Isles Of Janthir – Roaming Thief
Upcoming p/p and d/p changes!
Blast Finishers break stealth if they hit and this also has a projectile so it always hits. You will be stealthed and automatically revealed as the projectile hits the target (so basically it gives revealed instead of stealthy if you’re in combat).
As I said in other threads we can’t have spammable burning on weapon skills (unless there is some sort of fake cooldown like with Infiltrator’s Strike to avoid perma glue or Cluster Bomb to avoid throwing 6 blast finishers at the same time, I’m asuming you mean this to be the second part of Black Powder given how you need it first), but 9 initiative for 3 seconds of burning and automatically getting revealed is too much to pay to access burning (we already got a 7 initiative skill and it made the Thief avoid water as much as he can).
It’s the problem with burning or strong CCs in our weapon skills: it either is too abusable or you have too pay way too much. We live and die with initiative. It makes the Thief fun and dynamic, but also hinders him with this kind of stuff.
(edited by Lokheit.7943)
Blast Finishers break stealth if they hit and this also has a projectile so it always hits. You will be stealthed and automatically revealed as the projectile hits the target (so basically it gives revealed instead of stealthy if you’re in combat).
As I said in other threads we can’t have spammable burning on weapon skills (unless there is some sort of fake cooldown like with Infiltrator’s Strike to avoid perma glue or Cluster Bomb to avoid throwing 6 blast finishers at the same time), but 9 initiative for 3 seconds of burning and automatically getting revealed is too much to pay to access burning (we already got a 7 initiative skill and it made the Thief avoid water as much as he can).
Depends on how they do it: they could make the projectile hitting its target be the trigger for your stealth. built in aoe stealth would be broken, but having this be a chain skill that requires a large amount of initiative would mean there aren’t any more thieves with a perma-blind around them.
Perhaps they could modify the #5 so that instead of the current skill, it deals aoe burning for 3-4s, then chains to ‘black powder’ which is an aoe blind and stealths the thiekittenda like a reverse ‘Prestige’
Spamming of either of these ideas wouldn’t be an issue due to the initiative cost. It would not be beneficial to spam either scenario, you would be too vulnerable being reduced to auto attacks just to get burning on the target.
Perhaps they could modify the #5 so that instead of the current skill, it deals aoe burning for 3-4s, then chains to ‘black powder’ which is an aoe blind and stealths the thiekittenda like a reverse ‘Prestige’
Spamming of either of these ideas wouldn’t be an issue due to the initiative cost. It would not be beneficial to spam either scenario, you would be too vulnerable being reduced to auto attacks just to get burning on the target.
That seems interesting, though it may affect too much certain playstyles. But I think I can see certain potential here. Let’s analyze what it would mean:
Depending on if the second part automatically stealths you or not, I would make the total cost something like 5+6 (or total of 10, substract one from any of them) if it’s autostealth (autostealth with no pre-conditions is too good) or 4+5 if not. Make the first shot be a projectile that burns a target (AoE burning even in iteration to avoid spam would be too much I think, it should be tested, maybe a very small 100-130 radious around the target might work).
Then after a fiery projectile, we get a second iteration of the skill, Black Powder (which makes sense as firing a flaming projectile will cause an excess of smoke inside the Pistol that you have to clean), that lasts around 8-10 seconds (like when you use Infiltrator’s Strike) so if you want to shoot the flamming bullet again you have to either wait or waste a ton of initiative (making it a 4 seconds burn that if you want to manage more than half your ini bar you can only use every 10 seconds and even then have a very decent initiative cost so it isn’t abusable and can be used to try a condition spike).
Then we have to consider if it is the regular version of BP, or what you propose of it automatically stealthing you.
This is very tricky, because 9 initiative (with potential to be “reduced” to 7 through Infussion of Shadow) is what many players pay for just the stealth (D/P combo, /D stealth is conditional and you have to touch your target), without the burning, and in this case you’re stealthed without possible counters (the projectile part should be removed as it hits after the skill and depending on distance it may hit sooner or later, so to avoid programming headaches it should be removed along with any direct damage, do BP just consistd on freeing the smoke inside the pistol at your feet, the projectile was very low damage anyway but you would lose the potential blind at range for non melee thieves). The combo stealth is counterable if you jump inside the smoke, this one wouldn’t have a counter.
If it stealths you, the cost should be raised to 10 or 11 total after using both iterations (considering you’re already burning your target and getting a stealth without possible counters+smoke field).
It would be good for P/P to being able to focus on conditions (same as D/D can chose to focus on direct damage or the acrobat bleeder), and wasting 10 to 11 initiative (with potentil for 8 to 9 with trait) for burning plus 5 bleeds and blind as Sneak Attack always combo through fields (more or less automatically putting 13 bleeds and a blind on target) seems a right price considering you can’t do it twice in a row. You’re wasting a ton of initiative, so unlike P/D that distributes it better over time, you’re very vulnerable to condition removal (you should get some venoms to cover conditions with more conditions), but on the other hand you can quickly spike someone with a lot of conditions, and it synergizes with the auto-attack (something that Unload doesn’t).
Problem here, is that it would affect S/P and D/P VERY negatively. Those sets don’t invest on condition damage, so the burning won’t be so good, and with this way, D/P is wasting more initiative on getting the stealth than what they would with the current version (and as I said, we can’t give a total cost of 9 initiative to a burn+automatic stealth+combo field, it has to be more than that in total), so you’re really damaging one of the most used sets (and while it’s debatable if that set might need some tuning as it is too popular, this will infuriate a lot of people for sure).
Then let’s say we make the BP part as current one (it doesn’t automatically stealth you). It still has to have a higher ini cost than the original one. A minimim of 8 total.
With this D/P still suffers from a cost increase without getting much benefit from the burning, and with no stealth here, P/P remains a bad set, and if you invest on conditions you’re limited to a burn aplication every 8-10 seconds, and your auto-attack, which limits it a lot compared with the previous scenario that had flaws against heavy condition removal, but had potential too.
Continue on next post.
Changing it this way is very tricky (we are managing burn AND unconditional stealth on 2 iterations of the same skill, that’s incredibly tricky and really hard to balance). It may have potential to help P/P in some ways, but in any possible form it will damage D/P (and S/P, while it didn’t stealth before, was a good set for PvE as the field+auto-attack made you cut through a lot of things), and with the second version P/P is still really bad. At the end there are other ways to balance P/P without hurting other sets (something we have to consider always with non 2-handed weapons, 2-handed weapons are perfect from a balancing perspective as there are no extra scenarios, this is why our Shortbow is perfectly done and you may find yourself using any of it’s skills at any time).
I think this skill should be treated differently. Making it ground-target instead of field+shot would be a simple and great solution, as the problem with this one is only that it is bad for P/P as it’s not worth 6 ini at range by far. S/P and D/P will still use it as always (taking a little more effort to correctly place the field, so that could be enough to “tone down slightly” the set, with a change that only asks for player ability that good ones should easily overcome and even use in their favor placing it where they will land to get 2 combos without needing to turn the camera while running away for example), but P/P can offer great ranged support to teams in every enviroment, being able to throw blind fields in choke points without jumping inside it. This way BP is worth 6 initiative for P/P and its use won’t change that much for melee sets.