AA revamp for Brigands a good start, but you missed some things [Archive]

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fxdurand888

08-02-2011, 01:35 AM

Brigand<ul><li>Enhance: Shank has been added to the Brigand Advancement tree. It increases Shank’s damage by 5% per rank.</li></ul>This is all that is coming at brigands in test so far, but this should be taken as an opportunity to work on the class some more. Ideas:EQ2 Brigands: Since it is game update time soon, I will go over the brigand’s CAs and AAs in hope that by some miracle the gods of gaming will have my post looked at, and any of it will be used to improve our class or fix broken things about our class. CAs or AAs with a * in front of them are in my opinion the ones that need to be addressed first. In some cases I give a commentary of the CA/AA before giving a suggestion to fix it… sometimes you can just look for Fix: and get details about how I think the skill can be improved without having to read any opinions I may have. I realize giving use everything asked for would make us OP, I am not asking for all of it, but some combination of the ideas below to help/fix brigands. Anyone with constructive feedback or other ideas they would like for the brigand class, feel free to post your thoughts. When coming up with suggestions, I tried to stay away from making changes to skills the could negatively effect a particular play style for the class. The changes I proposed should be beneficial to solo, group, raid, pvp, and tank play as a brigand. Try to keep this in mind when making additional suggestions or bashing mine. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Class specific CAs that need fixing-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Band of Thugs - This skill is disappointing because it has the potential to be a class defining skill and yet instead is in its current state. 33.6 seconds for the Thugs to do 20,633 damage in 54 total hits; combat arts and poisons included - or 614 damage per second and about 382 damage each hit. Woopee. Fix: A velious double vv Lv 90 = 396 per hit average. Now transforming this into a CA lets take into account potency since they are pets and should share mine. total from agi and pot = 289% average hit of 396 * 3.89 = 1540 per hit... now they should share my crit chance as well which means they will crit 100% of the time so critically hitting they should be doing 327% more damage for a total of about 6577 damage each hit(when it crits). Assuming they are out the whole duration and land all 54 hits, that would be 355,158 Damage from the CA instead of 20,633 and much more appropriate. The dps for the 33.6 duration would be 10570. Take that amount over a minute and it is only 5919 dps and if you take into account the reuse is 187 seconds, in that time it only does 1899 dps... far from overpowered so lets beef it up some... remember we are going for class defining here. Since we are revamping AA... lets go back in time and unask that they remove the band of thugs AA skill from the final line in the shadows tree. So the new skill has 2 ranks at 3 points each and grants: +1 Thug, +30% aoe avoid (for the thugs), and 15 second reuse reduction per rank. Get rid of the useless Noxious Toxin AA... how worthless can it get really? If the devs are unwilling to do this, there are still many cool things that could be done with this skill. I personally like the idea of them becoming a buff that is always active. Now to get away with this, they would need to do a good deal less damage, but also be on a 10-15 second refresh, where 1 Thug will come back every 10-15 seconds if you have lost any. There is a lot of potential and I hope they can make this skill class defining. Lets say for arguments sake they make them only able to do 75,000 in a 33.6 second time frame as a buff; in this case, my enhance thug aa from above should have 3 levels at the cost of 2 points each granting +1 thug, +25% aoe avoid(for the thugs), and +5% to their inflicted damage per rank. *Shenanigans - The skill is actually a great skill, it just can not be used in all phases of game play with the same effectiveness. What I am going to suggest for this skill is something that can be applied to more than just 1 of our skills, but in summary, would make the skill have 2 effects - one effect for when in Defense stance, and one effect for when in Offense stance. Fix: For starters make ability mod actually increase the damage of this skill. Why it does not now, I have no clue. Defense stance - Same effect as normal, but include: increased hate gain for 10 seconds, about 20% more damage output, and your enemy is unable to switch targets for 3 seconds. Offense stance - Same effect as normal, but remove requirement of being hit to do the damage, as an additional disadvantage for not having the being hit requirement, make the effect of lowering our defense and parry last 6 seconds. Note the 20% damage increase is only for the CA when used in defense stance. From offense stance, you should be able to double up this CA. Note: Use the skill in offense stance with care; it still increases your hate position. *Amazing Reflexes - This used to be a class defining ability, but now it would be more appropriate to call this skill Reflexes because a whole lot of other classes are much more amazing at getting around aoes than we are now. Do not worry, I am not asking for 100% aoe avoid again or any more aoe avoidance for that matter, but I do want to put the "Amazing" back in the skill. Fix: Add a passive buff to the skill that gives +10% Reuse, +10% Casting Speed, +10% Recovery. When Amazing reflexes triggers, have it give +15 Haste, and lower any CAs currently on a reuse by 1 second. Also, when Amazing Reflexes triggers, it should extend the effect to our Thugs. Alternatively, +10% proc chance passive, and when the skill triggers double proc rate for the duration it triggers. There are a lot of things that could be done with this skill. *Thieves Guild - First of all, thank you for making this skill worth something. The only thing this needs is to allow spells to trigger thieves guild for the brigand as well as CAs. Currently it is limiting as far as targets go, since we only get the benefit if a CA is used (confirm?). *Double up - This is truly a class defining skill. All it needs is to work with every and any CA from our class and from AAs. This needs to be remembered for all future AAs that are CAs. Currently it is missing this capability with: Shenanigans, Sunder, Change of Engagement, Dance of Metal (this would not be a good use for the skill in my opinion though), Band of Thugs (I should be able to have 6 thugs if I want), Beg for Mercy, Honor Among Thieves, and Pris de Fer. *Daring Advance - Let ability modifier add to the damage portion of the CA. Rob – Here is a case where the debuff effect of the CA lowers the targets offense instead of defense. Something as easy as the next hit after Rob does +10% damage would work, but something that makes the enemy die quicker in the end is more up the brigands ally. Puncture - Again with lowering the attack skill instead of defense skill. Now this one I personally happen to like, but to be consistent, it should help the target die faster in some way instead. Beg for Mercy - Great skill, but the reuse was increased by a bit too much. I'd like to see 20 seconds shaved off the reuse.Too be continued...

fxdurand888

08-02-2011, 01:36 AM

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------AA improvements (since you are revamping AA anyways)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***************Rogue Tree*************** *Opportunistic Cover - I read notes that you plan to change this to no longer require a shield and give +2.5(or was it 2 I cant remember) DPS per rank. This is almost the good fix for this skill, just one thing however, do not eliminate a potential play-style for the class. Fix: Add +2.5 DPS per rank when not using a shield.Add +7.5 DPS per rank when using a shield. This will allow those brigands who play there character in every single way to still gain the benefit from using a shield and increased dps when brig tanking. Since you usually always add at least 2-3 of our aas to enhance our tanking ability, it would not make sense to go and take some of that away now. I personally like the added functionality and feel like it adds a unique roll to my character. Please do not do anything further to diminish or take that away.(more on this later) Make my proposed fix and more like this in the future to make all brigands of all play styles happy. *Swear - Keep the effect and turn it into a combat art that does decent AOE damage, or add a small amount of AOE auto attack per rank. *Formation - With the massive increase to auto attack damage, using a shield in formation no longer provides a comparable increase in survival as it does a loss in DPS. Fix: Increase any combination of these things to a suitable amount for the dps loss: Increase mitigation of Formation 495 is laughable at this point (this bonus has not scaled well over the levels), increase block chance of Formation, it takes a lot to really see an increase in block chance since round shields have a low shield factor, increase health amount of Formation, or my favorite idea, but I think way to over powered; Formation additionally grants the use of Kite/Tower shields. On the topic of our defense tree - When you revamped the wisdom tree you took away something very useful that I want back. We used to get as one of the skills: Caster will Parry 10% of incoming attacks, attacks from all quadrants have the same chance of being parried. This needs to find its way back into our AAs, and I think it should be split across AAs in the stamina line, since it IS for tanking after all. Again I say: Since you usually always add at least 2-3 of our aas to enhance our tanking ability, it would not make sense to go and take some of that away now. I personally like the added functionality and feel like it adds a unique roll to my character. Please do not do anything further to diminish or take that away. *Traumatic Swipe - For an end line AA skill... this move needs to hit harder. At my +289% total potency I think a fair amount is: 5000-8000. Also, if you could make it a point to not forget we have this skill and make it useful for all monsters; that would be a bonus. *Avast Ye - Let ability modifier add to the damage portion of the CA. Lunge Reversal - Refresh the effect every 5 seconds instead of 15. If it does not work with block, it should. *Remarkable Mobility - This seems like a very low return on MA per rank, correct me if I am wrong. I would like to see it give 20 MA at rank 10. Coule - This attack needs to deal more damage considering the long reuse. At my +289% potency given the reuse, and other AA CAs of ours I think it should do: 7500-9000 *Thief's Prowess - If someone cared about hate enough to go down this line and they are getting attacked, it is already too late. This AA needs a complete rework. The only way I would say this AA should stay is if it causes a drop of target in PVP. I have never speced this so I am not sure how it works in PVP… I do however seem to remember an update note saying that passive deaggro skills no longer work in PVP. PVP is not my main play function on my brigand, but I would not ask that any change be made for those that do enjoy PVP as their main function and use this skill. However, if I am correct that this has no value in PVP, then this skill needs to go. Fix: The int line doesn’t really have anything that awesome going for it, so lets try to change that. Maybe make the AA give +1% trigger chance per rank. Another option could be combat arts deal +0.5% damage per rank when used from behind.More to be continued...

fxdurand888

08-02-2011, 01:37 AM

****************Brigand Tree**************** This is the most terrible tree we have and I am sure anyone who is a real brigand would agree. It comes as no surprise that I took a 3 year break from the game shortly after the devs crapped this pile of stink onto our class. Well while you are doing changes to AAs, this is your chance to make right with brigands, don’t mess it up. We don’t get anything all that great from our end lines in EOF either. Tenure is cool, but not great. Enhance Murderous Rake – Add +1% base and critical damage per rank. Enhance Sneak – Each rank should additionally grant stealth for more monsters that could normally see stealth. Enhance Puncture – This further increases offensive debuffing and is not in line with our class role. As such, add +2% to base and critical damage per rank. *Enhance Defensive Poisons – The benefit from this AA is nominal and part of the crapping on brigands tree that is EOF. Fix: Change to Poisonous Strikes – Add +1 to poison trigger chance per rank. Alternatively, make it a self buff that adds poison damage to every attack, melee and CAs included. Kind of like the legendary weapon from Mistmoore Castle, I think it was called The Maestro’s Flame or something like that. It was a legendary weapon that added like 62 damage to all melee hits (weapon and CA). Now it would need to do a lot more damage than that obviously. It should also be effected by potency, crit bonus, ability mod, agi, and able to crit. *Enhance Desperate Thrust - +50% to hit is worthless, exchange for +3% critical damage per rank. Enhance Cheap Shot – At rank 5 it should have the added effect of getting a full duration vs. heroic mobs. Additionally, each rank should give it damage and turn it into a damage/stun attack. At +289% potency, it should do 869-1258 per rank. *Enhance Evade – This skill should be swapped out to enhance a different skill. A true pile of stink this AA is. *Enhance Barroom Negotiations – Again with hit chance on a CA, it is awesome that I need to list almost every AA in the Brigand tree as a candidate for improvement. Exchange + hit chance for +1% base and critical damage per rank. Enhance Shenanigans – Also increase + critical damage by 3% per rank *Enhance Rob – Another pile of steaming crap in its current state. This is another candidate for choosing another skill to enhance entirely. If however we have to take this Ca as one of the AAs… add +3% critical and base damage per rank or remove the stealth requirement at rank 5. Enhance Mug – Currently, I guess ok for PVP when fighting a brawler but very crappy otherwise, does anyone smell that? Turn it into a damaging CA with points in the AA. 700-1000 damage per rank at 289% potency. Also, at rank 5 it should always steal from the target; just because. *Enhance Vitality Poisons – I actually like this ability, but it has not aged well with the change of game mechanics and needs to be more powerful. Instead of 5% damage and healing per rank, make it 25% per rank. Enhance Debilitate – Add 1% base and critical damage per rank. Enhance Dispatch - Add 1% base and critical damage per rank. Enhance Cuss – I would like to see the dispelling become more powerful per rank. Either in level of dispel or preferably in additional types of buffs effected by the dispel. *Enhance Beg for Mercy – This effect was better when the recast was shorter and the effect different. Now however, it is pretty terrible. Change this to give a 15 second reuse reduction per rank. Enhance Gouge – At rank 5 allow this CA to be used from any position. Tenure – 12% is such an odd number. Make it 15% =p Honor Among Thieves (HAT) – I like this ability a lot; it just needs 1 small tweak. When a tank’s ward eats the damage of an attack that is intercepted with HAT, no power is healed. Now that I think about it, it might be if I am warded, but I am not sure what stops the power heal. Make this come before a ward, or allow us to get power in this scenario. I love the utility this adds to the class and that I can take part of a hit for the main tank in a pinch. Safehouse – Can non-pvp servers get the unlimited range back please? =p *Enhance Battery and Assault – Again with debuffing a mobs offensive capabilities, and as an end line AA? This is the biggest piece of rotting dung I have ever seen. This is more the role of a swash not a brig and should never have found its way to our tree. Mind you I would not wish this as an end line on anyone, not even a swash. Fix:Get rid of Enhance Battery and assault. Replace with Triple Cross: adds 1.5 seconds to double up duration for registering CAs. - enough said.More to be continued... character limits suck

fxdurand888

08-02-2011, 01:38 AM

<a name="OLE_LINK1">****************</a>Shadows Tree**************** *Hidden Adversary – This is redundant and is painfully obvious that the creative mind behind brig/rogue just couldn’t think of any good ideas for us. Fix: This could be a candidate for a whole different skill to be upgraded. However, lets just say we have to have this skill upgraded, instead of hate reduction increase, make it add 1 hate position reduction per rank at 2 points a rank up to 2 ranks. *Poison Mastery – Was this ever a good AA? Either add 20% poison damage per rank, or drop this entirely for something else. *Noxious Toxin – Can you require the person making brigand AAs to actually play one so they would realize how useless this is? This is the most useless skill of all, hands down. Improving the duration of food and drink by 2.5% per rank in the 1st line of shadows owns this AA. Whoever, decided this is what brigs should get as an AA in this tree should retire and never make skills for any game ever again. Replace this with an AA that gives our character a 20% bonus to all stats and damage every time people like the idiot behind this skill give us a crappy AA. j/k about the skill real fix is just below: Fix: See my above idea talking about Band of Thugs and replace this crap with that. *Rugged Shielding - I enjoy the tanking capabilities my brigand can have and as such find all the tanking AA options useful and can see their appeal for other brigands that like the versatility. I feel that way about all the AAs geared towards tanking except this one. For being in the final row of the shadows tree, this sucks badly. The one in the scout shadow line is better. The one in the rogue shadow line is better. Either replace this with something all play-styles can benefit from, or make this a much better option for the tanking brigand. As it stands, when I go to my mirror and bust out the tank spec, not one point goes into this terrible skill. Fix: To make this viable for tanking make it add 20% mitigation increase to Rugged per rank and add a small amount of shield block per rank. *Dispatch Defense – This is terribly redundant. We had enough mitigation decrease with the skill without any AA. Luckily we had a creative person trying really hard to come up with good skills for us… pfft. Fix: Take away the mitigation reduction increase (or not it really doesn’t matter) and replace it with this effect: The brigands party will benefit from increased potency while dispatch is in effect: +1% potency per rank for the group and +1.5% potency per rank for the brigand against a monster with dispatch on it. This effect is only group wide and does not effect the whole raid. Will to Survive – I always felt this CA should have done 10-20% more damage then it does. **************************Sentinel’s Fate Tree************************** Ruthless Riposte – This effect should be on any successful parry, it happens rarely enough, otherwise get rid of this skill and replace it with something good. Evading Awareness – In my opinion, this is another crappy skill. Make this increase all poison trigger chances, all trigger chances, or just make it something else entirely. Only way this should stay is if PVPers find it useful for causing targets to drop. *Help for the Merciful – This could have been cool back when the reuse was much lower, but now it is not something a brigand would use in most cases. Replace this with something all play-styles can benefit from. *Detect Weakness – Another offensive debuff, wrong class guys get them straight. Perhaps add the effect of target takes +3% damage from the brigand’s next hit per rank. ********************Heroic Tree******************** I would love to see more points added to this tree because I like almost every AA in it. Change of Engagement – This CA should hit 15-20% harder.<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Pris de Fer<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> – This CA should have 1 minute less of a reuse and hit 25-35% harder.

Shotneedle

08-03-2011, 05:31 PM

<cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Brigand*Band of Thugs - This skill is disappointing because it has the potential to be a class defining skill and yet instead is in its current state. 33.6 seconds for the Thugs to do 20,633 damage in 54 total hits; combat arts and poisons included - or 614 damage per second and about 382 damage each hit. Woopee. Fix: AOE Avoid, shared stats.Since we are revamping AA... lets go back in time and unask that they remove the band of thugs AA skill from the final line in the shadows tree. So the new skill has 2 ranks at 3 points each and grants: +1 Thug +30% aoe avoid (for the thugs), and 15 second reuse reduction per rank. Get rid of the useless Noxious Toxin AA... how worthless can it get really? Noxious Toxin is not useless at all. The most (only) useless AA in that line is Rugged Shielding.</blockquote><cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote>*Opportunistic Cover - I read notes that you plan to change this to no longer require a shield and give +2.5(or was it 2 I cant remember) DPS per rank. This is almost the good fix for this skill, just one thing however, do not eliminate a potential play-style for the class. Fix: Add +2.5 DPS per rank when not using a shield.Add +7.5 DPS per rank when using a shield. This will allow those brigands who play there character in every single way to still gain the benefit from using a shield and increased dps when brig tanking. Since you usually always add at least 2-3 of our aas to enhance our tanking ability, it would not make sense to go and take some of that away now. I personally like the added functionality and feel like it adds a unique roll to my character. Please do not do anything further to diminish or take that away.(more on this later) Make my proposed fix and more like this in the future to make all brigands of all play styles happy. *Thief's Prowess - If someone cared about hate enough to go down this line and they are getting attacked, it is already too late. This AA needs a complete rework. The only way I would say this AA should stay is if it causes a drop of target in PVP. I have never speced this so I am not sure how it works in PVP… I do however seem to remember an update note saying that passive deaggro skills no longer work in PVP. PVP is not my main play function on my brigand, but I would not ask that any change be made for those that do enjoy PVP as their main function and use this skill. However, if I am correct that this has no value in PVP, then this skill needs to go. Fix: The int line doesn’t really have anything that awesome going for it, so lets try to change that. Maybe make the AA give +1% trigger chance per rank. Another option could be combat arts deal +0.5% damage per rank when used from behind.<div></div></blockquote><cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Enhance Gouge – At rank 5 allow this CA to be used from any position.Honor Among Thieves (HAT) – I like this ability a lot; it just needs 1 small tweak. When a tank’s ward eats the damage of an attack that is intercepted with HAT, no power is healed. Now that I think about it, it might be if I am warded, but I am not sure what stops the power heal. Make this come before a ward, or allow us to get power in this scenario. I love the utility this adds to the class and that I can take part of a hit for the main tank in a pinch. </blockquote><cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote> *Poison Mastery – Was this ever a good AA? Either add 20% poison damage per rank, or drop this entirely for something else.Ruthless Riposte – This effect should be on any successful parry, it happens rarely enough, otherwise get rid of this skill and replace it with something good.*Detect Weakness – Perhaps add the effect of target takes +3% damage from the brigand’s next hit per rank.</blockquote>The problem with these threads is people put too many things that are fine as is in them. The things I quoted are the only things that need to be even read, and Band of Thugs is really the only thing that needs to be changed.

Nevao

08-03-2011, 05:44 PM

I just saw this myself and while I appreciate the OP effort I get completely lost trying to read through it. Brigs are actually in pretty good shape as-is. A lot of our useless abilities and issues have been addressed by either tweaks or content adjustments. While there's always things that can be tweaked I think the biggest items are:<ul><li>Thugs - Though I have no idea how to fix this without shared stats on dumbfires. At that point it won't matter as we'll all be rerolling Summoners or at the least bowing to our new overlords</li><li>EoF Tanking Line - I'm not sure if this is a stat problem or expectation problem but this really doesn't help you hold hate, it just lets you take bigger hits. If it's just intended for survivability, or we're only meant to be snap aggro and release style tanks, than it's just an expectation problem. If it was meant to help us get and hold hate it really doesn't do the job. Of all the things that Devs could be spending time on though I'm not sure this is where I would want the focus.</li></ul>In general with these AA changes I'm not seeing my spec changing dramatically, other than to pick up Enhance Shank (thanks for this by the way!) and Enhance Shennagins (for fun). I'll probably change a few other things as well, but just becuase I'm in there monkeying around and there have been a few things I wanted to try unrelated to this revamp.

Geothe

08-03-2011, 05:54 PM

Band of thugs needs to be totally redone. Its been stated since the ability came out.Only other base ability I think could used adjusting is Shenanigans.Just change it to a straight up CA attack, removing the reactive trigger damage portion of it.Keep the Hate position increase (and # of increase AAs) as is. Having to actually be hit to do damage with the ability is a horrible design.

Nevao

08-03-2011, 05:58 PM

<cite>Geothe wrote:</cite><blockquote>Band of thugs needs to be totally redone. Its been stated since the ability came out.Only other base ability I think could used adjusting is Shenanigans.Just change it to a straight up CA attack, removing the reactive trigger damage portion of it.Keep the Hate position increase (and # of increase AAs) as is. Having to actually be hit to do damage with the ability is a horrible design.</blockquote>How could I forget about this one. I don't really expect this to change, but man it would be nice if it did.

Cocytus

08-04-2011, 01:34 AM

<cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------AA improvements (since you are revamping AA anyways)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***************Rogue Tree*************** *Opportunistic Cover - I read notes that you plan to change this to no longer require a shield and give +2.5(or was it 2 I cant remember) DPS per rank. This is almost the good fix for this skill, just one thing however, do not eliminate a potential play-style for the class. Fix: Add +2.5 DPS per rank when not using a shield.Add +7.5 DPS per rank when using a shield. This will allow those brigands who play there character in every single way to still gain the benefit from using a shield and increased dps when brig tanking. Since you usually always add at least 2-3 of our aas to enhance our tanking ability, it would not make sense to go and take some of that away now. I personally like the added functionality and feel like it adds a unique roll to my character. Please do not do anything further to diminish or take that away.(more on this later) Make my proposed fix and more like this in the future to make all brigands of all play styles happy. -Good ideas here. I like this. *Swear - Keep the effect and turn it into a combat art that does decent AOE damage, or add a small amount of AOE auto attack per rank. -Don't know that I like this. Between resists and misses, I think I'd rather run the risk of resists, at leasts when it comes to making a straight up AE attack with threat. AE auto would be fin instead, but meh...I'd be happy just to see the threat doubled.*Formation - With the massive increase to auto attack damage, using a shield in formation no longer provides a comparable increase in survival as it does a loss in DPS.Fix: Increase any combination of these things to a suitable amount for the dps loss: Increase mitigation of Formation 495 is laughable at this point (this bonus has not scaled well over the levels), increase block chance of Formation, it takes a lot to really see an increase in block chance since round shields have a low shield factor, increase health amount of Formation, or my favorite idea, but I think way to over powered; Formation additionally grants the use of Kite/Tower shields. -You do not need a shield for this AA. (except the block portion). I wouldn't particularly want to see this changed unless it's for the better regardless of shield being off/on and what stance you're in, though I like the idea of being able to use higher shield classes (the current stat and itemization fiasco may prevent that from being possible though). At this point I don't really trust them to do something that doesn't have to do with one of these things, thus eliminating options. I feel if this was changed, block would need to be doubled or perhaps even tripled, and threat amount from damage maybe doubled or somewhere around that. Or even beef up the mit maybe to a flat % of your armor (that'd be better). ANy of these things would be ok. But I mainly wanted to point out you don't need a shield for this AA. Opportunistic cover was the only thing in this tree requiring a shield aside from the block (that goes without saying, imo). Hp% does not really need to change up or down. I would be particularly upset if it went down, which is why I'm kind of sensitive to changing this skill at all. On the topic of our defense tree - When you revamped the wisdom tree you took away something very useful that I want back. We used to get as one of the skills: Caster will Parry 10% of incoming attacks, attacks from all quadrants have the same chance of being parried. (riposte, actually, but yes I hated this too!) This needs to find its way back into our AAs, and I think it should be split across AAs in the stamina line, since it IS for tanking after all. Again I say: Since you usually always add at least 2-3 of our aas to enhance our tanking ability, it would not make sense to go and take some of that away now. I personally like the added functionality and feel like it adds a unique roll to my character. Please do not do anything further to diminish or take that away.(heartly agreed!) *Traumatic Swipe - For an end line AA skill... this move needs to hit harder. At my +289% total potency I think a fair amount is: 5000-8000. Also, if you could make it a point to not forget we have this skill and make it useful for all monsters; that would be a bonus.(This is a sad case, like the 1235901209501386256 other cases, where they said 'Hey, here, have something cool...now we are gonna take it away!) *Avast Ye - Let ability modifier add to the damage portion of the CA. Lunge Reversal - Refresh the effect every 5 seconds instead of 15. If it does not work with block, it should. (Haven't used this in awhile, not sure how it works now, but it used to have separate timers for offensive and defensive procs. IE when your target parries etc or when you parry etc. That was a fair balance.) *Remarkable Mobility - This seems like a very low return on MA per rank, correct me if I am wrong. I would like to see it give 20 MA at rank 10. Coule - This attack needs to deal more damage considering the long reuse. At my +289% potency given the reuse, and other AA CAs of ours I think it should do: 7500-9000 *Thief's Prowess - If someone cared about hate enough to go down this line and they are getting attacked, it is already too late. This AA needs a complete rework. The only way I would say this AA should stay is if it causes a drop of target in PVP. I have never speced this so I am not sure how it works in PVP… I do however seem to remember an update note saying that passive deaggro skills no longer work in PVP. PVP is not my main play function on my brigand, but I would not ask that any change be made for those that do enjoy PVP as their main function and use this skill. However, if I am correct that this has no value in PVP, then this skill needs to go. Fix: The int line doesn’t really have anything that awesome going for it, so lets try to change that. Maybe make the AA give +1% trigger chance per rank. Another option could be combat arts deal +0.5% damage per rank when used from behind.More to be continued...</blockquote>

fxdurand888

08-04-2011, 10:27 AM

Buffrat, while I highly disagree that Noxious Toxin is not useless, I would not ask the devs to remove any skill another Brigand might like. Options are able to make us unique afterall. Do however consider this: *Noxious Toxin - Move this skill into the Scout section of the Shadows tree. Replace the spot in the Brigand tree with something more class specific. You have to admint this is a very generic skill for being in the Brigand portion of our tree.Another time and another post I'd like to debate the usefulness of this skill, but I'd like to keep this one as a general discussion for improvements not the usefulness of 1 skill.Thank you for constructive and intelligent feedback.

Nevao

08-04-2011, 10:59 AM

<cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Buffrat, while I highly disagree that Noxious Toxin is not useless, I would not ask the devs to remove any skill another Brigand might like. Options are able to make us unique afterall. Do however consider this: *Noxious Toxin - Move this skill into the Scout section of the Shadows tree. Replace the spot in the Brigand tree with something more class specific. You have to admint this is a very generic skill for being in the Brigand portion of our tree.Another time and another post I'd like to debate the usefulness of this skill, but I'd like to keep this one as a general discussion for improvements not the usefulness of 1 skill.Thank you for constructive and intelligent feedback.</blockquote>This is an example off an AA that may not be useful in your situation but may be to others. My inital reaction to this was that it was not terribly useful in raids (my primary in game activity). But that was for me provided everyone else was casting their Debuffs on top of mine. Couple that with the fact that we don't currently have a Lock or Necro so having nox debuffed as high as possible is not as big a priority, again for me. That doesn't mean that it's not useful for Heoric content where you may not have the same access to additonal debuffs and can't as easily hit the caps.In addtion unless I'm way off base, poisons will trigger off AE attacks. Provided that's true (and I'm fairly sure it is) then it will help with AE Content where the debuffs are typically much lower since the vast majority of mit/resist debuffs are ST only. I'm fairly sure your Lock would nto consider this compeletly useless.TL;DR point: Remember when looking at an AA's usefuleness you have to consider Solo, Small Grouping, Grouping, Raiding and PVP. Any given AA may not be good for all of those but that doesn't mean that it needs to be changed.

fxdurand888

08-04-2011, 11:02 AM

Cocytus - Sorry let me be a little more clear on formation.First I am aware that you do not need a shield for formation. I was taking the perspective of a brigand tanking, who would most likely be using a shield to maximize their tanking ability. It used to be very close to even in regards to dps lost for survivability gained. However, with the multi attack surge, much more dps is lost then survivability gained. This is why I thought they should add more defensive bonuses to this skill. +block and more mit would make the most sense. The flat % mit buff is a good idea another option would be reduce incoming damage by x%I am glad I am not the only one mad about the riposte 10% of incoming attacks/parry from all quadrants loss.Thanks for the constructive feedback.

fxdurand888

08-04-2011, 12:12 PM

Nevao - I am sorry you had a hard time reading the post. Basically look at the combat art or AA in bold. Afterwards there will either be a rant and/or a suggestion to fix the skill. If the rant is long, you can skip it and look for Fix: which will have the suggestion to improve the CA/AA below it.Comments like this:"Brigs are actually in pretty good shape as-is."will let us slowly fall back into mediocrity. Lets not wait till we stink to have improvements made to our class, especially with AA/CA that are broken or weak.If these two statements are true:Summoners are t2 dps.Brigands are t2 dps.We have some room for some love.Anyway, this thread isnt about if brigs are good enough or not, lets not get off topic. It is for the AA/CA improvements/fixes that could be done or we would like to see for our class with the introduction of the AA revamp.

Nevao

08-04-2011, 02:04 PM

<cite>fxdurand888 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Nevao - I am sorry you had a hard time reading the post. Basically look at the combat art or AA in bold. Afterwards there will either be a rant and/or a suggestion to fix the skill. If the rant is long, you can skip it and look for Fix: which will have the suggestion to improve the CA/AA below it.Comments like this:"Brigs are actually in pretty good shape as-is."will let us slowly fall back into mediocrity. Lets not wait till we stink to have improvements made to our class, especially with AA/CA that are broken or weak.If these two statements are true:Summoners are t2 dps.Brigands are t2 dps.We have some room for some love.Anyway, this thread isnt about if brigs are good enough or not, lets not get off topic. It is for the AA/CA improvements/fixes that could be done or we would like to see for our class with the introduction of the AA revamp.</blockquote>I had no problem understanding your formatting. It was the giant walls of text of opinion (and most of this is bloated personal opinion as opposed to ojbective facts) that made it difficult to read.My problem is I disagree with your overall approach. You're asking for just short of a complete revamp of the Brig tree and several other AA and abilities, some of which you don't understand the benefit of. Along the way you continuely insult the devs which really goes a long way to making your case. And to top it off some of your requests are so arbitrary that it's laughable (like make Tenure 15% instead of 12% becuase you think 12% is a strange number). If you really want to affect change, pick the top few problems with the class (or in this case AAs), explain why they are a real problem (not a preference) and then propose changes. Don't just throw out a massive list of requests. In the 7 years I've played this game I've never seen these massive lists acted upon in a meaningful way. Short lists on the other hand, happen a lot more often.I really don't think you realize how much "love" Brigs have received in the last year. Our worst abilities (outside of Thugs which is tied to a game wide dumbfire pet issue) were replaced with things that are actually useful. We have hands down the best Max Health Debuffs in game now that that functionality has been revamped. If that's not your thing, or you're lucky and don't have to take CoE becuase someone else has, Sunder is hands down the best pure DPS endline out there. And as it has been forever we have the best Mit/Resist debuffs in the game. Toss in the fact that Traumatic Swipe is now working on about half the mobs again and we now have multiple avenues of utility. Do we parse as high as the conjy you want to compare us to? No, but when you have one raid slot left and have neither class who is the raid going to take? Unless you're just a wretched player or personality, it's going to be the Brig.But what do I know? I obviously do not understand as much about the class as you apparently do...

tigressb

08-04-2011, 03:16 PM

Add my vote for tweaking Thugs (and all dumbfire pets) somehow to make it worth casting aside for the laughs I get from my macro tied to the skill. Also please please take the requirement to get hit by the mob off of Shenanigans! Leave the hate increase and debuffs in by all means - but if I use it as a snap tool to try and save the squishies in my group all it does is get me killed in the process when I get drilled. Worse yet if I use it to see how hard it will hit the tank just snaps the mob off me before I get hit, so I'm just lying there not doing anything useful. Maybe if I tried grouping with bad tanks I'd get hit when I tried it lol.If the reactive component wasn't required I could use it as another high damage CA when I have a good tank that can snap it back off me (so only in heroic/raid settings with tanks in my guild, basically) or in the times where the tank dies and I'm trying to keep the healer from following closely thereafter (in a heroic setting). I don't even bother using this the few times I solo since it's just faster to autoattack/ranged attack.

fxdurand888

08-04-2011, 05:14 PM

Nevao -Complete revamp of brig tree? Most of the suggestions were to add small increases of +1pot/cb per rank to some of the skills. Read OP before posting? Not that a complete revamp would be bad either because the Brig Tree blows overall.The purpsose of the post is to put ideas out there in hopes that "some" of them will be used to boost the brig a bit. Again I reiterate read OP. The introduction states that I hope some combinations of the ideas can be used to boost the class. The introduction also explains Ability with a * in front of it = skill most important to look at.This just in, an AA revamp is being done, if changes are not made to the AAs now then when?This issue of yours so worth mentioning: "(like make Tenure 15% instead of 12% becuase you think 12% is a strange number). "Note the =p after this statement in the OP. Silly tongue out smile. aka not serious. Obtain a sense of humor. And see above about reading OP.All the so called love you say brigs have received is not a true statement. Rogues on the otherhand have indeed got some love.Just so you know regards to this: "We have hands down the best Max Health Debuffs in game now that that functionality has been revamped." - It is true we do, and I do have the fortune of 2nd brig in raid that is on CoE duty. However before the fuctionality was revamped as you like to call it, we were debuffing max health for more. Not an intentional attack against Brigands, but a slight nerf none the less.Yay our ability that is supposed to work now works 50% of the time! Way to push for excellence, lulz.Was this necessary Nevao? "Unless you're just a wretched player or personality, it's going to be the Brig." Reflecting much?You said it best: "But what do I know? I obviously do not understand as much about the class as you apparently do..."Yeah probably not.Putting down your suggestions for improvements would be helpful arguing with me is doing no one any good.Say what you will in any future posts I will not be responding to you unless you have constructive feedback on the subject of this thread. Since I get the fact that you didn't read the OP here is the threads topic: "AA revamp for Brigands a good start, but you missed some things" Bold and underlinded for your reading pleasure.I'd love to hear your suggestions on the AAs or CAs that could use an improvement, and how you would like to see them improved!

Onodi

08-06-2011, 01:52 PM

don't play the class but I play with a brig that is quite beastly from a DPS standpoint... give the poor guy a transfer or at minimum a single target hate increase. lets end the no hate mods for brigs and rangers with gu61 (fix the hawk for rangers)

fxdurand888

08-10-2011, 11:14 AM

Dauvien - I am not quite as concerned with this since in our heroic tree we can get up to 25% dehate if we had to. Not to mention with the AA changes being proposed, we will no longer need to waste points on terrible int line AAs(I have to say i am looking forward to getting Feign with the new AA changes being made) to get Evasiveness, which will give another -1.5% per rank. I cant imagine wasting 20 points into dehate, but if need be, we could get ourselves to -40% hate mod between the 2 AAs. There are definately some things in my first four posts that could be looked at though.Thugs, Shenanigans, the EOF tree and specifically the Enhance Battery and Assault endline AA are some of the main ones.Thanks for the post Dauvien.

Geothe

08-12-2011, 04:31 PM

Okay, beyond changing some actual class abilities (thugs, Shenanigans, etc).Here is my take on Brigand Tree AAs that could use some adjusting to make them fit into the current game / not make them useless.Enhance Street Smarts: Currenly adds around 800 spell mitigation with 5 points. When players are now reaching 30-50k mitigation from gear, 800 means jack squat.Suggested Change: Change this to flat out damage reduction, like 5% (1% per point). Still fits in with the intention of improving survivability without being horribly outdated.Enhance: Beg for Mercy. Currently adds physical mitigation to the target. This also doesnt really do squat being as Beg for Mercy already has a flat out ~50% damage reduction.Suggested Change: Have the points spent increase the number of triggers the ability grants, as well as increasing the duration of the ability. (Or even just greatly increase the duration. So with max points spent it can last liek 45 seconds, or until all 3 triggers are used up).Enhance: Shadow Slip. This has already been changed to increase the treat reduction granted by the ability. Plain threat reduction is completely useless. Hate Position drops are all that matter. Suggested Adjustment: Have the AA decrease the reuse (as it does now) as well as increase the number of hate position drops. Basically make the ability the opposite of Enhance Shenanigans.Enhance: Battery and Assault. More of a dev clarification desired. Could it be verified that this AA actually does something in current PvE (especially Raid Content). Decreasing AE radius by 30% means that with modern AEs with their damage gradients, the ability should make them tighter. ie The highest damage is usually from 1-9m radius, This AA should shrink that high damage radius to 1-6m instead. Does it actually function like that, or (and most likely) have Raid mobs (and other mobs) abilities been changed to just not be affected by this at all. If that is the case, this ability truelly is 100% useless and MUST be replaced.