The shadow is a design disaster

I would assume xzorn is saying that every class has the ability to melee, but the "melee defense" which is fortify is almost exclusively gated at the bottom of the passive tree. Rather than having a fortify-like effect baked into melee in general. At least that's how I think of it.

Fortify was designed and then further elaborated on by GGG to be the melee answer to the mobility of ranged/spellcasting. Since melee HAS to be up close and personal, fortify was there to lessen the naturally higher damage that melee characters took. And yet...without sacrificing a much needed support gem, or running a clunky fortify alt skill, fortify is really only available to half the classes who path around the bottom of the tree. It goes against GGG's own descriptions of the intentions behind fortify.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

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Xzorn wrote:

What I can't get behind are more recent changes like Fortify being by Duelist when technically every starting point can melee.

Could you please elaborate on this one? I'm not up to date with recent changes. I have a few guesses but I'd rather just get your clarification before responding more thoroughly.

Fortify was changed from something you could proc in melee range to a wheel next to Duelist. This makes the bottom left area favor melee when I don't think that's appropriate.

An Elementalist can scale Elemental Melee options by using various Elemental nodes nearby. A Templar can do Elemental / Physical. Shadow Chaos / Physical / Elemental.

All these have been melee build starting positions. As per GGG's reasoning Fortify is a melee mechanic yet starting points are now deprived of it. It needs to be generalized to melee properly.

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Xzorn wrote:

Fortify was changed from something you could proc in melee range to a wheel next to Duelist. This makes the bottom left area favor melee when I don't think that's appropriate.

I dont really remember that ever being the case...fortify was always gated behind the fortify support or the champion ascendancy. There was never a way to ubiquitously proc fortify until the wheel mastery.

Besides that, I agree there should be more access to fortify in the upper half of the tree.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

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Xzorn wrote:

Fortify was changed from something you could proc in melee range to a wheel next to Duelist. This makes the bottom left area favor melee when I don't think that's appropriate.

I dont really remember that ever being the case...fortify was always gated behind the fortify support or the champion ascendancy. There was never a way to ubiquitously proc fortify until the wheel mastery.

Besides that, I agree there should be more access to fortify in the upper half of the tree.

Leap Slam + Fortify + Faster Attacks was the most common method. Since it was a one time hit buff with a timer this made it far easier to maintain when you engage enemies.

Now not only does it not work at all with DoT Melee but it's less consistent even when you have the wheel due to being front-end damage dependent. Overall just a worse situation.

They knee jerk reaction changed it due to Shield Charge + Slam/Throw heavy usage 2 leagues after years of the original interaction being fine. Pretty similar to the story of Flesh and Stone.

That skill was used too much so they made it 35% reserve and have fully back peddled now.
Think it's actually slightly better than it originally was by 2%.

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Xzorn wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

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Xzorn wrote:

What I can't get behind are more recent changes like Fortify being by Duelist when technically every starting point can melee.

Could you please elaborate on this one? I'm not up to date with recent changes. I have a few guesses but I'd rather just get your clarification before responding more thoroughly.

Fortify was changed from something you could proc in melee range to a wheel next to Duelist. This makes the bottom left area favor melee when I don't think that's appropriate.

...

As per GGG's reasoning Fortify is a melee mechanic yet starting points are now deprived of it. It needs to be generalized to melee properly.

Right so Fortify gem is still a thing, but there are 'fortify' nodes down by Duelist. I just had a glance at it on here, and other mastery circle bonuses. I knew about these and thought they were fairly interesting BUT the more I look, the more I see familiar bonuses and passives. Specifically, taken from Ascendancies. Well, that right there steals some of the identity conferred by the Ascendancies. So while I am sure these masteries are a great boon as the game just keeps getting harder, they definitely do class identity no favours.

Specific to your issue, I do agree that something like fortify should be more generalised given how much of a handicap melee has in PoE just by being in PoE, but then again a more elegant (if time-consuming) solution would be to balance the other side somehow and make fortify unnecessary. After all, if we're looking at a buff that is considered, what, next to mandatory to melee, or at least one whose absence is strongly felt, then it stands to reason that the buff isn't actually a buff but a de facto equaliser.

If.

On the other hand, the Duelist is a melee specialist by identity and should get unique bonuses when opting to take that path. Location of passives on the Skilldrasil have traditionally represented those bonuses, and in that light, fortify as a melee buff being located in his comfort zone makes sense...except it really doesn't, because when I hear fortify I don't think duelist, I think Marauder. The supposed walking tank whose fortitude is one of his defining identity factors. For Duelist, I would think parry mastery would make much more sense. And let block mastery be a shared thing between Marauder and Duelist. Same deal with the other possible 'melee build starting positions'. Instead of democratising Fortify, lean into its specialisation, place it where it logically belongs, and create more class-appropriate defensive masteries.

But we both know that GGG know that most of their players don't really care about class identity. Do what works. If it works, no problem. Go roleplay elsewhere, nerds...

I suppose the query then is, is there a relationship between class identity and build diversity? It's important to remember that the OP was, from what I can tell, focusing mostly on the former regarding the Shadow as a 'design disaster'. And then we have to remember there are two strata to 'build diversity' -- inter-class and intra-class. Between the classes, and within any given class. If you lean too hard on class identity you risk neutralising build diversity intra-class, but if you put too much weight on build diversity inter-class, you weaken any given class identity by having too much inter-class common ability.


So let's go from there then. When you say build diversity, it seems to me you mean 'inter class', but it could also be read, in terms of criticising Duelist's favoured access to Fortify, as reducing intra-class build diversity. If Fortify is that good, then making a non-melee Duelist might be less 'goofy fun' and more 'complete waste of fucking time'. If.

What does build diversity mean to you in PoE?

(Sometimes I wonder if the balance/design devs at GGG look at other successful games which much less complicated, potential but most importantly frail character systems, and sigh in envy.)

I think a lot of the issues you guys are all circling around stem from the fact that the very nature of Ascendancies pigeon holes the classes and skills into specific combinations which become meta-defining. A lot of people said as much back in Prophecy League (anyone else remember when Act 4 first came out?), because it really crippled the Path of Exile sales pitch of "play any crazy build you want!" I remember playing fire converted whispering ice marauder back in the ancient prehistoric times, but that's a thing you would NEVER play now simply because that same exact build would be exponentially better on a class with better ascendancy synergy. Ditto what Mr Chan said about flicker strike: despite it being explicitly a duelist skill when it was added to the game, it's far better on raider or trickster than ANY version of duelist simply because Duelist has zero frenzy charge scaling in his ascendancy trees.

That being said, it's important to remember that poe.ninja is not, and has never been, a measure of which skills are OP/strong/whatever. All ninja tells you is which skills are POPULAR, and even though there is some overlap the two groups are not the same. Seismic Trap is a good example, because it's almost universally considered to be overtuned in this patch and yet it doesn't even crack the top 5 played skills. Conversely, RF is actually pretty bad right now in general and atrociously terrible at the Sanctum mechanic specifically... and yet it's the most popular skill on the SC Trade ladder.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

So let's go from there then. When you say build diversity, it seems to me you mean 'inter class', but it could also be read, in terms of criticising Duelist's favoured access to Fortify, as reducing intra-class build diversity. If Fortify is that good, then making a non-melee Duelist might be less 'goofy fun' and more 'complete waste of fucking time'. If.

What does build diversity mean to you in PoE?

(Sometimes I wonder if the balance/design devs at GGG look at other successful games which much less complicated, potential but most importantly frail character systems, and sigh in envy.)

I feel they've somewhat zig zag their way into this odd place. For a long time your starting position slanted towards the build you wanted to achieve more than defining that build on it's own.

The addition of Ascendancies created more localized starting locations based further on those different "Class" options. They then somewhat relieved this issue and problems with stretching across the passive tree with the addition of Cluster Jewels. Then nerfed clusters hard.

As I mentioned I think Trickster is a very good design for an Ascendancy. It has it's own unique perks like can't be slowed and enemies can't be hasted. It favors a particular defense style ES/EV but otherwise it's offensive options are wide open.

Slayer is another decent example. While it's obviously a melee pick. It doesn't really care what style of melee you pick. It "had" unique feature of overleech, making the Crit on any weapon good, Frenzy / Endurance changes making Armor/EV it's ideal defense.

Ones I dislike are Gladiator with it's Bleed node pretty much forcing this as the option for a Bleed build. I liked they gave Deadeye an option but Bleed is so dead I haven't been able to try it realistically. Inquisitor is similarly decent. Massive regen. Armor/ES defense but now you're favoring Crit builds and then it just kinda declines. Zerker favors Crit but has no identity due to shout nerfs.

Then you have the subject of this topic. The Assassin. It's identity was Elusive with Evasion as it's defense, high damage and speed. It had a poison line but worked with most offense options. Assassin was probably top in speed, taking no Crit damage and getting hit once ever 5 maps.

They made Nightblade support for some reason instantly removing some of Assassin's unique perka just as they recently made Petrified Blood overleech removing a Slayer unique perk.

I don't know. I see them literally causing their own problems and I don't get it.

Unfortunately none of this is news.

I did look at the latest Trickster ascendancy offering and thought it was pretty impressive for an evasion specialisation (e with a little e, not Evasion the stat). Pretty much every defining node is much stronger than before, but I also chalk that up to massive powercreep if the OP can still feel, even with that, that the Shadow is not the best pick.

I agree with Slayer too. That was always my favourite Duelist Ascendancy. It ws thematically close to his original design and still flexible for a number of styles. The Gladiator struck me as too much its own thing (it's a poor duelist who has to block all the time), and I can't even remember the third one because whatever. Let's have a look. Champion. Oh look, more fortify. Whoopee.

SSDD.

That's the real problem for me -- I can look at all these changes and be quietly blown away by some of them but then I have to take into account that most of them are across the board, which means less 'buff' and more just 'everything rising with the tide'.

I quit before Cluster jewels and am glad of it. That's just another layer of complexity I don't need, a 'more for more's sake' that hasn't seem to address some fairly core issues. Just one more thing for GGG to throw as a bone and then quickly add to the illusion of change that is PoE's volatile metagame.

They must have changed Assassin because back when I played, it was crit for days and not much else. Which is fine; that's as close to 'assassination' as you'll get in PoE, but it's still a long, long way off what the OP is saying.

I do recall Nightblade as a passive and liking it quite a lot but again it just felt like one of those slot-fillers that should have been a Shadow's exclusive ability somehow.

Anyway, about reached the end of my rope for this topic. OP is right, you're not wrong, those telling OP 'just play the shadow the way that works' are missing the point with typical abandon, and I've found much better games for what *I* want from an Assassin-type playstyle.

...But damn do I ever miss the Shadow. He is truly unique across all ARPGs.

edit: Thanks for the good addition there, Yaarrr. Almost missed it. You are right, even though I personally love prestige classes and anything that can turn a single class into a tree of its own, or options to 'make' classes after the creation screen. Nothing makes me happier in any ARPG than looking at Titan Quest's class list. It's so fucking glorious. Maybe PoE just needed more Ascendancies and fewer Skilldrasil-reliant definitions.

As for Flicker Strike, dude. Look at my sword. It screams weeb-ninja-anime shit. I yam what I yam. And I tried it on so many Shadows. It's likely different now that Trickster has greater frenzy charge generation but I still don't see that twinkly 'fancy movement' as inherently Shadow: not when his core identity was meant to be 'one good stab'. Still yoinked the blood flicker strike mtx quicker than you can say 'Twilight sucks' though.

Just for comparison this was the original rework of Assassin.

You can see it's complete loss of speed, damage and it's signature perk Elusive. That's why Assassin is bad. All of this was trashed. Dodge was reworked. 8% Reduction was removed though most Ascendancies had this removed. Not only does it have no unique feature but it's very weak.



Like I said, I played two after this rework and it was a lot of fun. It felt like super combat rogue zooming and weaving in and out of combat freely thanks to Elusive with deadly damage.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Unfortunately none of this is news.

I did look at the latest Trickster ascendancy offering and thought it was pretty impressive for an evasion specialisation (e with a little e, not Evasion the stat). Pretty much every defining node is much stronger than before, but I also chalk that up to massive powercreep if the OP can still feel, even with that, that the Shadow is not the best pick.

The big difference for me is that it's no longer a DoT favored build. Polymat is just generic Bonus damage. You can build anything into that. I feel it's a good model for how to design Ascendancies. Give Unique perk + Flavor Defense but don't pigeon hole it's damage output methods.