Please Buff Sabs

[Beckmann]

Just because I'm afraid all the ideas from the other thread will be lost ...

• Kill unintended synergy with BD.
• Fix the rotation. There needs to be space for bombs, right now the bleeds force you to spam charges. Two options here...
  • Increase bleed duration to 8 seconds. This doesn't fix the ramp-up time with sab, but it kind of "just works" with timing of everything else. See other thread for example rotations.
  • Reduce ramp-up time to 4-5 seconds. Only require 3 GCDs to load full charges. May require changing other CDs in the tree (e.g., bombs) to make the rotations work.
• Chemical Bomb should debuff targets, increasing damage of charges to them.
• Fix the crystal.
  • 2-pc buffs bomb damage and increases % from Chemical Bomb debuff.
  • 4-pc does what it currently does & reduces CD of Rapid Setup to 30 seconds.
• Replace Land Mines w

  Ricochet: All targets hit by your Shrapnel Charge ricochet to nearby enemies, causing them to bleed damage over 8 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

  Or this can just do direct damage, if the AE rotation doesn't degenerate to Shrapnel x5 -> Detonate again.
• Fix AP scaling.
• Add more synergy.
  • Example to address last two points (just an example): http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...ml#post3551408

I have no idea what to do with traps.

[Adnoz]

You guys who are asking for old charge booster back aren't thinking this through, you won't be able to use sabo in raid.
You would be costing your raid 2% magic damage and 37 armor on target, you might get away with the armor charge, never with the 2% magic damage.

[ChrisN]

I'll say this and leave it with this one statement; I used Saboteur in patch 1.4 with so much enjoyment, nothing was more fun than seeing your screen light up from shrapnel charge going boom.

It was a threat in PvP, but I feel it was to easy to be a AoE damage dealer.

The single target damage of Saboteur was just laughable, I feel it still is. Should be doing as much damage as the current spells Sanction Heretic (if I have that right) and Bolt of Depravity but with if you need to stack five charges; this may be an issue.

[kaspurtz]

Two reasons i wanted a sab buff:

1. Sab is awesome

2. I have a good friend who is playing swtor right now and would drop that game as soon as he heard sabs got buffed. He really, really, loves sab lol.

[Cromagis]

Sab should be buffed because:

A - It was nerfed when MM was buffed, and with the IQS change to MM, It was never brought up to the "decent" single target and best AoE of the time.

B - Saboteur is awesome design and fun to play. This is my opinion of course.

[DTM300]

Could we just have all charges be AE within some radius? Effects up to 8 targets? Have detonate as only hitting the single target?

Really need to edit/update/fix the other charges, but also having the charges auto "explode" if the target dies with charges on would help no charge(s) go to waste unless it was on literally the last mob to die.

Of course if you made those changes you'd have to raise damage on bombs and or have them have an additional effect or even add 2 cps.

Other big issues include currently needing to have 5 charges stacked and reapplied to keep the full damage up. Could change that to only needing 1 charge to keep the stack going.

So full setup would be:

5 spike, det
5 shrapnel, det
1 spike, 1 shrap, I think 2 blast, det

And the third det would reapply full spike damage and if shrap didn't fall off, full shrap dot.

Build up time is still there but if all charges were AE, that'd be some heavy AE after setup if done right.

[Vyxagallanxchi]

1. Make Caltrop, Embers, and Splinter charges deal fire damage instead of earth damage. -> NB synergy
2. Make charges count as a ranged weapon attack -> MM synergy
3. Make bombs add a CP -> Might make people use those...
4. Do something with the DR on Adhesive and that silencing bomb. They are self-defeating CC. -> CC that works.
5. Make charges uncleansable.
6. Rework charge booster. It's a BOOSTER. Someone mentioned raid issues with the 1.0 version of the skill so I'll propose this. Keep an effect similar to what is there now, BUT, make it apply like this, "Each charge detonated deals an extra 50% weapon damage +15% more weapon damage for each point spent in the Saboteur soul above 21." This would result in the CHARGES being boosted. And it would get rid of that damnable only works if there are 5CPs when detonated.
7. Make traps hurt like hell. Minefield should be something that you do NOT want to just go running through. Make the root trap unable to be broken by damage and unable to be broken out of (Kinda like that old warrior skill stand off or whatever it was). Stuff like that.
8. Make Rapid Setup more effective. Take it off GCD and shorten the CD or make it similar to sign of Asias where for x number of seconds, when a charge is applied it applies 5 charges and 5CP.
9. Make all charges on someone detonate when they die dealing AoE damage to targets around it.
10. Replace Track Constructs with Last Stand (The old sabo skill that blew yourself up to deal AoE damage). Or give them a passive that deals AoE damage to enemies whenever the sabotuer dies. Not a ton mind you, else we'll see lemming brigades in warfronts and I really think that would annoy the hell out of teammates. Just a nice little boost to compensate for the setup time of sabo attacks.
11. Make some combo ability for the bombs traps and charges. Example: Chemical bomb causes charges detonated within the AoE radius to deal x% more damage and maybe apply that bonus damage to all other targets in the AoE field of the chemical bomb. Or if some of the charges are made to be fire damage, make an oil trap that when triggered, increases fire damage received by the target by x% for y seconds. Make the 3 skill types Sabos have work together to produce different results.
12. Give Sabos a bomb that is placed on the ground and goes off after say 5 seconds dealing massive damage to those caught in the blast radius.

Obviously, these suggestions are only that, suggestions. And obviously some numbers may need to be tweaked. But I think a lot of these would add not only some viability to sab but would also make for some challenge in playing it rather than 5x spike det 5x shrap det... and so on.

Also, please see the link in my sig for further excellent suggestions for sabo.

[Zyzyx]

give it some self heals since it doesnt work with rift scavenger or leeching poison plz

[thoroar]

Maybe an ability like the bard's one that does 'codas do nor consume attack points fitter the next' 10 maybe? Then have it on a 48sec cd similar to the mm strafe cd.
Also removing the cool down on the ape bomb ( is it annihilation bomb?) making it a similar ability to fan out.

[ShazzamCrucia]

Overhauling the entire Sab soul is not an option. General playstyle of the Sab stays the same. Promoting synergy between the Sab and other souls is definitely something to look at. It should be the strongest AOE DPS soul among the Rogues and competitive with other AOE specialist in other callings.

Translation: they're gonna buff residual shrapnel, don't hope for much more than that

[Am0n]

• Kill unintended synergy with BD.

Was already addressed by a dev in like 1.longtimeago that the synergy with BD was intentional.

[Enaki]

Was already addressed by a dev in like 1.longtimeago that the synergy with BD was intentional.

The point behind killing BD synergy is the scaling concerns and trying to open up the lower half of the tree for stronger abilities. 105% to 3 full sets of charges? Makes lower level improvement of any significance impractical without forceing SabDancer which a good portion of the community is sick of.

Can it be done, probably? Are there other more creative ways to accomplish the same thing without resurrecting that spec? Definitely.

[Zyzyx]

give it some self heals since it doesnt work with rift scavenger or leeching poison plz

quoting this cuz i'm jealous of clerics and want to farm pas with sab like they do with cab

[Adnoz]

The point behind killing BD synergy is the scaling concerns and trying to open up the lower half of the tree for stronger abilities. 105% to 3 full sets of charges? Makes lower level improvement of any significance impractical without forceing SabDancer which a good portion of the community is sick of.

Can it be done, probably? Are there other more creative ways to accomplish the same thing without resurrecting that spec? Definitely.

It's 2 sets of charges, the only way you could get 3 sets in a dd is with rapid setup.

[HyuJun]

The only fix for sab is for Charge Booster to be reverted back to what it was pre 1.1. And Residual Shrapnal being 50% again. End of discussion.

while this may be true, changing BD 25% atk pwr to finisher and 25% atk pwer to builder to work with sab moves would go a long way as well