Why does the EoF AA double stab sux again?

Siclone · 02-28-2007, 12:24 PM

Been reading allot of the AA stuff, the ability seems good a face value but once you get into the detail, posted here, they seem rather pointless.

Not sure if they wanted to intential nerf Assassin or it was just bad game design.

Anyway, whats the deal with double stab,,,I think I am saying it right, the one on the very bottom next to the bleed one

t0gar · 02-28-2007, 08:34 PM

After a CA there's a period of time (.5 secs? been so long...) that you can't cast another CA. What this AA does is it takes that .5 secs and cuts it down to .25 secs. So basically you can cast your next CA .25 secs faster... lag will make it useless for some people and you tend to run out of CA's to cast and have to wait for timers to repop as it is. This is good if you just spam every CA that's up when it's up at the beginning of a fight and might raise your dps a little in groups(though by a little i really mean a little), but you'll have more downtime to just watch the numbers come off your weapons any other time.

Siclone · 03-01-2007, 01:49 AM

wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half.

I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said.

Jayad · 03-01-2007, 04:48 AM

To make it worse you have to put 20 points into a really worthless AA tree. (From a PVE raiding perspective) If you solo or PVP it might be something to consider because the rest of the tree is pretty useful for that.

brun · 03-04-2007, 02:17 AM

Siclone wrote:

wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half.
I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said.

--- I felt we were nerfed by omission.

ChildofHate · 03-05-2007, 12:05 PM

Siclone wrote:

wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half.
I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said.

Ya, it's just bad game design overall. Unfortunately, repeated stabbing is about the best we can get of the 4 skills. Frontload is a waste of time since it's a temp buff that has to be cast and not a perm buff. so re-tarded. Bleed almost seems worthwhile as well until you actually see how it affects heroic and epic mobs...

dont expect any of it to get fixed though. It would impact pvp too much and everyone knows, if pvp gets unbalanced, pve is going to suffer for it. I also know this is true from doing pvp on VZ in EQ1 for over 3 of the 5 years i played it. I know how well pvp affects pve. The same thing happens on EQ2. The EoF aa's prove just that, you can attempt to argue it but bottomline is, that's the facts and history of how soe works.

Hadanelith · 03-05-2007, 01:29 PM

ChildofHate wrote:

Siclone wrote:
wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half.
I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said.
Ya, it's just bad game design overall. Unfortunately, repeated stabbing is about the best we can get of the 4 skills. Frontload is a waste of time since it's a temp buff that has to be cast and not a perm buff. so re-tarded. Bleed almost seems worthwhile as well until you actually see how it affects heroic and epic mobs...
dont expect any of it to get fixed though. It would impact pvp too much and everyone knows, if pvp gets unbalanced, pve is going to suffer for it. I also know this is true from doing pvp on VZ in EQ1 for over 3 of the 5 years i played it. I know how well pvp affects pve. The same thing happens on EQ2. The EoF aa's prove just that, you can attempt to argue it but bottomline is, that's the facts and history of how soe works.

I'm just going to run a quick analysis of all 4 ending abilities along with comments about the main line for informational purposes.

* Bleeding - End ability is great for soloing as it allows you to reduce a mob's HP by 20% effectively. Note that I say 20% due to the nature of Mark, it tends to expire quickly in all situations other than Solo. If it doesn't proc you do indeed get a 25% total HP reduction on solo-con mobs. That's pretty big. On Heroics it allows for a 12% HP reduction (again, ignoring Mark) which is also substantial. The 4% you can reduce a raid mob's HP seems insignificant, but 4% of 3-million = 120k; relatively miniscule but still a substantial debuff. Furthermore, the entire line adds to your DPS. By far and away the most worthwhile tree.

* Tricks & Repeated Stabbing - This is a line that is quite worthwhile for people who don't raid. If you raid, this line is worthless as NONE of the special effects of abilities in this tree affects Epics other than Crippling Strike. "But Constriction affects Epics, too!" you say? Indeed, but its recast time is already shorter than its duration. That particular improvement is again only good for soloing and groups where mobs will die faster than the recast. Also, if you note the phrasing of Repeated Stabbing, it's quite clear what it does: "Improves Recovery Time by 100%." Recovery = delay between usages; RE-USE = cooldown timer. Really those .25 seconds DO add up over a long encounter such as a raid, but the rest of the tree is worthless for raiding. You have better ways of spending 21+ points.

* Physicality & Getaway - This is an interesting line, as the abilities here are improvements regardless of Solo, Group, PVP, or Raid. The Defensive Stance modifier is wonderful for soloing, small groups, or trying to save your own hide if you grab aggro in a raid. It's on the way to Exacting, and the Exacting modifier is a wonderful thing; 40 second shorter recast allows for many many more uses over the course of a raid, and more frequent use in soloing/grouping. A 15% increase on Honed Reflexes (making it 52% - 55% depending on ADP3 or MST1) is another great improvement since the buff lasts for a full minute - and yes, I've tested, it adds an additional total 3% per rank, not 3% of the existing amount (which is what some AA's have done in the past with other class's abilities). The only bad thing(s) about this line are that the points spent in Sprint are a drain from useful abilities, and the overall effectiveness of the Deadly Focus modifier isn't very good since it lasts such a short time (36 seconds) and because the ability and our self-buff already give so much DPS. The end-liner is very noteworthy as it allows us to dodge an AE once a minute in addition to giving us an extra in-combat stealth (never a bad thing); its TRUE utility however comes in activating it on the pull of mobs that use Curse of Insanity, or midfight on mobs with Stun/Stifle AEs. In the former case it allows you to avoid Curse altogether, and in the latter it lets you keep pummeling mobs while everyone else is stunned. Also just fun to use when training through zones since it gives you Sprint speed for a few seconds on termination with no power cost.

* Poisons & Frontload - The recent changes to Hemotoxin Poison make the Hemotoxin enhancer a much more viable option than it was just a few weeks ago. I haven't parsed it yet but in theory this AA, if taken to Rank 5, would make Hemotoxins do more damage than Caustics for a few reasons. For one, the recent change added 2 ticks to Hemotoxin in the same duration AND increased the damage per tick. As I look at an Exceptional Hemotoxin and Exceptional Caustic right now with most of my INT gear stripped (down to 110 INT), the Caustic does 452 per proc and Hemotoxin does 203 per tick (x7 ticks = 1,421 total) over 24 seconds. With the Hemotoxin AA, all 7 ticks now occur over 14 seconds. So long as you get at least 3 ticks of the Hemotoxin between procs, it does more damage than Caustic - this is especially true since on DoTs the ability on whole is calculated for Critical, not each tick; if the first tick crits, all the rest do, as has been proven by Graton and many other parsers examining our Melee DoT abilities and how they function with Melee Crits. Furthermore, this line allows us to enhance the Poison Debuff on our Snare and the hate reduction of Ignorant Bliss by a whopping 30%. The ability to modify our Apply Poison's proc chance is nice but will never be used by a raider in favor of either more points in other Poison abilities or in other lines altogether. The 25% (maximum) addition to Attribute Poisons is a nice touch, but up to personal taste as to whether you want to spend points here or not; it's a choice of whether you want to add marginally more Utility or marginally more DPS to your character. Frontload itself is a near-worthless ability; though nice in theory, it only works for 15 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown timer. Relying on your procs to go off multiple times in 15 seconds is not a good way to add into your DPS.

So, there you have it. In my personal opinion, all Assassins should have Bleed if for no other reason than the fact that you are, most likely, already spending 20+ points in the Bleeding line. Frontload is next to worthless, only exceeded by Repeated Stabbing UNLESS you are a strict soloer / grouper and already have spent 20 points in Tricks. Then, by all means, take it if you please. Getaway is a nice ability but does not necessarily warrant the expenditure of 20 points in the Physicality line, and you can get to Exacting (the best overall buff in the line) by going through Deadly Focus after dabbling in the Poisons line.

Mull that over and make your decisions.

-Hadanelith Raswrolski of Kithicor

Jayad · 03-05-2007, 04:15 PM

I like how frontload will actually make hemotoxin worse. That's classic SOE design.

Shinnar · 03-06-2007, 02:58 AM

exactly

Stormwitt · 03-06-2007, 03:22 AM

Nice post Hadanelith SMILEY

Norrsken · 03-06-2007, 06:27 AM

Jayad wrote:

I like how frontload will actually make hemotoxin worse. That's classic SOE design.

And the fix to that is to make hemotoxins not overwrite themselves. The way it really SHOULD have been from the [Removed for Content] get go. :/

Shinnar · 03-13-2007, 10:18 AM

It wouldn´t take much to make these EoF AAs more usefull. For Repeated stabbing - instead of halving time of recovery, reduce recovery time to 0.For Frontload - instead of that crappy effect, make it increase melee, ranged, spell and heal crits to 100 % for that 15 secs (or more SMILEY

) and it will be ok. Other skills could use some minor changes too, like that physical mitigation debuff for example... Why it reduces recast time instead of raising debuff value is a mystery to me SMILEY

Hadanelith · 03-13-2007, 11:47 AM

Shinnar wrote:

Other skills could use some minor changes too, like that physical mitigation debuff for example... Why it reduces recast time instead of raising debuff value is a mystery to me

Silly Shinnar.

Brigands and Swash can have powerful debuffs and Assassin-level DPS, we already know this. But Assassins having their DPS and Swash/Brig level debuffs is FORBIDDEN!!

-Hadanelith Raswrolski / Mossda Odis'Ossda, Kithicor Server

02-28-2007, 08:34 PM	#2
t0gar Loremaster Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 92	After a CA there's a period of time (.5 secs? been so long...) that you can't cast another CA. What this AA does is it takes that .5 secs and cuts it down to .25 secs. So basically you can cast your next CA .25 secs faster... lag will make it useless for some people and you tend to run out of CA's to cast and have to wait for timers to repop as it is. This is good if you just spam every CA that's up when it's up at the beginning of a fight and might raise your dps a little in groups(though by a little i really mean a little), but you'll have more downtime to just watch the numbers come off your weapons any other time. __________________ ____________________ Resident of Kithicor. Pawkeo - 70 Assassin - 69 Tailor Jido - 70 Fury

03-04-2007, 02:17 AM	#5
brun General Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 14	Siclone wrote: wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half. I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said. --- I felt we were nerfed by omission.

03-05-2007, 12:05 PM	#6
ChildofHate Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 298	Siclone wrote: wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half. I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said. Ya, it's just bad game design overall. Unfortunately, repeated stabbing is about the best we can get of the 4 skills. Frontload is a waste of time since it's a temp buff that has to be cast and not a perm buff. so re-tarded. Bleed almost seems worthwhile as well until you actually see how it affects heroic and epic mobs... dont expect any of it to get fixed though. It would impact pvp too much and everyone knows, if pvp gets unbalanced, pve is going to suffer for it. I also know this is true from doing pvp on VZ in EQ1 for over 3 of the 5 years i played it. I know how well pvp affects pve. The same thing happens on EQ2. The EoF aa's prove just that, you can attempt to argue it but bottomline is, that's the facts and history of how soe works.

03-05-2007, 01:29 PM	#7
Hadanelith Lord Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 197	ChildofHate wrote: Siclone wrote: wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half. I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said. Ya, it's just bad game design overall. Unfortunately, repeated stabbing is about the best we can get of the 4 skills. Frontload is a waste of time since it's a temp buff that has to be cast and not a perm buff. so re-tarded. Bleed almost seems worthwhile as well until you actually see how it affects heroic and epic mobs... dont expect any of it to get fixed though. It would impact pvp too much and everyone knows, if pvp gets unbalanced, pve is going to suffer for it. I also know this is true from doing pvp on VZ in EQ1 for over 3 of the 5 years i played it. I know how well pvp affects pve. The same thing happens on EQ2. The EoF aa's prove just that, you can attempt to argue it but bottomline is, that's the facts and history of how soe works. I'm just going to run a quick analysis of all 4 ending abilities along with comments about the main line for informational purposes. * Bleeding - End ability is great for soloing as it allows you to reduce a mob's HP by 20% effectively. Note that I say 20% due to the nature of Mark, it tends to expire quickly in all situations other than Solo. If it doesn't proc you do indeed get a 25% total HP reduction on solo-con mobs. That's pretty big. On Heroics it allows for a 12% HP reduction (again, ignoring Mark) which is also substantial. The 4% you can reduce a raid mob's HP seems insignificant, but 4% of 3-million = 120k; relatively miniscule but still a substantial debuff. Furthermore, the entire line adds to your DPS. By far and away the most worthwhile tree. * Tricks & Repeated Stabbing - This is a line that is quite worthwhile for people who don't raid. If you raid, this line is worthless as NONE of the special effects of abilities in this tree affects Epics other than Crippling Strike. "But Constriction affects Epics, too!" you say? Indeed, but its recast time is already shorter than its duration. That particular improvement is again only good for soloing and groups where mobs will die faster than the recast. Also, if you note the phrasing of Repeated Stabbing, it's quite clear what it does: "Improves Recovery Time by 100%." Recovery = delay between usages; RE-USE = cooldown timer. Really those .25 seconds DO add up over a long encounter such as a raid, but the rest of the tree is worthless for raiding. You have better ways of spending 21+ points. * Physicality & Getaway - This is an interesting line, as the abilities here are improvements regardless of Solo, Group, PVP, or Raid. The Defensive Stance modifier is wonderful for soloing, small groups, or trying to save your own hide if you grab aggro in a raid. It's on the way to Exacting, and the Exacting modifier is a wonderful thing; 40 second shorter recast allows for many many more uses over the course of a raid, and more frequent use in soloing/grouping. A 15% increase on Honed Reflexes (making it 52% - 55% depending on ADP3 or MST1) is another great improvement since the buff lasts for a full minute - and yes, I've tested, it adds an additional total 3% per rank, not 3% of the existing amount (which is what some AA's have done in the past with other class's abilities). The only bad thing(s) about this line are that the points spent in Sprint are a drain from useful abilities, and the overall effectiveness of the Deadly Focus modifier isn't very good since it lasts such a short time (36 seconds) and because the ability and our self-buff already give so much DPS. The end-liner is very noteworthy as it allows us to dodge an AE once a minute in addition to giving us an extra in-combat stealth (never a bad thing); its TRUE utility however comes in activating it on the pull of mobs that use Curse of Insanity, or midfight on mobs with Stun/Stifle AEs. In the former case it allows you to avoid Curse altogether, and in the latter it lets you keep pummeling mobs while everyone else is stunned. Also just fun to use when training through zones since it gives you Sprint speed for a few seconds on termination with no power cost. * Poisons & Frontload - The recent changes to Hemotoxin Poison make the Hemotoxin enhancer a much more viable option than it was just a few weeks ago. I haven't parsed it yet but in theory this AA, if taken to Rank 5, would make Hemotoxins do more damage than Caustics for a few reasons. For one, the recent change added 2 ticks to Hemotoxin in the same duration AND increased the damage per tick. As I look at an Exceptional Hemotoxin and Exceptional Caustic right now with most of my INT gear stripped (down to 110 INT), the Caustic does 452 per proc and Hemotoxin does 203 per tick (x7 ticks = 1,421 total) over 24 seconds. With the Hemotoxin AA, all 7 ticks now occur over 14 seconds. So long as you get at least 3 ticks of the Hemotoxin between procs, it does more damage than Caustic - this is especially true since on DoTs the ability on whole is calculated for Critical, not each tick; if the first tick crits, all the rest do, as has been proven by Graton and many other parsers examining our Melee DoT abilities and how they function with Melee Crits. Furthermore, this line allows us to enhance the Poison Debuff on our Snare and the hate reduction of Ignorant Bliss by a whopping 30%. The ability to modify our Apply Poison's proc chance is nice but will never be used by a raider in favor of either more points in other Poison abilities or in other lines altogether. The 25% (maximum) addition to Attribute Poisons is a nice touch, but up to personal taste as to whether you want to spend points here or not; it's a choice of whether you want to add marginally more Utility or marginally more DPS to your character. Frontload itself is a near-worthless ability; though nice in theory, it only works for 15 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown timer. Relying on your procs to go off multiple times in 15 seconds is not a good way to add into your DPS. So, there you have it. In my personal opinion, all Assassins should have Bleed if for no other reason than the fact that you are, most likely, already spending 20+ points in the Bleeding line. Frontload is next to worthless, only exceeded by Repeated Stabbing UNLESS you are a strict soloer / grouper and already have spent 20 points in Tricks. Then, by all means, take it if you please. Getaway is a nice ability but does not necessarily warrant the expenditure of 20 points in the Physicality line, and you can get to Exacting (the best overall buff in the line) by going through Deadly Focus after dabbling in the Poisons line. Mull that over and make your decisions. -Hadanelith Raswrolski of Kithicor

03-06-2007, 02:58 AM	#9
Shinnar Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 80	exactly __________________ Sirhen, Venekor

02-28-2007, 12:24 PM	#1
Siclone Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 717	Been reading allot of the AA stuff, the ability seems good a face value but once you get into the detail, posted here, they seem rather pointless. Not sure if they wanted to intential nerf Assassin or it was just bad game design. Anyway, whats the deal with double stab,,,I think I am saying it right, the one on the very bottom next to the bleed one

03-01-2007, 01:49 AM	#3
Siclone Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 717	wow these devs are tricky. The way they word it, it seems that all your CA's timers where reduced in half. I was not sure if the EoF aa's where just bad game design or a stealth nerf to the class sort of thing, but, it seems they are trying to decive cause the AA dont say what you just said.

03-01-2007, 04:48 AM	#4
Jayad Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Raelyn @ Permafrost Posts: 1,306	To make it worse you have to put 20 points into a really worthless AA tree. (From a PVE raiding perspective) If you solo or PVP it might be something to consider because the rest of the tree is pretty useful for that.

03-05-2007, 04:15 PM	#8
Jayad Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Raelyn @ Permafrost Posts: 1,306	I like how frontload will actually make hemotoxin worse. That's classic SOE design.

03-06-2007, 03:22 AM	#10
Stormwitt Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 17	Nice post Hadanelith

03-06-2007, 06:27 AM	#11
Norrsken Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 6,450	Jayad wrote: I like how frontload will actually make hemotoxin worse. That's classic SOE design. And the fix to that is to make hemotoxins not overwrite themselves. The way it really SHOULD have been from the [Removed for Content] get go. :/ __________________

03-13-2007, 10:18 AM	#12
Shinnar Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 80	It wouldn´t take much to make these EoF AAs more usefull. For Repeated stabbing - instead of halving time of recovery, reduce recovery time to 0.For Frontload - instead of that crappy effect, make it increase melee, ranged, spell and heal crits to 100 % for that 15 secs (or more ) and it will be ok. Other skills could use some minor changes too, like that physical mitigation debuff for example... Why it reduces recast time instead of raising debuff value is a mystery to me __________________ Sirhen, Venekor

03-13-2007, 11:47 AM	#13
Hadanelith Lord Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 197	Shinnar wrote: Other skills could use some minor changes too, like that physical mitigation debuff for example... Why it reduces recast time instead of raising debuff value is a mystery to me Silly Shinnar. Brigands and Swash can have powerful debuffs and Assassin-level DPS, we already know this. But Assassins having their DPS and Swash/Brig level debuffs is *FORBIDDEN!!* -Hadanelith Raswrolski / Mossda Odis'Ossda, Kithicor Server