Some assassin skill changes in pve.

Felt like making some suggestions to sin skills, add your own if you want. Elementalists got their thread, I want mine

Spells
Deadly Haste - For 5...25...30 seconds, half-ranged spells cast 5...41...50% faster and recharge 5...41...50% faster. Your Deadly arts attribute is increased by 2.
Helps melee sins get more out of DA. Boost caster assassins as well.

Locust Fury - For 10...30...35 seconds, you have an additional 50% chance to double strike while using daggers. Your critical strikes with daggers do 25 slashing damage (armor affected).
Helps the skill out, Locust Fury begs for attack buffs to be added on to it and this change just helps assassins dealing damage. Also the CS damage boost affects skills too so it's not one-dimensional

Shroud of Silence Elite Touch spell. For 1...6...7 seconds target foes spells are disabled. Your spells are disabled for 15 seconds. 20s recharge.
A 5s spell disable at 9 DA, every 20 seconds would have more niches then it does now.

Shadow Form - Enchantment Spell. For 6...11...12 seconds, you have +15 Health regeneration move 33% faster and +100 armor. This enchantment ends if you successfully hit with an attack or use a skill.
My personal opinion is to make it an elite Feigned Neutrality. Good for running, survival and tanking, friendly to new players. Still some farming ability in there.

Attacks
Temple Strike -15s recharge
Golden Skull strike -10s recharge
20s recharge single target skill in PvE that doesn't do damage.... Yes Temple strike is awesome but for PvE? Yeah come on. Golden Skull strike...well I don't even know wtf it's purpose is, might as well just take a BHA ranger, that would due the same thing but unconditionally and for longer.

Shadow steps.
Aura of Displacement, Shadow Meld - 10s recharge
It's not the same situation as PvP, a 10s recharge is not a problem.

Shadow Prison, Dark Prison, Beguiling Haze -15s recharge
Again for PvE it's not a problem. they're 10-15 energy to begin with, and Beguiling Haze would be competing with BHA.

Shadow of haste -
For 30-60 seconds you move 15% faster than normal. When Shadow of Haste ends, you return to the location where you activated Shadow of Haste. 30s recharge
The above is actually a previous form of shadow form. So I'm suggesting a revert to this. This previous form of shadow of haste was arguably the strongest. Assassins and /A secondaries A permanently maintainable IMS that doubled as being a safety net if you caught yourself in trouble.

I love the shadow form change.

Maybe we could just get that skill changed.
I'd be up for it.

i like the shadow form change as well

does anet actually apply any suggested skill changes that players post?

i'm quite sure they at least pay attention to the ones that make sense, because if they didn't, then they would never nerf/buff/make any changes to any skills at all

They have their own sources for input on skill changes.

Also, iirc Anet cannot read Sardelac at all for legal reasons. If you really think an idea is worth the attention of ArenaNet, you'll need to post it somewhere official like on the Wiki. It's got to do with creative ownership of ideas or something like that.

That said, let's keep on topic.

I think many of the things you have pointed out are in great need for change. As over time Anet has only really concentrated on sin skills when they became too OP, for example palm strike and SF, and have not really ever thought about the whole host of 'dead' skills sat there for sins, in particular deadly arts, and the majority of elites for sins. As atm sins are very much limited in their choice in EFFECTIVE builds, sure crit strikes work with any weapon you choose but come on..
Just being limited to skills like AP, MB/DB, WoTA, is really boring especially if u only spec into sin attributes most of the time. And clearly with the upcoming derv update the crit scythe will become less powerful than a derv, how less we don't know but there is a general consensus that people will choose derv>sin when it comes to scythes. So back to daggers then? And use those overused cookie cutter builds again, because the rest of the skills either have too long recharge, or too much energy to be viable in a build. There has been too much emphasis on nerfing 'invincibuilds' and not enough on actually making the assassins skills more viable.

OK, so I would change.

Seeping Wound
Make it so if target is bleeding, they suffer from disease and poison.

Shadow Steps.
Make them all maintainable enchantments and when you cancel them you shadow step to your original position. And reduce their recharge. This is because I think if you are a sin and you shadow step. In. You will almost always be the 1st to get hit, so surely you should have an escape route once the foe is dead.

Dagger skills.
REDUCE THEIR RECHARGE for elites e.g temple strike etc.

Deadly arts.
Moar fun please. Because atm only a handful of skills work that don't have a ridiculous e cost or recharge.

reduce the recharge on some dagger skills, nothing really out damages DB but it's good to have some variety for different situations. Reduce the recharge and energy on Shadow steps and deadly arts in general, skills that take 20+s to recharge and 10+energy are pretty useless with monsters getting spammed at you.

Rework deadly arts, it seems to benefit casters more then it benefits assassins. Have hexes interact with the melee aspect of the assassin rather just have self contained effects, like enemies take increased damage when criticaled or damage when suffering from conditions.

Shadow of Haste is fine as it is imo, ok less recharge would be fine, but I use it daily when tanking DoA or running chests and shit, it's the best troll you can ever get with AI, but less recharge isn't really needed imo.

Shadow Form, let's not get there.. It's fine as it is imo, but I'm one of the few people on here it seems..

Deadly Arts needs a total rework though, but honestly, they gave away GW2 release date, it's november, so 9 months to go, dunno if they'll get to it. Let's hope now that they're finishing up stuff for GW2, some of the people working on it could give the Live Team a hand, but that's prolly wishful thinking..

^ The old Shadow of haste is much better then this current one.

That is not the official date. it could be sooner, could be later. they only recently updated the FAQ that the beta will be sometime this year.

about the Sin skill changes, I like deadly haste idea but thats about it. The thing with assassin daze is it's harder to avoid, BHA you can stand still for a few seconds then move a little. Shadow form idea would annoy sc guilds, and really it would just turn into a cover enchantmant. and Locust strike, if any critical hit activates the damage, it'd be used with other weapons regardless of no double strike, that skill really just needs a do over without messing up the mantids. I do agree that Assassins could use some work though.

To be honest the only things that need proper buffing are the elites, lower recharges and more inspiring effects.

Take a look at the Elite endgame part of the forum and count the non SF abusers.

I said, let's not get there, I'm not planning on highjacking this thread. For any arguments, see Nerf Invincibuilds.

Assassin skills can use a buff, but there are professions that are in more dire need. Ele is on the first place, and Derv is second imo. Rangers can use a buff/rework too, but since it took em a friggin year to do Derv update, I'm not hoping for anything.

speaking of Sin changes. I remember that post that Karate Jesus made in Riverside a few months back and he was right on all the changes to the Dervish. Also, he put something in there about changes to Shadow Form. Was that post deleted? Would be nice to have a link to revisit that post as it is totally relevant and correct.

Recharge? If your gonna give assassins such a strong tank skill, i feel it shouldn't be perma. Also, your changing the functionality completely....
The focus of Shadow Form was to give Assassins immunity to single target spells.

I suggest you compromise and state:

Shadow Form - Enchantment Spell. For 6...11...12 seconds, you have +xx Health regeneration, have +xx armor, and cannot be the target of enemy spells. This enchantment ends if you successfully hit with an attack or use a skill.

The increased speed can be acquired other ways (Drunken Master, Dark Escape, Mindbender, etc etc)

I doubt Anet would change SF from its original intended purpose of being an anti-spell skill.

I thought of that but at the same time I had some personal desire for an IMS built in with that.

I would keep time as the only variable in your suggestion though. Leaves less room for bad scaling . Useful in PvE at various attribute investments since if the assassin is in trouble it will give him necessary protection period.

I do like the +2 in Deadly Arts.
I like those skills that give you +x to an attribute, like Aura of the Lich or Double Dragon.

The "xx" part wasn't scaling, i simply put it in there because Anet wouldn't adopt a +15 regen skill for assassins, and +100 armor is WAY too much. A more appropriate scale would be like +6 regen and 40 armor

I think the focus of Shadow Form should be associated with shadows, i.e. you either cannot hit a shadow (attack) or cannot hit with a spell, or both. I have no qualms reverting this skill back to "all attacks miss and all spells fail" if they cannot deal ANY damage (direct or indirect) while the skill is active, as such, i guess i will update my suggestion for it...


Shadow Form
Energy: 10 (Increased energy cost for a good reason, see below)
Casting Time: 1 second
Recharge: 30 seconds
Elite Enchantment Spell: For 7...25...28 seconds, you have +1...4...5 health regeneration, 50% of all attacks miss, and you cannot be targeted by hostile spells. This enchantment ends if you hit with an attack or use a skill.

NOTE: With this change, SF would be restored to its original intended purpose: a viable tank that can be maintained without other skills (deadly Paradox/glyph of Swiftness) but cannot deal any damage/degen.


If you think about it, i dont think a shadow has ever hurt me, so why should an assassin that 'becomes a shadow' be able to deal damage?

Maybe i've gotten off topic, forgive me. I just feel that double digit regen, +100AL, and +33% speed is useless and unnecessary.

No.

Spellbreaker, SF, and OF all had one thing in common: immunity from spellcasting.

They were all extremely broken. SF is still extremely broken.

Immunity to spellcasting is just a dumb idea in general.

i like the shadow form suggestions in here.
i think the ending condition could be attack or spell, instead of skill, allowing you to use stances and whatnot... as a tank i feel that would be acceptable

That totally was NOT the original purpose.
Here is how the skill was originally. Note the duration and the recharge.

The skill was, in its original conception, very cool: a way for a squishy assassin to have 10-20 seconds of almost complete immunity to jump/run in, kill some stuff, and jump/run out to the backline before the clock struck midnight. That's even how it was used to farm, initially. It was a gambling skill, and it was great for its niche (incidentally, it wasn't considered useful at all by most people; a hilarious way for a noob to die at best). Then, people figured out how to make it last permanently, and it all went downhill from there.

Nice suggestions.
- Shadow steps are completely useless for pve with the current recharges. They have to come down drastically to help the "in and out" assassin style.
- Shadow form: gorram assassins are not tanks. Make invulnerability a pve skill if you have to have it.

In addition:
- I would nerf all "continuous" DPS skills/combos, it is out of character.
- the whole critical strike concept needs an overhaul.

Hello mates, take a look at this suggestions:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...in_PvE_Changes

I was playing JQ and i saw a few people abusing Shadow Form to cap shrines: basically with archane echoed shadow form and a block skill (shroud of distress) you are able to walk in a shrine which isn't guarded by a monk and kill everything with chaos storm and wastrel spam without a scratch. Needless to say that this sh!t have to go,my suggestion is to just smither boon it, since if your are using Sf in a pvp environment you are an exploiter or just a noob/troll/runner.

For the sole purpose of maintaining energy it's fine. With Dervish changes the actual criticals aren't an issue either.

JQ is more of an "exploit environment" than "PvP Environment." Shadow form, much like contagion bomber, is useless everywhere else because death matters. The lack of the latter opens up a ton of balance issues, with the PvP SF just at the tip.

If there was a safe way to detect suicide, I would give those that commit it a 30 second time out in JQ.

Then people would rage that their team mates abandoned them for 30s.