Shadowers Need a Buff

I'm going to have to be a very boring conservative here and say that I would prefer not to see this implemented simply because of your first 2 cons.

Also, you mention cleave barely being relevant, but doesn't that hit the nail on the head? I feel like figuring out a way to give cleave a more relevant spot in the meta is a healthier approach than repeatedly buffing the 'weakest' class.

 

Shad and Hero are becoming the 2nd attacker class nowadays.
Most people who run multi attackers on bossing are usually a range + shad/hero.

Shad (and hero and cleave in general) is due for a fix, but with people running multi attackers like that, buffing them is risky.

 

To be fair, even if cleaving was more relevant, shads would still be in the same predicament as their cleaving abilities are so incredibly lackluster compared to warriors (their 3-target cleave loses to paladins and their 4-target cleave still loses out to heroes and DKs).

 

Never appeal to the 'buff everyone to parity' sentiment, it's a game killer. Classes need nerfs even if it will make 10 rageheads quit, or the game will powerscale out of control. At least every game I've ever played afraid to nerf classes has gone that way. The only saving grace against this sentiment is that ML has an average of one balance pass a year... But that also means while things are OP, they don't get addressed for a long time, long enough for people to heavily invest and do economy damage.

I would like to see an attempt at flattening the differences between cleavers theoretical damages into a very narrow but concise hierarchy. I'm not sure what the current state is of that question though. I don't think we should be using HT45s as our judgement metric (at least exclusively) due to the differences in how each class can approach it. This is why we make use of dummy/theory dpms, to best address all content potential. Of course we should have priority focus on 2 and 3 target cleave when it comes to balancing cleave as 4 hit is basically irrelevant. Then it's up to the player to achieve it. This is why I joke about DrK being hard, because to hit dummy potential requires a constant focus to zerk safely, while others washed to similar degrees have 3-4 hits to work with. (in the cleave section at least) so as far as I'm concerned it is the hardest to apply theoretically and makes sense being ontop of the 3x cleave genre. Not to say shads heroes and bucc shouldn't be within 5-10% of that damage though. I would like to see the theoretical dps be very tightly grouped.

And then next year we can assemble loads of practical data (we should get a group of contributora. And absolutely not only providing our bests, but our averages too) and make adjustments based on practicals. I'm sure this is somewhat the goal of the balance team but I think this calls for much more user metrics. Howany people run daily HT, Cwkpq, jc, rav, zak, weekly PB, etc. And yet we have like 10 best case or less representative stats from HT and PB only..

 

im conflicted. I love shads, and id love to see a buff, but id rather see a change like what ainz said. make cleave more viable rather than flat out buff.

i feel like trying to buff cleave classes that already have a way easier time hp washing/surviving/able to unlock content way earlier and progress and level faster compared to ranged classes is already a huge benefit in choosing one of these cleave classes. cleave classes can also better prepare for end game where a ranged class needs a year just to setup. the trade off for this patience should be immensely rewarded.


side track.
(imo. voting for a year is insane especially with ap resets being mostly TIME gated. people move on to different games in that kind of time span.)

before we address closing the damage gap, maybe we should first address the trade off that different classes have to go through.

 

If buffs are out of the question then we should at least nerf Marksmen, Paladins, and Buccaneers(screw you iPippy, your barrel is getting taken away) so they can be as awful as they were years ago. Neckson decided that they were to be the worst classes and we ought to respect that decision, just look at how jealous all of the poor cleave classes are now that they're on the bottom. We ought to nerf them so that everyone can be in the stinky piss pit, and in that way we can reserve the good classes like Night Lords and Corsairs(with their mages too) for the folks who care are willing to get their DPS permit by posting their sweaty gamer chairs on the forums

 

Please read what you wrote here, we can't buff a bad class because a random guy is attacking with his NL/Sair while attacking with shad/heroes? like, they can't use 2 NL's to hit? This only happens because this guy left the class because they irrelevant, and now he have 2 attackers, the problem is on hero/shad? You really think that?

 

Duo clienting with a shad or hero isn’t just for dpm (tho hero dpm in cwk is just insane). If it’s all about dpm, just make a 2nd NL #zoni

 

My suggestion to buff shadowers is to remove the need to cast dark sight to proc assassinate while smokescreen is active, increasing their single target dps by lowering the overall cast time of the combo.
This would also give them a larger percent of a buff from having sharp eyes, as well as time leap and would not be a ridiculous buff to solo shadower gameplay.

 

To be honest i'd loved to see shadow partner on shadowers, this would be cool as f*ck, but i think it is easy to say, staff not going to do it, since its not "nostalgic", that's how they work, unfortunately.
In my humble oppinion shadowers need to get their single target damage relocated to something near buccanners/archers, since they provide extra utility, and shadowers provide a little better cleave, there's plenty ways to do that, as we saw in previous posts, if b.step damage/speed get a buff (enough to their main ST attack being ds+ass+b.step), i agree with dealing lower damage than si/se (i'm not talking about dummy dpm), since our cleave is going to be more useful, and this can increase i-frames (+dpm effectiveness), this would make the gap between log/high ping shads lower, since it's not ass spam too.

Another cool change is assassinate not having cap, even i with a bad dagger and 110 int (level 153) can deal 200k lines after cancels already.
Personally i don't like the idea of changing smoke for lower cd + lower duration, since the cast time is way too long, but this is debatable since after all, shadower utility is worse than SI/SE, while providing less damage, that's no reason to play shadower, and that's why i'm re-rolling, the lack of transparency of the balance team makes me sad, i should listen the start of alyosha post when i came back:

i would be happier than now, personally i don't like the idea of funding and wasting my time when everyone can do better with less, re-rolling to bucc, and pretty excited, unfortunately i'll need to wait for almost a year, but it's fine, i can live with it

 

Not needing to cast DS for assassinate while in smoke is a cute idea I've entertained before, and while it is very thematic and just "makes sense", it does almost nothing to boost overall shad dpm by itself.

Assassinate has a cast time of 1380 ms and DS has a cast time of 100 ms, which means not having to use DS makes assassinate about 6.76% faster. Since smoke has an uptime of only 15%, the overall impact on shad dpm would be just over 1%. For the impact to be at all significant, assassinate would have to be made at least 20% faster while in smoke, i.e. have a cast time of 1180 ms, which is the point where overall shad dpm would be increased by 3%.

It does allow shads to synergize with themselves though, i.e. the benefit is augmented in parties with multiple shads (when does that ever happen though). It also would be a nice QoL change for the shad players with ping issues...

 

What if you buffed Ninja Ambush? No one uses it cause of the poor damage. What if you buffed it so it gave you a DPM boost if you were skilled enough to time the re-casting every 12 seconds?