Add a Cooldown on Shifter

I like the idea of it, your solution for shadowers is an interesting one.

 

I'd have also considered something like a logarithmic avoid growth for thief, personally. The continued avoid scaling into late game by raising main stats is a bigger issue imo. Don't have the maths on-hand, but shifter itself is less impactful as avoid shoots into absurd endgame numbers compared to values in the earlier ht levels. I have a feeling endgame NL would still be on top even if shifter were just outright removed.

 

I got a better (and funnier) idea, instead of 100 attack limit, reduce NL attack limit to 15

 

I'm not sure I would agree with this. Avoid is the big thing that makes thieves unique, and the pot saving cost is a benefit of playing the class.

In regards to NL that pot cost is slightly offset by the cost of recharging stars(as well as the limit on how much one can hold in one's USE inventory). They have to balance out attack pots, mp and hp pots, and the flurry of stars they expect to last during a whole boss fight.

I don't know how much an NL would have to invest into more pots just to keep up if shadow shifter was lowered. Seeing as you could potentially be attacked once every 5ish seconds, setting shifter on a 15 second cooldown would be a pretty big increase. And shifter would have to be a guaranteed success every time it was off cooldown, otherwise the investment for the cooldown just simply wouldn't be worth it.

 

Nerf drain

 

Just buff other classes that are underperforming like Shadowers, Heros, Dark Knights, Buccs.

 

Bucc’s are undeniably an S tier class right now. Hard to find any sort of line of thinking that places them anywhere outside of a top 3 class

 

Using dark sight and canceling it, however small that window might be, puts a thief at risk. Shadowers have Meso Guard so the risk is slightly lower, but I'm not really worried about them.

If a Night Lord lags as they initiate Dark Sight, they cannot pot because they cannot cancel it. If the lag is significant enough, as sometimes it is, it puts undue stress on the party to either heal or revive.

I am not shutting down your suggestion, but I do question some of the worst case scenarios and how a cooldown or a skill that denies the use of potions until it is canceled could hinder the ability of the player to stay alive.

 

Not getting hit is one of my favourite parts of playing NL, and while I do want better class balance, I would be really sad if this is the aspect that gets nerfed.
I don't know about other NL players but personally I would very strongly prefer if damage was reduced by nerfing something like the Critical Throw x Sharp Eyes interaction or just Triple Throw's damage %.
Being braindead is part of the class identity

 

Make shifter not a full dodge, but half damage hit (or even just 1 damage is enough) . Forces repositioning or getting hit by the same kb/stun effects as everyone else... excluding their giant avoid pool without having to sacrifice other gear options

 

I do generally think it's better to buff everyone else than to nerf one class because of something a bit overpowered.

It might be easier to nerf the one thing in the short run, but I think you've probably seen the effects of that on not just this game, but pretty much every game.

If something gets nerfed, people don't typically think, "Oh now this class is in line with everyone else, we can enjoy the game now."

It usually goes something like "X got nerfed to 10%(which is usually still higher than everyone else but that's kinda my point), worthless class now my enjoyment is ruined."

Now we(the theoretical, and I guess the literal as well) can argue all day which is better overall, but in my opinion strengthening the other classes in comparable ways would help overall.

Like maybe Warriors could have more baseHP gain per level, further reducing their need to wash. Or maybe their w/mdef is raised to compensate for heavy hits. Magicians could have a better magic guard. Bowmen could get an SE buff or a dummy target buff. Corsairs could have more baseHP on their ship.

Just some things to bring everyone up to each other and make everyone feel like they're able to keep up, rather than bring one class down and make everyone who play that class feel like they got robbed for what very much seems to be a perk of the class.

 

Especially since pet pot started acting up more a few maintenances ago, if I'm in a boss like Toad, where I'm still two touch on MG even with HB, and my pet nopes late in my long ass nate animation, I have virtually zero time to interrupt my macro before the next nate and reposition to manual pot, and that's on top of being twice screwed if a magic attack is about to land. Our avoidability needs to come at some cost even if we're going to maintain the illusion that light washing is viable for all content.

 

See now that's coming into a little bit of bad faith argumentation. You haven't provided evidence that a proposed shifter nerf would not reduce their DPS, you've only claimed it would do so.

As far as I can tell, we're all debating concepts, not actual statistics or evidence. Would a Shifter nerf lessen the DPM of a Night Lord? I mean obviously yes. But by how much? Well that's the technical part. What's debatable is how it would affect their current playstyle. Would it be healthy? Would it feel clunky? What are the downsides to needing to press a couple extra buttons to reactivate a skill?

I think it would just add some weird clunkiness to the class. Having to go into Dark Sight and then break out every time Shadow Shifter went off would take your attention away from any attacks and preparation for those attacks, and instead have you staring at your character or buff bar waiting to see the proc go off. And if you've got a lot of effects going off around you that might be difficult to pay attention to.

I think thieves are fine as they are, Shadow Shifter is great but it's still very much a luck dependent skill. Some bosses it could proc every time, while others it might never proc at all. On average I imagine it will proc as often as the description says it will, but in a fight you're not looking at statistics or counting dodge:hit/miss ratios. It balances itself out because it's random.

What I would like to see are some of the classes get a little more love, rather than punish players for picking a class that promised one thing but then got nerfed and now people don't find it as valuable.