Vydar
08-22-2007, 08:13 PM
Now, before you tell me to L2P or think I'm crying about needing a buff, I'm not. I basically would like to know why our AA lines are broken/useless and how they intend to get fixed (if at all). With the AA respec cards, as well as spending 1-10p often to respec and try out different combos, here are the conclusions I've come to concerning our AA lines. <img src="http://img471.imageshack.us/img471/7154/predatortreeyy2.jpg" alt="" border="0" />Predator Tree... Str line is a no brainer. One of the few that works. Speeds up reuse timers of our two biggest attacks (Decap and Killing Blade) as well as buffing the damage it produces. Cool, excellent, working as intended. Now, the armor effects of Decap reuse timer reducers do NOT work properly. The full set of PvP gear for Assassins set reward is (Decapitate reuse timer reduced by 80 sec) but it is not. It caps out at 9 min, so it only gives us an extra 60 seconds. 20 sec difference, I know, but... they did the same thing to the relic/nemesis chest that gives the reuse timer reducer. Does nothing, cuz it caps out. Why give us these bonuses if they are not being utilized? ---Opening Blade, nice CA---Parry increase, amazing when fighting other melee classes, substantial increase---Melee crit chance, great to haveAgi line- was meant for rangers. This is obvious. Any Assassin that takes this line should be shot. The end line is a "reduces casting time" which is not helpful when almost all of our spells are .5 sec casting time. Rangers HAVE long casting times that must be done while NOT moving, so this helps them. Ranged crit... we rarely use our ranged attacks due to all of our combos, CA's being melee based. An entire line dedicated to rangers that we must suffer removing a choice from us. ---Point Blank Shot, a slow casting, must be done without moving knockback with a short duration. This would be nice in some instances, since it also interrupts, except that the rest of the tree is a waste of points. ---In combat run speed... that doesn't work in PvP.---Ranged crit chance... we so rarely use our ranged stuff, this is not of benefit to us. ---Casting time reduced. Almost every single CA we use is .5 seconds-2 seconds. How much faster do we really need? A useless tree with a near useless endline does NOT benefit Assassins, only rangers.Sta Line, one of the other trees that works- if you want to have tons of HP.---Spinning Spear, now that there's no weapon requirement, nice little aoe, doesn't do much, but its nice to have another AoE to proc CoB and poisons off of. ---HP increaser, this is an amazing aa point spendature after the buff to it last update. I gain over 1k HP by having this spot.---I forget the name, but it is near useless. A tiny chance at attacking multiple mobs in front of you with an auto attack. Cone based, not aoe, Auto Attack only, and a very small chance. Unlike our other proc's which are on successful melee hit, this is on auto attack only. Impenetrable100% parry for 12 seconds. This is great... against melee classes only. Whereas many other classes get a endline in Sta that helps them against any attack, ours ONLY works against melee classes, and we are stifled while using it. Limited utility, but a decent endline. The 12 seconds often gives us time to get a few CA's up while other melee classes burn their mana. Better hope a caster isn't attacking you or someone using anything non melee damage based. Wisdom Line, was great until last update. Who screwed it up or why without letting us know, I have no idea.---Nice little dehate, if you're raiding. For some reason it doesn't seem to clear your target's targeting of you in PvP after testing it with a Q friend, even though it is a dehate.---Defense Increase, nice, but most T7 Assassins are already so far past the point of diminishing returns, this doesn't help that much. I put 8 points into it, stacked with the 8 parry points, as well as my already insanely high avoidance, was an extra 1-2%. ---Obfuscation, supposedly makes any CA done after using Stealth do 8% more damage. The CA even shows it in its description that it does more damage. After looking through parses and combat logs for raids and such, doesn't seem to really help. And, it doesn't work with our Concealment Combo, so it only works with STEALTH, which most Assassins don't like using because you stop auto attacking while casting it. This speeds up the reuse timer, casting time of stealth, which is nice to gain stealth WITH, but seeing as it costs so many points to get here and not really see a damage increaser in it, it is disappointing.Finally... Smoke Bomb.Smoke Bomb was amazing up until last update. It's an AoE that forces ALL targets in the area (read ALL, UNLIMITED, including PvP or PvE) to NOT be able to target ANYONE for 4 seconds. it also interrupts and throws you into stealth. This was a great endline in group pvp, then two things changed. It gets resisted non stop, and now once the 4 seconds wears off, it aggros any mobs in the area onto you, defeating its purpose. It has a HUGE radius, I believe 25m, and so this has a very high chance of grabbing mobs, guards, etc. There is almost nowhere it can be used, and it is often resisted, and has a long reuse timer. Int Line...This is the line of Choice for DPS'ing assassins for Raids. Str/Int is the basic, standard choice for Assassins on other servers with very few differentation due to the other lines being near useless on PvE servers anyway. (They all have very very limited utility on other servers, I'm aware, before anyone tries to point these out. But they are VERY limited and not even a choice when compared to Str/Int.)---Poison Resist Debuff, requires the target to already be poisoned. Since we are never alerted that our opponent is poisoned, we have to spam it, hoping and wishing that they are in fact poisoned. --- Neurotoxic Coating, decent little debuff if we are hit with a melee weapon, huge against melee druids. Can't complain here.--- Spell Damage Crit Chance... up to 62% crit chance. This means our Proc's and Poisons have a chance to crit. Now, since Hemotoxin and Caustic Poisons are nerfed so badly in PvP, and due to Assassin DPS being nerfed and Manashield being buffed, many assassins use Mental Breach in place of a damage dealing poison. I've never seen mental breach crit. Not once, in any combat log I've looked through. This would lead me to believe it does NOT crit, although I may be wrong. Also, our two debuff poisons do NOT crit. So, this is a great line to have for PvE, not so in PvP.Finally... IntoxicateThis poison is amazing... when it lands. It has a 2 min recast. Self buff, so you can cast it, wait two minutes, use it, and it's already back up because it treats it as though you can apply this poison to your weapon every 2 minutes, not reuse it every 2 minutes. Problem being, it is resisted WAY too often, and the cast time is insanely slow, plus it cannot be cast while moving. When we are always on the move, not being able to take too much damage or shield ourselves in anyway, we never have time to cast this poison. It's great if you can plan out your attack (i.e. see someone on track, sneak up, pop your temp buffs, then jump them) but again, this is a very limited capability tool in PvP, since we can so rarely take the time out to cast this buff on ourselves. There are nice things about it, such as once you use this, it guarantees that you can then use the aforementioned Poison damage debuff. So in conclusion on the Assassin AA lines for PvP, Agi line is meant for Rangers and it somehow got stuck into our tree. Str line is a no brainer. Sta line is a defensive line, as most Sta lines are, but the endline has limited utility/usefulness. I know Assassins are not meant to be tanks, but dedicating this many points to our tree should do something more for us than just make us sit there waiting to be killed by another melee class or give us a small breather during which we cannot cast anything to help ourselves. <img src="http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/6195/assassintreedx8.jpg" alt="" border="0" />Now the really messed up tree. Predator Tree is decent, its ok, with its mixed up and downs. The Assassin tree is really messed up for both PvE and PvP.First, the bleed line. Increases to the overtime damage of almost all of our DoT's, and in increase in percentage chance on Malignant Mark. Now, these are nice, but our DoT's are not very large, so a 20% increase to the overtime damage of a tick of 70? Yeah, I'm gonna throw 5 points into that. There are only 3 thins on this lineup worth putting points into, possibly maybe 4, and that's Deadly Wound, Cloaked Assault (huge aoe tick), Malignant Mark percentage to Proc increaser (one of Assassin's top damage dealing abilities) and maybe possibly Flowing Wound (tiny little DoT though.) Now, we don't have this option... because we HAVE to take Scraping Blow first, which is the smallest DoT EVER. It's recast timer is fast, so it's constantly on the opponent, but the DoT is so tiny, I can't imagine wanting to buff it's damage output. Bleed end line... Reduces target's Max HP by 5% per bleed for regular targets, 3% for Heroics, 1% for Epic's... so if you stack the bleeds, a max of 25% or so Max HP reduced. (So, if you had 10,000 HP, and all 5 bleeds were put on you, you should in theory have only 7,500 max HP while the bleeds are still ticking. Once the bleeds are off, you can be healed back to original max HP, but while they are on, even heals will not put you back up to full HP. This doesn't work in PvP. At all. I've had friends on the Q side who had a Tank and a Healer, I put the bleeds on, healer heals... back to original Max HP. The bleed did not reduce the target's HP AT ALL. In PvE, this is a nice end line, but in PvP? Broken.The tricks line is next. Most Assassins take this one because one of our biggest assets on the field is our stifle. Here we can buff the Stifle's Duration. Now... there is a cap on our stifle. it is cut in HALF in PvP, and it caps out at 4 points being put into it. Can't put a 5th into it, since the stifle doesn't really take effect on most Epic targets and it definitely doesn't in PvP. increase the duration of our root... after last Update, it caps out at 3 points being put into it. Again, limits our choices severely. The green arm is our defense debuff, this decreases its reuse timer quite a bit. Not too bad, but it is already a very very fast recast time, and there is no other bonus to it. Crippling Strike is an excellent AA point spenditure. It makes it decrease the opponent's defense by quite a bit. This attack is positional (behind only, not behind or flanking) and hard to get off, but when you do, the opponent is not likely to avoid many more of your hits... and it has over 1 min duration. Love this little AA buff. Repeated Stabbing is an excellent endline. Reduces RECOVERY time by 100%, which means that the time between CA's is cut in half. This means we can cram more CA's into a Dirge's CoB, and we can cram more CA's into our conceal combos, as well as just doing damage faster. No complaints here. Physicality Line...Increase to Sprint... that has been nerfed so badly if it's in combat that this is useless. Decrease to Honed Reflexes, increase to its benefit... Ok, so a minor Haste buff for a very short time. Our defensive stance buff is an excellent AA choice, especially after last update... removes the downsides to having the defensive stance on, and increases its benefits by 20 or 25%, I don't remember which. Excellent, love it. Exacting reuse timer reduction, exacting is nice, but 5 points to get its reuse timer down isn't really worth it. It's a 3 min reuse, and 5 points would reduce it to 2 min 20sec, so points can be spent better elsewhere. Deadly Focus... very short duration buff, but definitely nice... for Auto Attacking and for Accuracy for CA's. Long reuse, not usually worth spending the points for.Endline... Getaway. Dehate to everything in aoe area, throws you into invis, gives you a nice big run speed when it's done... unless you're in PvP of course. so, nerf in combat run speed in PvP, but give us nothing to replace it with, making a lot of choices useless. Thanks.Finally, the poisons line. I actually think higher of this line than most Assassins do. The first is an increase to the poison debuff, it makes it debuff for quite a bit more. Hemotoxin has its' DoT duration between ticks sped up (nice for PvE, not that nice for PvP where most fights don't last long enough for ONE poison to finish its' ticking anyway). Increase to all the debuffing poison's debuffs, nice to have, these are useful. Increase to Ignorant Bliss's dehate amount... a poison dedicated to proc'ing a dehate. This is a debatable poison. I don't need it on Raids to keep aggro off of me and I often parse over 3k DPS. In PvP, you often want someone's target off of you when they are at ranged, and most bows don't go fast enough to proc this when you need it to. Limited utility, but no denying that there is some. Apply Poison is a buff to put on someone else that gives their weapon a VERY nice poison proc. No complaints here, except there are arguments as to whether or not this breaks the Assassin's stealth. Not sure, haven't been able to prove/disprove it. Finally.. Frontload. I can't tell if this works in PvP or not properly, but I dont' think it does. It doubles ALL trigger percentages on equipment and poisons, and increases poison damage (by adding about 160 damage to each poison proc, including debuff poisons). I have tried auto attacking an enemy with haste on without Frontload, and with, several times, and looking through parse logs and seeing how many times it Proc'd, I don't see a noticable difference. nor do i see a large increase in weapon proc's. Now, in PvE, the proc's just go NUTS. I see weapon proc's, poison proc's going off like mad. In PvP, I don't see the same effect unfortunately. To wrap this whole thing up...Our AA lines are not all bad. There are many choices to make, but these "choices" are usually not choices at all, especially on PvP servers. Wis line is broken currently, Bleed is broken, Getaway Useless, Frontload possibly not working properly, Agi line meant for Rangers, int endline resisted much too often and impractical to cast in many scenarios. So 6 endline abilities that are either broken, useless, or of very limited utility on a PvP server. This leaves us about 4 trees that are NOT broken or useless, narrowing down our choices quite a bit.I'm not asking for a buff. I'm not asking that we be more uber or anything. I'd just like our AA lines to be real choices, and not just things to avoid due to their uselessness or broken capabilities.