Feedback:User/Widowmaker/Scythe Mastery Skill Changes
Scythe Mastery Skill Changes
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| User | Widowmaker |
| Categories | Skill feedback → Dervish → Scythe Mastery |
Some Scythe Mastery skills are highly overpowered. Others are just plain bad. Here are some ideas about what could be done about them:
Wounding Strike 5
5
Elite Scythe Attack. If this attack hits, target foe suffers from Bleeding for 5...17...20 seconds. If you are under the effects of an enchantment, target foe also suffers from a Deep Wound for 5...17...20 seconds.
- OK, this is nothing original, but we all know now that WS is overpowered, so why not give it the fix that was given Incendiary Arrows, a slight recharge increase which limits how much it can spread conditions? Yeah, it might not be perfect, but it's a simple fix which obviously isn't going to break the game and isn't a sbooning. Alternatively, it could undergo a larger rework:
Wounding Strike 5 3
Elite Scythe Attack. If this attack hits and you are under the effects of an enchantment, target foe suffers from a Deep Wound for 5...17...20 seconds. Otherwise, you do +5...17...20 damage and target foe suffers from Bleeding for 5...17...20 seconds.
- This is essentially a revert to the old WS, with a small buff so that it's actually useful. More radically would be something like:
Wounding Strike 10 10
Elite Scythe Attack. If this attack hits, target foe suffers from a Deep Wound for 5...17...20 seconds. If you are under the effects of an Enchantment, you deal +5...17...20 damage and that foe also suffers from Bleeding for 5...17...20 seconds.
- A change like this would make the skill a bit more like Reaper's Sweep, but with an easier-to-apply Deep Wound instead of enchantment removal. Since nobody used WS back before it was buffed, an enchantment-conditional Deep Wound clearly isn't enough so making this unconditional seems to be in order if removing the Deep Wound/Bleeding combo, but a skill which just did a Deep Wound would be like an Elite energy-based Dismember, quite boring and also even more mindless since with the current version you do at least need an enchantment. So, changing things around and making the Bleeding conditional, along with some +dmg so it's actualyl worth trying to fulfil the condition, makes for a more interesting skill, balanced by a higher energy cost and/or recharge. With an enchantment this would essentially work like the current version with some more damage, but would be much less spammable. Without an enchantment it would still, however, be useful thanks to the Deep Wound, so the high cost and recharge might still be worth it.
Elite Scythe Attack. If this attack hits, you deal +10...34...40 damage. If your target is below 50% Health, you also inflict a Deep Wound for 5...17...20 seconds and Wounding Strike II takes an additional 3 seconds to recharge. Otherwise, target foe loses one enchantment.
- Thanks to power creep, instead of nerfing Wounding Strike back down a tad, ANet decided to buff Reaper's Sweep up to almost the same level, effectively creating a second version of much the same skill. Currently, it's inferior in most cases, so a nerf isn't sensible on its own, but assuming WS does get nerfed, this skill could also do with being toned down a little (albiet not as much). A simple recharge increase should do the job, though I would chose to make this conditional on the Deep Wound since though the enchantment removal is powerful, RS is no better than, say, Shattering Assault at removing enchantments (same enchants-per-energy, 1/4 the enchants-per-second, small AoE but blockable) and I don't think you should lose the utility of being able to remove an enchantment with this skill and then use it to Deep Wound shortly after, when you've got a foe down to below half health.
Radiant Scythe 5 8
Scythe Attack. For each point of Energy you currently have, all adjacent foes take 1 Holy damage (maximum 10...34...40). If it hits and you are under the effects of an enchantment, this attack deals +5...17...20 damage.
- Currently, Radiant Scythe is a powerful spiking skill, but doesn't really see much play due to alternatives such as Chilling Victory, which deals AoE cold damage, and Mystic Sweep, which has a faster activation speed. By giving it some enchantment-conditional +damage and making the energy-based bonus damage holy damage, and unreliant on hitting a foe, it becomes much more potent, and a strong contender with Chilling Victory since the former is now in the Wind Prayers line. To avoid overbuffing this, the recharge could be increased and the bonus damage changed to 1 per energy rather than 2. This also makes Avatar of Lyssa more attractive with Radiant Scythe.
- If this turned out to be too powerful on Assassins or Elementalists, who can achieve a high energy much more easily than Dervishes with meta bars, it could always be moved to Mysticism.
Reap Impurities 10 6
Melee Attack. If this attack hits, you deal +10...26...30 damage. Whenever you hit a foe suffering from at least one Condition, you gain 1 Energy and 10...46...55 Health, plus a further 5...13...15 Health for each additional Condition (max 100 health per target).
- Currently, this skill is similar to Victorious Sweep with an easier condition, and one more likely to be fulfilled when you actually want health. However, it has both double the energy cost and recharge. By adding a small energy gain and a scaling health bonus, a Dervish who can inflict multiple conditions will be able to net a larger heal without losing as much energy. The shorter recharge means that by hitting multiple condition-suffering foes, the Dervish will have a greatly improved survival rate, but this will still be limited by energy. Thus, it's not overpowered, but a bit better in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.
Aura Slicer 5 12
Scythe Attack. If this attack hits and you are enchanted, target foe loses one enchantment. If that foe was not enchanted, you deal +5...17...20 damage and inflict Cracked Armour for 5...17...20 seconds.
- The old, Cracked Armour-dependant version of this skill was tricky to use, but the new version is quite frankly little better, if not worse. If WS were nerfed (as it should be), this might be a nice cover for Deep Wound on a Reaper's Sweep build, for example. However, at the end of the day, the Bleeding is nowhere near as powerful as the Enchantment removal it used to have. By giving the skill back that power, as well as the ability to inflict Cracked Armour, it becomes really useful. However, I don't think this is overpowered since though no melee class can inflict CA (ANet seemed to have made the decision that professions who benefit from it be unable to inflict it), Dervishes no longer have any skills which directly benefit from it, and what with the lengthened recharge and the fact that it's conditional on a lack of enchantments, it should actually be fairly difficult to inflict with this.
