Feedback Upcoming Shadower updates and plans

tagged wrong guy lol

 

Well that is sad to see, the server has been great at staying true to oldschool maple up to a point but the writing has been on the wall for a while. I would advise you to look for someone that has alot of experience with the class to add to balance team before making any more decisions.

 

Appreciate the insight. This seems to indicate that having a mix of the two would be ideal. But in terms of the total stance that is received from the two, it should be lower than warriors (since warriors do not have the "no damage taken" aspect).

 

To preface, I haven't played for around 2 years.
I have a 200 minimal washed shad and a 198 heavily washed shad.
Been awhile but came on to read because I heard interesting things were happening to the class.

The removal of the passive Shifter for the addition of Stance on a passive 3rd job thief skill, which is more or less the same thing as Shifter at a higher proc rate. Assuming you don't die in one shot, its almost a 40%>75% shifter with the only downside being that a potion has to be consumed.

-The addition of an active Shifter to avoid everything for 20 seconds & 12s Smoke.
I can see the charm in the Shifter change but at the same time it feels really random with a random stun cleanse slapped onto it as well. To a shad, it's essentially the old smoke broken into 2 difference skills.

-The addition of Assassinate dash to become invulnerable for 2.5s.
Anything that has a potential to give you a 100% uptime on invincibility is a fundamentally flawed design, especially if it's on your main attack skill. Personally, anything more than the time needed to cast an assaulter I would say is too much(<1s). The problem with adding or removing iframe is its either you take damage or none at all, there is no middleground. If it's too short, you'll still take damage casting the second one. If it's too long, you'll take no damage until something occurs (debuffs/dr/etc).

I think a big problem comes with how there's a lot of contradictions in the changes.
The only reason a shad would've needed a sort of stance is when assassinate could only be cast while grounded as a QOL but that has already been addressed with one of the changes.
Assassinate giving a constant 2.5s iframe alongside the implementation of a 20s iframe through shifter and an additional 12s off smoke. Dashing for invulnerability inside my already invulnerable 20s+12s skills. All these variations of iframes just clash with each other.

Replacing the stance on shield mastery with potentially a lower value IED from assassinate (removing from assassinate) feels logically very fluid. With how WDEF functions, this would also aid in the transition from 2nd to 3rd and 4th job, giving significant damage to Savage Blow, while also still benefitting 3rd and 4th job skills.

Everything also feels really boss-focused.

I've probably missed some stuff or said some mumbo jumbo that doesn't make sense but

personal tldr;
Shifter revert
Smoke revert
Shield mastery -stance, +ied
Assassinate -ied, revert/<1s iframe

 

echoing this sentiment and what I suggested about removing IED before too.

I enjoy playing shad now as single client and if you wish to play shad like before (which I do when I footpedal shad when multi’ing), you still have the option to. Shifter and stance don’t necessarily play that differently, so it’s really a toss-up for me

 

Re-iterating what I said before, I think what we have to figure out is whether 100% uptime invincibility (whether from 2s, 2.2s or 2.5s) is too broken.

if it is, then there’s not really any middle ground to reach. There’s no way that using nate dash for 1.5s invulnerability then bstep assaulter or straight assaulter back to position is going to be worth doing, especially when you can again get hit on the assassinate cast time as well. It was quite simply never get used.

so in all of this, the first question that has to be asked is should the 100% invulnerability uptime here to stay. If yes, you can tune back other things (e.g. remove IED, or revert SE effect on normal nate lines). If not, then that’s fine too. But shad’s power is currently tied directly to this mechanic, and BT have to decide whether it’s here to stay.

I like the nate dash, and as mentioned, how it gives the option of being more active and getting higher dpm, or just sitting still and hitting. If I had a vote, I would keep it.

 

You know you can nate dash without the invincibility right? It was already being used effectively before last anniversary.

 

Nate dash attack still had its value for good dpm boost similar level with hero mixing panic. (especially with recent % buff too!). It can be optional, but still it's a feature.
Also, without invincibility given from nate dash, nate dashing onto target getting body hit from it, and getting iframe from it, by taking damage, or shifter/avoid, was also an way to avoid sed notes if timing allows it. Skilled players were doing it already, beside bstep/assulter, to minimize their DPM loss. Because of lack of experiences and confidence, I mostly did bstep/assulter, but some experienced players I witnessed including Soblet were already applying such tricks.

 

This is kinda the main sticking point for me, I understand the issue before was that HPC shadowers had to be nearly level 200 to be independent from hyperbody to tank PB body when nate dashing but with them buffing the values of HPC, I really don't see the need to keep it? People keep saying how it's so much more active now but this was something always available to them that they just chose not to do.

If we're gonna talk about nate dashing being active, wasn't nate dashing without immunity before more active because you had to deal with the risk of repositioning if you did get hit (washed or unwashed). I feel like I'm shouting at the wall because shadowers formerly just refused to use nate dashing that was already available to them.

 

I did use nate dash before the dash iframes, I used it before exclusively on thick bosses like zak and berg and nib. The payoff for being active was not worth the extra effort. It’s not like it was a hidden tech before or whatever, but now there’s more incentive to use it, and it’s enough to make me favour single clienting my shad instead.

 

I guess we can just agree disagree then, generally I found it worth doing whenever you were able to tank the boss body pre anniversary (pap,zak,jc,etc). One of the biggest gripes is the lack of actual risk attached to doing so and many have already pointed out that it's all due to the excessively long immunity duration. Some have already pointed out that there's a pretty bad flaw if we just nerf the duration of it since it leads to the issue of it either not doing anything anyway except as a defensive option with assaulter/bstep (not enough to chain another nate dash if you're in touch damage of whatever you dashed onto) or a small duration nerf ultimately not changing the issue of not taking damage. Holp summed up my issues with it pretty well:

If the issue was most shads not being incentivized to dash before, I think there are other design spaces we can look without giving iframes. This could be increasing damage, reducing smoke cooldown on a successful dash, or even allowing IED to be maintained from nate dashing (this one might be too busted). I'm just spitballing here but I feel we don't need a blanket safety net be attached to what's considered our optimal dummy DPM option.

 

This.
In my experience, nate dashing with iframes is not always better than spam nate unless you have SE. It becomes worthwhile depending on the width of the boss hitbox so you can dash multiple times without turning.

Nate dashing without iframes will probably be worse dpm than simply spamming nate, not to mention the extra effort.

If staff wants to incentivise nate dashing there should be a payoff which could be iframes, higher dash damage, or some other creative ideas like what Regrets posted above.

 

Curious to how you are turn dashing.
Did a quick @dpm1 as our range is quite similar and it seems to be around a 5% increase.

Spam vs Dash

Thought you might've forgot booster
No booster dashing for reference

 

It gets better as you get more avoid, we only needed dash to be castable midair to make it more viable, not all this other nonsense.

 

Is your statement based on two single 1min dpm tests?
There are big variations and outliers in shad 1min dpm tests due to our wide damage range and crit rng.
In the screenshot from my previous post you can see there can be ~500k dpm difference between the lowest and highest dpm while testing the same scenario.

I also did another natedash+turn VS spam nate test about a month ago in which I came to the same conclusion. Here you can also see 400k dpm differences in between tests.

May 19 tests:


Aug 11 tests:


Could you run several dpm1 tests and average the results?
I'd be happy to be proven wrong but it requires more than a single datapoint.

 

Could only do 3 of each since I gotta head to bed but;
Top 3 is Spam
Bottom 3 is Dashing


As reference for turning speed

Almost certain dashing and turning around is not ping-dependent as it should be client-sided.
From what I can see, with the iframe, the main incentive would be both the damage and iframe since I imagine it's not really that hard to keep the uptime on the iframe with the current duration.

 

Thanks for this!! I stand corrected
Your turning seems to be much more instant than mine somehow just from the looks of it.
I’m not behind my PC right now but will check later. Really not sure what’s different in my case.

 

I think the big difference between nate dash and panic is that nate dash would force you to constantly tank touch when you didn’t need to before, whereas panic is just an extra for click for heroes without repositioning when their ACA is expiring (to my understanding, please correct if wrong). The extra damage effort needed for the shad nate dash is crazy amounts higher.

as Ken said, fully aware you could nate dash before, but simply not worth it usually. There’s plenty of times where the dash was somewhat useful for repositioning after getting kb’ed, but not really for the damage. The current version incentivizes you to do it, but still leaves the other option open.