Riftstalker, Bladedancer and Bard souls update suggestion!

[Kyan]

Hi everyone!
I've been testing these souls a lot lately and some things just don't seem right about them.

Riftstalkers make for bad tanks compared to warriors (and by that I mean my healer nearly got an heart attack from healing me in a T2).

Bladedancer's Rythmic Actions are somewhat overpowered for DPS since there are something like 7 of them which you can chain endlessly with the right masteries, yet I don't see a lot of defensive ones, which is a huge cons for Bladedancers.

Bards don't scale with their gear. If they do, I couldn't notice the difference between naked girl playing guitar and the mega armored Wonderwoman with alpha weapons.

Riftstalker

Boosted Recovery: Increased healing bonus to 5/10/15%.
Why? Riftstalker's strenght is having massive HP, making possible for his healer to heal him between spikes, but as it is now, rogue tanks and warrior tanks are healed for the same amount!

Toughened Soul: Increased bonus armor value to 5/10/15/20/25% from 4/8/12/16/20%.
Why? Honestly, I've got the Elder Relic Merchant set (some pieces of it anyway) and had 5k armor. I compared this to my friend's armor (warrior); he had level 48 gear, blue stuff, and yet he had 8k armor. WTF? I think the difference's just too huge to ignore.

Rift Scavenger:Changed functionality to :''Whenever you use a Finisher, you are healed for 0,6/1,3/2% of your maximum health per combo points''.
Why? This mastery feels useless in experts, raid and PvP stuff. It does not help your healer keep you up at all. You don't wait for your Rogue to add combo point to a player target '' 'cause he needs healing'' you kill your target, that's all. Therefore, the mastery currently procs like once every 3 or 4 hours, unless you're farming. May I add a LOL to this last statement?

Shadow Mastery: Increased cooldown reduction to 4/8/12/16/20 seconds from 3/6/9/12/15 seconds. Added functionality : ''Shadow Assault's cooldown is further decreased by 1/2/3/4/5 seconds''
Why? Riftstalker fun and strenght in PvP comes from the fact that he can easily move around. Alright, you nerfed him already, now he can't run sourcestones in any PvP, at least let him do his thing! Shadow Assault is the main DPS shift riftstalkers have for PvP. It is one of the two that procs Stalker Phase and the only one that does decent damage. It needs more spam than ''once every 30 seconds'' Can you imagine being able to use Bull Rush every 30 seconds? I can't either.

Bladedancer

All Rythmic Actions now share a common cooldown (55 seconds)

Blade Finesse: There is now only 3 ranks available for this mastery. Now increases auto attacks damage by 15/30/45% from 10/20/30/40/50%.
Why? Be patient, you lazy people.

Counterbalance: There is now 3 ranks available for this mastery. Changed functionality to: ''Decreases Rythmic Actions cooldown by 5/10/15 seconds''

Combat Efficiency: Changed functionality to '' Your Finishers now increases Energy regeneration by 1/2/3% per combo points. Lasts 15 seconds''
Why? The mastery was useless, let's make it better, then nerf accordingly lololol. No serious, it will need to be toned down, I just don't know how to do the maths behind it so it is balanced.

Double Coup replaced by Lasting Tempo: ''Reduces the cooldown of your next Rythmic Action by 50%. (2 or 3 minutes cooldown)''

Bard

NERF IT WTF

Let's give sarcasm a break and look at this fairly interesting soul. Why the hell am I getting strictly no bonus whatsoever from stats? When I'm doing an expert and need a bard, I'll ask the ****tiest rogue around since it doesn't matter how much dex he has, he's a bard and does not scale at all! Nice trolling right there Trion, it can stop now. The revamp for Bard is just too much for me to even think about something but here are some suggestions I got from some players.

1. Buff and damaging abilities scales with gear.

2. Motif of Encouragement: Added functionality: ''Critters charmed by Motif of Encouragement will aid the Rogue in battle, turning into level 50 Super Critters, dealing 250-300 damage with each attacks. If there are no critters nearby, this skill summons a maximum of one Squirrel''.

Now, that is balance.

Conclusion

Obviously, some of these changes are ridiculously exaggerated. Yet, I think they give interesting leads for possible revamp. Hallelujah, and bump if you like this!

[Cloudmourne]

I have to agree with the attack squirrel.
You sir, have a gained +1 cookie :P

[Kyan]

This would allow bards to rock the Endless Citadel like they should with their Epic Army of Crying Snakes. :P

[nikrel]

I like the changes, some do seem OP but we do need some changes somewhere.

[Montezuma]

Either boost "Boosted Recovery" or "Rift Scavenger", if you do both then it will be to much healing. If I had to chose, I take Rift Scavenger because it will have a multiple purpose and does not affect any encounter (being it solo, instance or PvP) in a negative way, as it does now.

The boost in armor is not needed. The mechanism of RS is way different then the warrior, so they do not need equal armor.

The other ability changes I am not that fond of. They are fine as it is imo.

[Kyan]

I must say I didn't think of the cumulating healing bonus you'd get from both masteries boosted.

As for BD's RAs, I really think they need to be toned down in terms of DPS bonus and add some defensive ones. As it is, Double Coup allows Keen Strike to hit for 700-800 for 15 seconds. Blade and Soul Parity... well just read it and you'll understand. and they're all the same! Ridiculous DPS bonus that you can use one behind another.

As for Riftstalker's Plane Shifts ... they're useless in PvP right now. I believe they need to at least be able to chase their target and procs their masteries correctly.

[Kytrarewn]

Hi everyone!
I've been testing these souls a lot lately and some things just don't seem right about them.

Riftstalkers make for bad tanks compared to warriors (and by that I mean my healer nearly got an heart attack from healing me in a T2).

By all accounts I've heard from experienced Rogue tanks, they're far better single target/partial-magic-damage-taken tanks than Warriors. Whether that's a viable end-game solution for Rogue is up for discussion, since the AoE mitigation of a Rogue tank is somewhat lower than a Warrior to Physical damage.
[/quote]

Bladedancer's Rythmic Actions are somewhat overpowered for DPS since there are something like 7 of them which you can chain endlessly with the right masteries, yet I don't see a lot of defensive ones, which is a huge cons for Bladedancers.

I continue to believe strongly, as laid out in my "Blade Dancer is Exhausting" thread, that Sprint and Side Steps need to be removed from the Exhaustion system to allow for use of DPS Rhythmic Actions in situations where one might find himself in need of the defensive cooldowns.

Also- it is tough to argue that BladeDancer's DPS abilities are overpowered when the numbers from empirical testing/parsing put BladeDancer's DPS as lower than other Rogue DPS roles (which continue to be lower than Warrior/Pyro DPS, but that's a different story).

Bards don't scale with their gear. If they do, I couldn't notice the difference between naked girl playing guitar and the mega armored Wonderwoman with alpha weapons.

Huge problem and one I sincerely hope Trion has recognized and is looking at. Verse of Vitality, in particular, needs a scaling mechanism... as well as perhaps a method to reduce its cooldown (perhaps "Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to reduce the cooldown of Verse of Vitality by 5 seconds" or something of that nature, but that would still not affect the fact that Verse is a weak heal that does not scale.

Riftstalker

Boosted Recovery: Increased healing bonus to 5/10/15%.
Why? Riftstalker's strenght is having massive HP, making possible for his healer to heal him between spikes, but as it is now, rogue tanks and warrior tanks are healed for the same amount!

This also affects Clerics as their main "aoe healing" seems to come from abilities that heal the raid based on overhealing on the tank or another selected target. If said cleric cannot heal up the tank to full and beyond, the raid healing suffers dramatically.

Bladedancer

All Rythmic Actions now share a common cooldown (55 seconds)

Blade Finesse: There is now only 3 ranks available for this mastery. Now increases auto attacks damage by 15/30/45% from 10/20/30/40/50%.
Why? Be patient, you lazy people.

Counterbalance: There is now 3 ranks available for this mastery. Changed functionality to: ''Decreases Rythmic Actions cooldown by 5/10/15 seconds''

Combat Efficiency: Changed functionality to '' Your Finishers now increases Energy regeneration by 1/2/3% per combo points. Lasts 15 seconds''
Why? The mastery was useless, let's make it better, then nerf accordingly lololol. No serious, it will need to be toned down, I just don't know how to do the maths behind it so it is balanced.

Double Coup replaced by Lasting Tempo: ''Reduces the cooldown of your next Rythmic Action by 50%. (2 or 3 minutes cooldown)''

I dislike these ideas immensely and do not see them improving the class in its seemingly chosen design aim in any real way.

1. Buff and damaging abilities scales with gear.

Cool idea, bro.

2. Motif of Encouragement: Added functionality: ''Critters charmed by Motif of Encouragement will aid the Rogue in battle, turning into level 50 Super Critters, dealing 250-300 damage with each attacks. If there are no critters nearby, this skill summons a maximum of one Squirrel''.

Lots of souls have stupid abilities in the mid to high tiers, I don't see why we're continuing to focus on this one as being the pinnacle of poor class design in the Rogue souls.

Conclusion

Obviously, some of these changes are ridiculously exaggerated. Yet, I think they give interesting leads for possible revamp. Hallelujah, and bump if you like this!

I think this entire thing was somewhat tainted by "But but but my friend has a bigger armor number" and "BladeDancer rhythmic actions are OP because they're always up!" without doing any real empirical testing or consideration of obvious class interactions.

[Kyan]

I think this entire thing was somewhat tainted by "But but but my friend has a bigger armor number" and "BladeDancer rhythmic actions are OP because they're always up!" without doing any real empirical testing or consideration of obvious class interactions.

Empirical testing : Done by 5 different healers that had done experts with many Warrior tanks. Conclusion: Warrior take 3 times less damage.

Consideration of obvious class interactions: What?! If you're talking about the use of masteries in other souls, I must say, my friend, that you derped in a highly exaggerated manner. My said 5k armor comes from the use of Anthem of Glory. I also use other masteries to decrease chances I get hit. I'd say I pretty much maxed out damage reduction you can get with a Rogue. A warrior with ****ty masteries and gear still gets more damage reduction. That's all. There's no buts and ands. It's just like that. And don't tell me ''Rift Guard blocks 30 something % damage'' I know it, I took it in consideration and it still doesn't make up to the warrior tankiness.

[vortel]

Hi everyone!
Riftstalkers make for bad tanks compared to warriors (and by that I mean my healer nearly got an heart attack from healing me in a T2).

You lost me right there. Sorry, rogues are still amazing tanks due to their raw damage mitigation abilities.

[Kyan]

Oh and for the Bladedancers RAs, yes they are OP.

[Hokonoso]

rifstalkers suck at trash tanking, but for t2 bosses, we blow and i mean blow warriors out of the water. our 1 soul can do more than any 4 of the warrior souls and all at once. we have 0 boss threat issues, ZERO!!! warriors lose aggro day and night and we got tons of oh shat buttons that allow us to survive when healers get cc'd/los'd/killed where warriors get 1 in each tree with 44points put it that has a 1min cooldown.... not worth it!

my t2 group runs with 1 war 1 rog and we rotation between tanking stuff with the warrior always tanking trash cause warriors are kings of trash (literally with pun intended). and as far as i know, we are the only tank that can even do greenscale!! i dont mean the zone, i mean the dragon!

to say riftstalkers cant tank is too broad a statement, sure we suck at trash and die every 5 seconds, but we can sure tank the hell out of every boss in the game, and do it better than warriors!

[Absalon]

Bladedancer's Rythmic Actions are somewhat overpowered for DPS since there are something like 7 of them which you can chain endlessly with the right masteries, yet I don't see a lot of defensive ones, which is a huge cons for Bladedancers.

Sprint is offensive or defensive. Side Steps is defensive, but also offensive in that it can generate extra CBs with Contra Tempo. Double Coup, Dualism, Blade Tempo and Blade and Soul Parity are all offensive. I wouldn't mind if they changed Dualism to a defensive ability, but I don't think it's absolutely needed. And none of your suggestions include defensive changes, so I don't know why you mentioned it.

Bladedancer

All Rythmic Actions now share a common cooldown (55 seconds)

This would be bad, even with the later reduction of the cooldown. So we'd go from using a rhythmic ability every 20 (or 35) seconds, to using one every 40 seconds. What's the point, other than to reduce our sustained DPS?

Blade Finesse: There is now only 3 ranks available for this mastery. Now increases auto attacks damage by 15/30/45% from 10/20/30/40/50%.
Why? Be patient, you lazy people.

Fine with this, as the ability isn't remotely worth spending 5 points. They could even make it a 2 point ability for 25/50%.

Counterbalance: There is now 3 ranks available for this mastery. Changed functionality to: ''Decreases Rythmic Actions cooldown by 5/10/15 seconds''

Again, this isn't helping. Now I've got to spend 3 points and STILL have a longer cooldown than I did before? The only thing your change enables is being able to cast the same rhythmic ability sooner, which is fine if you haven't specced high into BD, but if you have, you are getting screwed. I can already cast Blade Tempo, and then cast Double Coup just as Blade Tempo is expiring. What you suggest doesn't help me one bit, it only makes it worse because now I have to wait longer between Blade Tempo and Double Coup.

I would support changing the cooldown of each ability to 1 min, but I would not support what you suggest.

Combat Efficiency: Changed functionality to '' Your Finishers now increases Energy regeneration by 1/2/3% per combo points. Lasts 15 seconds''
Why? The mastery was useless, let's make it better, then nerf accordingly lololol. No serious, it will need to be toned down, I just don't know how to do the maths behind it so it is balanced.

Combat efficiency is NOT useless. If you use a 5 CB finisher, you are gaining 15 energy. Finisher costs 20 energy at 5 CBs, 1 second GCD regens 20 energy, and you get 15 energy on top.

What you suggest would make energy regen be 23 per second. It would take 5 seconds to get an extra 15 energy. With all the extra CBs BD specs can generate, I'd actually be losing energy in this deal, because I can regularly use 5 CB finishers more often than every 5 seconds.

Double Coup replaced by Lasting Tempo: ''Reduces the cooldown of your next Rythmic Action by 50%. (2 or 3 minutes cooldown)''

Double Coup is a nice ability. "Lasting Tempo" is not. This would allow you to cast the same Rhythmic ability back to back. How is that helpful? I can already do Blade Tempo and Double Coup back to back. Is it really better to do Blade Tempo + Blade Tempo, or Side Steps + Side Steps? I don't think so.

Your proposed changes make BD worse, IMO.

[Fasc]

Riftstalkers make for bad tanks compared to warriors (and by that I mean my healer nearly got an heart attack from healing me in a T2).

If this is your evidence of Rogues being inferior to Warriors...

Anecdotes won't do much good since I've yet to see a complaint about my own tanking save for when I was thrown into an Akala PuG with about 50ish Toughness and full blues (whee), but we still downed it quite painfully.

I'm not quite sure anyone can say one way or another for sure right now since no such analysis has been done. I do know that if you hop on over to the Dungeon/Raid forums you'll see people complaining about MTing Greenscale and the default answer people give is "Get a Rogue, profit." Not that Clerics and Warriors can't do Greenscale, but thanks to the heavy magic mitigation we have (despite inferior physical), Rogues are taking significantly less damage overall on that fight since his breath is the major killer.

Bladedancer's Rythmic Actions are somewhat overpowered for DPS since there are something like 7 of them which you can chain endlessly with the right masteries, yet I don't see a lot of defensive ones, which is a huge cons for Bladedancers.

You do realize how deep you have to go into BD to get all the Rhythmic abilities right and what you're giving up as a DPS focused Rogue? If you want defensive goodies from BD, there are plenty of choices for that passively in the tree and in the root skills, and if you want offensive you have that as well. To get the best offensive goodies though you have to sink a lot of points into the tree into things that don't help in your focused role. Bladedancer is a great Soul, but it suffers somewhat from a duality of purpose (offense/defense) when you're looking to augment other Souls or focus heavily on it. It pairs amazingly in a Tank setup because both assets in the Soul are used often, same with PvP. But for raw DPS, the gain from going deep enough for Blade and Soul Parity is definitely offset by what you give up in other Souls like Magnify Pain or a lot of the combined goodies in early Sin/NB.

Finally, most of the defensive stuff is passively gained in the tree. Reprisal, Strike Back, Turn the Tide, False Blade, etc etc. Side Steps is a HUGE CD to feed into these mechanics, but with proper play and gearing you don't need to rely upon Side Steps really at all to get them rolling, just like you don't need Double Coup or Dualism to do what you otherwise normally do with the Keen/Reactive rotation. Sprint is a utility CD as well and one that can be used offensively or defensively.

I really like BD although it could use a tweak or two upwards in the DPS department so that you don't have to be on the defensive to get some of the goodies to proc, like Turn the Tide or Contra Tempo.

Riftstalker

Boosted Recovery: Increased healing bonus to 5/10/15%.
Why? Riftstalker's strenght is having massive HP, making possible for his healer to heal him between spikes, but as it is now, rogue tanks and warrior tanks are healed for the same amount!

So if we're healed for the same amount... why do we need a boost? Is this based upon the guess/anecdote that we take more severe spike damage? We don't so we don't need extra healing. On trivial content extra healing does us no good because its all overheal anyway. On harder content extra healing would actually make us more powerful to the point of OP because a lot of logs I've seen show low amounts of overheal (sub 15%).

Unless we take significantly more damage, we don't need significantly more healing.

Toughened Soul: Increased bonus armor value to 5/10/15/20/25% from 4/8/12/16/20%.
Why? Honestly, I've got the Elder Relic Merchant set (some pieces of it anyway) and had 5k armor. I compared this to my friend's armor (warrior); he had level 48 gear, blue stuff, and yet he had 8k armor. WTF? I think the difference's just too huge to ignore.

Okay let's look at what feeds into Physical Mitigation for a moment:

Armor
Damage Reduction
Avoidance

If we ignore Avoidance for a moment and just look at Armor and Damage Reduction, you'll notice that Warriors don't have as many sources of flat damage reductions as we do. Since we have higher passive damage reduction from sources like Rift Guard, Phantom Blow, Bolster, etc, we don't need as much Armor.

Furthermore, are you even accounting for Guarded Steel? You do know that boosts our Armor tremendously and you can't just look at the Armor totals of one set of gear vs another and cry foul. If your buddy is all buffed up in Plate gear and tells you 8k and you look at a vendor and add it up to 5k... You did it wrong I'm afraid.

Finally, taking your numbers at face value, 5k Armor is 43.47826% Reduction against a lvl50 mob, 8k Armor is 55.17241% Reduction against a lvl50 mob. This means that a Rogue with that much Armor, specced 51RS/08RG/07BR will have 69.48507% Reduction against physical attacks from a lvl50 mob. For the Warrior to just equal that, he would need 31.92824% passive reduction from other sources like talents and abilities, and I'm pretty sure they don't get that much.

Warriors do take less damage than us in physical situations on a per hit basis in equal gear, but not by so much that warrants an Armor boost. If we did, we'd need a passive mitigation nerf anyway, because we'd be the absolute sturdiest Tank of the bunch.

Rift Scavenger:Changed functionality to :''Whenever you use a Finisher, you are healed for 0,6/1,3/2% of your maximum health per combo points''.
Why? This mastery feels useless in experts, raid and PvP stuff. It does not help your healer keep you up at all. You don't wait for your Rogue to add combo point to a player target '' 'cause he needs healing'' you kill your target, that's all. Therefore, the mastery currently procs like once every 3 or 4 hours, unless you're farming. May I add a LOL to this last statement?

Umm... are you trolling here?

Rift Scavenger is NOT a MT ability, it is for trash, solo play, and open world PvP. It goes off all the time in a dungeon when you're killing mobs. If you have a 4 pack of mobs and you don't get at least 1-2 procs of this talent to go off... you're either grouped with the most consistent and amazingly bursty of DPS or you are a button masher that uses a finisher (that probably doesn't need refreshing) when a mob is at 10%.

This doesn't need a change at all and we don't need 2% healing (my goodness you must be high) for every finisher. Every 6 seconds we'd get a 2% Heal if you used nothing but single point builders. Throw in Power Cord from Bard and do it every 5 seconds. In BLUES you can hit 10k Health pretty easily and you want 212 (230 if we do your suggested buff to self-healing) free health every 5-6 seconds on content (since we're in blues here) that hits no harder than 2k periodically, on top of all other effects like Shadesources, trinkets (oh and our Healer too)...

Again we're not taking more damage overall than the next guy, why do we need more healing?

Shadow Mastery: Increased cooldown reduction to 4/8/12/16/20 seconds from 3/6/9/12/15 seconds. Added functionality : ''Shadow Assault's cooldown is further decreased by 1/2/3/4/5 seconds''
Why? Riftstalker fun and strenght in PvP comes from the fact that he can easily move around. Alright, you nerfed him already, now he can't run sourcestones in any PvP, at least let him do his thing! Shadow Assault is the main DPS shift riftstalkers have for PvP. It is one of the two that procs Stalker Phase and the only one that does decent damage. It needs more spam than ''once every 30 seconds'' Can you imagine being able to use Bull Rush every 30 seconds? I can't either.

I'm terribly sorry that you only have two 30 sec CDs that proc a 10 sec buff (meaning you have 66% uptime if you spam it) that increases all damage by 15%, while still being able to stay on target with all the OTHER abilities you have to teleport where you want or to your opponent.

You cannot compare this to Bullrush. They have one ability on a 15 sec CD that does a lot for them. We have an absolute bevy of ports we can use that all have a 30 sec CD that do a lot of different things for us. Between Shadow Shift, Shadow Stalk, Shadow Blitz, Shadow Warp, Flashback, and Shadow Assault, you have SIX ways to keep moving quickly, stay free of CC, and gain ground on an opponent or flee or whatever it is you're trying to do. At a 30 sec CD... you can warp every 5 seconds continuously if you really wanted... which means you have an 80% uptime on a 30% run speed boost and 40% IMMUNITY to roots/snares/stuns. Oh and some of those abilities break those things for you as well...

We have PLENTY of opportunity to "do our thing" but we aren't a one button Shadow Assault spam class while maintaining every single one of our offensive buffs with ease. It is a Tank Soul first and foremost with a tremendous amount of mobility and utility. As much as I'd love to Shadow Assault every 15 sec in PvE... umm... why? I have a generic "Charge" macro I use when Tanking that just uses the next available port skill to get back to my enemy and aside from the uber fun knock back spam of Manticores, I'm never without the ability to pretty much never move, and even that fight I don't fly through the air all that much.

The rest I'm not going to bother with since I really don't care as much about DPS and such as I do Tanking.

[Absalon]

This doesn't need a change at all and we don't need 2% healing (my goodness you must be high) for every finisher. Every 6 seconds we'd get a 2% Heal if you used nothing but single point builders. Throw in Power Cord from Bard and do it every 5 seconds. In BLUES you can hit 10k Health pretty easily and you want 212 (230 if we do your suggested buff to self-healing) free health every 5-6 seconds on content (since we're in blues here) that hits no harder than 2k periodically, on top of all other effects like Shadesources, trinkets (oh and our Healer too)...

Actually, he suggested 2% per CB. 10% healing every 5-6 seconds? Nah, not OP at all, especially when combined with 51 Sin or 51 NB.

[Merro]

In regards to Bard improvements: Just some things kicking around in my head...

It would be nice if all of the skills (motifs, codas, cadence) scaled from stats and that then everything scaled better. They can take our percentage motifs and codas off of % and put them back onto values, thus allowing the bard's stats to adjust the values. It would be nice that for once, improvements to the bard's gear through progression actually affect the raid's performance.

Bard healing seems to be a delicate subject. They are told that they are not healers yet their only in-soul combo builder is balanced around a healing talent (Invigorated Soul) and that the majority of the finishers that are executed are AE heals. What exactly is a bard supposed to do with their combo points outside of healing? Debuff once a minute and then deal damage only if the raid/group is full health. I would like to see Invigorated Soul dropped to a conversion rate of 25%/50%/75% damage to healing just for starters and then see Cadence's base damage increased (this in conjuction with the better scaling through stats from above). Also it'd be nice if Bards had access to more support oriented Codas, ie buffs, that way they aren't always mashing their Coda of Restoration.

Lastly, everyone just needs to stop complaining about having access to Motif of Encouragement. The Dev Team is not going to replace it with a combat oriented ability. If they really want suggestions, I'd love it if it allowed my pants to summon bread.