Saboteur changes for 1.8

[Vyxagallanxchi]

You stood me up!

Wait... what?

Anyway, Fervor is up until noon server time at least. Might be longer if my homework takes longer than that.

[Vyxagallanxchi]

Wait... what?

Anyway, Fervor is up until noon server time at least. Might be longer if my homework takes longer than that.

Ah hell, I completely forgot to mention. It's a defiant character. I don't have a guardian character.

[Beckmann]

Wait... what?

Anyway, Fervor is up until noon server time at least. Might be longer if my homework takes longer than that.

I don't see you on PTS. o.O Ooooohhhhh, you're defiant aren't you?

Anyway, same setup as before but this time with the correct crystals. One min parse. Relic gear bag. Whetstones, no vial.

Rotation - Damage - DPS

51 sab / 10 mm / 5 rs

no preload - 230k - 3.8k
preload - 270k - 4.5k
preload & extra shrap - 280k - 4.6k

You can fit an extra shrap instead of caltrop right at the end for a little more DPS, not really significant.

46 sab / 20 sin / 0 rs

no preload - 240k - 4k
preload - 255k - 4.25k

51 mm / 13 nb / 2 rs

fanout - 200k - 3.3k

51 bd / 10 sin / 5 rs

bd - 270k - 4.5k

stormcaller (unchanged)

sc - 350k - 5.8k

[Beckmann]

The BD numbers are particularly disturbing -- much much easier rotation with same DPS if you have all the rhythms off cooldown.

Nothing comes close to the DPS of Stormcaller. Sab crystal is a small DPS gain, not particularly significant.

Pre-loading in 51 Sab actually lets you spike above the sustained AE dps (normally takes much longer to refresh the bleeds than 51 sab lets you do to open). 46 Sab still is below its sustained DPS because of having ~10 secs in the beginning with not all of the bleeds up.

[Vyxagallanxchi]

Yep... sorry. I completely forgot about Defiant / Guardian when posted

My only guardian on PTS is on the Omega server and that's been locked for months.

[Petgroup]

What do you imagine you are accomplishing with this post?

What do you imagine you are accomplishing with this post?

[Vyxagallanxchi]

What do you imagine you are accomplishing with this post?

Are you an alt account of Gunzip?

[Enaki]

If we're not going to get a shorter charge time and DoT duration adjustment then I think a lot of this ground can be covered by:

• Stances as previously mentioned (in other words ST stance that boosts Single Target and decreases AoE and vice versa). Make them higher point investments, say around 36 points or so.
• Taking the Richochet Finisher (with a 30 second CD) idea and have it replace Landmines. It makes more sense for the new "AoE" focus and would be less situational.

Then for the Synergy Crystal move the current bonuses into the stances and for the Tier 1 4pc bonus make it lower the CD on Ricochet to 15 seconds (now it's every two rotations instead of 4) and then for the 4pc bonus have it do some kind of AoE boost. The current Synergy crystal while a big improvement seems strange in that its 1st bonus is ST focus and it's 2nd bonus is AoE.

Two things that I don't want to get lost in the noise though:

• While the Debuff Groupings and Priorities help Sab debuff charges they still take way too long to apply. Maybe I'm being thick head but I'm failing to see why it should take Sab up to 6 times longer to apply their debuffs and cause such a DPS hit to a Soul that is already having DPS issues. Please convert these to Bombs so that we have a realistic, not just theoretical, options for using them.
• A tablet required just so you can run a 17 second test? Sab needs some serious cost tweaks. Other AoE souls simply don't have this handicap and when they do start to hit their barrier they have easy to acquire tools to help them with it. Sab does not. Granted this is a larger class issue, but I still think it's worth mentioning here.

[Petgroup]

Are you an alt account of Gunzip?

When I say no, does it even matter?

People gotta get real. SAB on live is bad in every which way. SAB on PTS when "more competitive" tweaks were done becomes worse than live? You have faith in it being resolved?

My post was scrap the whole thing and return MM to where they were and play another day. Yet that doesn't add to this conversation? Me stating that SAB will be useless in every HK fight is the truth. Everyone will AOE better than us coupled with their single target blowing us outta the water in their AOE specs when no adds are up. Why have a SAB? Removing Deadly Dance without making up for it is the kiss of death. How can you have faith when that was implemented with no recourse.

How's those PA's coming along? June like I said but this update comes out in March..... Yes that was five dots for anyone who watched this weeks The Office.

[Zyzyx]

Things to test:

6 second burst best case:

sab(starting with charges loaded) 2-3 charge detonations
cab bound fate and 5x 3stack tyrannys
SC(starting with 3 stacks electrified) EOTS - instant AB - 3x LF

6 second worst case:

sab(no charges) 2 charge detonations
cab 5x 3stack tyrannys
SC(no stacks) 3x FL instant AB EOTS

For pvp numbers multiply both sab numbers by .75 to account for armor.

Do it again for pve switching from 51 sab to 46 sab and 51sc to sc/pyro. Sab will only get 2 detonations off in the first and one detonation off in the second trial.

[Vyxagallanxchi]

When I say no, does it even matter?

People gotta get real. SAB on live is bad in every which way. SAB on PTS when "more competitive" tweaks were done becomes worse than live? You have faith in it being resolved?

My post was scrap the whole thing and return MM to where they were and play another day. Yet that doesn't add to this conversation? Me stating that SAB will be useless in every HK fight is the truth. Everyone will AOE better than us coupled with their single target blowing us outta the water in their AOE specs when no adds are up. Why have a SAB? Removing Deadly Dance without making up for it is the kiss of death. How can you have faith when that was implemented with no recourse.

How's those PA's coming along? June like I said but this update comes out in March..... Yes that was five dots for anyone who watched this weeks The Office.

Do I have faith in it being resolved? No. I don't. But then, I have no faith in anything at all so that hardly changes anything.

I simply want to see them make it better. Do I think it will happen? No. I don't. Mainly because of what got Sabos into this position in the first place. PvP crying about terribads being blown up. I GUARANTEE that on some level, the massive focus on bleeds instead of burst is because of all the QQ a year ago when zero people had valor. And as long as Sabo is a DoT soul, I agree, it's completely worthless in both PvE and PvP. Especially as an AoE DoT soul. Granted, for me, I couldn't care less about PvE but the issues plaguing sab are the same for both realms of gameplay. They aren't hard fixes either. I can't imagine the coding for a lot of changes suggested here like 2 charges per GCD or stances would be hard to implement. Same with energy regen. I'm no coder, but I can't imagine that would be all that hard to fix. Still, I don't like the idea of abandoning Sabo for another year. It was the reason I chose to play Rift in the first place. It's also the reason that I have a twinked out sabo in the level 10-19 bracket since those levels are no different than what they were back in 1.0 when Sabos weren't a worthless waste of space.

[Laban of C O]

Well, I've not chimed in. I guess I will for ****s and giggles.

1. Make both Blast, Spike and Shrapenel charges scale a 50%-75% boost off AP.
2. Turn Splinter Charge into a Purge Charge. Does 0 damage itself, but purges 1 buff per charge blown.
3. Turn Landmines into a turret pet. Stays in one place till placed somewhere else. High hp/mitigation, OK aoe damage. Think similar idea to the turrets in Ember Island.
4. Turn Barbed Trap into a snare/life drain. Can be escaped via a breakfree, but drains hp = damage for the duration it is up. Call it Vampiric Mine or something. Meh
5. Either do away with bombs or make them a lot better. The adhesive is kind of cool though.

[Zyzyx]

I believe the self heals would be best as a weapon enchant. Because none of the marksman, nightblade, or assasin weapon enchants work with the saboteur soul(outside of auto attacks).

Weapon Enchant Sab1 = x% of damage done from charges heals for y%. Stopping to cast a "heal trap" isn't practical.

Weapon enchant sab2 = adds damage or something
Weapon enchant sab3 = adds damage to dots or something

[Laban of C O]

I believe the self heals would be best as a weapon enchant. Because none of the marksman, nightblade, or assasin weapon enchants work with the saboteur soul(outside of auto attacks).

Weapon Enchant Sab1 = x% of damage done from charges heals for y%. Stopping to cast a "heal trap" isn't practical.

Weapon enchant sab2 = adds damage or something
Weapon enchant sab3 = adds damage to dots or something

Granted that's probably a much better option, but they seemed to want Sabo to be somewhat unique or whatever so I suggested the trap change. Changing the trap to a "primer" or charge buff is not bad either though. Sabo has almost no syngery really with any of the other souls, except Assassin which is annoying. I'd love if the "Concussion" charge was also a friggin interrupt. Just having a purge and an interrupt charge would give Sabo at least some more utility. MM having good (and super easy) AOE, decent ST, and HUGE utility makes it almost almost required. Sure you can get buttdancer, or the new 51BD going, and you'll get a touch more dps for a ton more effort, but you're never going to get the ease or utility. Having the Turret could be an interesting dps increase. And make the "track constructs" into a heal turret thing. Meh. Hell, just turn that into an 'Upgrade" button. So setting up the turret is one skill, and the other can be use for a channel ability to "upgrade it". It would give the Sabo some setup time before they start pumping their max dps, but make it good enough at the top level that it makes up for it on longer fights.

[Enaki]

While we don't know for sure since the Dev's won't confirm it, a lot of people agree that it is the "utility" of Marksman that is the justification for Marksman DPS being where it is. I'm sure range has some to do with it as well, but I don't think range would be nearly the issue people think it is if that was the only concern.

That said I don't think we should be trying to add utility to the Sab soul. It has two decent debuffs (in theory if not application), a decent silence and a decent snare. Instead of trying to add things like purges to give other options that MM we should be concentrating on:

1. Getting the AoE DPS up to par with Stormcaller and Cab
2. Getting the existing utility easy to use as opposed to 6 seconds of sub-par DPS
3. Increasing (waiting, adding) soul synergy so that there's a reason to sub sab and so that something other than Assassin is viable for Sab to sub in (NB is close, but still overpowered by Serrated Blades and Crit Damage increase)
4. Adding in flavor like Sab specific weapon enhancements (really goes with point 3)
5. Getting the Single Target DPS to something that is useful, not preferred

Edit: I'm not sure why this Turret idea keeps coming up. You're essentially creating a Pet and look how well those are scaling for everyone else. I think there are several other ideas that would be easier to implement and would scale better than this.