Saboteur changes for 1.8

[Taranth]

i was tentatively excited about sab changes. but this has become utterly ******ed. we might see some lovely damage on three dummies that stand still for you. but @mouseover on a fluid fight is going to be totally impractical. ground target in rotation is impractical. traps were already impractical with their 1 or 2 meter activation radius. your 30 second rotation is completely screwed soon as your HE drops, completely screwed soon as your target dies with 3 combo points. completely screwed soon as you overwrite a ticking time bomb. all this messy theorycrafting is leading the soul down a blind alley to absurdity.

[Puandro]

LOL at the rotation.

[Durango]

i was tentatively excited about sab changes. but this has become utterly ******ed. we might see some lovely damage on three dummies that stand still for you. but @mouseover on a fluid fight is going to be totally impractical. ground target in rotation is impractical. traps were already impractical with their 1 or 2 meter activation radius. your 30 second rotation is completely screwed soon as your HE drops, completely screwed soon as your target dies with 3 combo points. completely screwed soon as you overwrite a ticking time bomb. all this messy theorycrafting is leading the soul down a blind alley to absurdity.

Yes, now sab is a back loaded dot class with a super complicated rotation that relies on continuous delayed damage mechanics that go poof when a mob dies and requires 1s placement of GTAOEs and targeting a new mob every 3s then switching back to the main target.

The rotations definitely need to be cleaned up. If chemical bomb is going to be a big part of the rotation, it should probably be a targeted AoE. And TB should probably either stack on a target or be changed so it isn't required to maintain on 3 separate targets.

[Beckmann]

Relic gear back. Reset PA. Golem Inductor. 51 Sab / 10 mm / 5 rs. 1136 AP / 1320 Crit.

Bard buffs

Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca
Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Rs Ab
Tb Sh Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca

7400 DPS over 4 mins

29% HE, 25% Caltrop, 18% Time Bomb, 7% Shrapnel Charge, 7% Chemical, 6% Frag, 3% Shrapnel Bomb, 2% Anni Bomb, 2% CoJ, 1% Auto Attack

{ Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca } x3 > Ab > Rs > Sh

7430 DPS over 4 mins

28% Caltrop, 27% HE, 18% Time Bomb, 9% Chemical, 6% Shrap Charge, 5% Frag Bomb, 3% Shrap Bomb, 2% Annihilation Bomb, 2% Auto Attack

Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca

7300 over 4 mins

32% Caltrop, 27% HE, 20% TB, 10% CB, 6% FB, 3% Shrapnel Bomb, 1% Auto

Archon & Bard

{ Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca } x3 > Ab > Rs > Sh

8050 over 4 mins

28% HE, 26% Caltrop, 18% TB, 9% CB, 6% Shrapnel Charge, 5% Frag, 3% Shrapnel Bomb, 2% Anni Bomb

Conclusion

Negligible DPS loss to using Rapid Setup out side of the main rotation, although not using Rapid Setup at all is a DPS loss (not a big one though). So just do the "basic" Tb > Cb > Fb > Tb > Ca x2 > Tb > Ca x3 rotation and throw in Ab > Rs > Sh when Rs is off cooldown.

I wouldn't mind if Tb was scaled back somehow so this wasn't the right way to play Sab. Even just increasing its cooldown to 4 (or 5) seconds would mean you could only rotate between two targets in a 10-sec rotation, which would be an improvement. However, if this is done then there needs to be something else to do with the other GCD.

Also note that if my prior suggestion of removing the first tick of HE was adopted, then these TB rotations would be naturally suboptimal.

The DPS with these rotations seems to be perfectly competitive, though. Given the backloaded nature of ... well, everything in the rotation, I'm not sure it needs to be scaled back.

I still need to play with non-TB rotations in the same setup and see how they compare. It might be that everything is fine. So stop freaking out everyone.

[Petgroup]

DPS testing with a backloaded rotation on stationary targets = real word less than happy results.

Stop attacking my mob!
-Saboteur

Did you just pull my charged up mob away from everything else?
-Saboteur

WTF, you dam Warriors just focused down my mob =/
-Saboteur

How come my class defining ability just got cleanesed off of my Cleric target?
- PvP Saboteur

Lol Saboteur
-Warriors, Trion, Clerics & Mages

[Beckmann]

DPS testing with a backloaded rotation on stationary targets = real word less than happy results.

Yeah, and that's why its nice that it is parsing >10% ahead of Stormcaller. I'm not saying Sab has no problems -- see my previous post on spammable AE. And the rotation's I've given won't be useful in anything except progression trash pulls because everything will die too fast.

But that doesn't change the fact that the DPS is in a waaaaaaaaaay better place then just a week and a half ago. People saw one over-optimized rotation I came up with and freaked out without testing anything themselves. Until people start parsing stuff, we'll have no idea where different rotations are at, what still needs to be fixed, and what's been resolved.

So on that note -- I'm going to parse non-Time Bomb rotations. Depending on those results, it might be obvious that Time Bomb needs to be changed so its not necessary to keep it up on three targets for good DPS. Other than that, Sab still needs spammable AE (at a DPS loss), and Shrapnel Bomb is very unimpressive and should be changed somehow.

[Durango]

Yeah, and that's why its nice that it is parsing >10% ahead of Stormcaller. I'm not saying Sab has no problems -- see my previous post on spammable AE. And the rotation's I've given won't be useful in anything except progression trash pulls because everything will die too fast.

But that doesn't change the fact that the DPS is in a waaaaaaaaaay better place then just a week and a half ago. People saw one over-optimized rotation I came up with and freaked out without testing anything themselves. Until people start parsing stuff, we'll have no idea where different rotations are at, what still needs to be fixed, and what's been resolved.

So on that note -- I'm going to parse non-Time Bomb rotations. Depending on those results, it might be obvious that Time Bomb needs to be changed so its not necessary to keep it up on three targets for good DPS. Other than that, Sab still needs spammable AE (at a DPS loss), and Shrapnel Bomb is very unimpressive and should be changed somehow.

For reference, 51ch with ID test gear and full T3 PAs, no bard, no archon, self buffed only is doing 7.7K on 3 targets with a brain dead simple rotation with basically no ramp-up. I'll try to get in some testing with ID gear and full T3 PAs for sab tomorrow.

[Adastra]

Yes, now sab is a back loaded dot class with a super complicated rotation that relies on continuous delayed damage mechanics that go poof when a mob dies and requires 1s placement of GTAOEs and targeting a new mob every 3s then switching back to the main target.

The rotations definitely need to be cleaned up. If chemical bomb is going to be a big part of the rotation, it should probably be a targeted AoE. And TB should probably either stack on a target or be changed so it isn't required to maintain on 3 separate targets.

Yeah, I agree the rotations need some tweaking. I wouldn't mind having Chemical Bomb being a targeted AoE either, one little missclick and you might end up targetting the mob instead of throwing it on the ground. /rage

However, very interesting rotations.

[charliekelly]

i love people saying theyd rather have a complicated rotation for an aoe soul. do you realize how tedious that will become considering its a spec youll play mainly on trash mobs? and also considering 90% of the time you wont have the chance to do a single full rotation before your target dies. on a boss encounter, sure thatd be fine. but anything where youd really need to aoe it is impractical.

[Adastra]

i love people saying theyd rather have a complicated rotation for an aoe soul. do you realize how tedious that will become considering its a spec youll play mainly on trash mobs? and also considering 90% of the time you wont have the chance to do a single full rotation before your target dies. on a boss encounter, sure thatd be fine. but anything where youd really need to aoe it is impractical.

Yeah, that's why sabo needs an alternative, lower dps option that allows them to spam some instant AoE damage, maybe less than fan out damage.

[Enaki]

i love people saying theyd rather have a complicated rotation for an aoe soul. do you realize how tedious that will become considering its a spec youll play mainly on trash mobs? and also considering 90% of the time you wont have the chance to do a single full rotation before your target dies. on a boss encounter, sure thatd be fine. but anything where youd really need to aoe it is impractical.

The problem is that Sab went from one of the most boring rotations in the game to one of the most complicated. It needs to land somewhere in the middle, but that's just speaking the obvious...

[Gynxz]

Changes are up in PTS

Warning: You will get a message that your soul was reset. Change to It and Activate it without mousing over the old talents or it will Crash your client. So, select the soul and activate it before mousing over the talents.


Now a note: Who's Idea was to change Demolition specialist from spreading Spike to 8 targets to doing less than 1k to those targets while consuming cpts? It doesn't specify how many targets the shrapnel bomb hits but 800-900 damage vs about 84K (~2000 per ticks x 6 ticks x 7 other targets). I mean I see it working in a 85+ target fights :/

and thats beyond the REALLY sloppy design of having two talents do the same for diff bombs. Combined arms and Demo Spec.

[Beckmann]

The problem is that Sab went from one of the most boring rotations in the game to one of the most complicated. It needs to land somewhere in the middle, but that's just speaking the obvious...

I actually don't think

Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca

is all that bad of a rotation if Chemical wasn't a GTAE and probably Time Bomb needs a tweak. Time Bomb actually has a graphic on mobs so you can tell which ones already have it -- although if mobs are properly stacked this might not really help.

I'm not a big fan of Time Bomb stacking on a single mob, because right now Time Bomb only works if there are multiple targets -- making it a good AE specialist skill. There just needs to be a better way to apply it. This is kinda weird, but what if Time Bomb was changed to

Time Bomb: Applies a Time Bomb to the target, or if the target is already under the effect of Time Bomb, a random unaffected target within X radius.

Maybe that's babysitting us too much, I don't know.

But I don't like the GTAE every 10 secs, I'll agree on that much.

...and we still need spammable AE & Shrapnel Bomb is bad.

[Beckmann]

Now a note: Who's Idea was to change Demolition specialist from spreading Spike to 8 targets to doing less than 1k to those targets while consuming cpts? It doesn't specify how many targets the shrapnel bomb hits but 800-900 damage vs about 84K (~2000 per ticks x 6 ticks x 7 other targets). I mean I see it working in a 85+ target fights :/

Spike > AB was a problem for the soul. I liked the mechanic, but it made the AE DPS way too reliant on a 10-sec DoT on a 30-sec CD, and it made the AE and ST DPS too tightly linked so it was difficult to balance them separately. Removing the spreading functionality was a good call IMO.

and thats beyond the REALLY sloppy design of having two talents do the same for diff bombs. Combined arms and Demo Spec.

Agreed.

[Durango]

I actually don't think

Tb Cb Fb Tb Ca Ca Tb Ca Ca Ca

is all that bad of a rotation if Chemical wasn't a GTAE and probably Time Bomb needs a tweak. Time Bomb actually has a graphic on mobs so you can tell which ones already have it -- although if mobs are properly stacked this might not really help.

While TB is an inconvenience on the dummies, it will be much worse in reality when you have a whole bunch of mobs all stacked together, moving, dying, etc.