Initiative Cost Balancing

[shrew.3059]

1 hour ago, Tails.9372 said:

 

The phrase "several ranged AAs" already necessitates as much.

 

Vital Shot is part of an issue I talked about earlier: redundancies. "1 and 3" and "2 and 4" do essentially the same things (and a weapon set doesn't need 2 skills for continuous single target damage / single target CC) with 5 being quite useless as you generally want to keep your distance anyway so a skill to disengage would have been way more usefull.

 

The root of the problem here is A-Nets rather lazy way to design the dual weapon combos for which the number of dual skills should have been based on nessesity rather than "only weapon skill 3".

 

Pistol AA: Not very exciting, especially compared with Shortbow (although SB is such a beautifully designed weapon).

 

Pistol 2: Bola Shot, which gives Immob and Vuln. Won’t comment on numbers, but the former makes sense on a ranged weapon, latter is just a nice to have.

 

Pistol 3: Unload, not obviously sexy but definitely crams a lot of damage into a short cast, plus Might on hit, plus INI recovery for landing all hits.

Pistol 4: Head Shot, On-demand interrupt, you could chain 3 if you really wanted to stop someone from using their skills (not suggesting it should be used this way, mind you).

 

Pistol 5: Black Powder, needs no introduction, since people complain about it all day long and it’s an important part of what makes D/P so powerful. You can drop a Black Powder and Unload through it to be annoying if you want.

 

The skills are boring, but not obviously bad. Compared with Shortbow, the issue is that SB has character and is clearly built for mobility and distruption, whereas Pistol is… some condi, power, and utility? It does have the disadvantage of needing to accommodate dual skills, so maybe that’s it? But SB1 has synergy with Poison, P5 has synergy with D2 but nothing on P outside of Blind spam. Not sure, just thinking out loud here…

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

4 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

The skills are boring, but not obviously bad. Compared with Shortbow, the issue is that SB has character and is clearly built for mobility and distruption, whereas Pistol is… some condi, power, and utility? It does have the disadvantage of needing to accommodate dual skills, so maybe that’s it? But SB1 has synergy with Poison, P5 has synergy with D2 but nothing on P outside of Blind spam. Not sure, just thinking out loud here…

 

exactly what i meant with "lack of identity", which isnt a dagger only issue i guess

[shrew.3059]

34 minutes ago, Felices Bladewing.3914 said:

 

exactly what i meant with "lack of identity", which isnt a dagger only issue i guess

 

And I grant that it’s harder with Dagger or Pistol than Shortbow, but it shouldn’t but this hard.

[Tails.9372]

45 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

Pistol 3: Unload, not obviously sexy but definitely crams a lot of damage into a short cast, plus Might on hit, plus INI recovery for landing all hits.

 

Except having less damage than several other ranged AAs can hardly be called "a lot of damage". For that amount it shouldn't cost any initiative at all. The might on hit is also another issue as it effectively renders all other sources of might useless, at this point it would be preferable to just remove the might on hit and buff the damage output of that skill by about 33%.

 

 

56 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

Pistol 5: Black Powder, needs no introduction, since people complain about it all day long and it’s an important part of what makes D/P so powerful. You can drop a Black Powder and Unload through it to be annoying if you want.

 

How it performs on D/P is completely irrelevant for the weaon set in question in which case there are other more preferable options.

 

 

55 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

The skills are boring, but not obviously bad.

 

Vital Shot, on this set, is both bad and redundant and should have been replaced with unload by the dual weapon class mechanic.

 

What counts as "boring" is entirely subjective but going by the comment section of pretty much every P/P video guide there seem to be many people who would disagree with at least unload being "boring" so no real issue here.

 

Also, like I said, the main issue with these skills are that that they're for the most part either redundant or don't fit the set. Both "2" and "4" not being bad means nothing when the issue is that having both deprives the set of much needed variety.

[shrew.3059]

16 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

Except having less damage than several other ranged AAs can hardly be called "a lot of damage".

 

Which AAs were you thinking of in particular?

 

I don’t think we fundamentally disagree that something is broken, perhaps just a slight disagreement on what that something is.

 

Full disclosure: I play a silly P/P permaquickness Deadeye build in Open World because:

1. It’s OW, and

2. It’s fun to go pew-pew with HOPEs.

[Tails.9372]

2 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

Which AAs were you thinking of in particular?

 

Iirc SB LB had roughly comparable damage from almost twice the range. The ranged version of the PF AA does more damage (but not by much). Dunno the exact numbers for every condi build in the game but there are also some with comparably strong AAs.

 

 

2 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

I don’t think we fundamentally disagree that something is broken, perhaps just a slight disagreement on what that something is.

 

What's broken is the access to (or better lack thereof) other meaningful weapon skills. I wouldn't mind to break the break bars if it wouldn't prevent me from using the following downtime for doing damage with unload. I'd like to have an engagement / disengagement / small scale AoE weapon skill so the answer to every situation wouldn't boil down to "just use unload" but I don't have these options so "using unload" it is.

 

 

2 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

Full disclosure: I play a silly P/P permaquickness Deadeye build in Open World because:

1. It’s OW, and

2. It’s fun to go pew-pew with HOPEs.

 

Keep in mind that every at least somewhat competent build blows away downscaled OW trash mobs like nothing but many classes can bust down veteran creatures just as fast as unload does with the regular mobs.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Tails.9372

[shrew.3059]

20 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

Keep in mind that every at least somewhat competent build blows away downscaled OW trash mobs like nothing but many classes can bust down veteran creatures just as fast as unload does with the regular mobs.

 

Of course, that’s what I meant by (1): it doesn’t much matter since things tend to die fairly quickly in OW. So the goal is to kill things as quickly and sustainably as possible to keep the murder-train rolling.

 

The main reason I tend to use P/P is that ranged means less time clearing the distance to the mob and although there is Shadow Shot, often it’s just as quick to blow things up right away. DE rifle doesn’t seem to me to be worth it in most cases because few mobs survive until Death Judgement and the damage feels clunkier and more expensive without it. Happy to consider alternatives though!

[AikijinX.6258]

I think all of these ideas are pretty good ideas. I do think that possibly some type of initiative reward or payback would definitely benefit Thief but it’s tricky to implement. Even receiving initiative back on auto attack would be kind of in realm of brokenness because of quickness proc’s. But if there is an ICD between each initiative payback then it’ll be kind of lack luster. 
 

I just had a thought right now of potentially reworking assassins reward acro trait or invigorating precision critical strikes trait so those traits have an ability to be more rewarding than they currently are, making you benefit from getting rewarded back with initiative. I am aware that assassins reward heals you based off of initiative spent but that can be reworked entirely, and invigorating precision can reward initiative back on crit.

The CS line needs more utility (I will add)

I really am curious who really takes those traits? And i apologize because this is my ignorance showing, because I genuinely just don’t know how those traits are useful without sacrificing a better damaging trait. So someone can explain this to me because I know in PvE it is probably used more, but I don’t understand why they would choose it over a more useful or higher damaging trait in their line. 

[babazhook.6805]

I took assassins reward in an off the wall d/d build which also used SOM. As soon as they boosted the INI cost of DB the build went nowhere.

 

Prior to that it was playable will not being unbeatable. I used healing/condi type runes. Assassins reward is really bad if there no heal in the build.  The whole ACRO line was made subpar with one of those patches.

[AikijinX.6258]

30 minutes ago, babazhook.6805 said:

I took assassins reward in an off the wall d/d build which also used SOM. As soon as they boosted the INI cost of DB the build went nowhere.

 

Prior to that it was playable will not being unbeatable. I used healing/condi type runes. Assassins reward is really bad if there no heal in the build.  The whole ACRO line was made subpar with one of those patches.

Yeah I know back in the past assassin reward builds with SoM were nutty, especially with D/D. But with all the initiative cost increases, those types of builds became less viable. 
 

I will add that I was thinking of a type of an initiative type of  heal skill that when passively used, you gain initiative faster OR gain initiative every auto attack. Whereas when using the active would of course heal, but restore a portion of initiative back based on the amount of hit points you have. And I guess depending on your initiative count, it heals you based on the amount of initiative you have. (Those 2 don’t work in conjunction with each other)

I decided not to share the idea because it just sounded dumb, but I do wanna get opinions I guess of that type of heal skill idea haha.

[ixon.2496]

Well since the Spectre has been revealed as having reduced initative its going to be double as mandatory to get any value out of our weapon sets. 

 

Genuinely annoyed they suggested "You'd want to run trickery with this spec" on the stream.. like we don't have to for our builds already. 

 

How out of touch can you get.

[AikijinX.6258]

11 hours ago, ixon.2496 said:

Well since the Spectre has been revealed as having reduced initative its going to be double as mandatory to get any value out of our weapon sets. 

 

Genuinely annoyed they suggested "You'd want to run trickery with this spec" on the stream.. like we don't have to for our builds already. 

 

How out of touch can you get.

To be honest I agree with you here, because it’s completely out of touch and just a blatant lack of awareness and respect to the Thief Community. The Thief community has been trying to branch out from needing to rely on trickery so heavily which seriously limits build diversity and creation, and pigeon holes us into picking one of few builds, that are typically meta. Then CmC goes on stream making a joke and a sly/snide comment about our initiative. How did that help the community? How is it helpful in anyway? This Just brushed me the wrong way.

EDIT: And seeing how you guys gave Ranger (The Untamed) a good ability to condition cleanse because (justifiably) they have needed that for a long time kinda feels like a slap in the face to Trickery users and our simple need and long asked for request for preparedness baseline.

 

Edited October 25, 2021 by AikijinX.6258

[Tails.9372]

12 minutes ago, AikijinX.6258 said:

To be honest I agree with you here, because it’s completely out of touch and just a blatant lack of awareness. You know the Thief community has been trying to branch out of needing to rely on trickery for initiative use hence limiting build creation/option and then CmC goes on stream making a joke or a sly & snide comment about our initiative. How is this helping the community? Just brushed me the wrong way.

I feel like the lot of the "need" to run trickery could be alleviated if AAs would give one initiative on hit like they do in several other ARPGs.

[ASP.8093]

2 hours ago, ixon.2496 said:

Well since the Spectre has been revealed as having reduced initative its going to be double as mandatory to get any value out of our weapon sets. 

 

Genuinely annoyed they suggested "You'd want to run trickery with this spec" on the stream.. like we don't have to for our builds already. 

 

How out of touch can you get.

Ok, but you absolutely want to run Trickery because it's the best way to get maximum value out of Well of Bounty.

[AikijinX.6258]

11 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

I feel like the lot of the "need" to run trickery could be alleviated if AAs would give one initiative on hit like they do in several other ARPGs.

Initiative replenish on auto attack would be a great solution. I just don’t understand how the developers don’t or refuse to acknowledge this as an obvious problem.