Its not ready

I have a feeling the notes are unfinished, seeing as they also didn't mention where Minor Force is going.

• Is it just gone from the class?
• Is it back on Dark Deal, or is it on the base skill with all morphs?
• If it's back on Dark Deal, did they revert the 20s buff to Minor Berserk?

While I didn't like losing Major Resolve on a damage skill as a unique source, the idea of moving Minor Force to Storm Calling and on a damage skill any build could use was a step in the right direction. 20s Minor Berserk on DD was also something we've wanted since it changed to 10s, it's a sustain skill 1st, buff skill 2nd, not vise versa... So forcing a 10s buff management rotation for a skill with a cast time, kinda felt terrible.

I have a feeling they just reverted everything, no 20s buff, but Minor Force back on DD. Unfortunate.. if it had to go back, I would hope they kept the 20s, and move Minor Force to the base skill so at the very least, everyone has access to it, and DD becomes more fun to use.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I have a feeling the notes are unfinished, seeing as they also didn't mention where Minor Force is going.

• Is it just gone from the class?
• Is it back on Dark Deal, or is it on the base skill with all morphs?
• If it's back on Dark Deal, did they revert the 20s buff to Minor Berserk?

While I didn't like losing Major Resolve on a damage skill as a unique source, the idea of moving Minor Force to Storm Calling and on a damage skill any build could use was a step in the right direction. 20s Minor Berserk on DD was also something we've wanted since it changed to 10s, it's a sustain skill 1st, buff skill 2nd, not vise versa... So forcing a 10s buff management rotation for a skill with a cast time, kinda felt terrible.

I have a feeling they just reverted everything, no 20s buff, but Minor Force back on DD. Unfortunate.. if it had to go back, I would hope they kept the 20s, and move Minor Force to the base skill so at the very least, everyone has access to it, and DD becomes more fun to use.

I still think making all of the "damage" lines run off of crit damage is a mistake. Why not have stormcalling push WD instead. Dark magic is atleast attempting to push Max stats even though they are all but obsolete from the game. Making the skill lines require you to invest in opposite directions instead of flat buffs to plug and play could help point people away from just running 3x crit damage skill lines like we are seeing in pvp.

The main problem darkdeal has is that why would I ever run it vs netch which is better overall and on a better line with access to other better skills.

No extra Sundered chance yet either. So even less time to test it by the time it actually comes out.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

No extra Sundered chance yet either. So even less time to test it by the time it actually comes out.

The sunder chance is probably just behind the scenes proc coefficient for status effects. It'd be painful, but you can test for it.

I will and update here shortly, but most skills specify that they increase their chance. The only one I think they ever forgot to update the tooltip for was Volatile Familar. Maybe it's a Sorc theme at that point lol.

Would love if they gave the entire class a higher chance to proc Sundered and/or Concussed like they did with Chilled and Wardens.

And then the same thematic treatment for the other classes, where it makes sense.

Gaelethon wrote: »

Neither of those tooltips (for Bound Aegis or Armaments) mention Minor Protection, but the patch notes seem to indicate that Bound Armor "and its morphs" will grant that. Do we know whether it is granting the ability and missing from the tooltip or whether the notes are incorrect?

Bound Aegis tooltip is incorrect, it gives Minor Resolve and Minor Protection in game, no Major Resolve.

Bound Armaments gives neither still, only Major Savagery/Prophecy.

Do you have the Battle Mastery champion point, which would increase application of Sundered by 60%?

Sincere thanks for the testing and for sharing your results and analysis.

Here is a basic test with charged + cp + destro staff to test the status effect chance against Relentless Focus, as well as compare the damage ratios with their status effects.

For those not aware; on live, BA has a 3% status effect chance, on PTS it appears to be 15% (x5), so with +395%, the new value should be 74.25%. My test got 75.6%, so I think my theory is correct.

I did not have any passives slotted for race, most of the cp, armor, class, or sets. I had a Gold Shock Staff, but I also used Torc to even out my stats. I couldn't avoid Major Prophecy/Savagery, so I just added Thief Mundus to make it an even 30%.

Rotation was simple.. 2x light, 1x BA, 2x light, 1x BA, 2x light, 1x RF, 2x light, 1x RF.. repeat.

Point is, don't focus too much on the damage, just the ratios between everything.

• BA is 24.4%, RF is 28.7% - RF had 1 less cast than BA and deals 21% more damage, but BA got better crit RNG, so they're about 20% apart regardless. This gap was to be expected, but BA has Sundered, so how does it compare?
• BA + Sundered = 32.2%
• RF + Diseased = 30.4%
• Due to the way I did the rotation and the nature of status effects, RF did not have as much access to Minor Breach (Sundered) or the +100 w/s damage it gives, so the 32% vs 30% above is close enough to be considered relatively equal considering the numerous variables.

TLDR: BA and RF are so close in damage that your build should determine which comes out ahead instead of BA just being inferior 100% of the time. This solves the damage gap they had fortunately, well done. Thank you.

RF still has more postives overall though:

• Costs 270 less.
• Stacks up to 10 instead of 8.
• Stack duration is infinite instead of 10s.
• Burst heals in melee range.
• Assassination skills and passives are just infinitely better than Daedric Summoning.

BA as a skill you can use every 4s with pretty much a guaranteed Sundered proc is a positive in its own right, but can we do something about the utility side of these abilities now that the damage gap is solved?

Relentless Focus should be the same cost, not cheaper. It should stack up to 8, not 10.

Bound Armaments stack duration should be infinite and provide some sort of auxillary effect to compete with the burst heal. For example, why not give this ability Minor Force which is mostly redundant in PvE, but provides some build flexibility. You stole this from Dark Deal, and after reverting the Lightning Form changes, you removed Minor Force from the class entirely. WHY?

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Gaelethon wrote: »

Do you have the Battle Mastery champion point, which would increase application of Sundered by 60%?

This is from live. Ignore the +30% on combat metrix, I had the Magical CP on which messed with the add-on somehow, but Martial CP was removed, so +0% is in effect.

This shows Bound Armaments on live is treated as "single target dot" for status effect chance at 3% instead of 10% like Rapid Strikes... for reasons... despite scaling with single target + direct damage buffs from sets/cp.

So.. TLDR, they most likely gave the skill x5 status effect chance, going from 3% to 15%.

I don't know how I feel about this because it shouldn't be 3% to begin with, it's created a perspective for them that they've buffed it by 5x when in reality it's more like 0.6x. Take for example Force Pulse, it does 10% for each of the 3 hits, all different elements, both treated as single target + direct. I have no clue why Bound Armaments (and Rapid Strikes) are nerfed behind the scenes like this if they scale with Direct damage.

Absolutely crazy that it wasn't 10% already. I consider putting it back at 10% to be a BUGFIX and NOT a buff. Buffing it to 15% from 10% (while also deleting our minor force) is pitiful.