Bladedancer Feedback

[Muspel]

Unfortunately, ever since Storm Legion launched, Bladedancer has become more and more overshadowed by other builds. There have been changes that have helped to mitigate this, like the increase to Duelist Pose's duration and the buff to Fated Blades, but they haven't been enough for it to keep pace with the other rogue DPS builds.

It's a shame for such a fun soul to be so uncompetitive, so let's take a look at its problems and how to fix them.

The first problem is pretty straightforward: Bladedancer's DPS just isn't very good. It's barely even better than Marksman on a raid-buffed training dummy, and MM is a ranged soul, so it pulls ahead whenever Bladedancer has to move out of melee. BD does have good AoE, but only within very specific time windows, and it's not sustained AoE, so the one thing it's specialized for is too narrow to be much of a redeeming factor.

The second problem is range. Unlike Nightblade, Bladedancer doesn't have any ranged attacks to help with disconnects. Unlike Assassin, it doesn't have bleeds that allow sustained DPS even when out of range. You can pick up Fiery Spike or Quick Shot, but neither one benefits from Fated Blades, Dualism, or Double Coup, and they can't proc Duelist Pose, either. Also, disconnects during Fated Blades and Dualism are crippling-- unlike many specs that rely on attacks with short cooldowns, Bladedancer relies on strong attacks during cooldowns, so spending some of that duration out of range is a huge loss. To top it off, Bladedancer still suffers from a highly irritating bug where mainhand attacks on moving targets will occasionally fail to activate offhand attacks.

The last problem is utility. Bladedancer doesn't really bring anything a raid needs-- it's competing with Nightblade for the spot of "rogue melee with ST and AoE", and Nightblade tends to win by default because it has ranged attacks.

So, the solution.

First off, Bladedancer could really use a buff to single-target DPS. How this is done doesn't matter a whole lot, although I think that buffing Duelist Pose is probably the simplest way.

To address the second problem, I actually don't think that giving BD a ranged attack is the right answer. Instead, I propose adding a new talent. One that makes it so that for couple seconds you spend not attacking while a dance is active, you get a stacking damage buff for your next offhand attack. Maybe 15-20% per stack, up to a max of 3 stacks, possibly with a small crit chance buff tacked on to help refresh Hack and Slash/DP/Magnify Pain. Just enough to give you a bit of damage back after you're forced to run out, to simulate the way that Assassin would be able to take advantage of a Backstab that had come off cooldown or Nightblade could leverage the extra energy regenerated.

For the third... well, Dauntless Strike is the solution, in my opinion. Right now, the only souls that can provide the 5% crit debuff on the target are Assassin and Champion. Champion doesn't see much use anyways, and Assassin doesn't need Lethal Poison to be worthwhile. The simple fact that it has the highest ST DPS out of all the rogue souls is enough. If Dauntless Strike were changed to apply the 5% crit debuff instead (or just make it apply passively from all Bladedancer finishers), then BD would have something to set it apart from Nightblade.

[Movesie]

And add to that, it is not a good main soul for PvP at all. I only want to be venture 12 points for the interupt.

[McWaffles]

Personally I'd like to see 3 changes occur:

1) Move Blade Tempo and Dauntless Strike in the tree. Replace Blade Tempo with a self buff that increases the range of KEEN strike and DEADLY strike to 20m. This allows them to still be useful at level 60, much like spiritual scrutiny makes BoJ useful for inquisitor and salves the wound of movement for them.

2) Dual Mastery and Contra Tempo need a buff. For offhand attacks being a focus of this spec, they do not hit hard enough.

3) Combat Efficiency needs an additional function, or a rework of it's current function. As it stands, BD is far from starved due to BaSP causing zero energy costs for 1/4th the fight, making combat efficiency pointless during one of your top dances. I would like to see Combat Efficiency also buff off hand auto attack damage a bit(seeing as how your off hand generates more of your ability damage than your MH making it smart to have a better weapon in OH, yet OH only does 30% auto attack damage).

I also like Muspel's suggestion to have Dauntless Strike debuff the target for 5% extra chance to be crit in the same stack group as lethal poison.

The biggest issue causing BD to be non-viable atm IMO is how many talents are useless or at a diminished value to BD itself as a DPS soul, either because they provide survival for solo'ing or because they are pointless during a major dance (like Combat Culmination giving armor pen when during fated blades you already have 100% armor pen, or the Combat Efficiency/BaSP issue already mentioned)

[Ammako]

A Phantom Blades equivalent, or something like Harbinger's Blade Rush stun for Flash of Steel for utility.

[Kedon]

It's really weird, I've been turning a similar idea in my head for Bladedancer disconnects myself. A talent such as that that allows Bladedancers to return to melee range with a big bang after disconnects would feel a lot more appropriate to the soul than just turning some of it's attacks into 20m ranged attacks instead.

[Kedon]

(this is just rough)
Replacing Combat Efficiency: Steel Tempest - xs cooldown. For every 3 seconds the Rogue is not attacking the Rogue gains a stacking buff causing the next Flash of Steel executed within 5 seconds to strike an additional time per stack. 2 stacks max per rank.

[Muspel]

Move Blade Tempo and Dauntless Strike in the tree. Replace Blade Tempo with a self buff that increases the range of KEEN strike and DEADLY strike to 20m. This allows them to still be useful at level 60, much like spiritual scrutiny makes BoJ useful for inquisitor and salves the wound of movement for them.

Blade Tempo is useful at 60. It gives you a backup if you mess up the dance rotation, and more importantly, it means you have four dances that affect AoE damage.

Boosting the range on Bladedancer attacks just doesn't make sense thematically. For Harbinger it works because Harbinger is using magic to create duplicates of its weapons next to the target, but Bladedancer is doing... what, exactly?

Making it so that you get to hit harder after moving back in makes a lot more sense and fits with the whole theme-- after all, you're dancing in and out of close range.

[Demiskus]

Bladedancer definitely needs some love. It's such a fun soul.

I was thinking a way to deal with the disconnects may be an ability that makes it so a BD doesn't have to...

What I'm thinking is a cooldown deep in the tree that will allow the rogue to take reduced aoe damage for 15 seconds every 2 minutes or so. Basically allowing the rogue to stay in melee range and continuing to deal damage while dancing in aoe. Thoughts? Too strong?

[Muspel]

Bladedancer definitely needs some love. It's such a fun soul.

I was thinking a way to deal with the disconnects may be an ability that makes it so a BD doesn't have to...

What I'm thinking is a cooldown deep in the tree that will allow the rogue to take reduced aoe damage for 15 seconds every 2 minutes or so. Basically allowing the rogue to stay in melee range and continuing to deal damage while dancing in aoe. Thoughts? Too strong?

Too strong, in my opinion (and it wouldn't work on some mechanics, if you need to avoid a debuff rather than raw damage). And it doesn't even solve the disconnect issue, since those are caused by more than just AoE damage.

[Demiskus]

Along the same idea you had thought... adding an ability similar to the following...

"Building tempo" or "Target analysis"
5 second cooldown
Can stack up to 5 times
Range of 3-25
Increases the damage of the next 5 melee damaging abilities by 5%

This would allow you to get a nice burst at the start of a fight (this wouldn't put you in combat) and allow you to use this in disconnects to return with a damage spike.

[Muspel]

I don't like the ability of an ability that Bladedancer has to spam. The whole point of the soul is that you never press the same button twice in a row. Except Twin Strike, I guess, but I don't like that one much, either.

[Dunharrow]

I agree with Dauntless being changed to apply a crit debuff instead of buff. That's very sensible and should have happened long ago. No reason it needs to be removed from Sin though.

IMO, the easiest change on this would be to change it thusly:

Dauntless Strikes: Bladedancer finishers increase the chance that the enemy will be critically hit by 5% for 15s.

I strongly disagree with buffing Duelist Pose even more. Its already the best talent in the tree, by far. Instead, I think we should look at the holdover abilities from the times when BD didn't have a focus and had random tanking abilities scattered throughout.

I suggest totally changing Disengage. Its incredibly useless except in a very few PvP situations, at this point. Replace the current functionality with the following:

Disengage: Leap backwards 15m. Your next mainhand and offhand attack have their range extended to 20m. 30s cooldown.

Flash of Steel: Now resets the cooldown of Disengage, in addition to current functionality.

In other words, Disengage will let you throw your mainhand and offhand weapons at the target, and grab them again by using Flash of Steel. This would also make BD more mobile and give it some actual dance aspect.

I don't like the ability of an ability that Bladedancer has to spam. The whole point of the soul is that you never press the same button twice in a row. Except Twin Strike, I guess, but I don't like that one much, either.

Yep. Suggestion:

Twin Strike: Now considered a mainhand attack, and allows the use of an offhand attack. The next offhand attack deals 30% less damage but hits up to 5 enemies.

So you replace Binary Strike with Twin Strike in your rotation for AOE. This would basically let you continue doing a rotation while doing AOE and allow for sustained AOE. You could even weave in a mix of ST/AOE based on what is needed, on the fly.

[Muspel]

I agree with Dauntless being changed to apply a crit debuff instead of buff. That's very sensible and should have happened long ago. No reason it needs to be removed from Sin though.

I strongly disagree with buffing Duelist Pose even more. Its already the best talent in the tree, by far. Instead, I think we should look at the holdover abilities from the times when BD didn't have a focus and had random tanking abilities scattered throughout.

I suggest totally changing Disengage. Its incredibly useless except in a very few PvP situations, at this point. Replace the current functionality with the following:

Disengage: Leap backwards 15m. Your next mainhand and offhand attack have their range extended to 20m. 30s cooldown.

Flash of Steel: Now resets the cooldown of Disengage, in addition to current functionality.

In other words, Disengage will let you throw your mainhand and offhand weapons at the target, and grab them again by using Flash of Steel.

That's a really neat idea that plays well with the theme of BD, but 15 yards is a long way back, which means Bladedancer still has trouble with shorter disconnects (shorter in terms of range, that is, not duration), and jump-back abilities are kind of awkward for moving out of stuff, in my opinion.

I also kind of feel like Bladedancer already needs too many keybinds, so I don't know that adding another that's part of the standard DPS kit is a good idea. (Most bladedancers don't even put Disengage on their bars because it's so useless, or at the very least they put it on a crappy keybinding rather than an easily accessible one.)

[Dunharrow]

I don't like the ability of an ability that Bladedancer has to spam. The whole point of the soul is that you never press the same button twice in a row. Except Twin Strike, I guess, but I don't like that one much, either.

Yep. Suggestion:

Twin Strike: Now considered a mainhand attack, and allows the use of an offhand attack. The next offhand attack deals 30% less damage but hits up to 5 enemies.

So you replace Binary Strike with Twin Strike in your rotation for AOE. This would basically let you continue doing a rotation while doing AOE and allow for sustained AOE. You could even weave in a mix of ST/AOE based on what is needed, on the fly.

[Orangu]

binary strike - increases movement speed by 15% for 15 second
Double strike - increases movement speed by 20% for 15 seconds

precision strike - deals x amount of offhand weapon damage over 5 seconds

flash of steel cooldown reduced to 10 seconds (somewhere high in tree)

duelism functionality bonus - precision strike damage doubled (dot form) instead of hitting twice.

duelist pose added functionality (maybe not here but somewhere) - critical hits with bladedancer abilities cause the enemy to bleed offhand weapon damage modified by AP over 10 seconds, stacks 3 times.

sprint - no longer rhythmic action, cooldown reduced to 30 second

this way disconnects are better to deal with without a "turns attacks to ranged", maybe add an attack like some sort of dagger throw or something