the joys of being a mid stealther... (only for professional whiners)

[Melachi]

Excercia (RR11 SB) actually tested the dmg with exacly that specc and DR5 and it was 99%.

Ill believe you on that, Ive tested LA myself and they go hand in hand perfect with Wyrds findings but I havent tested DR myself. But going by what you said it must mean:

110LA = 99.9% base damage
71LA = 86.64% base damage

therefore, DR5 = 13.26%

DR = 2.625% = 8 trains in LA roughly

I find that a bit high, I think truncation might have played a roll in producing those figures Excercia found but ill consider it, however would be fun if Dreami/Fadeh got DR5, and tested to see if they swung there off-hand EVERY round, if not then either Exercia is wrong, OR, DR favours LA mechanics much more. :O

And I can compete very well as a 5-specc
Could compete as a full CB also (50sword 50cs) I actually did 700+ mh dmg PA unbuffed against a fully buffed caster using GS and TD with 1+6 la
Had no problems as a SZ either but tbh couldnt be less fun specc roll a zerker instead.
Ran around with 44sword 44cs 20la also. Could compete well with that one also

Specc is only a minor thing there are some standard rules to follow as with any char but then u can switch around speccs as u like. Eq and the player controlling the toon is what makes the difference (can see that alot from all the infils spamming DS and DF and then wonder why the never land DS)

Your rr7, as I said 5-Spec can become ok at higher rr's. But its still in my opinion sub par to a Shadowzerker. I cant think of a single target a Shadowzerk would have to strike off the target list that a 5-Spec/Critblade wouldnt be able to take either in open field fighting.

And there is a very nice way to handle casters with brittle guards.

DoT mine? That spear(golden spear?) artifact lvl 10 charge throwing weapon?

 

[Dracus]

Im missing something with the WS issue...SBs can reach the same WS as infils...but they'll never do the same dmg anyhow..so why do u bring WS into it? yes it gets u closer to cap...but doesnt affect ur cap, right?...how about everyone tests their cap dmg instead? i know my SBs cap dmg with LA styles wasnt anythin great

I did some calc and ur WS based stat should be around 380(351str+409dex/2, correct me if im wrong with those stats) SBs can get 380(with aug str5, yeye lotta points ino ) but wouldnt go higher than 374 i suppose. So it cant be much different for WS at same RR?

Ofc this doesnt mean SBs take advantage of this fact, which might be a problem. But the fact that you did put effort into a frontload template doesnt hide the fact that Infil dmg generally is higher than SBs. Thats how i see it anyway.

Ah well, another day another whine(or in this case an old whine )

/Dracus

 

[Dracus]

Nerf edit timer post was mainly for bigchief ofc

/Dracus

 

[Puppet]

Your rr7, as I said 5-Spec can become ok at higher rr's. But its still in my opinion sub par to a Shadowzerker. I cant think of a single target a Shadowzerk would have to strike off the target list that a 5-Spec/Critblade wouldnt be able to take either in open field fighting.

As a ranger I much more enjoy fighting a Shadowzerk then a 5-spec SB.

A shadowzerk is nothing but a piss-poor copy of a melee-ranger without IP. There's only 1 spec worse: Soulblade.

That is from my PoV as ranger btw

 

[Cylian]

who cares if you can win against someone in worse gear who doesn't have a clue ?

sounds as if you say "As long as you can get kills, it's all fine" ?

Oh great! ... but what would I be able to do when on par with infils ? or maybe an Iwin-button ?

but guess SBs should be nerfed more, still taking on duos/trios and getting away with a few kills

 

[Morimdin]

bigC hits you with hes rapier and sword? 50 thrust 50 slash? xD

 

[Derric]

What's so bad with showing the unedited log Cylian?

 

[bigchief]

bigC hits you with hes rapier and sword? 50 thrust 50 slash? xD

Yeah, rocking spec xD (jk ofc)

 

[Melachi]

who cares if you can win against someone in worse gear who doesn't have a clue ?

sounds as if you say "As long as you can get kills, it's all fine" ?

Oh great! ... but what would I be able to do when on par with infils ? or maybe an Iwin-button ?

but guess SBs should be nerfed more, still taking on duos/trios and getting away with a few kills

The closest youll get to being on par is by specing as a Shadowzerker, until Mythic steps in and does something.

As a ranger I much more enjoy fighting a Shadowzerk then a 5-spec SB.

A shadowzerk is nothing but a piss-poor copy of a melee-ranger without IP. There's only 1 spec worse: Soulblade.

That is from my PoV as ranger btw

How do you know? The only difirence you will be able to use to indentify a 5-spec from a Shadowzerker is if he PA's you or not.

The so called Shadowzerkers you fought could have been 5-specs who missed PA. You didnt see any CS styles? Alot of SB's use Draw-out now for low end cost and high to-hit bonus.

Lets assume a fight anyway with both. The 5-specs PA damage is never that great usualy around 4xx to 7xx depending on targets. On a ranger I imagine around 450, factor in the debuff, thats around 400hits gone, so a whoping PA of 50. Then the stun, ok this is a nice part. However I know I will evade atleast once against a Ranger, and I prefare it like that. (Whats better? Stunning a ranger and then taking his HP down to 10% when he comes out of stun he IP's, or hitting with stun when hes on 50% and killing him during stun.). Ok so you dont really get to choose often when you stun someone, as its usualy an opportunity that you just have to take.

Im not saying as a 5-Spec you will do bad, What I am saying is, you wont perform like an Infil. So why be the inferior class if it bothers you so much? If you really really want to play a dual-wielding critical-strikeing envenoming class, play an Infil or a Nightshade.

Im missing something with the WS issue...SBs can reach the same WS as infils...but they'll never do the same dmg anyhow..so why do u bring WS into it? yes it gets u closer to cap...but doesnt affect ur cap, right?...how about everyone tests their cap dmg instead? i know my SBs cap dmg with LA styles wasnt anythin great

Why do people say things like this. "But they'll never do the same dmg anyhow". Totaly not true. They might never produce the same numbers but they can still out-damage.

People get it through your heads, Left-Axe is 99% working perfectly, there is a small issue that does affect Shadowblades far more than Berserkers, but since most Shadowblades take Left-Axe to 39 its affect isnt massive, but it is still there. Apart from that, the LA Basedmg Penalty is as it should be. Left-Axe total damage is great, LA style growthrates are nice too.

 

[Cylian]

Left Axe might have been good back in the days, now it's obsolete.
You can swing two 4.0/4.1 weapons at cap speed, so the haste bonus is out of the window.
And CS styles do quite a chunk more damage than LA/Sword/Axe styles.
Too bad that the draw backs of going low LA are so many.

 

[DaggerElivager]

Why do people say things like this. "But they'll never do the same dmg anyhow". Totaly not true. They might never produce the same numbers but they can still out-damage.

People get it through your heads, Left-Axe is 99% working perfectly, there is a small issue that does affect Shadowblades far more than Berserkers, but since most Shadowblades take Left-Axe to 39 its affect isnt massive, but it is still there. Apart from that, the LA Basedmg Penalty is as it should be. Left-Axe total damage is great, LA style growthrates are nice too.

i'd have liked to see my sb out damage infils...if we do outdamage them then how do infils win so much that we see etc...cos i know i never did anywhere near the damage that infils did to me (most of the time)

 

[Melachi]

Left Axe might have been good back in the days, now it's obsolete.
You can swing two 4.0/4.1 weapons at cap speed, so the haste bonus is out of the window.
And CS styles do quite a chunk more damage than LA/Sword/Axe styles.
Too bad that the draw backs of going low LA are so many.

What are you talking about!?

Even with 10% item haste, 20% buff haste, 250 quickness, and a 4.0spd weapon you wont hit cap speed . You would need a 2.7spd off-hand to hit cap with the above. Having said that though you can forget about LA haste bonus since most people run with Malice's off-hand these days anyway.

CS styles do a chunk more damage? They have higher growthrates on most things yes, but LA also has very high growthrates on alot of things. Also you have to note that Styledamage is taken from growthrate and by spec level!
Which means even though for example (someone specced 50 Sword, 34 CS, which will do more damage? Garrote with the .75 growthrate, or drawout with .6 growthrate? Draw-out!

50Sword * 0.6 = 30
34CS * 0.75 = 25.5

0.60 4 Doubler M M L -L From Behind Target Target is Bleeding
0.35 6 Ravager M M L - Anytime -
0.60 10 Snowblind M L L -M Anytime Taunts Target
0.65 12 Atrophy M M L - After 'Ravager' Target is Hindered
0.90 18 Comeback L H M - After You Evade -
1.00 21 Scathing Blade M H M -M After 'Atrophy' Target is Slowed
0.95 25 Decaying Rage L M M H After 'Atrophy' Detaunts Target
0.95 29 Snowsquall M H M - From Behind Target -
0.75 34 Doublefrost H H L - Anytime -
1.00 39 Frosty Gaze M H M - After 'Comeback' Target is Stunned
1.10 44 Icy Brilliance M H H - After 'Snowsquall' Target is Bleeding
1.25 50 Aurora Borealis L H H - After Your Target Parries Target is Slowed
Assuming these are still correct, which they look


Too bad the drawbacks from not speccing LA are too many?! Thats because the pro's for speccing it are massive.

Increases base-damage for both hands!
Gives an evade-stun style at higher level.
Large growthrates on styles.
Increases Weapon-skill of Off-hand.

 

[Melachi]

i'd have liked to see my sb out damage infils...if we do outdamage them then how do infils win so much that we see etc...cos i know i never did anywhere near the damage that infils did to me (most of the time)

Cant answer that until you be more specific.

Are you wanting me to show you that SB's can show a bigger number per-hit compared to an Infil?

Or to outdamage them on a whole?

 

[xxManiacxx]

tried speccing la over 39. will never do it again after seeing what I can get instead. 47debuff, PA+CD instead of 2-5% more dmg/round
The pts it takes aint worth it

Let us see. 39-44la is aprox 2.5% more dmg/round. If u are doing lets say 100dmg per round u are suddenly doing 102.5dmg instead. That is 210 specc pts for 2.5 more dmg/round. Put 1pt in DR instead and u have gained more dmg and saved 210 specc pts

 

[DaggerElivager]

Cant answer that until you be more specific.

Are you wanting me to show you that SB's can show a bigger number per-hit compared to an Infil?

Or to outdamage them on a whole?

i view out damaging an infil by killing them, generally that was the way pre toa bonus + toa charge crap (yes i hate toa ). however ofcourse winning isnt just outdmg..evade, misses etc involved but if i cud do more dmg in 1 normal attack than infil cud i wud be happy...or even go near to wot an infil can.

 

[Melachi]

tried speccing la over 39. will never do it again after seeing what I can get instead. 47debuff, PA+CD instead of 2-5% more dmg/round
The pts it takes aint worth it

Specing over 39 LA, meant you lost PA & CD & 47 Envernerating?!

Hate to tell you but your SB is bugged, speccing over 39LA doesnt cost a million points

What is your spec if you dont mind me asking.

Id take a spec of 33 Stealth, 50 Sword, 44 Left-Axe, 30 Envenom with your char, assuming your auto-trained that is.

 

[xxManiacxx]

my specc is

43sword
39la
33stealth
34cs
30env

I tend to do 150-170dmg with mainhand 90-100 oh using malice

and when I was 50sword 44la 21cs 20env I did 160-180 dmg 100-110 oh using malice

Was it worth the pts to bring sword and LA up that much for that dmg increase? not really.

Edit:
with 44sword 44cs 20la I did 130-150dmg mh 40-50dmg oh using TD while dualwielding.

 

[Melachi]

but if i cud do more dmg in 1 normal attack than infil cud i wud be happy...or even go near to wot an infil can.

Guess what m8, you probably are allready.

Why dont you see this?
Because they have spec AF.
Because you may be swinging faster, and therefore have lower style damage.

But mainly because!

Your comparing your Main-Hand damage, to their Main-Hand damage and crying over the difirence.


You people will just never get this, all you want is big numbers, its about DPS not friggin big hits.

 

[Melachi]

I tend to do 150-170dmg with mainhand 90-100 oh using malice

and when I was 50sword 44la 21cs 20env I did 160-180 dmg 100-110 oh using malice

Was it worth the pts to bring sword and LA up that much for that dmg increase? not really.

Pah, even you know better than to simply value the spec upon its 'average' damage per hit. With the 50sword spec, when you were only doing 10 more damage than your current spec, how do you know half those hits would have landed with your other spec? Or how many would have been evaded, ect...

You cant value it like that, and you know it. Plus how you came to those numbers is astoneshing. What are those numbers based on? Fighting Infils, or fighting everything? With what weapons ect..

 

[xxManiacxx]

based on fighting assassins with heat sword/Malice except 20la specc wich is TD offhand.

I keep logs of almost every fight I do.

And I havent noticed any difference between 50sword and 43sword. Nothing that is worth spending all those pts to get sword to 50 atleast.

I am happy with my specc. I stand a chance against almost every stealther out there. Dont matter if they have str relics or not.

 

[Melachi]

I am happy with my specc. I stand a chance against almost every stealther out there. Dont matter if they have str relics or not.

5-spec as I said come into themselves at higher ranks like you are at now.

And if you stand a chance against almost every stealther out there, what is your complaint?

My personal opinion is that CS line is overrated, and poor for Shadowblades.



Ohh and another thing, the reason you might not be seeing a massive difirence between 43sword and 50sword, well first off I need to know what your weaponskill is now with 43sword. If its over 15xx then yes its the same thing I noticed.

Im not 100% positive about this, but I noticed a big jump in damage once my weaponskill was twice their AF, upwards of this didnt show major difirences.

But it was the jump from Weaponskill being below their AFx2 to above their AFx2 that showed a massive difference.

This is why you might not notice a massive difference between 43Sword and 50Sword on Infils but it might make a difierence on Scouts for example, or Mincers.

 

[Cylian]

What are you talking about!?

Even with 10% item haste, 20% buff haste, 250 quickness, and a 4.0spd weapon you wont hit cap speed . You would need a 2.7spd off-hand to hit cap with the above. Having said that though you can forget about LA haste bonus since most people run with Malice's off-hand these days anyway.

...there's an RA called Mastery of Arms, try lvl3.

CS styles do a chunk more damage? They have higher growthrates on most things yes, but LA also has very high growthrates on alot of things. Also you have to note that Styledamage is taken from growthrate and by spec level!
Which means even though for example (someone specced 50 Sword, 34 CS, which will do more damage? Garrote with the .75 growthrate, or drawout with .6 growthrate? Draw-out!

You're forgetting Achilles Heel, which will outdamge Draw Out by far. And Garrotte does just as much (or more) damage than Draw Out. Going to 50 in a spec line doesn't gain you enough to make up for what you could've gotten for those spec points in other lines.

Too bad the drawbacks from not speccing LA are too many?! Thats because the pro's for speccing it are massive.

Increases base-damage for both hands!
Gives an evade-stun style at higher level.
Large growthrates on styles.
Increases Weapon-skill of Off-hand.

you don't happen to be a Used-Car-Salesman in real life ?

Offhand to-hit calculations base on the spec of the OFFHAND skill in mid, not like in Hib/Alb where it's based on the weapon spec line. Try hitting something with ~20 Weapon spec. But LA only works better than a 1h weapon if both weapons hit....
With DW/CD, offhand is a damage bonus if it hits, but not an overall penality if it doesn't.
For the evade-stun, both Hibs and Alb rogues can spec for a direct-off-evade stun, which allows to chain reactionaries once it lands. Very seldom possible with Comeback-> Frosty Gaze.
Large growthrates on styles ? pardon me, what're you talking about ? Growthrates for some styles were raised for Berzerkers, not SBs.


And before you try to tell me about specs...

old-5spec
Crit-blade(on a 2nd SB)
Perfzerk
SZ (50Axe, 44LA, DR3, WD2)
Soulblade (50 Sword, 39 LA, 34CS, 32 Stealth, 13 Env)
Bile-spec (44 Sword, 39CS,39LA, 32 Stealth, 19Env)

tried a few more than these, non of them allows to 'just' stand up against an infil in straight out melee without either charges/pots or a serious amount of luck.

 

[Dreami]

Lol 232 replies

 

[Cylian]

need 393 tho

 

[Marath]

my specc is

43sword
39la
33stealth
34cs
30env

I tend to do 150-170dmg with mainhand 90-100 oh using malice

Edit:
with 44sword 44cs 20la I did 130-150dmg mh 40-50dmg oh using TD while dualwielding.

And here it is. People tell us to play to our strenghts and use LA-haste.
Guess what ? It does less damage than same speed weapons!

I do/did similar damage with using lw on offhand before I started using malice.

With traitors dagger/lw offhand I would swing cap speed at 1,5sec.
I swing just under 1,8secs with lw sword+malice.

So with traitors dagger you do (150+50)/1,5=133DPS
Malice (170+100)/1,8=150DPS

Numbers arent exact as they are "about" figuers but tell what does more damage. And while end usage is based only on main hand you get just as many styles out with both weapon compinations. I for 1 started doing a lot better after using malice.

Going out without haste with malice is a bad idea as it drops you dps to about same as the TD offhand. (My swing speed goes to something like 2,3sec without haste). You do more damage on swings but not enough to cover the 0,5sec swing speed reduction.

And I dont have MoArms atm so would do better with that prolly. (MoA3 would take me just above 1,6sec with malice).

 

[Dracus]

Gotta luv this. So what ur saying melachi is, that because we might swing a lil faster its ok infils do about 2x the dmg we do? Cause its sure as hell not half swing spd for infils. I think ur talkin outta ur arse tbh(yes pointless comment, sue me!) I have played hunter, SB, NS and ranger both pre and post toa..and i agree toa helped the balance to some degree. But my biggest threat to infils is still my NS and ranger. Blame it on spec, items, RAs, MLs, buffs or even looks if u want...wont change the fact.

/Dracus

 

[Melachi]

Gotta luv this. So what ur saying melachi is, that because we might swing a lil faster its ok infils do about 2x the dmg we do? Cause its sure as hell not half swing spd for infils. I think ur talkin outta ur arse tbh(yes pointless comment, sue me!) I have played hunter, SB, NS and ranger both pre and post toa..and i agree toa helped the balance to some degree. But my biggest threat to infils is still my NS and ranger. Blame it on spec, items, RAs, MLs, buffs or even looks if u want...wont change the fact.

/Dracus

Ok first off let me clear up something that some people might not know.

First I'm not an Infil, I play(ed) mid, as soon as my broadband arrives I'm gonna roll a Shadowblade on mid/pryd again.

Second I'm not defending Infils, they are top of the assasin pile at the moment. Infils are overpowered to an extent. Shadowblades do need help, some of my sugestions are:

Make off-hand weapon-skill be taken from Mainhand weapon spec, rather than Left-Axe spec.
5-10% Weaponskill increase.
And an NPC who will make any weapon str/dex based only for Shadowblades, so that those who wish to stay with pure Str weapons (me for one) can stay like that, and those who want Str/Dex get them also.

To me thats the extent of the issues with Shadowblades, thats all I'm saying. The reason most Shadowblades underperform to the extent they do is not just because of the flaws of the class but because they try to play it as if it were a difirent class. Shadowblades do not have the spec points to spec as an Infiltrator, so why try? If they fixed the off-hand weaponskill bug then Shadowblades could spec identically to the way Nightshades do without being at a disadvantage (an advantage imo since LA > CD/DW).

Ive played Shadowblade both pre and post ToA also. The reason it looks like Infils hit harder is not only because we might be swinging a bit faster, but because of a few things, like spec AF, and the fact that the majority of people seem to think LA basedmg penalty is unfair and dont understand it.

[Edit] Also another reason some Shadowblades see their damage as underpar because they get hit with the top level envenerating and only hit their targets with lower versions of it because of some split spec they took.

 

[Puppet]

The so called Shadowzerkers you fought could have been 5-specs who missed PA. You didnt see any CS styles? Alot of SB's use Draw-out now for low end cost and high to-hit bonus.

That makes little sense to me. Why use an anytime taunt-style when u can actually use styles who *HURT* alot more. Perhaps lemme rephrase: Shadowblades who *use* CS-styles are alot more challenging to fight then the SZ specced ones.

Lets assume a fight anyway with both. The 5-specs PA damage is never that great usualy around 4xx to 7xx depending on targets. On a ranger I imagine around 450, factor in the debuff, thats around 400hits gone, so a whoping PA of 50. Then the stun, ok this is a nice part. However I know I will evade atleast once against a Ranger, and I prefare it like that. (Whats better? Stunning a ranger and then taking his HP down to 10% when he comes out of stun he IP's, or hitting with stun when hes on 50% and killing him during stun.)

Its way better to stun from CD. Why? Because when U evade me and I see u hit comeback you aint gonna land frosty gaze on me. I will run through you; either through comeback or through frosty gaze. Surely it aint gonna work 100% of the time like that; but its the common complaint from SB's they cant easily land the stun mid-fight because its too easy to avoid while the enemy has an 'insta-stun' after evade (dragonfang/diamondback).

So U either accept your stun from LA (CB-->FG) is easy enough to land on a ranger; or you accept it aint and u will aim for the CD stun. Your choice; I would go for the 'sure' CD stun and not for the 'probably not' LA-stun.

Im not saying as a 5-Spec you will do bad, What I am saying is, you wont perform like an Infil. So why be the inferior class if it bothers you so much? If you really really want to play a dual-wielding critical-strikeing envenoming class, play an Infil or a Nightshade.

That involves changing realm; redoing TOA, etc etc.. Not really an option for most of us and most prefer to get the best out of it.

 

[Melachi]

Ohh and btw, 5-Specs will be even worse off against rangers in NF because of MoS.

In NF puppet, its going to easier to avoid being PA'ed than it is FG'ed

 

[Melachi]

That makes little sense to me. Why use an anytime taunt-style when u can actually use styles who *HURT* alot more.

And just one thing, most 5-specs have 34CS, and 44Sword or so

Drawout @ 44Sword = 44 * 0.6 = 26.4
Garrote @ 34CS = 34 * 0.75 = 25.5

Not to mention Draw-out has a high to-hit bonus, and uses less end