The Drunken Friar

Pulling this out of the other thread for more discussion.





There are a couple things going on here.

First off, let's suppose you're Slash spec. Does this new poison change anything for you? No. You were previously debuffed STR/CON which affected your weaponskill; now you will be debuffed WS/CON fr about the same amount. No change.

For Flexible, Staff and Thrust users, the new poison will be a larger effect. No one is denying that. However, this is NOT a "nerf" to those weaponlines, it is a "fix" to poisons. The original intent of the poison was to lower your effectiveness in melee. It was an oversight that some (but not all) weapon lines were either partially or completely immune to this effect. By debuffing WS instead of STR the poison effect is "normalized" across the board for all weapon types.

I'm interested in any actual test data that anyone might have with respect to shield tests. I -am- a little concerned that the WS debuff will make it difficult to Slam the assassin once we are poisoned. Getting hit with this poison should not be an unrecoverable death-knell for a Hybrid. If it turns into less than a 50/50 proposition (ie. you can't get a Slam off at least half the time after being debuffed) then that is probably going to be deemed overpowered to Mythic.



That's how debuffs work, sadly. They always have and it is very likely not to change.

The "base" debuff value only has about half effect vs. unbuffed targets, but can be up to 150% value for max-buffed foes. Keep in mind that equipment bonuses cannot be debuffed - something I lobbied against from the very start when I was Champion TL so long ago. Of course, for WS debuffs, I'm not entirely sure how that will affect things. The equipment bonuses that relate to Weaponskill might not "count" when WS itself is debuffed, since those are an indirect effect. I'd like to see this tested:

Poison a naked character and see how much the WS drops. Repeat with equipment buffs only, again with casted buffs only and finally with both types of buffs. If things are working correctly, the buff should have a much smaller effect against the equipment buffs.

I see what your saying Stupid. I've known about the "debuffs not fully effective against non-buffed players" since the patch came out (yeah I was a champ at the time).

However, I must list a counter example for arguements sake: Resist debuffs! And no, you don't have to answer that one because they did used to do 2x to resist buffed targets.

Also, hard to test yet I'd love to know, does this apply to our DPS/ABS debuffs (the bonus..), or haste debuffs for that matter?

I also would like to see the tests of this as you stated. I don't have any assassin accounts active though.

The effects on offensive and defensive shield use are by far my biggest concern. Shield already has a significant disadvantage vs. dual wielders.

It's hard to test though, because I only know that shield defensive ability is Dex based, so this should not make the block chance any less. But how is the WS of shield 'to hit' calculated? This could have dramatic repercussions for a Reaver's ability to use Slam in a fight.

K this whole thing brings up an interesting question. If the STR debuff portion of the poison was meant to lower the effectiveness of your enemy and they are now just "fixing" it, did our Python proc have the same intent and will IT be "fixed" and changed from a STR debuff to a WS debuff?

Good point spinner.

Indeed a good point, and one that I hadn't considered -- but I will be bringing up to the devs very VERY soon!

According to the programmer who coded the shield "weaponskill" section of the game, shield depends soley on DEX and Shield spec; STR does not enter into it at all, so this change shouldn't make a difference in how able we are to Slam after being poisoned. Whether or not this is actually the case or not is still worthwhile to test.

The last time I ran a battery of tests on the DPS/ABS debuffs was during SI beta and we never used a buffed opponent. I guess I should bump a Reaver to 50 Soulrending and do that again. It's time consuming though, and of late, time has not been something I have a lot of.

if Python will be WS debuff, then propably 6% WS debuff... it's not that much, but not bad.

or if u really wanna get dirty with it make it a Fumble debuff proc
like the vamps have

Here are some realy numbers from the Scout TL with regards to shield damage and chance to hit:

[quote] did some preliminary test last night and here are the results:

stats for scout: 273 dex, 50+12 shield
stats for inf: 210 dex, 168 quick

scenario:

100+ hits with shield style "numb" vs inf before and after debuff.

before debuff:
108 swings, 53 hits, 82.1 avg damage, 42 evade 11 miss

after debuff:
185 swings, 84 hits, 66.1 avg damage, 89 evades, 12 miss

evade rate for before is around 40%
evade rate for after is around 50% (capped)

my average damage decreased about 25% after the debuff
the inf's evade rate went up AT LEAST 25% after the debuff.
the miss rate is surprising but may be statistical noise.
[/quote]

Also his melee damage went from 130 to 85, so that might give you an idea of what you are going to lose when this patch goes live.

Do we need a feedback to cut and paste over this, or is everyone ok with it? It will make our fights against Nightshades (which to me are already dicey often) noticeably more difficult.