Posts by Bat

    Hello, I'm not even going to bother sharing my opinions on the changes made aside from total shock, but I would like to share some more in-depth analysis of what Storm Strike is now capable of doing.

    As DreameR68 pointed out, you can reach 0s CD on the skill with the RP CD and full CD on character. However, unlike what he said, you don't need other players to give you RP in PvE to spam it, because it turns out that you still gain RP from being hit (even if the dmg taken is 0). So in farming situations, or let's say a CC floor full of mobs, the Fighter can indeed spam the RP CD comfortably due to infinite RP. This was confirmed by testing on only 5 mobs, so imagine the easy RP from 20-30 mobs.

    Next, as EchoSon pointed out, you have to take into account the RP effect time & animation time. After testing it a dozen times, I approximately get 2.5s-2.7s total time. This means that from the moment you hold down the skill key until the end of the full animation, ~2.6s have passed, and thus there is indeed a 0.6s window where the Fighter would not be invulnerable if he were to want to spam this skill.
    0.6s of no invulnerability is really quite small, especially for a class with naturally high Dodge capabilities. It's still near-perma invincibility in my eyes, but if you're being nitpicky then being unlucky during that 0.6s window could potentially bring you harm.

    Additional information to be added. This invincibility term lead me to understand it would nullify all damage received, and I think most people would understand it the same way I did. But as a surprise to me, it turns out invincibility doesn't simply block all damage (making it 0), but it also stops any and all debuffs. Meaning during this 2s window, you can't be hit with a DoT, with a sleep, a KD, a defense debuff, etc.
    However, one thing seems to bypass this invincibility, and that is an HTB.

    Finally, the method used for this invincibility seems to be Guard with 100% chance to block 100% of damage. Because of this, when we were testing against a player that uses an attack skill during the skill animation, there would sometimes be a Counter Attack (you know, the thing that happens when you use Guard timed perfectly against a skill) which ends up doing a KD to the attacker. But it's much more reliable compared to normal Guard, because it seems the Counter Attack window is active during the full 2s. For lack of wanting to spend hours of testing we only tested this particular mechanic 20 times, and in those 20 times the attacker got countered & KD'ed 13 times: 13/20.
    I think Counter Attack has an innate chance to function during Guard, so don't take the 13/20 as correct (I think it might be 50% of the time), but it should give you an indication that it happens often enough to be mentioned and for it to be counted as yet another asset this skill now has.


    Therefore let's look at the PvE implications:

    • AoE damage is not too great, but it's phys based, so fighters don't need to be hybrid to use this.
    • The total animation time for the skill (including RP usage) is about 2.6s. Therefore when spamming this skill with CD RP, a Fighter will find himself vulnerable for ~0.6s between each recast of the skill.
    • With Concentration (29 CD buff), 4 CD on glasses (I randomly pick this because it's not that high) and the easy to obtain CC CD earrings 10+16 => 59CD.
      59CD is equivalent to 41.3% reduction to a 24s skill -> which is -9.912s. The CD of the skill is now at 14.08s.
      Now take into account that the skill animation time with RP CD is 2.6, this means 14.08s - 2.6 = ~11.5s.
      Finally add the effect of the CD RP which is -12s and you are at 0s CD.
      This means that with extremely easy to achieve CD gear, you can comfortably spam the skill over and over. There is a sacrifice of using CD earrings instead of props, but now let's take this example with players that are actually not using cheap/bad gear. It's not crazy to think of a Fighter using one 23CD earring with 6-8CD on glasses. This means they only need to sacrifice one earring to still be able to comfortably spam the skill.
    • No issue with keeping RP up considering that you still receive RP from being attacked by mobs during the invincibility, so you can spam it with infinite RP alone.
    • It gives you total immunity to any debuffs during the 2s as well, which means you can't be KD'ed during those 2s, or given fear or given burn, etc.
      If you were to look at it this way, imagine a Fighter is tanking a boss that can give fear. While there is that ~0.6s window during the Storm Strike spam where he could slip a debuff in, that only accounts for 0.6/2.6 = 23% of the time. So even if that 0.6s delay means it's not perma invincibility to all damage and debuffs, it's still basically lowering the amount of time a Fighter can be hit or debuffed down by 77% (this is ignoring the Dodge too).
    • The Counter Attack mechanic only activates from skills and not auto-attacks, which will rarely happen in PvE instances, so this part is ignorable.

    And now PvP implications:

    • Forget CD RP, unless you're really just using a troll build, but I think we can all agree that Fighters won't be able to spam this skill nonstop in PvP.
    • The fact that the Fighter receives RP from attacks during immunity is a tiny bonus in a pvp scenario (probably moreso in a 5v5 or large scale pvp scenario if he's being focused), but overall not really important.
    • Seeing as it's a free-cast aoe now, due to the update, it can be used to avoid an incoming strong attack or debuff. I imagine it won't be too useful against attacks (unless you see an SK using a bold strike on you and hasn't stunned/fear/KD you), but I can certainly see this being very helpful to avoid the ennemy's Crowd-Control skills like KD/Stun/Fear etc. Timing will be difficult, and anticipation is probably needed to pull it off, but against a KD that requires RP charge animation... I can see it being a helpful save. HTB can hit it, but this just seems like one of those rare occurences. For an HTB attack to be timed with Storm Strike in a PvP match... I don't think that will happen often. But at least every other class now has a single surefire way of hitting a Fighter during Storm Strike (...).
      Let's now also mention that all of this is given to a Fighter skill, which is the class who will have the highest Dodge to begin with. So this has given an already elusive target another potential chance to avoid being hit by something.
    • Finally, the most important factor for pvp in my opinion: the Counter Attack. This Counter Attack mechanism just seems like another very powerful bonus that this skill may have in a fight. Again, timing might be difficult, but in a 1v1 or 5v5, skills are constantly being used one after the other, so it can't be that impossible to time it right. And when you do time it right, you have a non-negligible chance (50%? I'm not entirely sure, maybe someone can help me out on this) to KD the attacker. So not only did you completely avoid the damage and the debuff from the attack skill, but you also may KD the attacker in the process, giving you an amazing opportunity to pursue with a combo.

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    I'm very much aware that this update only happened today and that most of the things I talked about could quickly become irrelevant in a future update of the skill, but I think I felt it was important to share all this so that everyone can see how a seemingly simple 'invincibility' effect can have many more repercussions on the balance of the game that one would think.


    I hope my tone was non-aggressive the entire time and that some of this might have been interesting for someone.

    Congratulations to anyone who actually read everything... here's a potato:

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