The Blade Skills Problem/Bug!

[Ritslev]

Blade Skills:
Suffering 3/4 - 1/8 - x/x Damage -- that is ok since you can make any weapon ranged. Of course two handed weapons suffer further damage penalty but it still becomes ranged.
Adds small damage per level making it a 1 point wonder -- nothing wrong in that either...

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Problem is with all the blade skills (No this isn't a bug it's a problem or oversight from Blizzard) :
Attack rating -- The skills doesn't offer any attack rating, and attack rating is needed in order to make this skill work. It's a real shame to see a skill such as this be somewhat ruined by the lack of this.

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It would have been nice if it would have 15% at level 1, and a 5% increase at each further level invested. This would make the skill worth investing points in...

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Actually I could say this for all the Blade skills. Of course people will start to speak about how it's a trap skill and it shouldn't have attack rating. I have no really good or witty reply to that.

[quik77]

does anyone have the exact formular for BF and ar ? or is it just base?

[jrichard]

Actually the blades do make an AR check. They use the AR listed for your normal attack. Wait 'till you get to hell and you'll see them miss fairly often.

I agree with you Ristlev, the blade skills need and AR bonus of some kind. To build a decent blade 'sin you have to invest too much into getting a decent CTH whether it's a point investment or equipment.

jrichard

[theBlackKnight]

Or you could play it cheap and use enchant and angelics and ravenfrost and stuff to you know, acutally have an AR.

[Ritslev]

...play it cheap...
I know there are ways around this issue... I've written about them in my guide.
Such as Enchant. Raven Frosts. Angelic rings + amulet. AR Charms.. and so on.

That's not the point. The point is all other skills which require you to hit a target receives an AR bonus... BF doesn't.

...or is it just base....
I'm glad you edited your post...
BF use your base attack rating. Just switch to your normal attack which everyone has and your AR will be displayed. Just like JRichards stated

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I've written a guide about the Blade Fury Assasin and used an excessive amount of time testing all this stuff. So I'm not asking any questions here. I'm stating a fact/mentioning a problem. In doing so I hope enough people will take notice and eventually Blizzard will in patch 7.9 will fix it.

(Yeah that's a joke)

[lextalionis]

Ritslev has made a great guide to Blade Fury Assassins and its recently been updated in the Assassin's Forum, people should check it out. I think its fair to say he understands and explains every conceivable way to boost your BF AR.

I think what he's trying to convey is that in 1.10 has made Blade Fury a decent skill, whereas before no one was using it, now complete builds are using BF and being built around BF. Hardcore meleer's use it to finish off badees so they don't get killed by the uber corpse explosion upon death(a really sucky nerf on melee play, especially in Hardcore). Kickers use BF for creatures they don't want to get close to like Lightning Enchanted bosses.

Many characters need help with AR, but none need the help that Blade Fury does. The only way to increase your AR threw skills is to equip claw(s) and max Claw Mastery. Claw Mastery is a modest AR benefit, mainly because it contemplates you using it in conjunction with one of the other melee skills which all have significant AR boosters built into them. But Claws even with maxed Claw Mastery give little help in useful mods for BF, nor do they give you very credible damage for bladefury (even when you consider Critical Strikes).

Yes there are ways around attack rating. Ristlev does a great job of pointing those out. But most of his build is dedicated to boosting AR, and at the end of the day, you still will have AR problems of some kind. -- This is skill is not a superdamage skill to begin with. So there is no counterbalancing reason not to grant it some AR boost, at least that I can see.

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That being said, I'm still very disappointed in both Blade Sentinel and Blade Shield. Very few people use either of these skills. Actually these two fairly weak skills in 1.09 have received a nerf, not a boost in 1.10. Since they now do not activate many/any of the mods on your weapon. In 1.09 at least they had some defensive or special attack kind of thoughts to them. But now they are reduced to damage and leeching, but they are good at neither.

I thought it was very interesting that no synergy system was created for the "BLADE SKILLS". I noticed that Blade Fury and Blade Sheild really don't work well together at all. Since you dont' want to be BFing in melee range anyway.

OPTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Blizz could make the blade skills more interesting by giving them an AR booster synergy for one skill (Blade Sentinel), a damage booster for another skill (Blade Fury), and possibly a chance to create Open Wounds when hit by a blade skill (consumate with the level in Blade Shield).

Blizz could give back all the hit causes mods to blade skills. With the next delay timer, these skills would go off often, but not unmanageably so. Builds like the Blender 1.09 *(were fun, but weren't overly strong). With next delay while they would now "work" they would be even less strong than in 1.09. But these would give people more of a reason to use skills like Blade Sentinel and Blade Sheild.

Blizz could remove next delay. This would make Blade Sentinel more viable, as you could then get several in play and they could hit the same target multiple times. The skills already have very diminished damage, so I don't think this would make them unbalanced at all.

Just grant AR boosters of some sort to each blade skill. I think this is the biggest advantage for Blade Fury, while the Blade Fury is already useful in 1.10, its unfair disadvantage of no AR booster could be fixed in this way. I don't see how this would help either BS or BS, since Next Delay is a big problem for both of them. Both these skills need more help beyond AR.

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The Blade Skills are some of the "prettiest" skills in the game. They are just fun to watch. It would be fun to see these skills, used more often in games. I think that there is a happy medium where the skills can be made more useful without over balancing the Assassin tree. The idea of Synergies is particularly useful to this because, you have to make choices when applying these points. Currently all blade skills are only used at around 0-10 skill levels. Mostly at the 0 skill level. Some assassins are using them as "one point wonder" skills, but not to any uber benefit. But if you could get better damage out because of synergies of these blade skills with a signicant dedication of skill points to the "Blade Skills", builds would emerge around these skills and that would be good to see.

PS: As for the arguement that Blades are traps and thus should have an AR booster... Aren't blades also the only trap that makes an AR check???? -- I hope we have luck pissing into the wind on this.


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* I put together the 1.09 Blender guide

[Ritslev]

The Blade Skills are some of the "prettiest" skills in the game. They are just fun to watch
Along with everything else you wrote Lex I agree with this part the most. (On that and the pissing in the wind part)
I hope that more wirte exelent posts like yours and that more support this thread!