I don't think people quite appreciate how bad the charge-up skills are. When people say these things need to do more damage, I feel they don't fully grasp just how much more is needed. If you want to be really depressed, open up a character planner and spec out a full Fire/Cold Sorceress, then spec out a full Phoenix Strike Assassin. The assassin will be doing less than half of the raw damage, will have to do it from melee, will have to hit with her attacks (i.e. needs attack rating), and will have to hit with 1-3 normal attacks in between her casts. So...less than half of the raw damage, every 2nd to 4th hit. So, actually, less than quarter to eighth of the damage. That's how bad those skills are. If you buff the damage of the charge-up skills by 5x to 9x (cause remember, they were doing LESS than half) they'll STILL be worse than a Sorceress cause you have to be in melee and need to stack enough attack rating to be effective. You'd have to buff those charge levels to do at least 6-10 times, or better yet, 7-11 times the damage for them to be worth anything. A simpler comparison on the non-elemental side of things. With a lvl 20 Tiger Strike and lvl 20 Dragon Claw, you do approximately the same amount of damage by charging up Tiger Strike 3 times and then proccing it with Dragon Claw as you do with just using Dragon Claw 4 times. You spent 20 skill points and your reward is being just as strong as before and down 20 skill points. Even just basic napkin math brings you to this conclusion. Which makes me really wonder if they ever bothered doing any math on the MA Assassin at all during design and "balancing". It's apalling the Assassin was even released in that state.
Yeah. I too have often found charge-up skills to be impractical and a complete waste of time in the long run. I played Phoenix Strike Assassin a couple of times. While she did alright in Normal and Nightmare, she was almost rendered almost useless in Hell difficulty. Even with decent equipment, she didn't do enough damage, she didn't clear mobs fast enough and often died very easily. So I just had her respec-ed into a Dragon Talon/Death Sentry combo build and my life was so much better. And it's shame really. As charge-ups are a cool concept, but as they are, there not worth it unless you really want to handicap yourself.
yea but Blizzard probably isnt even watching these videos or any others. They will probably do something else like just buff some skills instead of changing their whole effect... like with all other game developers who dont listen to the fans
Hey Carbot, one problem with your "Fire claw increases Fire resist stuff" is that the minions who DO that element in damage (so where the resist is useful) ALSO have natural higher immunity in that element or are straight up completely immune to that. Which means using a Fire Claw attack against a fire monster to boost your fire resist is pointless because the monster is fire immune. Same with your ice and lighting attack. Nobody would use that against ice & lighting monster cause they are immune to that element.
was thinking exactly the same, so it should reduce monsters resistance as well?. but then it will do crap dmg which is the current problem... I was thinking that it somehow, should give you resistance to all elements but fire.
I'd much more prefer if the elemental charge-up skills actually deal some minor bonus damage of their respective elements on the charge-up attack, and then big elemental damage when releasing the charge with a Finisher move. Not sure if this is how Fists of Fire actually kinda works already. I know it converts a portion of your physical damage into fire elemental damage, but that might just be on releasing the charge, so basically it just deals bonus fire damage based on your physical damage at the cost of reducing your physical damage by that same amount, which kinda is an overall negative since everything in the higher difficulties has really high fire resistances.
Well in diablo 2 it's rare to fight only fire inmunes or only cold inmunes in a determined area, so if you want more fire resistance before facing a mob pack you can prepare fighting lighting inmunes before
6:39 Poison, and also Open Wounds and fire ground, will already by default prevent monster healing since they deal damage every frame and regen cannot occur in the same frame damage is being dealt. Fun fact, cold damage over time only halves HP regen because it only deals damage every other frame and therefore a max APS Whirlwind is just as effective at doing so. 7:30 The red arrow and text are actually wrong. Blade Sentinel does not proc Open Wounds or Crushing Blow. It does work with Deadly Strike, though. 7:54 Blade Shield does not return damage to attackers. It solely deals damage to enemies near the Assassin.
Back in the day i remember the kicks finishing moves would hit like once every 10 swings even with 95% hit chance. That was the most painful diablo experience ever and i havent looked at that tree ever since.
@@europeansovietunion7372 To be fair whether or not they can do it is one thing but Diablo 2 has tons of skills that no one uses because they are bad or impossible to use on harder difficulties
@@Azguella Depends. Phoenix for example is completely fine (the other elemental martial art skills are better until you can max out all synergies, so they are useful too in normal and nightmare). The changes proposed here would make this skill completely unfun for me, as I explained here : th-cam.com/video/tsD7X3djf6E/w-d-xo.html&lc=UgzE3aov_c0OfOsdgUB4AaABAg Another skill people often doom as useless is bone wall (and prison). I can't count the number of players I've saved with that skill in hardcore. But it can also be used offensively with bone spear. Is used correctly you can "force" the monster to be in line, which increases the efficiency of bone wall, firewall, and other piercing attacks. Finally this can be used to safely stack monsters on corpses. This is especially important for bone-necro against magic-immunes monsters, since the only way to kill them is corpse explosion. Leap is another decried skill, because everybody knows leap attack is much better, right? Well no. leap attack doesn't have a knockback effect, whereas leap does knock back all monsters in a pretty large radius. This even works on stun-immunes monsters like Hephaistos. All necro curses have their uses as well when you think about it ; and I could go on and on. There might not be the best skills all the time, but they are the best skill sometimes. See, in game-design there's 3 types of "strategies" the player can use. - dominant strategy : the player can pretty much beat the game using that same strategy all the time. Which makes the game boring. - dominated strategies, which never have any use and are just there because of bad design and/or bad balance. Diablo2 have very few of them. - nearly-dominant strategies : won't work in any situation, but each one is the best in at least one context. Any good game-designer should seek to increase the number of such strategies, as they generate meaningful and interesting choices for the player. The problem is, most players think they want dominant strategies, which is completely understandable from their perspective because they want to beat the game, use strategies they like more often. But what they want in fact are nearly-dominant strategies because that's what makes games interesting. ___ Also, lot of Diablo2 player focus only on the end game (probably because that's an old game and player think they already know everything about it and just want to have fun with a powerful level 80+ character). But if you play the way the game was indented, you need a sense of progress, and variations. The game would be incredibly boring if you had to use the normal attack until you achieve your final build all of the soudain. For example the simple kick liberation (at level 6 IIRC) is a big step up compared to liberating with a normal attack. Then at level 18 (it may take few hours to get theses extra levels if you don't do sewer runs) dragon tail is incredibly powerful in comparaison since it has an AoE. However you typically can't use dragon tail all the time because it costs a lot of mana. So you end up with 2 nearly-dominant strategies for a while : dragon tail against groups of monsters you can leach (using 2 or 3 cobra charges) and the normal kick against the rest. Finally, later on (level 35 or so, depending of the equipment you've found) you'll do enough damages and have enough mana to be able to use dragon tail all the time. That being say, progress is fine because it drastically changes the way you play, but you probably don't want to create artificial progress either... For example dragon flight (which makes the assassin teleport to a distant target to kick it) is very useful as a poor-man's teleport, and one point is enough to unlock all its usefulness (except if you use it for pvp). Some players and probably some designers would see that as a problem and would like to "milk" that skill more. For example, by reducing the reach of the "flight", and increasing it for each point put in it. But that's only an artificial way to "milk" a strategy when you don't have enough time or imagination to create more strategies. This kind of artificial progress is often unavoidable because you have to ship the game at some point, and it can be used to keep the game consistent. For example each character gets one skill point per level, so you might need to add something completely unimaginative such as a mastery skill ; so at least the player could dump their extra skill points in there (otherwise the player would think there's something wrong with his character, with him, or with the game). Let me be clear: this is a dirty trick of the trade, not an elegant design. And it would be a mistake to consider that every skill ought to gradually gain in usefulness for each skill-point invested in it. The game is completely fine with skill getting pretty much all their usefulness with only one point. As long as the player has something to dump their points into, that's a non-issue and trying to fix it could make the game worse (because now instead of putting one point to unlocking all the power of a marginally-usefull skill, you'd have to invest let's say 20 points... Chance are your new design decision would simply push the player not use that marginaly-useful skill anymore since the cost is now way too big...) ___ Sorry for the long post. All in all I don't think nowadays Blizzard have the skill and/or cares to put the required time to make good design decision regarding D2. Keep in mind that it took a very long time to get D2 released, with a lot of liberty to experiment, prototype, and most importantly the liberty to abandon design decisions when they turn out to be bad once implemented into the game (an important liberty many studios do not have). I'd much prefer see the devs focus on modding tools instead (and a simple way to convert characters form vanilla/closed mode to modded/open mode... Maybe even allow to convert from opened mode to non-ladder closed mode with a bit of character-sanitation) That way the gaming community could experiment; prototype; abandon bad mods to their faiths, scavenging only goods ideas from them, etc.
I could be wrong but the pre-patch notes sound like they might possibly consider thinking about maybe looking into the idea of someday getting around to buffing the physical damage traps.
All sounds pretty good. Seeing someone use a dagger for a change would be really neat. If blade sentry was based off of the weapons equipped that would make for some seriously cool combos, especially if they're on a weapon swap.
The thing I love about your ideas is that they're not stupidly overpowered. They are legitimate ideas that could diversify gameplay, something that Diablo 2 lacks a bit. I seriously wish Blizz would pick your brain for their upcoming class changes
The charge attacks can already stack meaning if you release these abilities you end up with a huge explosion and white orbs from the rainbow buildup. My favourite is to do fire, lighting, and cold claws, and finish off with 2 charge pheonix strike.
Yeah, I have a martials arts assassin, and you have to hit a lot in Less than 10 seconds and hope you hit with the finisher or one of the charges will disappear. I have a lot of fun with her, but it's really challenging in hell
@@cesargeney5268 I got all to ubers once mostly by myself a year ago with Martial arts with this excat playstyle. Juggling those orbs is a challenge to say the least.
I like the idea of the blade skills synergising and carrying over weapon properties, very cool idea. Totally agree on sentries just feeling like spells, trappier traps would be neat. D2 Carbot mod when?
Man I love these videos! Also your voice reminds of Norm McDonald (RIP). Keep'em coming 😆
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Cool to see some of the same ideas that I had on the video! Cobra Strike should poison as well, and I also miss some poison trap too. The trap fence idea is great! Congrats
Gotta say, I REALLY like the idea of Blade Fury Bouncing between nearby targets similar to Chain Lightning. Increased levels can increase number of bounces.
Multi shot blade fury which can bounce is actually cool idea, it will make a physic equlvant of chain lighting. To balance it maybe make it only be availiable when equip with throwing knife. Make all these throwing type weapon more useful.
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Yes I have the same idea! Make blade skills super powerful BUT only with throwing knives equipped. Also it should allow use claw and knife/dagger together.
MA Assassin is my favorite play style in the whole game but it needs love. A way I found is each charge up skill also does it charge up effect. Forcing you to charge up many spells and keeping them up by using them in a rotation. Then doing a finisher move unleash everything. Also Trigger Strike should boost any effect and with just that change you don't need to boost the skills damage since you just have to keep Trigger strike charges and when you unleash on bosses the Neighbors network lags out from your awesomeness!
as per usual you have some great ideas and I appreciate the video. I really liked the idea of the ice traps and think it would make for an interesting alternative to traps in general. Imo, the blade spells should be moved to a different tree all together as they aren't very trappy; maybe cut down the number of martial arts for a ranged offering there? that would free up that whole column for ice traps. I would probably put a frost nova trap first, then a Glacial spike trap second, then tie both it and Wake of Inferno to death sentry as the "ultimate" trap. Then Death sentry would then be buffed to include a blade shield effect to the trap itself, but make them blue (or give it a icy model) that deal cold damage with a chance to freeze any target that it hits. that would mean you could lean into Light skills to buff lightning, fire skills to buff CE, and Ice skills to buff CC through the freeze effect on the blade shield. I also think Fire blast should probably be merged with Shock web and replaced with a "caltrops" or "Frag Grenade" type physical damage dealing spell (or 50/50 like CE, hence the synergy); it could leave a "spike floor" type effect that slows with the fire blast model just with physical damage for the initial hit. That way each branch of traps would have Death sentry, 2 synergies per line, and then the physical damage option for elemental resistant stuff. Also wake of inferno should probably be a fireball type spell as it matches thematically with the Lightning and Glacial spike offerings, and I doubt it will be missed in its current iteration. I don't do enough non-traps to really comment on Martial arts or the Shadow spells directly, but imo they are pretty lackluster so I'm sure both could use some work.
I mean the lightning nova is a nice idea except that death sentry has corpse explosion. When high enough level, the corpse explosion radius is comparable to nova.
I really, really hope the devs are watching these videos. I would love to see your ideas patched into D2R with all the new changes they are already going to make. That would be awesome! Thank you for putting so much thought, and effort into these idea videos. Pure gold. 🥇 (One thing tho...blade shield does proc skills, like on my RiftSin, my blade shield will set off my FO proc from my Rift Caddy)
They just came out yesterday and announced changes for all character classes. Basically buffing every skill that isn't used. For assassin, they're buffing martial arts. Check out the latest info. Theyre also having major merc balances, and a plethora of new runewords that will be ladder only so it keeps value in non ladder. This is why they released the spirit and other stuff in non ladder. It's coming early 2022
So, I used to work in the games industry, and unfortunately, a dev seeing these would guarantee that they would never be implemented. Legality issue -- it opens the developer up to a whole mess of liability if they implement anything that they were exposed to from somewhere else, even if they already had the idea on their own.
Blade Shield doesn't carry Crushing Blow or Open Wounds. And it has a pathetically tiny duration which needs recast before (and during) most confrontations. If these details were changed then a sin with active BS would be very difficult to approach or engage in melee.
It would be cool if doing finishers with different charges held gave additional bonuses. Like if you had tiger strike and cobra strike held when doing a finisher, you get life and mana leech for a few seconds after doing the finisher. If you had cobra strike and one of the elemental charges held, you get some elemental damage absorption for a few seconds after the finisher.
I usually skip all ads and don't play free to play or mobile games at all. This time I just watched the video because of the add in it. I am not that deep into diablo mechanics, but I love chrono trigger. I hope I won't regret it this time to give in into F2P.
I'm really curious what they're going to do with MA sin. Right now the reason they don't work is rooted in the basic mechanics of the game. Look at any decent melee builds right now and they're virtually all centered around hitting as fast as possible while stacking crushing blow and/or an enormous amount of flat damage (Insert Grief, Stormlash or Tomb Reaver in Druid's case here). That just plain doesn't work with MA's combo flipflopping and honestly don't see how your changes really address that. The only way i could see it work would be if stacks stuck and were refreshable like the Druid's Feral Rage but that basically throws most of the design identity of the tree out of the window. And the other problem is that claws utterly sucks in PvM. None of the unique ones are really worth using even over something as basic as Black in a club. The few runewords that fit into them sucks for PvM (Ik Chaos and Fury are decent in PvP). I guess making Strength in a Katar early on works well until you find the runes for Black. So yeah, tons of work to be done here. Also fun fact about your idea about Blade Shield... its how the skill used to work early in LoD. There was a build called Blendersin stacking crushing blow and running around with Blade Shield destroying everything. It wasn't super popular cause it didn't exist very long, nobody knew wtf they were doing back then and there wasn't a bunch of streamers/ytbers to highlight that stuff. But it existed and it got nerfed for a very valid reason. It was hilariously broken.
Changing the MA charge mechanic would go a long way. Compare vs Frenzy or Feral Rage, which basically "charge up" in a similar way but then stay "charged" as long as they keep being used before the timer expires. They don't build up to a "discharge" attack, they just keep going (and keep building up to maximum bonuses) as long as you can keep hitting things with the skill.
Bladefury lacks attackrating. i'd like to see that fixed. For the chargeskills an improved attackspeed or better animation would help a lot. now, the fire, ice, lighting -claw are slower then tiger, cobra, phoenixstrike whilts wearing a shield. that messes the timing up. on a 2,7 attck/sec chargeup melee elemental skill! Such little room for error and with hell immunities it means no damage if you do time it 0.35s wrong. a meteor per kick seems a bit much but 2 for a dualclaw release could be a good fix too
It be great that clock of shadows would actually make assassin invisible (cannot be seen) from monsters and players but reduces your movement speed and attack speed to like 5% and is wear off whenever you attack or do a finishing move. You can cast traps and remain invisible but only at your location. Increase level increases the attack and movement speed up to 100% at lvl 20, so when you have +1Skills you break the 100% and can move even faster and attack faster from the shadows, If this is too op, it could work like Valeera's heroic from HOTS like you have certain area in which you are invisible which becomes a little bigger each level and last a couple seconds, but it has twice the cooldown.
I like it, i think id be cool if the fence trap was a passive buff that applied to all other trap skills. So it doesnt matter what trap you place, just all traps will connect to each other for the trap wall
Not sure if you watched the Developer Stream today Carbot, but they are changing all classes, and mercenaries. Some of your mercenary suggestions from other videos will actually be in the game come next year. But coming back to the assassin, they are changing how Martial Arts work, and now you will only use the current charge when you finish a combo. So, if you have all three charges, only the third one is spent and you could use finishers twice more if you wanted before regaining them. Or you could always be just one charge away from the last.
I'd like using daggers and blades and a pure physical build, but for that martial arts would have to be heavily buffed. I don't think the additional resist and max resist makes sense, because if someone hit's you with that they are usually immune to it, so your hitting skill nullifies ... like a fire hitting skill should raise your cold resist instead to make it work.
Such good ideas, totally with you on nearly all of them! With shadow warrior/master I also would like to see that you have them both, and that they have synergies with each other. That way a summon assassin becomes a thing, which would be cool. Then treachery could have “can summon 1 extra shadow warrior and master” instead of fade (which is totally OP)
I love the ideas. Retaining charges after a killing blow is a bit of a game changer but I can jive with it. The part about shadows makes sense but I doubt they will be doing any tweaking on the AI of the shadow. The final trap you mentioned is basically Searing Bond from PoE.
My biggest criticism of the martial arts is that you need to be able to see your charges on the HUD rather than on your character. It gets really hard to tell how many charges you have when you're not consistently hitting and the screen is covered with mobs
the idea with the walls between two traps is awesome - but waaay too OP. change it to: a new kind of trap that creates a *tether*. baseline tether would do no damage, but make some esoteric effect, like debuff or increas MF on the mob, or something. then - dependent on the charges from melee skills the tether would take on those effects! elements of the charges gives the tether damage over time. any mob standing on the tether would be damaged by that element. the amount of charges increases the dmg. and if u perform a finisher ALL the tether traps explode with that same finisher! now that would look AWESOME!!
The walls wouldn't be that op if you limited the number of connections/traps you could have based on skill points. Like they have a trap now that's basically a corpse explosion auto turret so in terms of power it seems in line with strength and gimmick imo.
I did a phenix (and its 3 synergies) assassin in hardcore (until level 99 IIRC: I loved that build, my favorite after bone-necro). With also 20 points in tiger and dragon tail (and 1 point in the corpse-explosion trap) it also did decent physical damages. It's one of the "funest" build, especially in the cow level, and it doesn't require a lots of stuff to do big damages (plus you can get great +1 martial arts skill charms with other bonus for close to nothing, since very few player play martial art assassin, especially in hardcore mode). I feel your changes would make that build less fun. For example the way phoenix works right now favors one or 2 charges. One charge is pretty fun and powerful when you got the rhythm and the time to agro monsters into your meteor landing zone. It's like casting meteor without cooldown : meteor rain ! Trust me, it's ridiculous ! The second charge is also very powerful (especially in co-op, when the team is steamrolling mobs and you can't take the time to nicely stack monsters into your meteors landing zone) but the second charge is much more difficult to trigger reliably. It's very satisfying once you are able to cast it multiple times in a row without any pause between charges and liberations. The 3rd charge is the easiest to trigger, but does pitiful damages. It's only useful as a first attack for crowd control, so you typically don't want to charge past the second charge. It takes training to avoid "overcharging" and wasting a total of 4 attacks (3 charges + liberation) It's like a trade of : first charge is okay, the second is better, and the last is crap. But using the first one is reasonably easy to trigger, liberating the second is much harder, and the last is the easiest (but total crap, unless you want to freeze mobs). This mechanics and balance makes this build very skill-dependant. Being able to just cast meteor + "chain lightning" anyway, even if you "overcharge" would remove all the skill and "timing-discipline" out of this build. Note that I'm not an elitist. I enjoyed playing builds that are much, much, much easier to play. But for me the main strength of Diablo2 is it fits different playstyles. Sometimes I want to chill and can play summoner necro, sometimes I want more challenge and play phoenix assassin, etc. The last thing I would want is to get all builds play the same and be just as powerful.
blade flurry or the shuriken throw skill should proc combo points and become a disengage or knockback. so the sin must be in melee but gets to unleash a sick phoenix strike of all 3 elements while also shoving the enemy back so you don't die. would be great to see it as a hybrid defense/offense ability. All blades should get venom or on-weapon chance on hits spells too
What if Blade Shield augmented Blade Sentry and Blade Fury while active at the cost of its duration. Since the duration of Blade Shield goes up per level, it makes sense to put more points into Blade Shield to increase its duration and it's augments (below). While it's active: - Blade Sentry moves 25% faster and increases the number of passes it makes by 1-20 based on Blade Shield level. Each cast of Blade Sentry reduced the current duration of Blade Shield by 2 seconds. - Blade Fury bounces to 1-20 times based on Blade Shield level and reduces the current duration of the Blade Shield by 1 second each time a blade is thrown with Blade Fury.
Love it! Martial arts assassin is my favourite but is just so outclassed by other classes and builds. I think your suggestion for Phoenix strike wouldn't even make it OP, it would just bring it to the level of other builds/classes. :-)
Well it looks like big changes are coming. A huge balance patch was announced for January so just maybe we will actually see some of the changes you've talked about in your videos.
For the combo thing... A finishing move should consume the highest tier combo point. Like this: Hit -> Combo1 Hit -> Combo2 Hit -> Combo3 Finishing -> consumes combo3, so you have 2 remaining... you can either hit to get combo 3 or use finishing move to consume combo2. Generating a combo point, refresh the duration of the other combo points from other habilities, but a finishing move will consume the highest tier point from all the active combo point habilities. So, once you get combo3, you can do normal hit, then combo hit, then normal, then combo and it would be great!
Phoenix strike sould use the fire, lightning and frost .But stage 1 have a chans to use use one of them, stage 2, two of of them and 3:erd stage all of them. The ressistens thing can be neglected, so the outher skills have more of a defencive use. And Phoenix strik is more of a offensive.
I would love tò put a support type of traps in replace of the same atribute trap (ex. Lightning trap), let say maybe a smoke screen trap that reduce enemy attack rating, or a caltrops that disable enemy from moving for a period of time
My core issue with the MA assassin was hit chance. I pumped tons into improving my AR and still only hit maybe 20% of the time. I remember going after Normal Diablo with like 7k AR, allegedly with about 70% hit chance, and I couldn't build a single stack of charges because I missed so much (actual hit chance must have been below 10%) that by the time I landed a second hit, the charge of the first hit expired. So a massive buff to hit chance on the assassin. I like the idea of buffing the damage on most of the charge up skills though. I never ran the numbers myself, but others have said that comparing damage between an MA sin and a sorc is a total joke. If that is true, I am inclined to think the damage of MA skills should probably be increased 5 to 10 times. I suspect that Assassins should do 70% sustained DPS (AoE) or 110% sustained DPS (Boss single target) compared to other classes, and from what I read the MA Sin does more like 40%, or in my experience with the hit chance bug more like 10-15%. I would probably add a secondary synergy for all charge up skills where the effect of any one skill increases for every additional charge of other skills added to the stack. So if you had a level 20 Tiger Strike, then you add 3 charges of Cobra Strike and 3 charges of Phoenix Strike, the Tiger Strike would actually hit like a level 26 (20 + 3 + 3). This would give an extra bonus for building up multiple different charge skills at once. I would also change all charge up skills so that they have a 10% effect applied to every non-finishing attack. So for example, if Tiger Strike had +1,000% damage at three charges then every hit while charging up Cobra Strike would have +100% damage. If you have the 1,000% damage Tiger Strike, 500 damage Blades of Ice, and 50% leech, then any charge-up move would have +100% damage, 50 cold damage, and 5% leech for every attack. I like this idea because it provides a benefit for keeping charges rather than expending them. So you would build up and carry charges while fighting trash, and then expend the charges for a powerful hit on a named or boss. I would change the 4 elemental attacks so that Fists of Fire would be Martial Master, and Claws of Thunder would be "Claws of Force". By itself, Claws of Force would do magic damage, probably as a % of weapon damage like Tiger Strike. Martial Mastery would be a passive that would increase the effect of all MA skills, but it would have an active component at level 1 that would allow you to add a magical property to Claws of Force based on the number of charges of Martial Mastery active (much like Phoenix Strike uses a different element based on charge count). 1 charge could be poison damage (highest total damage per hit, but as a damage over time), 2 charges would be cold damage + a 2 second freeze followed by a 4 second slow, and 3 charges would be lightning (highest instant damage). I would then change Pheonix Strike so that at 1 charge it increases the damage of Force Attack, at 2 charges it becomes a localized AoE, and at 3 charges it becomes a large radius AoE (per hit damage would go down with charge, but total damage would go up from hitting more targets per charge). The change to the elemental attack skills would depreciate Blades of Ice, and I don't know what I would replace it with. I don't think Dragon Tail does AoE damage, I would change that. Deals full damage to the main target, and deals 50% damage / Tiger Strike / Cobra Strike to targets in the 7 surrounding cells. I like the idea of adding dual daggers to the assassins repertoire. I would change Shadow Warrior to make better use of skills. I would sit there for 20 seconds with a charge up skill set and the stupid shadow would never use it. I think this could either be making it mimic the players actions rather than skills, or improving the AI to make use of the players selected skills. I would change Venom to do more damage, probably a % of weapon damage + a flat amount, rather than just a flat amount (this could stack with Tiger Strike). And it would apply to the 3 trap blade skills. I would add a defense effect to the masteries page. This could be bonus armor on either Weapon Block or Fade, or a change to dodge attacks on Fade. I am fine with Carbot's ideas for the Traps page.
I think Assassin should get some more passives to movement speed, and maybe a small distance blink that when you blink towards enemy you get synergy with Cloak of Shadows or Claw Mastery, where you cloak and do extra bonus damage on the next attack, similar to how Zeratul or Valeera in Heroes of the storm.
Phoenix 3 charge should do all 3. For an ultimate skill it should be so. I want to add on, taking a book from d3, whatever ma skill you have on, it should automatically passively build charges like the monk skill.
I played a combo assassin through the end of hell difficulty and had zero problems with damage output. I'd be very hesitant to buff this character. In particular, she does so much damage on dragon tail finishers, that if you've maxed out tiger strike and cobra strike, you can actually end up not being healed because of integer overflow on how much life you've stolen. I do agree that the elemental combo skills could use a buff.
I think an issue with Diablo that no one really talks about, is that in order to do any real damage, you need to incorporate some sort of elemental aspect, Lightning Fury for the Amazon, Holy Shock for the Paladin etc, which is fine for normal and nightmare, but once you hit Hell and even the swarm mobs have some sort of elemental immunity, you find yourself suddenly doing no damage, because physical is just so pitifully weak. I think physical damage needs a MAJOR buff to reduce reliance on elemental builds.
I like the Dagger idea I rarely have seen someone use a dagger, but there are a lot of them and selling or trading them hurts a bit, that the Blade Traps should have some synergies, and also not having the Ice traps, I think the main thing is not having Fade and Burst of Speed not stacking, also the Dragon Claw not dealing nearly as desirable damage as Dragon Talon.. The Elemental Martial Arts should deal more damage, I have a build that mainly uses Claw Mastery, Burts of Speed, Poison, Phoenix Strike and Death Centry, also Cobra for bosses, I would love to use fade, but I can't, it doesn't make it too OP but would be a nice touch. I also at level 78 have 15 skill level that I didn't apply yet, cause I dunno what to expect at Hell (my first time running through Hell) The build works well cause Phoenix Strike can adjust to any immunity and Death Centry can hit the Physical Immunes, but overall Fade would be awesome, I know about the Treachery
9:43 Firewalls? Like in internet security? And you know what's great at protecting you in the internet? Today's sponsor, Nord VPN... Ah, nevermind, wasted opportunity... ;D
I don't even care for Jrpgs, but this sponsor was awesome XD love it. About the assassin.......i actually don't even know what she does. My current bonemancer find THREE charms with plus shadow skills or something like that, so maybe i give a try.
Just checking, is anyone aware that tiger strike charges multiply the output damage of dragon tail, allowing you to unleash a small explosion that deals upwards of thousands of fire damage with a dragon tail kick, assuming that the primary target hit is not immune to physical?
Yes, there's a bunch of people who know about this. It's fine in normal and nightmare, but the skill has problems that make it hard to use through hell difficulty. First off, even though it's fire and physical, the entire damage depends on the physical portion of the attack. Hit a physical immune monster, and your fire damage explosion is 0. So the only way to kill phys immunes with it is to gather up other monsters who aren't phys immune/resistant and attack them to make the explosion hit everything. Second problem is that hell has a lot more enemies with physical resistance/immunity, which makes it harder to effectively kill stuff when your damage is 0. This basically necessitates the use of a Lawbringer phase blade or a Lacerator axe so that you can get decrep/sanctuary aura/amp damage on your enemies. Third problem is that fire resistance is the most common mob resistance in hell, so your fire explosions get greatly reduced. Finally, getting those high damage numbers to appear on your character sheet requires 3 regular basic attacks (assuming that none of them miss or get blocked) followed by 1 attack that does about as much damage as a mediocre sorc's meteor. It can be made to work, but you really have to be a tryhard to succeed and your damage output over time isn't all that hot.
@@-Keith- Yeah, there are an awful lot of good physical builds in D2 that *require* some sort of decrepify or amplify damage procing item. One of my favorite battlenet memories is when a generous player gifted me a free The Reaper's Toll. Awesome for a desert mercenary!
If finnishers always hit kicksin with crushing blow would be the ultimate boss/uber killer. Could make it so a finnisher only always hits with at least 3 charges (any combo). or just give a ton of AR bonus on them would be simpler maybe.
Assassin is the most brilliant class there is. Except for Wake of Inferno and Blade Sentry. All the skills are usable to a certain extent. Some of them are one point wonder, some are pretty good when heavily invested. But the only thing I'd change is the Blade Sentry to proc OW, CB and On Attack and On Striking spells. The sin is not the class that needs the most changes.
Isn't Dragon Strike and Dragon tail (first charge up and the aoe flame kick) - isn't that combo prettty viable? If not for the presence of the fire immunes.
Idk, the whole point of assassin, as I get it, is: run fast, kill with one hit and keep running. I've only played normal, but I use *Fade* like all the time, literally. And only 2 claws, no shield, just a Weapon Block + Cobra Strike, no potions needed. But that's for normal, I admit. Still love the idea of mixing charges from different strikes for the final combo. I miss that option too. 😊
Your fence traps idea is almost verbatim searing bond totems from path of exile... differences are a) those also link with the player and b) totems can be targeted and killed
It'd be nice if the traps weren't considered companions and you could actually buff them with plus skills instead of auras to help break the elemental resistances
The thing with Mana/Life LEECH is that it needs a source in which to leech from. So skeles, having no meaty substance of their own, don't have that source. Kind of like trying to squeeze a rock for water.
You missed the most important thing that should be changed. Those damn combo skills should use both weapons, not just one of them coz its really stupid that you are basically better off using a claw + shield than dual weild for a martial artist coz the 2nd weapon never used.
Martial arts should make special effects to the traps. Assasin should be that character who has no lvl 20 spell because she use all spells just with different points. I.E. fire spec but trap and martial too. Or very martial but some points to all traps. With some special cap points on the spells so much different variations can be made by the assasin.
IdBeCoolif - Blizz/Vicarious would add some of these in this upcoming ladder patch.... The "Chaos" runeword assassin would be SO much more....Chaos...and Badass. Might even be so cool it would be annoying because everyone would be building one.
you don't touch death sentry. Removing corpses while doing lightning-sentry damage? What do you want, any other kind of assassin than trap assa?!? Out of yo mind?!?
I love these videos, real good ideas, especially the traps connecting and creatings effects between each other. Keep it up!
I got my Diablo 2 Christmas sweater in the mail yesterday and I rocked it at the xmas party at work today 😎
I don't think people quite appreciate how bad the charge-up skills are. When people say these things need to do more damage, I feel they don't fully grasp just how much more is needed.
If you want to be really depressed, open up a character planner and spec out a full Fire/Cold Sorceress, then spec out a full Phoenix Strike Assassin. The assassin will be doing less than half of the raw damage, will have to do it from melee, will have to hit with her attacks (i.e. needs attack rating), and will have to hit with 1-3 normal attacks in between her casts. So...less than half of the raw damage, every 2nd to 4th hit. So, actually, less than quarter to eighth of the damage. That's how bad those skills are. If you buff the damage of the charge-up skills by 5x to 9x (cause remember, they were doing LESS than half) they'll STILL be worse than a Sorceress cause you have to be in melee and need to stack enough attack rating to be effective. You'd have to buff those charge levels to do at least 6-10 times, or better yet, 7-11 times the damage for them to be worth anything.
A simpler comparison on the non-elemental side of things. With a lvl 20 Tiger Strike and lvl 20 Dragon Claw, you do approximately the same amount of damage by charging up Tiger Strike 3 times and then proccing it with Dragon Claw as you do with just using Dragon Claw 4 times. You spent 20 skill points and your reward is being just as strong as before and down 20 skill points.
Even just basic napkin math brings you to this conclusion. Which makes me really wonder if they ever bothered doing any math on the MA Assassin at all during design and "balancing". It's apalling the Assassin was even released in that state.
I'm way out of touch with the vocab, what does MA stand for here?
Yeah. I too have often found charge-up skills to be impractical and a complete waste of time in the long run. I played Phoenix Strike Assassin a couple of times. While she did alright in Normal and Nightmare, she was almost rendered almost useless in Hell difficulty. Even with decent equipment, she didn't do enough damage, she didn't clear mobs fast enough and often died very easily. So I just had her respec-ed into a Dragon Talon/Death Sentry combo build and my life was so much better. And it's shame really. As charge-ups are a cool concept, but as they are, there not worth it unless you really want to handicap yourself.
@@Alex-tx7ih Martial Arts
If they just made it like pd2 it would be fine
They literally just announced how they will work now in the new patch 2.4. When you use a charge spending skill, you only lose 1 charge, not all 3.
Phoenix strike is basically the Pokémon 2000 movie, Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno all together in one strike!
This series is even more hype now that we know they are planning balance changed
yea but Blizzard probably isnt even watching these videos or any others. They will probably do something else like just buff some skills instead of changing their whole effect... like with all other game developers who dont listen to the fans
Hey Carbot, one problem with your "Fire claw increases Fire resist stuff" is that the minions who DO that element in damage (so where the resist is useful) ALSO have natural higher immunity in that element or are straight up completely immune to that. Which means using a Fire Claw attack against a fire monster to boost your fire resist is pointless because the monster is fire immune.
Same with your ice and lighting attack. Nobody would use that against ice & lighting monster cause they are immune to that element.
was thinking exactly the same, so it should reduce monsters resistance as well?. but then it will do crap dmg which is the current problem... I was thinking that it somehow, should give you resistance to all elements but fire.
Or you could do a rock paper scissor fire grants cold resistance, thunder grants fire resistance, cold grants thunder resistance
I'd much more prefer if the elemental charge-up skills actually deal some minor bonus damage of their respective elements on the charge-up attack, and then big elemental damage when releasing the charge with a Finisher move.
Not sure if this is how Fists of Fire actually kinda works already. I know it converts a portion of your physical damage into fire elemental damage, but that might just be on releasing the charge, so basically it just deals bonus fire damage based on your physical damage at the cost of reducing your physical damage by that same amount, which kinda is an overall negative since everything in the higher difficulties has really high fire resistances.
Well in diablo 2 it's rare to fight only fire inmunes or only cold inmunes in a determined area, so if you want more fire resistance before facing a mob pack you can prepare fighting lighting inmunes before
Maybe have the skills reduce immunities also :)
6:39 Poison, and also Open Wounds and fire ground, will already by default prevent monster healing since they deal damage every frame and regen cannot occur in the same frame damage is being dealt. Fun fact, cold damage over time only halves HP regen because it only deals damage every other frame and therefore a max APS Whirlwind is just as effective at doing so.
7:30 The red arrow and text are actually wrong. Blade Sentinel does not proc Open Wounds or Crushing Blow. It does work with Deadly Strike, though.
7:54 Blade Shield does not return damage to attackers. It solely deals damage to enemies near the Assassin.
Back in the day i remember the kicks finishing moves would hit like once every 10 swings even with 95% hit chance. That was the most painful diablo experience ever and i havent looked at that tree ever since.
I like how just little while ago Blizzard announced that there will be some balance changes to class skills in the next 2.4 patch
Please no... Just no.
@@europeansovietunion7372 To be fair whether or not they can do it is one thing but Diablo 2 has tons of skills that no one uses because they are bad or impossible to use on harder difficulties
@@Azguella Depends. Phoenix for example is completely fine (the other elemental martial art skills are better until you can max out all synergies, so they are useful too in normal and nightmare).
The changes proposed here would make this skill completely unfun for me, as I explained here : th-cam.com/video/tsD7X3djf6E/w-d-xo.html&lc=UgzE3aov_c0OfOsdgUB4AaABAg
Another skill people often doom as useless is bone wall (and prison).
I can't count the number of players I've saved with that skill in hardcore.
But it can also be used offensively with bone spear.
Is used correctly you can "force" the monster to be in line, which increases the efficiency of bone wall, firewall, and other piercing attacks.
Finally this can be used to safely stack monsters on corpses. This is especially important for bone-necro against magic-immunes monsters, since the only way to kill them is corpse explosion.
Leap is another decried skill, because everybody knows leap attack is much better, right?
Well no. leap attack doesn't have a knockback effect, whereas leap does knock back all monsters in a pretty large radius.
This even works on stun-immunes monsters like Hephaistos.
All necro curses have their uses as well when you think about it ; and I could go on and on.
There might not be the best skills all the time, but they are the best skill sometimes.
See, in game-design there's 3 types of "strategies" the player can use.
- dominant strategy : the player can pretty much beat the game using that same strategy all the time. Which makes the game boring.
- dominated strategies, which never have any use and are just there because of bad design and/or bad balance. Diablo2 have very few of them.
- nearly-dominant strategies : won't work in any situation, but each one is the best in at least one context. Any good game-designer should seek to increase the number of such strategies, as they generate meaningful and interesting choices for the player.
The problem is, most players think they want dominant strategies, which is completely understandable from their perspective because they want to beat the game, use strategies they like more often.
But what they want in fact are nearly-dominant strategies because that's what makes games interesting.
___
Also, lot of Diablo2 player focus only on the end game (probably because that's an old game and player think they already know everything about it and just want to have fun with a powerful level 80+ character).
But if you play the way the game was indented, you need a sense of progress, and variations.
The game would be incredibly boring if you had to use the normal attack until you achieve your final build all of the soudain.
For example the simple kick liberation (at level 6 IIRC) is a big step up compared to liberating with a normal attack.
Then at level 18 (it may take few hours to get theses extra levels if you don't do sewer runs) dragon tail is incredibly powerful in comparaison since it has an AoE.
However you typically can't use dragon tail all the time because it costs a lot of mana.
So you end up with 2 nearly-dominant strategies for a while : dragon tail against groups of monsters you can leach (using 2 or 3 cobra charges) and the normal kick against the rest.
Finally, later on (level 35 or so, depending of the equipment you've found) you'll do enough damages and have enough mana to be able to use dragon tail all the time.
That being say, progress is fine because it drastically changes the way you play, but you probably don't want to create artificial progress either...
For example dragon flight (which makes the assassin teleport to a distant target to kick it) is very useful as a poor-man's teleport, and one point is enough to unlock all its usefulness (except if you use it for pvp).
Some players and probably some designers would see that as a problem and would like to "milk" that skill more. For example, by reducing the reach of the "flight", and increasing it for each point put in it.
But that's only an artificial way to "milk" a strategy when you don't have enough time or imagination to create more strategies.
This kind of artificial progress is often unavoidable because you have to ship the game at some point, and it can be used to keep the game consistent.
For example each character gets one skill point per level, so you might need to add something completely unimaginative such as a mastery skill ; so at least the player could dump their extra skill points in there (otherwise the player would think there's something wrong with his character, with him, or with the game).
Let me be clear: this is a dirty trick of the trade, not an elegant design.
And it would be a mistake to consider that every skill ought to gradually gain in usefulness for each skill-point invested in it.
The game is completely fine with skill getting pretty much all their usefulness with only one point.
As long as the player has something to dump their points into, that's a non-issue and trying to fix it could make the game worse (because now instead of putting one point to unlocking all the power of a marginally-usefull skill, you'd have to invest let's say 20 points... Chance are your new design decision would simply push the player not use that marginaly-useful skill anymore since the cost is now way too big...)
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Sorry for the long post.
All in all I don't think nowadays Blizzard have the skill and/or cares to put the required time to make good design decision regarding D2.
Keep in mind that it took a very long time to get D2 released, with a lot of liberty to experiment, prototype, and most importantly the liberty to abandon design decisions when they turn out to be bad once implemented into the game (an important liberty many studios do not have).
I'd much prefer see the devs focus on modding tools instead (and a simple way to convert characters form vanilla/closed mode to modded/open mode... Maybe even allow to convert from opened mode to non-ladder closed mode with a bit of character-sanitation)
That way the gaming community could experiment; prototype; abandon bad mods to their faiths, scavenging only goods ideas from them, etc.
Crowd control trap sounds amazing.
I could be wrong but the pre-patch notes sound like they might possibly consider thinking about maybe looking into the idea of someday getting around to buffing the physical damage traps.
Man, you really grasp the meaning of the notes there!
All sounds pretty good. Seeing someone use a dagger for a change would be really neat. If blade sentry was based off of the weapons equipped that would make for some seriously cool combos, especially if they're on a weapon swap.
You guys are the best. That’s includes the accented promo.
Having been playing D2 off and on for over 20 years, and never having played the Assassin, this video is actually really educational.
The thing I love about your ideas is that they're not stupidly overpowered. They are legitimate ideas that could diversify gameplay, something that Diablo 2 lacks a bit. I seriously wish Blizz would pick your brain for their upcoming class changes
Well with the new balance changes I'm hoping they take all carbots suggestions.
The charge attacks can already stack meaning if you release these abilities you end up with a huge explosion and white orbs from the rainbow buildup. My favourite is to do fire, lighting, and cold claws, and finish off with 2 charge pheonix strike.
Yeah, I have a martials arts assassin, and you have to hit a lot in Less than 10 seconds and hope you hit with the finisher or one of the charges will disappear. I have a lot of fun with her, but it's really challenging in hell
@@cesargeney5268 I got all to ubers once mostly by myself a year ago with Martial arts with this excat playstyle. Juggling those orbs is a challenge to say the least.
The connecting traps with their element is brilliant!
I like the idea of the blade skills synergising and carrying over weapon properties, very cool idea. Totally agree on sentries just feeling like spells, trappier traps would be neat. D2 Carbot mod when?
Man I love these videos! Also your voice reminds of Norm McDonald (RIP). Keep'em coming 😆
Cool to see some of the same ideas that I had on the video! Cobra Strike should poison as well, and I also miss some poison trap too. The trap fence idea is great! Congrats
I really like these idbecoolif episodes and most of the changes your talking about have been implemented in some way in median xl.
PD2 mod also showed a lot of love to the MA tree. They even got claw block to work on the move. :)
Gotta say, I REALLY like the idea of Blade Fury Bouncing between nearby targets similar to Chain Lightning. Increased levels can increase number of bounces.
Multi shot blade fury which can bounce is actually cool idea, it will make a physic equlvant of chain lighting. To balance it maybe make it only be availiable when equip with throwing knife. Make all these throwing type weapon more useful.
Yes I have the same idea! Make blade skills super powerful BUT only with throwing knives equipped. Also it should allow use claw and knife/dagger together.
Carbot: There are too many trap assissins in the higher levels, there should be others too.
Also Carbot: Trap assassins should have frost nova traps.
MA Assassin is my favorite play style in the whole game but it needs love. A way I found is each charge up skill also does it charge up effect. Forcing you to charge up many spells and keeping them up by using them in a rotation. Then doing a finisher move unleash everything. Also Trigger Strike should boost any effect and with just that change you don't need to boost the skills damage since you just have to keep Trigger strike charges and when you unleash on bosses the Neighbors network lags out from your awesomeness!
as per usual you have some great ideas and I appreciate the video. I really liked the idea of the ice traps and think it would make for an interesting alternative to traps in general.
Imo, the blade spells should be moved to a different tree all together as they aren't very trappy; maybe cut down the number of martial arts for a ranged offering there? that would free up that whole column for ice traps. I would probably put a frost nova trap first, then a Glacial spike trap second, then tie both it and Wake of Inferno to death sentry as the "ultimate" trap.
Then Death sentry would then be buffed to include a blade shield effect to the trap itself, but make them blue (or give it a icy model) that deal cold damage with a chance to freeze any target that it hits. that would mean you could lean into Light skills to buff lightning, fire skills to buff CE, and Ice skills to buff CC through the freeze effect on the blade shield.
I also think Fire blast should probably be merged with Shock web and replaced with a "caltrops" or "Frag Grenade" type physical damage dealing spell (or 50/50 like CE, hence the synergy); it could leave a "spike floor" type effect that slows with the fire blast model just with physical damage for the initial hit. That way each branch of traps would have Death sentry, 2 synergies per line, and then the physical damage option for elemental resistant stuff.
Also wake of inferno should probably be a fireball type spell as it matches thematically with the Lightning and Glacial spike offerings, and I doubt it will be missed in its current iteration.
I don't do enough non-traps to really comment on Martial arts or the Shadow spells directly, but imo they are pretty lackluster so I'm sure both could use some work.
I mean the lightning nova is a nice idea except that death sentry has corpse explosion. When high enough level, the corpse explosion radius is comparable to nova.
I really, really hope the devs are watching these videos. I would love to see your ideas patched into D2R with all the new changes they are already going to make. That would be awesome! Thank you for putting so much thought, and effort into these idea videos. Pure gold. 🥇 (One thing tho...blade shield does proc skills, like on my RiftSin, my blade shield will set off my FO proc from my Rift Caddy)
They just came out yesterday and announced changes for all character classes. Basically buffing every skill that isn't used. For assassin, they're buffing martial arts. Check out the latest info.
Theyre also having major merc balances, and a plethora of new runewords that will be ladder only so it keeps value in non ladder. This is why they released the spirit and other stuff in non ladder. It's coming early 2022
Oh and look up mrllama for the latest patch notes it you are wondering where to read them
So, I used to work in the games industry, and unfortunately, a dev seeing these would guarantee that they would never be implemented. Legality issue -- it opens the developer up to a whole mess of liability if they implement anything that they were exposed to from somewhere else, even if they already had the idea on their own.
Blade Shield doesn't carry Crushing Blow or Open Wounds. And it has a pathetically tiny duration which needs recast before (and during) most confrontations.
If these details were changed then a sin with active BS would be very difficult to approach or engage in melee.
It would be cool if doing finishers with different charges held gave additional bonuses. Like if you had tiger strike and cobra strike held when doing a finisher, you get life and mana leech for a few seconds after doing the finisher. If you had cobra strike and one of the elemental charges held, you get some elemental damage absorption for a few seconds after the finisher.
ANYBODY WHO DIDNT WATCH THE AD... WATCH THE ADD! iT'S HYSTERICAL!
Unless I am losing my mind my Blade Shield on my RiftSin does, in fact, proc some (maybe not all) of my on striking/attack affects.
I usually skip all ads and don't play free to play or mobile games at all. This time I just watched the video because of the add in it. I am not that deep into diablo mechanics, but I love chrono trigger. I hope I won't regret it this time to give in into F2P.
Update: I downloadad the game through steam, it crashes on launch, no error message or anything. Just strait crash. Not recommended.
I'm really curious what they're going to do with MA sin.
Right now the reason they don't work is rooted in the basic mechanics of the game. Look at any decent melee builds right now and they're virtually all centered around hitting as fast as possible while stacking crushing blow and/or an enormous amount of flat damage (Insert Grief, Stormlash or Tomb Reaver in Druid's case here).
That just plain doesn't work with MA's combo flipflopping and honestly don't see how your changes really address that.
The only way i could see it work would be if stacks stuck and were refreshable like the Druid's Feral Rage but that basically throws most of the design identity of the tree out of the window.
And the other problem is that claws utterly sucks in PvM. None of the unique ones are really worth using even over something as basic as Black in a club. The few runewords that fit into them sucks for PvM (Ik Chaos and Fury are decent in PvP). I guess making Strength in a Katar early on works well until you find the runes for Black.
So yeah, tons of work to be done here.
Also fun fact about your idea about Blade Shield... its how the skill used to work early in LoD. There was a build called Blendersin stacking crushing blow and running around with Blade Shield destroying everything. It wasn't super popular cause it didn't exist very long, nobody knew wtf they were doing back then and there wasn't a bunch of streamers/ytbers to highlight that stuff. But it existed and it got nerfed for a very valid reason. It was hilariously broken.
Changing the MA charge mechanic would go a long way.
Compare vs Frenzy or Feral Rage, which basically "charge up" in a similar way but then stay "charged" as long as they keep being used before the timer expires. They don't build up to a "discharge" attack, they just keep going (and keep building up to maximum bonuses) as long as you can keep hitting things with the skill.
I have fond memories of an Assassin built around the biggest, slowest ethereal weapon I could find and Blade Fury.
9:39 - This does exist in path of exile with the "searing bond" skill
Bladefury lacks attackrating. i'd like to see that fixed. For the chargeskills an improved attackspeed or better animation would help a lot. now, the fire, ice, lighting -claw are slower then tiger, cobra, phoenixstrike whilts wearing a shield. that messes the timing up. on a 2,7 attck/sec chargeup melee elemental skill! Such little room for error and with hell immunities it means no damage if you do time it 0.35s wrong. a meteor per kick seems a bit much but 2 for a dualclaw release could be a good fix too
It be great that clock of shadows would actually make assassin invisible (cannot be seen) from monsters and players but reduces your movement speed and attack speed to like 5% and is wear off whenever you attack or do a finishing move. You can cast traps and remain invisible but only at your location. Increase level increases the attack and movement speed up to 100% at lvl 20, so when you have +1Skills you break the 100% and can move even faster and attack faster from the shadows, If this is too op, it could work like Valeera's heroic from HOTS like you have certain area in which you are invisible which becomes a little bigger each level and last a couple seconds, but it has twice the cooldown.
Blizzard yesterday announced future patch 2.4 with balance changes :)
I like it, i think id be cool if the fence trap was a passive buff that applied to all other trap skills. So it doesnt matter what trap you place, just all traps will connect to each other for the trap wall
Not sure if you watched the Developer Stream today Carbot, but they are changing all classes, and mercenaries. Some of your mercenary suggestions from other videos will actually be in the game come next year.
But coming back to the assassin, they are changing how Martial Arts work, and now you will only use the current charge when you finish a combo. So, if you have all three charges, only the third one is spent and you could use finishers twice more if you wanted before regaining them. Or you could always be just one charge away from the last.
I'd like using daggers and blades and a pure physical build, but for that martial arts would have to be heavily buffed.
I don't think the additional resist and max resist makes sense, because if someone hit's you with that they are usually immune to it, so your hitting skill nullifies ... like a fire hitting skill should raise your cold resist instead to make it work.
But in a very exciting way, it kind of does matter now! Looks like someone of your suggestions will be making their way into the coming patch :)
The first time I cleared diablo 2 was with blade fury assassin it shocks me more than shocking mine that nobody ever does that🤯
Probably idbeccol videos r my favorite from Carbot. So many nice ideas and jokes! I hope few of these ideas will be noticed by blizzard.
Such good ideas, totally with you on nearly all of them!
With shadow warrior/master I also would like to see that you have them both, and that they have synergies with each other. That way a summon assassin becomes a thing, which would be cool. Then treachery could have “can summon 1 extra shadow warrior and master” instead of fade (which is totally OP)
The devs actually confirmed that some changes will take place in future updates! :D
I also had that same idea. With the traps. 9:39 🤗💖🥰
That last one is straight up the Searing Bond skill gem from Path of Exile!
I love the ideas. Retaining charges after a killing blow is a bit of a game changer but I can jive with it. The part about shadows makes sense but I doubt they will be doing any tweaking on the AI of the shadow. The final trap you mentioned is basically Searing Bond from PoE.
My biggest criticism of the martial arts is that you need to be able to see your charges on the HUD rather than on your character. It gets really hard to tell how many charges you have when you're not consistently hitting and the screen is covered with mobs
6:45 dude you made that gargantuan beast thicc.
The doodles in this are especially adorable. I mean, look at 2:25
the idea with the walls between two traps is awesome - but waaay too OP. change it to: a new kind of trap that creates a *tether*.
baseline tether would do no damage, but make some esoteric effect, like debuff or increas MF on the mob, or something.
then - dependent on the charges from melee skills the tether would take on those effects! elements of the charges gives the tether damage over time. any mob standing on the tether would be damaged by that element. the amount of charges increases the dmg. and if u perform a finisher ALL the tether traps explode with that same finisher!
now that would look AWESOME!!
The walls wouldn't be that op if you limited the number of connections/traps you could have based on skill points. Like they have a trap now that's basically a corpse explosion auto turret so in terms of power it seems in line with strength and gimmick imo.
@@AltoStratusX1 or have a range to it. Just look at Searing Bond in Path of Exile.
It would be cool if, all builds were viable after normal 😂
Blade skills just need faster animations. They are so slow!
I did a phenix (and its 3 synergies) assassin in hardcore (until level 99 IIRC: I loved that build, my favorite after bone-necro).
With also 20 points in tiger and dragon tail (and 1 point in the corpse-explosion trap) it also did decent physical damages.
It's one of the "funest" build, especially in the cow level, and it doesn't require a lots of stuff to do big damages (plus you can get great +1 martial arts skill charms with other bonus for close to nothing, since very few player play martial art assassin, especially in hardcore mode).
I feel your changes would make that build less fun.
For example the way phoenix works right now favors one or 2 charges.
One charge is pretty fun and powerful when you got the rhythm and the time to agro monsters into your meteor landing zone.
It's like casting meteor without cooldown : meteor rain ! Trust me, it's ridiculous !
The second charge is also very powerful (especially in co-op, when the team is steamrolling mobs and you can't take the time to nicely stack monsters into your meteors landing zone) but the second charge is much more difficult to trigger reliably.
It's very satisfying once you are able to cast it multiple times in a row without any pause between charges and liberations.
The 3rd charge is the easiest to trigger, but does pitiful damages.
It's only useful as a first attack for crowd control, so you typically don't want to charge past the second charge.
It takes training to avoid "overcharging" and wasting a total of 4 attacks (3 charges + liberation)
It's like a trade of : first charge is okay, the second is better, and the last is crap.
But using the first one is reasonably easy to trigger, liberating the second is much harder, and the last is the easiest (but total crap, unless you want to freeze mobs).
This mechanics and balance makes this build very skill-dependant.
Being able to just cast meteor + "chain lightning" anyway, even if you "overcharge" would remove all the skill and "timing-discipline" out of this build.
Note that I'm not an elitist. I enjoyed playing builds that are much, much, much easier to play.
But for me the main strength of Diablo2 is it fits different playstyles. Sometimes I want to chill and can play summoner necro, sometimes I want more challenge and play phoenix assassin, etc.
The last thing I would want is to get all builds play the same and be just as powerful.
*patiently waits for a possible paladin episode*
owo
blade flurry or the shuriken throw skill should proc combo points and become a disengage or knockback. so the sin must be in melee but gets to unleash a sick phoenix strike of all 3 elements while also shoving the enemy back so you don't die. would be great to see it as a hybrid defense/offense ability. All blades should get venom or on-weapon chance on hits spells too
What if Blade Shield augmented Blade Sentry and Blade Fury while active at the cost of its duration. Since the duration of Blade Shield goes up per level, it makes sense to put more points into Blade Shield to increase its duration and it's augments (below). While it's active:
- Blade Sentry moves 25% faster and increases the number of passes it makes by 1-20 based on Blade Shield level. Each cast of Blade Sentry reduced the current duration of Blade Shield by 2 seconds.
- Blade Fury bounces to 1-20 times based on Blade Shield level and reduces the current duration of the Blade Shield by 1 second each time a blade is thrown with Blade Fury.
Love it! Martial arts assassin is my favourite but is just so outclassed by other classes and builds. I think your suggestion for Phoenix strike wouldn't even make it OP, it would just bring it to the level of other builds/classes. :-)
Well it looks like big changes are coming.
A huge balance patch was announced for January so just maybe we will actually see some of the changes you've talked about in your videos.
6:37 doesn't poison already do this? I thought any damage over time stopped monster healing.
For the combo thing... A finishing move should consume the highest tier combo point.
Like this:
Hit -> Combo1
Hit -> Combo2
Hit -> Combo3
Finishing -> consumes combo3, so you have 2 remaining... you can either hit to get combo 3 or use finishing move to consume combo2.
Generating a combo point, refresh the duration of the other combo points from other habilities, but a finishing move will consume the highest tier point from all the active combo point habilities.
So, once you get combo3, you can do normal hit, then combo hit, then normal, then combo and it would be great!
I wonder if any modders are going to come up and create these changes? I love your ideas!
I like the part where you added whirlwind into the mix :D
Phoenix strike sould use the fire, lightning and frost .But stage 1 have a chans to use use one of them, stage 2, two of of them and 3:erd stage all of them. The ressistens thing can be neglected, so the outher skills have more of a defencive use. And Phoenix strik is more of a offensive.
I would love tò put a support type of traps in replace of the same atribute trap (ex. Lightning trap), let say maybe a smoke screen trap that reduce enemy attack rating, or a caltrops that disable enemy from moving for a period of time
My core issue with the MA assassin was hit chance. I pumped tons into improving my AR and still only hit maybe 20% of the time. I remember going after Normal Diablo with like 7k AR, allegedly with about 70% hit chance, and I couldn't build a single stack of charges because I missed so much (actual hit chance must have been below 10%) that by the time I landed a second hit, the charge of the first hit expired.
So a massive buff to hit chance on the assassin.
I like the idea of buffing the damage on most of the charge up skills though. I never ran the numbers myself, but others have said that comparing damage between an MA sin and a sorc is a total joke. If that is true, I am inclined to think the damage of MA skills should probably be increased 5 to 10 times. I suspect that Assassins should do 70% sustained DPS (AoE) or 110% sustained DPS (Boss single target) compared to other classes, and from what I read the MA Sin does more like 40%, or in my experience with the hit chance bug more like 10-15%.
I would probably add a secondary synergy for all charge up skills where the effect of any one skill increases for every additional charge of other skills added to the stack. So if you had a level 20 Tiger Strike, then you add 3 charges of Cobra Strike and 3 charges of Phoenix Strike, the Tiger Strike would actually hit like a level 26 (20 + 3 + 3). This would give an extra bonus for building up multiple different charge skills at once.
I would also change all charge up skills so that they have a 10% effect applied to every non-finishing attack. So for example, if Tiger Strike had +1,000% damage at three charges then every hit while charging up Cobra Strike would have +100% damage. If you have the 1,000% damage Tiger Strike, 500 damage Blades of Ice, and 50% leech, then any charge-up move would have +100% damage, 50 cold damage, and 5% leech for every attack. I like this idea because it provides a benefit for keeping charges rather than expending them. So you would build up and carry charges while fighting trash, and then expend the charges for a powerful hit on a named or boss.
I would change the 4 elemental attacks so that Fists of Fire would be Martial Master, and Claws of Thunder would be "Claws of Force". By itself, Claws of Force would do magic damage, probably as a % of weapon damage like Tiger Strike. Martial Mastery would be a passive that would increase the effect of all MA skills, but it would have an active component at level 1 that would allow you to add a magical property to Claws of Force based on the number of charges of Martial Mastery active (much like Phoenix Strike uses a different element based on charge count). 1 charge could be poison damage (highest total damage per hit, but as a damage over time), 2 charges would be cold damage + a 2 second freeze followed by a 4 second slow, and 3 charges would be lightning (highest instant damage). I would then change Pheonix Strike so that at 1 charge it increases the damage of Force Attack, at 2 charges it becomes a localized AoE, and at 3 charges it becomes a large radius AoE (per hit damage would go down with charge, but total damage would go up from hitting more targets per charge). The change to the elemental attack skills would depreciate Blades of Ice, and I don't know what I would replace it with.
I don't think Dragon Tail does AoE damage, I would change that. Deals full damage to the main target, and deals 50% damage / Tiger Strike / Cobra Strike to targets in the 7 surrounding cells.
I like the idea of adding dual daggers to the assassins repertoire.
I would change Shadow Warrior to make better use of skills. I would sit there for 20 seconds with a charge up skill set and the stupid shadow would never use it. I think this could either be making it mimic the players actions rather than skills, or improving the AI to make use of the players selected skills.
I would change Venom to do more damage, probably a % of weapon damage + a flat amount, rather than just a flat amount (this could stack with Tiger Strike). And it would apply to the 3 trap blade skills.
I would add a defense effect to the masteries page. This could be bonus armor on either Weapon Block or Fade, or a change to dodge attacks on Fade.
I am fine with Carbot's ideas for the Traps page.
I think Assassin should get some more passives to movement speed, and maybe a small distance blink that when you blink towards enemy you get synergy with Cloak of Shadows or Claw Mastery, where you cloak and do extra bonus damage on the next attack, similar to how Zeratul or Valeera in Heroes of the storm.
Phoenix 3 charge should do all 3. For an ultimate skill it should be so. I want to add on, taking a book from d3, whatever ma skill you have on, it should automatically passively build charges like the monk skill.
Why do I see two of my most played games at the moment in the same video? :O
I played a combo assassin through the end of hell difficulty and had zero problems with damage output. I'd be very hesitant to buff this character. In particular, she does so much damage on dragon tail finishers, that if you've maxed out tiger strike and cobra strike, you can actually end up not being healed because of integer overflow on how much life you've stolen.
I do agree that the elemental combo skills could use a buff.
I think an issue with Diablo that no one really talks about, is that in order to do any real damage, you need to incorporate some sort of elemental aspect, Lightning Fury for the Amazon, Holy Shock for the Paladin etc, which is fine for normal and nightmare, but once you hit Hell and even the swarm mobs have some sort of elemental immunity, you find yourself suddenly doing no damage, because physical is just so pitifully weak. I think physical damage needs a MAJOR buff to reduce reliance on elemental builds.
I like the Dagger idea I rarely have seen someone use a dagger, but there are a lot of them and selling or trading them hurts a bit, that the
Blade Traps should have some synergies, and also not having the Ice traps,
I think the main thing is not having Fade and Burst of Speed not stacking, also the Dragon Claw not dealing nearly as desirable damage as Dragon Talon..
The Elemental Martial Arts should deal more damage, I have a build that mainly uses Claw Mastery, Burts of Speed, Poison, Phoenix Strike and Death Centry, also Cobra for bosses, I would love to use fade, but I can't, it doesn't make it too OP but would be a nice touch.
I also at level 78 have 15 skill level that I didn't apply yet, cause I dunno what to expect at Hell (my first time running through Hell)
The build works well cause Phoenix Strike can adjust to any immunity and Death Centry can hit the Physical Immunes, but overall Fade would be awesome, I know about the Treachery
9:43 Firewalls? Like in internet security? And you know what's great at protecting you in the internet? Today's sponsor, Nord VPN... Ah, nevermind, wasted opportunity... ;D
Fence trap is awesome
Shadow assa with martial spells can be a dinamic tanking character.
I don't even care for Jrpgs, but this sponsor was awesome XD love it.
About the assassin.......i actually don't even know what she does. My current bonemancer find THREE charms with plus shadow skills or something like that, so maybe i give a try.
The Chad MA assassin is pleased with these ideas.
If blizzard actually updated D2 in ways like this it would be an instabuy for me. Nostalgia can only go so far before I need actual gameplay variety.
Just checking, is anyone aware that tiger strike charges multiply the output damage of dragon tail, allowing you to unleash a small explosion that deals upwards of thousands of fire damage with a dragon tail kick, assuming that the primary target hit is not immune to physical?
Yes, there's a bunch of people who know about this. It's fine in normal and nightmare, but the skill has problems that make it hard to use through hell difficulty. First off, even though it's fire and physical, the entire damage depends on the physical portion of the attack. Hit a physical immune monster, and your fire damage explosion is 0. So the only way to kill phys immunes with it is to gather up other monsters who aren't phys immune/resistant and attack them to make the explosion hit everything.
Second problem is that hell has a lot more enemies with physical resistance/immunity, which makes it harder to effectively kill stuff when your damage is 0. This basically necessitates the use of a Lawbringer phase blade or a Lacerator axe so that you can get decrep/sanctuary aura/amp damage on your enemies.
Third problem is that fire resistance is the most common mob resistance in hell, so your fire explosions get greatly reduced.
Finally, getting those high damage numbers to appear on your character sheet requires 3 regular basic attacks (assuming that none of them miss or get blocked) followed by 1 attack that does about as much damage as a mediocre sorc's meteor.
It can be made to work, but you really have to be a tryhard to succeed and your damage output over time isn't all that hot.
@@-Keith- Yeah, there are an awful lot of good physical builds in D2 that *require* some sort of decrepify or amplify damage procing item. One of my favorite battlenet memories is when a generous player gifted me a free The Reaper's Toll. Awesome for a desert mercenary!
If finnishers always hit kicksin with crushing blow would be the ultimate boss/uber killer. Could make it so a finnisher only always hits with at least 3 charges (any combo). or just give a ton of AR bonus on them would be simpler maybe.
please make videos about another eden!
Cool, where to sign?
Assassin is the most brilliant class there is. Except for Wake of Inferno and Blade Sentry. All the skills are usable to a certain extent. Some of them are one point wonder, some are pretty good when heavily invested. But the only thing I'd change is the Blade Sentry to proc OW, CB and On Attack and On Striking spells.
The sin is not the class that needs the most changes.
So when is the Carbot D2 mod coming? :)
Isn't Dragon Strike and Dragon tail (first charge up and the aoe flame kick) - isn't that combo prettty viable? If not for the presence of the fire immunes.
Idk, the whole point of assassin, as I get it, is: run fast, kill with one hit and keep running. I've only played normal, but I use *Fade* like all the time, literally. And only 2 claws, no shield, just a Weapon Block + Cobra Strike, no potions needed. But that's for normal, I admit.
Still love the idea of mixing charges from different strikes for the final combo. I miss that option too. 😊
It'd be cool if she was in HotS.
LOLLL The trap sounds
Set Items should be up'able. it would bring some new items into use without breaking balance. imagine an mid/early up'd death''s sash.
They literally announced this just now in their patch notes.
You'll be able to cube upgrade set items from now on, in a future patch*.
@@Xeirus911 awesome. I can stop spamming every request form i see now lol.
Your fence traps idea is almost verbatim searing bond totems from path of exile... differences are a) those also link with the player and b) totems can be targeted and killed
It'd be nice if the traps weren't considered companions and you could actually buff them with plus skills instead of auras to help break the elemental resistances
Have one of the traps changed to mind blast. That would be awesome.
Also Blade Fury is a set speed, meaning if you get IAS it doesn't help it at all!
The thing with Mana/Life LEECH is that it needs a source in which to leech from. So skeles, having no meaty substance of their own, don't have that source. Kind of like trying to squeeze a rock for water.
You missed the most important thing that should be changed. Those damn combo skills should use both weapons, not just one of them coz its really stupid that you are basically better off using a claw + shield than dual weild for a martial artist coz the 2nd weapon never used.
Martial arts should make special effects to the traps.
Assasin should be that character who has no lvl 20 spell because she use all spells just with different points. I.E. fire spec but trap and martial too. Or very martial but some points to all traps. With some special cap points on the spells so much different variations can be made by the assasin.
IdBeCoolif - Blizz/Vicarious would add some of these in this upcoming ladder patch.... The "Chaos" runeword assassin would be SO much more....Chaos...and Badass. Might even be so cool it would be annoying because everyone would be building one.
you don't touch death sentry. Removing corpses while doing lightning-sentry damage? What do you want, any other kind of assassin than trap assa?!? Out of yo mind?!?