, the thing with firestorm is that I don't see it as a damage skill. You get a crit, you cast one meteor, and then you cast another. That completely negates enemy damage for a very very long time. You can basically sustain it forever if you don't get greedy and cast two meteors before the 10 second cooldown period that flashpoint has (which I'll admit is somewhat difficult if you need to cast barrier on someone), but you get my point.
 

When you combine that WITH barrier and firewall, looking at it from a support perspective, its as good if not better than keeper support because unlike static cage, this knocks ranged attackers down. Static cage is only good at dealing +50% electric damage from all sources and stopping melee, its not that great when you think about ranged attackers.

I've never looked at the ele as a raw dps class. I just think 100% chance of stunlock from meteor is a bit op.

Also its not viable to get spirit mark at all at this pont Haxaw. The current new build for necromancer is fade step, fade cloak, walking bomb, and mind blast. Since you can generate barrier with mind blast now, + fade cloak for invuln/damage + you trigger walking bomb to knock down enemies. It's actually a pretty deadly combination that does a lot of damage and you can generate a ton of XP doing this. If your mind blast is crap or you're running out of mana you just fade step out, or walking bomb / knockdown / or fade cloak till you get mana for mind blast again. Its the best build I've seen for necro since the patch but you probably need the 15% cooldown reduction amulet for it to be really effective.

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I think the rogues should have a slightly faster attack speed and running speed than what it is now.  Warriors should either do a little bit more damage since they are slower with melee and/or have more armor for better tanking.  The mages are fine as is. I also dislike the way this game ranks how well you do based on kills you make.  but that's a different post for different thread....

[haxaw]

The current new build for necromancer is fade step, fade cloak, walking bomb, and mind blast. Since you can generate barrier with mind blast now, + fade cloak for invuln/damage + you trigger walking bomb to knock down enemies. It's actually a pretty deadly combination that does a lot of damage and you can generate a ton of XP doing this. If your mind blast is crap or you're running out of mana you just fade step out, or walking bomb / knockdown / or fade cloak till you get mana for mind blast again. Its the best build I've seen for necro since the patch but you probably need the 15% cooldown reduction amulet for it to be really effective.

 

I was lucky enough to get the CD amulet somewhat early on, so I'll definitely have to give this spec a shot. What's a standard rotation? Walking Bomb, Detonate, Fade Step in, Mind Blast, Fade Cloak, repeat?

 

Ironically, I had been experimenting with Mind Blast on Necro just before the patch that fixed it. Imagine my disappointment when I wasn't able to generate Barrier from scratch, and only worked when there was some Barrier on me already. At the time, I really wanted it to work, especially with it being a detonator and all. Plus, as a legacy skill, Mind Blast has always been a really useful skill in the Dragon Age series.

[Dieb]

 I also dislike the way this game ranks how well you do based on kills you make.  but that's a different post for different thread....

 

That was the part I upvoted specifically.