The shadow is a design disaster

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xjjanie wrote:

If the Shadow is that much of a design disaster, then why are you still playing it sonicphi?

Exactly.

In my opinion, Shadow has the best design so far. Ofc in POE 2 will probably be even better all the graphics.

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xjjanie wrote:

If the Shadow is that much of a design disaster, then why are you still playing it sonicphi?

I dont really, if i see enough changes in a league that warrant me trying a shadow character again i will make a shadow in the new league and see how far i go in hardcore before the game becomes unplayable, i died once this league so i should have about 18 to 20 hours played this league total, stopped in the last act because you cant sustain ES with melee in bosses.

Last league i pushed to tier 2 maps because trading allowed me to and quit and the last league i played before that was melee league, i dont rly play much, i just come back in hope that it gets better but it never does...

What a dumb post.

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sonicphi wrote:

You can do that IF you play softcore OR if you have a ton of currency, but that is looking at the problem from a very shallow perspective, like i mentioned before, you have to take into account things like immersion and new player experience.

I just hard disagree with this...this may be a personal experience but it is not the reality. I believe that it is you who is taking a very narrow perspective on things...You can succeed in any game mode, if you have the knowledge. New players shouldn't be jumping right into HC (unless they plan to die). New players are also NOT jaded by power creep and off-the-charts numbers or clearspeed. They play what they like, and in 99% of the game, it all works fine. With minimal effort I might add.

The way you talk, you are heavily biased by past performance and years of "experience". This tells you things are "not viable" simply because they don't perform at the same level as something else. But this is not what viability means, nor is it the new player experience.

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xjjanie wrote:

If the Shadow is that much of a design disaster, then why are you still playing it sonicphi?

The OP alreaddy responded but I have a much more reasoned out and nuanced take on why anyone would play Shadow, my sister in [insertpreferreddenominationandormessianicfigureheadhere].

He's a fucking badass.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

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sonicphi wrote:

You can do that IF you play softcore OR if you have a ton of currency, but that is looking at the problem from a very shallow perspective, like i mentioned before, you have to take into account things like immersion and new player experience.

I just hard disagree with this...this may be a personal experience but it is not the reality. I believe that it is you who is taking a very narrow perspective on things...You can succeed in any game mode, if you have the knowledge. New players shouldn't be jumping right into HC (unless they plan to die). New players are also NOT jaded by power creep and off-the-charts numbers or clearspeed. They play what they like, and in 99% of the game, it all works fine. With minimal effort I might add.

The way you talk, you are heavily biased by past performance and years of "experience". This tells you things are "not viable" simply because they don't perform at the same level as something else. But this is not what viability means, nor is it the new player experience.

This is not the case at all, even in softcore you will be hard pressed to have a proper ES/EV build with melee if you dont trade and new players are not known for having tons of currency in any game are they?


You are correct on the fact that i am jaded tho, its hard to not be jaded when you want to do a certain playstyle and you cant when stuff like summoners has been literally easy mode in any league for years, then they pretend to nerf it and the things you want to play are still crap, i think my jadedness might not be without foundation.

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sonicphi wrote:

The trickster ascendancy leads you into a melee direction so the SOUL DRINKER node should give you ES on hit for melee hits only based on evasion something like "gain 0.5% of ur evasion as ES on hit" adjusting that number accordingly.

Swift killer overlaps with the archer too much, it should be something that touches on both power and frenzy charge like it was before.

I would also like to see something that works like "do X when using a dagger and a claw simultaneously"

For the assassin ascendancy i would love something with chaos on the top side of the tree.

Trickster doesn't lead you in any direction besides it's Defensive options. That's why it's such a good rework IMO. I was originally going to do my Storm Rain as Trickster but factoring the investment made Deadeye. Now I wish I had because Deadeye has pitiful defenses.

I think they did Frenzy over Frenzy + Power because Frenzy charges are just objectively better.

Assassin did have a lot of Chaos / Poison as per the pic I showed. They just ripped most of it away. Unlike other Poison builds it was also a Crit based poison build which along with speed and Elusive helped it stand out. Then they ruined it with Nightblade support and tons of nerfs.

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Xzorn wrote:

Trickster doesn't lead you in any direction besides it's Defensive options.

That is not exactly true, thats only true if you only look at the nodes and not at the art work.

Also if you look at "one step ahead" node it suggests you are going to be fast and nimble.

None of that is reflected in the majority of builds being played in any league at the moment unfortunately.

In my opinion builds that dont reflect the main theme of a character should be the outliers not the norm, some random dude found a very interesting way to make things work or some rich dude wanted to make a tank with the shadow aesthetics and spent tons of currency to make it work.

When you design something to be a ninja assassin and they all turn out to be archers and witches with a different model, something is wrong.

I am a big fan of the shadow class and also pay attention to the "fantasy" of the character I am playing, at least a little bit. This is my take, let's go by each ascendancy.

Saboteur
For me, this one nails the fantasy. Or at least what it's trying to portray the saboteur as. Just look at the background, he is on what seems to be a battlefield, flames and explosions, destruction. The fact that you can pre-lay your devices and some other powerful effects like, throwing many traps at once or trap triggering multiple times, it creates all these opportunities for spectacular destruction. Honestly, when I'm whirling from pack to pack throwing explosive traps and whirl into the next just before the traps blow up, annihilating the mobs, I really do feel as if I am the saboteur in his ascendancy artwork.

Trickster
This one is more nuanced, the trickster can do a lot of things.
As I understand it, the main theme of the trickster is elusiveness, you can tell how he's jumping from rooftop to rooftop at night in his art. I do manage to achieve it by utilizing the high mobility offered by the whirling blades and the attack+cast speed nodes. Zipping my way around the map, swiftly dispatching of packs, dancing around bosses with ghostly grace, avoiding hits with mobility skills, evading attacks, suppressing spells and with a big ES pool for the occassional hit. As it is now, ES/EV, suppression and leech really come together in the class.
As for the means of destruction, a fantasy I often go for is sort of an Arsonist, using fire spells, it fits the "trickster" title pretty well, so things like ignite flameblast or poison blazing salvo. Charged dash and blade flurry fit a lot for attacks, I do wish we'd get more channeling attack (and spell) support though. Whatever I pick, however, I can always manage to become highly elusive and achieve the fantasy I described, especially through the attack+cast speed nodes, we need more of that.

Assassin
Sadly this one fails to deliver for me. And all the nerfs that assassin's been getting over the years didn't help. When I see the assassin I imagine very high damage output. In terms of spell, maybe something with unleash, high damage ethereal knives, maybe ACTUAL STEALTH MECHANICS, as it is now, it is very hard for assassin to use Phase Run, I see no reason why stealth can't be incorporated into mistwalker, or some other talent. Especially since assassin can no longer refresh Elusive with withering step. I expect to be ambushing rares and bosses for big chunks while they won't be quite able to tell where I am for a moment or two. Bows could work too, kinda like a sniper, but it's hard to find projectile QoL like ranger, too stressed for talent points to be going for Bow clusters etc...
As it is now, Assassin offers low survivability, low defense builds in hardcore, and some high dps paper builds in SC like CoC cyclone... oh and some mediocre poison builds. He has very little synergy with ES too since poison builds generally do not do high damage hits to leech, if a class needs ES on hit it's assassin IMO, maybe something that is less dependant on attack/cast speed so as to encourage powerful hits? Just an idea.
He is due for a rework I think, give him some projectile synergy, some ES synergy maybe, stealth, good ways to front-load damage, or bring back dodge now that elusive can't refresh, make Assassin feel GOOD Chris, thanks.

Saboteur and Trickster seem fine to me, assasin is the one that feels odd.

when i think of an assasin i imagin some stealth character that kills with a single blow oftenly resorting to sneak attacks or poison.

Ambush and Assassinate should give something like:
next skill will have 400% increased critical strike chance and 150% increased critical strike multiplier
has a cooldown of 4 seconds
can not be trigered by curses, minions, movement skills or skills that cant crit


Noxious Strike:
when an enemy affeted by your poison stacks is killed part of those stacks are applied to nearby enemys
Regenerate 0.5% of poison Damage as Life
40% chance to poison on hit