It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

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Mortarion
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It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

I'm simply going to let the screenshots speak for themselves. For what it's worth, yes i know this is an RR2 SB fighting an RR5 NS. However, Keep in mind that this fight was actually TWO RR2 SBs who simultaneously fought a single RR5 NS. Both SBs died, NS survived with something like 30% HP.

I am fully buffed and using 11.3 DPS dmg add. I have full melee resists, 75 d/q s/c charge.

I don't know what to say about this really. His damage reflection hits about as hard as my Offhand. He's got two ablatives going which must be nice and clearly makes a difference. Doesn't change the fact that even when u account for ablatives the dmg difference is still blatant. I'm getting Thunderstormed (.88 GR) for more than I hit with combined for leaper (1.28 GR).

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I'm not going to try and speak for other SB mains when I say the following, just for me. I do NOT CARE that NS (and to a lesser extent, rangers) have managed to obtain their RR with clearly high DMG and the BS that is Thunderstorm. The ONLY thing I want to see, is SB damage get fixed to a level that makes at least MARGINALLY competitive. The fact that a single NS can just 2v1 outdps two SB at this stage is indicative of what is quite clearly a balance issue. Let him keep his RR5. Let the other NS keep their RRs and their RSPs I don't care.

I just want to be able to go into RVR and know that I have at least a FIGHTING chance vs an NS or a ranger. That would be in stark contrast to the current game which is knowning that even two of us can't even drop a lone NS. Something is clearly broken right now and it needs to be fixed.

In the meantime, I'm retiring my SB until this gets addressed. There is no point in playing an SB on this server in their current state. A hunter can melee better than an SB or play as a sniper. I understand this isn't a server breaking problem, but it is certainly a balance problem for players who have invested time in this project only to realize that classes like the SB aren't just a marginal class, they're probably outright the weakest class on the server by a significant margin.
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Amurdora
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

So, digging around you can see what I've written about SB's and Assassins in general related to this patch level.

The tl;dr version is that the post-LA to Kuji SB was objectively much weaker than NS or Inf.

Reasons for this are:

1) LA nerf. - Necessary for sure but it hit SB especially hard.
2) Resist Tables - A slash NS is gonna have a 15% (maybe 20% depending on what tables are used here) advantage over a SB outside of Bludgeon. I can only speak to my experiences as an Inf on Live in this time frame, but Bludgeon was only marginally useful overall. It can provide a good burst but there are ways to deal with that.
3) An often overlooked impact was evade rates being halved by two weapons and how this was removed and it's my understanding it's removed here as well. The original LA nerf accounted for this mechanic. Removing it amplifies the LA nerf. Since SB swing both weapons every swing they halved evade every swing. NS/Inf don't double swing every swing so didn't always half evade rates. People's recollections of Dodger aside, this wasn't insignificant though not to the magnitude of 1 and 2.
4) There are ways to make a 2h critblade viable. It takes a good player to do so though. I've never felt like balancing on high quality play was a good move. Being a good player to be competitive against an average player on another class isn't balance IMO.
5) Live ended up raising LA damage if you specced at least 25 into LA. This helped, it wasn't great.

The other things like the deathblow abilities (if they exist here) and the R5 abilities didn't help SBs either. There is no good way to balance the SB R5 ability that I've seen. It's either too strong or too weak with the nice in between amount never having been found before the Kuji changes, and subsequent changes again, made it all irrelevant to this server.

I haven't played a sin in 7 years now and don't know all the different things done on Eden to balance them so I won't make any recommendations on what should be done specifically.

But, from above, 1. the LA nerf needs to be softened for SB to make them competitive in Sin v Sin fights. If it's not, then the 1.90ish outcome of a SB vs a NS/Inf should be an ez W for the NS/Inf most of the time. This doesn't mean totally unnerf LA but softening it by scaling it for LA spec or just flat increasing the damage a good 15-20% if you want them to be able to have an even chance against NS/Inf.

2. There's nothing that can or should be done about this. It's the original dynamic that was put in and there is a good argument to be made that by using Slash rather than Thrust a NS/Inf is hurting themselves in a lot of other spots so having this bonus against a SB if they go this route is appropriate. If they spec Thrust then this is a moot point as SB are resistant to Thrust.

3. I've always thought these penalties to opponent defenses shouldn't have been removed but I appreciate that many disagree with me. I'm simply pointing out it does have real effects. Whether you want that or not is subjective.

4. I don't know how 2h critblades perform against other sins here or casters. I know that pre-buffbot era it was devestating. Post buff-era it wasn't nearly so good. How that translates to here I don't know. If a SB can consistently 2 shot a caster before they get a purge/qc off then it's good. If not, maybe raise it up instead of adjust LA. You never need to balance sin vs sin, live ended up going that route and I felt like it broke the sin classes as what they were designed to do.

That's my two cents. The tl;dr version is, if you want to balance sin vs sin raise up LA. If you want to make SBs what assassins were meant to be look into 2h CS. If it's popping casters in 2 rounds consistently it's good. If it's not then maybe raise the 2h perf damage up a bit. If no change is made then it's patch level appropriate and SB need to live with the reality that they were well behind NS and Inf in performance at this patch level.

I know from the arguments in region chat today a lot of people remember this great SB and that great SB doing well, but I played this era a lot and my recollection was that SBs that could get a 40/60 result were exceptional and that most SBs were looked at as little more than a free set of RPs. What an exceptional player can do with a class is not a reflection of a classes overall balance. If it takes an exceptional player to draw decent results, it's a weak class. The SB around 1.90 was a very weak class compared to Infs and NS. Whether that's what you want or not is the real question.
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Alando
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

I can tell you that I was easily fighting 1vs2 with my Ranger on a 34 CD spec with 50 bow.
Press the lol 35% advanced evade buff and dumpster the SBs by spamming Thunderstorm. ( I would consistently lose with the low weapon spec against the actual good SB players, meaning they no-lifed the server to get all the charges and buff bonus and run everything all the time)

It is absolutely silly how good CD is in comparison to LA or even DW.

The experience of playing an Assassin class on this server is very poor in general since there isn't much to fight anyway. Alb sneaks are primarily Minstrel + X, which means you die. Hib sneaks are 1 NS + X Ranger. Solo SB have all quit playing the class, with the exception of some hardcore players who will strafe and run through all fight to have a chance and the team of Hunters who live around hib docks and quest spots.

So going anywhere as a solo Infil/NS/SB is pretty pointless. The only area you can consistently find finds is DF and I personally hate DF with a passion, especially with how badly implemented stealth is on Eden with players seeing you roughly double the distance they do on live and monsters uncovering at rates and distances that are obviously wrong.

[EDIT] And yes, I fully agree that SB is by far the weakest assassin class and will always lose against NS if both have the same buff and equivalent templates. Only Thrust infils will have problems against SBs because of the resist table disfavoring them.

But SB will face some of the same issues I had on Ranger with a melee spec and template. I consistently lost to blue pets. BD pets would straight up kill me in a few attacks, while I was hitting them for 90dmg mainhand (compared to 200+ against SBs), saphire simulacrum would be at 100% life thanks to its LL proc and not taking damage either. The pets also run faster than players for some reason ...

[EDIT2] And also do not forget all the silly charges people can play with on this server. Find a Scout? Get slammed, point blank s hot till dead. Or if you purge they use the unbreakable 25% snare charge and just run away from you and shoot you. If you run away to fight later, your purge is down and they will kill you easy. I do not understand how so many of these obviously broken things made it into the actual server release. And that is all without even mentioning the broken damage tables and damage calculation for style procs.
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Vladamire
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

Alando wrote: Wed Jan 04, 2023 3:34 pm I can tell you that I was easily fighting 1vs2 with my Ranger on a 34 CD spec with 50 bow.
Press the lol 35% advanced evade buff and dumpster the SBs by spamming Thunderstorm. ( I would consistently lose with the low weapon spec against the actual good SB players, meaning they no-lifed the server to get all the charges and buff bonus and run everything all the time)

It is absolutely silly how good CD is in comparison to LA or even DW.

The experience of playing an Assassin class on this server is very poor in general since there isn't much to fight anyway. Alb sneaks are primarily Minstrel + X, which means you die. Hib sneaks are 1 NS + X Ranger. Solo SB have all quit playing the class, with the exception of some hardcore players who will strafe and run through all fight to have a chance and the team of Hunters who live around hib docks and quest spots.

So going anywhere as a solo Infil/NS/SB is pretty pointless. The only area you can consistently find finds is DF and I personally hate DF with a passion, especially with how badly implemented stealth is on Eden with players seeing you roughly double the distance they do on live and monsters uncovering at rates and distances that are obviously wrong.

[EDIT] And yes, I fully agree that SB is by far the weakest assassin class and will always lose against NS if both have the same buff and equivalent templates. Only Thrust infils will have problems against SBs because of the resist table disfavoring them.

But SB will face some of the same issues I had on Ranger with a melee spec and template. I consistently lost to blue pets. BD pets would straight up kill me in a few attacks, while I was hitting them for 90dmg mainhand (compared to 200+ against SBs), saphire simulacrum would be at 100% life thanks to its LL proc and not taking damage either. The pets also run faster than players for some reason ...

[EDIT2] And also do not forget all the silly charges people can play with on this server. Find a Scout? Get slammed, point blank s hot till dead. Or if you purge they use the unbreakable 25% snare charge and just run away from you and shoot you. If you run away to fight later, your purge is down and they will kill you easy. I do not understand how so many of these obviously broken things made it into the actual server release. And that is all without even mentioning the broken damage tables and damage calculation for style procs.
Don't forget the hib side stun style that hits and stuns you from being face to face. Not sure why it's working like that, but it does every single time I fight a hib with it.
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Mortarion
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

This is all so true. Tbh this server is pretty good for zerg fights and 8man. This server is terrible as an assassin. Probably one of the worst balance wise I've ever been on and for all of the reasons you just listed plus these below.

The biggest problem is that basically every class on this server is running patch 1.9x EXCEPT for assassins. Assassins are basically on 1.65. SBs in particular are in the doghouse because their styles aren't particularly good, LA is atrocious for SBs and the damage tables are almost 100% against them with the exception of bludgeon which is basically a bandaid for an arterial bleed.

I know some people will not like this, but advanced evade buff for archers needs to go. If you're an assassin and you fight an archer. Let's just go with a ranger like I just did. He's fighting a nightmare in DF. I PA him, he instantly pops advanced evade and the combat log looks like this.

Ranger evade, evade
His buddy hits me,
Ranger evade evade
His buddy hits me again
Ranger evade evade
His buddy hits me
Ranger evade evade
I'm dead.

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. And if he wanted to, he could just front root style me and walk off and shoot me. If i purge it, he can just advanced evade and either kill me or survive so long his friend can do it. And what do SBs get? Shadowstrike? Remedy? Shadowstrike is 100% useless, pretty sure its only ever been used on training dummies guards and AFks. It is 100% a useless ability. If it was BLINK like from live that let assassins gap close, then it might actually be useful. But as it stands it's pure trash. Some people want to see proof so, here you go.
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Suggested fixes.

1) Bring thunderstorm in line with all the other anytimes/detaunts or bring the others in line with thunderstorm.

2) Boost LA damage for SB only upwards of 10%.

3) Get rid of stupid shadowstrike and all that garbage and replace it with blink from live. Assassins need a gap closer. Every other class on this server, especially starting at RR5 can just get away from you with the insane amount of RR5s that will come on line.
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Mortarion
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

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iggy i12i
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

Actually wanted to make a post about this but not for the reasons that SB and Infi are so weak, but at the fact that nightshades are so strong and overpowered. Nightshades have none of these problems that we are seeing in SB or Infi. They shred almost any class currently, their damage output is genuinely so high that it doesn’t even make sense. Something is going on with them and it doesn’t add up.
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Mortarion
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

Guess what, another evening on SB, another complete asshwhooping received from a nightshade. In fairness, I did get the NS to 89% so i feel like it's a moral victory considering how completely fucked the balance on Eden is.

Leaper for 107 from me.

Thunderstorm from the NS for 190.

No contest
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Skorn
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

Problem is, if you just adjust NS to be on the same level as SB or Inf you still have other "OP" classes.

Necro, Friar, Minstrel, VW, Warden, etc. Feel free to add more...

I do agree, overall, there seems to be an apparent Hib bias happening here. I'm not sure if it's maybe just the patch level or something with the custom code they use.

Our biggest concern should be what happens to the server/population if more players either (a) quit or (b) re-roll Hib to take advantage of this.

Once you lose the players trust it's nearly impossible to win it back.
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Mortarion
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Re: It's time to admit something is broken with SBs

hopefully they do something soon. its so insane going to rvr or DF anymore. All it is is 2-3 NS farming 4, 5, 6 mids at a time. Hell u run into 1 NS who probably drop 2 or 3 before going down. I think it would be more fun to watch grass grow than try and fight them since the chance is basically 0. Hopefully they figure something out soon. I'm starting to think the server should have waited cause Phoenix is watching this and seeing the mistakes and making adjustments but Eden is losing credibility the longer the balance issues go on.
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