Shaman needs a thwack. They come in at 1 aps (.9 curse/throw + .1 from .5s slow from confound body), ignoring inhibit's double aff til jinxed is on (IMO, inhibit before jinxed is worth but I don't see that often) and the failure prophecy. Swiftcurse and taking the 50/50 on the throw + confound is 1.15 aps (e: had a wrong number here). Neither are bad rates (arti assassin is 1.3ish without trance/hypochondria, dropping lower depending on how shadowplants play out), and this setup phase lasts til about t+4.4 (mark/curse/confound, curse/jinx, curse/jinx).
Then that jumps to 1.63 aps (1.53 swift/throw + confound) with jinxed on. It can technically spike a little higher with delayed curses, but that's not relevant for top aps. Shifting jinxed to a high prio helps (and is really the only way to try fighting them). The only way to defend otherwise is by using active cures [basically whenever you have 2+jinxed or more affs], slowing balance or hindering some other way [I've had limited success with two inhibiting queues], or ending the fight, since yew runestone or tiger make curseward not a thing + truecurse. They 'can't truelock', but the one they can't deal with via an aff can be eliminated via prophecy or coinflipped past since it's on a long cooldown, so I don't think anyone would pretend they aren't a lock-capable class. They don't technically need to lock, since just stacking for bat with addiction and 3 DoT affs in the mix is pudding (pure swiftcursing with confound on is .86 aps, enough to maintain/slightly build pressure). Ignited porcupine + swiftcurse aff or steal+throw is also an option.
And that's before we throw in fetishes and some astounding holding skills (vortex, obstruct, laguz [or whatever bone picture it is], the best holding affs in agora and claustro, double sleep for tumble if they don't want to/can't take the easy totem hit, plus likely having dizziness from inhibit). The one downside is they lack much in the way of long-term momentum (ironic considering Vodun), so you can reset the fight if you manage to escape for about 15s to let confound fade and regain tree/purge balance.
For anecdotal stuffs, when I fight a shaman with half a brain, I need the stack sealed and ready before I really commit to eating the totem (only reliable way to 'dodge' is if they drop vortex, oddly), entering my offense route, and snapping the trance. In practice, that means entering, eating totem, standing, dropping 1-2 suggestions, running, repeat. When I commit, I try to at least get tree and purge down before snapping, but I can't usually stack enough to make sure they won't shield/flee/dust cure unless they commit to their offense. Also, I can still effectively die before the trance pays dividends (fastlocking on snap has seen the best results; trying to mask impatience for a more reliable lock tends to get me killed). Dstab/plants or confounded whispers for the fastlock doesn't win versus theirs since it basically becomes a 6s focus versus a blockable purge with the aff rate in their favor.
And all of that is just 1v1 balance. Tex/totem is one of the most obnoxious things for teamfighting, with or without the 8-slot arti. That discussion also brings in RG, though.
Solutions have been more trying than the problem. I keep wanting to type 'delete totems' I guess I'll save that for after any replies/comments/suggestions from others. Been holding onto this post too long as it is.
Aside: I wish Demonic Shaman kept the old Shamanism Magick could have had the fluffies, then AM could have like brand target with guilt and joy or something.
@Gjarrus I agree with most of your points. The ones I don't agree with is your portion about holding skills. I'm going to break them down, though I'll have to make an assumption on a couple.
Claustrophobia/Agoraphobia. I'm going to assume here, since you said it's 1v1, that you're talking about the shaman using shell in conjunction with. The AB says that it makes the room indoors, but as far as claustrophobia is concerned it actually does not. I've tested this.
Onto tex/totem. Everyone has access to them now; before shaman's rework I'm pretty sure only magick had totems (but correct me if I'm wrong.) Talking about getting rid of them is talking about the one thing magick has ever really had to be a real movement nuisance with.
Moving onto obstruct: obstruct is pretty nice. I don't use it, but it can be nice. It does throw off balance in a failed movement attempt, but obstruct can be dodged with a 100% success rate if you use certain abilities or have certain artifacts. It is single target and only lasts for 8 seconds.
I'll be honest, I don't know why you have laguz in here; that's kind of laughable. It's just rubble.
Demonic and AM both have a piety/gravehands to keep people in rooms. Magick does not. Magick doesn't even have the one skill that was single-target comparable kept to itself anymore, as the profession that has it is now also neutral. Now, if you want to get into a REAL nuisance... how about we talk a piety/tex/taunt combo or a gravehands/tex/taunt combo. That's absolutely brutal.
@Owyn Just popping in to address totems. Pre-neutral, shaman was wytch, which was a demonic profession, and it always had totems. The only circle that had no access to vortex/totems was AM. Now they do.
Canopy effects not procing the claus/agora border move failure makes them weaker than I theorized for Shaman, but they're still pretty good. Rubble isn't terrible if not stellar, but laughable is definitely underselling it. I also forgot stonewall entirely, since it is only becoming relevant again with the shard rework. E: I meant more the suite of holding skills is nice altogether, not that everything in it is astounding.
Magick also has piety :O Sorta (Spatium Blizzard). Not in a position to do a circle v circle holding comparison at the moment, though (mostly cause idfk what mage has for holding).
I'm not suggesting deleting Vortex, either. It has pros and cons, just the pro of 'making them hit a totem' is massive. Vortex also isn't the cancer that is watching someone flip/eat unblind/undeaf/6 pain 2 times in 4 seconds. Vortex on its own would still be rather strong for bringing in people who flip/tumble in any situation where you have blockers instead of needing to wall.
And re history: Wytch was 'neutral' for a bit then Demonic then true Neutral. Tex/totem was never Magick exclusive. E: Curse you @Caelya I WAS BEING INFORMATIVE
@Gjarrus Meh. I dragged a non-com to test Blizzard. It appears to be either single-target or room-wide without discrimination to ally or enemy (can't tell which because was just the two of us, me and him.) Plus it can also be dodged 100% of the time by the same types of skills/arties that obstruct can. It's not even close to the same level of viability.
Funnily enough, this would have been the kind of thing I'd jokingly suggest Bard gets, while making wide allusions to Bard being the Priest of Magick. Regretfully, that seems too soon considering this thread. I'm always going to weigh in on the side of stronger holding skills, though my gut is screaming to reconsider that. Maybe fertile ground for some Bard tradeoffs, if you still think those need to happen.
Aside from wondering vaguely if we considered what we were doing by putting them in the Neutral category, I only have passing thoughts about Shaman. I think their affliction rate is pretty strong, but I'm still tweaking the way I change my priorities and I don't have any terrific active curing in Outrider. I traded that away for things like easy lethargy, et cetera when I picked the class. Classes like Shaman are delicate beasts, though - if the affliction rate is truly too high, just gently dial something back about their cure tampering.. ideally one thing and one thing only.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
You have a bow and wormholes. You shouldn't be walking into vortex or a totem. As for canopy and xeroderma, you still have a way to proc xeroderma even indoors, so that shouldn't be an issue at all. It feels like some of these issues are more about someone not using the full renegade/Saboteur kit, and less about shaman.
Funnily enough, this would have been the kind of thing I'd jokingly suggest Bard gets, while making wide allusions to Bard being the Priest of Magick. Regretfully, that seems too soon considering this thread. I'm always going to weigh in on the side of stronger holding skills, though my gut is screaming to reconsider that. Maybe fertile ground for some Bard tradeoffs, if you still think those need to happen.
I would be much more in favor of splitting up Renegade to include elemental powers in magick and demon powers in demonic. Magick renegades could gain an actual piety-effect from Blizzard, and Demonic Saboteurs could gain a multi-target AoE attack or additional mana pressure that they're lacking now with new Malignist.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
@Galt Canopy was never brought up with regards to xeroderma. If you think you're sticking that for 40s versus a Shaman anyway, you're crazy. E: Unless you lock and leave them there, in which case any other kill method would work as well. As for the bow, that simply doesn't work unless they are vortexing you. E: They'll just reprop before you recover balance from the lengthy net snipe otherwise, leading into a pointless loop that goes nowhere until you enter the room.
I'm following this discussion, but it will be a while before we get to classleads. We will release Engineers and then let that settle into combat a little, tweak them as needed, and then we can start into classleads a little. Keep in mind though, that we are still working on revamping the rest of the PvP systems as well.
Basically, don't think we are starting classleads next week or something.
I'm following this discussion, but it will be a while before we get to classleads. We will release Engineers and then let that settle into combat a little, tweak them as needed, and then we can start into classleads a little. Keep in mind though, that we are still working on revamping the rest of the PvP systems as well.
Basically, don't think we are starting classleads next week or something.
Any chance we could get an answer on the 'design direction' statement I had pitched a few days back? Otherwise, this is really fantastic and I appreciate the transparency on the topic of when to expect this process.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Despite the wisdom of doing one change at a time, I keep coming up with three problems for Shaman: the quick ramp-up to a high aff rate, the inability to defend against their primary offense, and totem/fetishes.
1. Backend the power of inhibit, making it instead do dizziness -> dementia (or some other low tier mental hinder) -> hallucinations -> confusion + lethargy. 2. Remove Truecurse. 3. Make propping a soft channel that is delayed shortly before activating.
1 puts confusion further back whereas now it's both providing a significant aff surge and strong hinder that either masks the most vital aff (jinxed) or makes the fight effectively over for eq users. Getting confusion+lethargy after three gating affs available in both curses and the skill is still pretty strong, IMO. 2 allows defensive reduction in shaman APS and an opportunity to break momentum that currently does not exist with curseward bypass having negligible opportunity cost. The class has a high rate of affliction and ample access to numbness, so there's no reason it should ignore shields as well as its intended protection without some sort of tradeoff (even ignoring curseward's actual eq cost over the analogous rebounding).
3 is simply the lightest nerf to totems that I can really think of. None of its burst damage or afflicting is removed, but it's more difficult to chain totem hits and makes running after a totem/fetish user not asking for a face full of ouch every single time.
Sadly, coming from an assassin, it seems like this is the pot calling the kettle black.
Do I think a fetish is crazy strong? I certainly do. I personally don't think it should be anymore than 3 slots on a totem(arti or not).
Inhibit has a longer balance cost on the ability to make up for the extra affliction. It's also the only way I have to give confusion. If you take confusion off of it, it'd at least need to be given as a curse or bonedust attack. (Granted, I don't find this near as strong as your current hypochondria ability. )
Remove truecurse? Shield already stops porcupine so that gives us only one affliction. I far from see this being an issue.
There are quite a few ways to break Shaman momentum. I know of at least 3 combatants that have learned them that I've been fighting often.
In summary, only thing I truly agree with you on is totems.
So, I think we need to talk about Berserkers. Usually, I'd put this in its own thread, but Engineer is clearly more important than our current professions actually working, so I guess this will just become a classlead concern anyways. Last night, I used a mirror to copy Tahm and toy around with the class. It was one of the professions I'm entertaining picking up to revitalize my interest in the game. After looking at the hard numbers, I can't for one minute justify spending any credits or lessons on this class.
It might be a 'team fight king' just because of WARCHANTS HASTE and their ability to work with others, but we need to analyze the actual state of the class here. From everything I can see, the class is still stuck in the era where it was solely Anti-Magick. It operates under the assumption that an Outrider will be there. It actually has been designed entirely dependent on the ecosystem of Anti-Magick, never once having a consideration that a Berserker might go and do his own thing or not have a team around to play with. I want to talk about some of the problems I've identified just looking at this data.
1. Lots of bleeding synergy, but not a lot of ways to push the theme : Berserkers come with a lot of things that care about bleeding, but their actual ability to take advantage of this is sort of bottlenecked. They possess Bloodlet in Maiming, which does not deliver a toxin and has a soft cap, as well as Bleed in Warchants, which has no soft cap.. but the nature of the skill means it pushes the Bloodlet softcap. These would be their enablers, and they are few and far between. However, they have payoff skillsfor this bleeding - Warchants Vesselburst (deals damage based on bleeding - looks like roughly BLEEDING*2.5=RESULTANT_DMG - this is a Psychic Bloodfreeze, basically) and Warchants Bloodflow which, from my testing, I needed somewhere around 21 to 30 bleeding based on 460maxHP, to get haemophilia to trigger. Basically, Berserkers lack a way to take advantage of this avenue due to the nature of their bleeding skills. They don't just generate a bunch of bleeding like Outriders might while pushing their normal offense. They need somebody else pushing the bleeding because they won't stick haemo. Finally, this might seem small, but they have no way to accurate get a readout on bleeding themselves - an Outrider has WYRMRIDING BLOODSCENT, which gives them a readout on all bleeding when it occurs. Berserkers seem like a class that truly want this, and it could have been built in to WARCHANTS RAGE or even as a separate defense elsewhere. In addition, for Bleeding being such a core theme in their design, they sure seem to be lacking a Shield skill in Maiming to generate bleeding or act similar to Batter, Bash, and Smash.
2. They sure have a lot of closers, payoffs, and unique buffs, but no way to get to them alone : I am referring to Maiming Batter, Bash, and Smash, as well as Warchants Pierce and Bewilder. Berserker rewards having a set list of afflictions present on the target, some of which cannot be tracked with any true reliability and some of which do not come from toxins. Pierce scales on Weaken's aff list, of which two are not available in any way aside from Warchant Weaken or help.
3. Their numbers are just all wrong - they scale like shit and they're about as slow : I'll be upfront here: the shield attacks that a Berserker performs are by far the biggest gate on their offense, clocking in at 2.9s with a Level 1 Balance bonus and a Level 3 Shield. Warchant balance is faster than 2.9s, but you cannot perform another Warchant until you regain full balance. This means that the speed at which Berserker combos come out at is roughly 2.9s or slower. It feels like this would take too much time to build up to your specialty shield hits - in the time you would use to stick all of this, your opponent definitely isn't sitting still. They've likely worked their way to their own kill condition too. If this wasn't bad enough, their damage is terrible by all accounts. They deal physical damage on all accounts, even Warchant damage. Maiming damage is not particularly high due to Blunt and Cutting resists being so easy to stack up. Warchant's Psychic type is still blocked by surcoat due to physical sourcing, and can be reduced by class defenses, Philosophy, and the psychic resist ring. Pierce's scaling seems to be in the ballpark of roughly 4% extra maxHP in damage per aff, topping out at ~19% of maxHP with all affs. The totals at which they deal damage feel very stunted, making it hard to lead up to Overwhelm - a skill that would make Shout do roughly 9.3% of maxHP for the duration. Their shit damage means that Warchants Shatter is only going to see prominent use in teams, when it could be a primary Berserker closer alongside Disembowel.
The potential of this class feels gated behind being in a team, and that is not okay. We shouldn't be releasing new classes when we can't even make our remakes of classes work. It's not alright for an entire class to lack any potency outside of a team situation. If Berserkers are gods of teamfights, where are they on all of our teams in Imperian right now? More importantly, if their 'team fight god status' is why they can't have their own functioning offense in a vacuum, can we please put that on the chopping block in exchange for a functioning class?
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
To get the first bit out of the way: Assassin has good afflicting, but my artifacted aps during setup is ~1 aps (bounces between .8 and 1.2), equal to shaman. With a snapped trance, I hover around jinxed porcupine aps. Hypochondria (excluding the double proc which I already agreed needs to go, and I even suggested non-aps changes to it in this thread) inches that up slightly higher with another .1 aps. Deadening is a dramatic boost to snapped trance aps (from .1ish to .5ish). Shaman doesn't have hemotoxin, but assassin has heavily gated impatience use + focus is a better lock breaker + failure. Shaman turns into sabre dsl on crack once marks ignite, where assassin has to stop aps entirely to devour or puncture, or they go for one of the more req heavy true instas in the game in Annihilate.
So, no, assassin is not as bad as shaman is right now. Strong? Sure, but the sample size of Assassin is also literally someone who has been playing only that class for years.
Inhibit still gives confusion, but later. You can also swift/throw inhibit, if you didn't know.
'I only have just under 1 aps while you shield' is kind of funny, especially considering how underutilized bat has been. Breaking shaman momentum requires running, active cures, or killing them. No class is going to hinder a shaman before they do the same. To compare, assassin can pull 0.5 aps on a shielder and can't flat out ignore fenugreek.
In summary, Shaman is far more powerful right now than it seems you want to give it credit for, which is odd considering you went from losing consistently as Outrider to winning against literally everyone as Shaman.
I just find it amusing and somewhat gratifying that the criticism of the class has only come after it's made public and available to everyone. I wanted to make a note of that
For my opinion both classes are already disgustingly OP with regards to affliction load. With assassin redesigned specifically to mess the internal autocuring system around. Power classes designed by power players.
I just find it amusing and somewhat gratifying that the criticism of the class has only come after it's made public and available to everyone. I wanted to make a note of that
For my opinion both classes are already disgustingly OP with regards to affliction load.
That said, carry on.
Templar is woefully underpowered and restricted to some zzz playstyles I would strongly suggest some people sitting down and doing something similar to what I was talking about with DK earlier.
I just find it amusing and somewhat gratifying that the criticism of the class has only come after it's made public and available to everyone. I wanted to make a note of that
For my opinion both classes are already disgustingly OP with regards to affliction load.
That said, carry on.
Templar is woefully underpowered and restricted to some zzz playstyles I would strongly suggest some people sitting down and doing something similar to what I was talking about with DK earlier.
Sure, but until then, can we put the BS aside and agree both of your classes are very, very strong and there are some that need more reasonable attention? This is pretty counterproductive.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
I've suggested and agreed to nerfs to both classes, akshually. The least productive thing I did in the one you quoted was not provide specific suggestions. Just saying 'they're overpowered plx' or trying to use one to justify not making small, targeted nerfs to another are far less productive.
E: And I'm not ignoring the Berseker post, but there's a lot going on there and I'm not comfortable weighing in on it yet.
So, I think we need to talk about Berserkers. Usually, I'd put this in its own thread, but Engineer is clearly more important than our current professions actually working, so I guess this will just become a classlead concern anyways. Last night, I used a mirror to copy Tahm and toy around with the class. It was one of the professions I'm entertaining picking up to revitalize my interest in the game. After looking at the hard numbers, I can't for one minute justify spending any credits or lessons on this class.
It might be a 'team fight king' just because of WARCHANTS HASTE and their ability to work with others, but we need to analyze the actual state of the class here. From everything I can see, the class is still stuck in the era where it was solely Anti-Magick. It operates under the assumption that an Outrider will be there. It actually has been designed entirely dependent on the ecosystem of Anti-Magick, never once having a consideration that a Berserker might go and do his own thing or not have a team around to play with. I want to talk about some of the problems I've identified just looking at this data.
1. Lots of bleeding synergy, but not a lot of ways to push the theme : Berserkers come with a lot of things that care about bleeding, but their actual ability to take advantage of this is sort of bottlenecked. They possess Bloodlet in Maiming, which does not deliver a toxin and has a soft cap, as well as Bleed in Warchants, which has no soft cap.. but the nature of the skill means it pushes the Bloodlet softcap. These would be their enablers, and they are few and far between. However, they have payoff skillsfor this bleeding - Warchants Vesselburst (deals damage based on bleeding - looks like roughly BLEEDING*2.5=RESULTANT_DMG - this is a Psychic Bloodfreeze, basically) and Warchants Bloodflow which, from my testing, I needed somewhere around 21 to 30 bleeding based on 460maxHP, to get haemophilia to trigger. Basically, Berserkers lack a way to take advantage of this avenue due to the nature of their bleeding skills. They don't just generate a bunch of bleeding like Outriders might while pushing their normal offense. They need somebody else pushing the bleeding because they won't stick haemo. Finally, this might seem small, but they have no way to accurate get a readout on bleeding themselves - an Outrider has WYRMRIDING BLOODSCENT, which gives them a readout on all bleeding when it occurs. Berserkers seem like a class that truly want this, and it could have been built in to WARCHANTS RAGE or even as a separate defense elsewhere. In addition, for Bleeding being such a core theme in their design, they sure seem to be lacking a Shield skill in Maiming to generate bleeding or act similar to Batter, Bash, and Smash.
2. They sure have a lot of closers, payoffs, and unique buffs, but no way to get to them alone : I am referring to Maiming Batter, Bash, and Smash, as well as Warchants Pierce and Bewilder. Berserker rewards having a set list of afflictions present on the target, some of which cannot be tracked with any true reliability and some of which do not come from toxins. Pierce scales on Weaken's aff list, of which two are not available in any way aside from Warchant Weaken or help.
3. Their numbers are just all wrong - they scale like **** and they're about as slow : I'll be upfront here: the shield attacks that a Berserker performs are by far the biggest gate on their offense, clocking in at 2.9s with a Level 1 Balance bonus and a Level 3 Shield. Warchant balance is faster than 2.9s, but you cannot perform another Warchant until you regain full balance. This means that the speed at which Berserker combos come out at is roughly 2.9s or slower. It feels like this would take too much time to build up to your specialty shield hits - in the time you would use to stick all of this, your opponent definitely isn't sitting still. They've likely worked their way to their own kill condition too. If this wasn't bad enough, their damage is terrible by all accounts. They deal physical damage on all accounts, even Warchant damage. Maiming damage is not particularly high due to Blunt and Cutting resists being so easy to stack up. Warchant's Psychic type is still blocked by surcoat due to physical sourcing, and can be reduced by class defenses, Philosophy, and the psychic resist ring. Pierce's scaling seems to be in the ballpark of roughly 4% extra maxHP in damage per aff, topping out at ~19% of maxHP with all affs. The totals at which they deal damage feel very stunted, making it hard to lead up to Overwhelm - a skill that would make Shout do roughly 9.3% of maxHP for the duration. Their **** damage means that Warchants Shatter is only going to see prominent use in teams, when it could be a primary Berserker closer alongside Disembowel.
The potential of this class feels gated behind being in a team, and that is not okay. We shouldn't be releasing new classes when we can't even make our remakes of classes work. It's not alright for an entire class to lack any potency outside of a team situation. If Berserkers are gods of teamfights, where are they on all of our teams in Imperian right now? More importantly, if their 'team fight god status' is why they can't have their own functioning offense in a vacuum, can we please put that on the chopping block in exchange for a functioning class?
Kinda my take as well. I think it would benefit greatly from just allowing haste to be self targetted to an appropriate balance level and trade off for likely damage level or finisher thresholds.
I don't believe Haste controls all of Berserker's power budget. If it does, then the class definitely should not have made it out of beta. That would mean they knowingly doomed the class to only be useful for buffing a team. I would like to think we know better than that. There's a case to be made for not taking anything away whatsoever and going forward with making some changes to increase the solo viability of the class.
Here's some things I'm toying around with as reports, and I'd like some people to poke holes in my logic so I know if I'm nuts or not:
1. AB WARCHANTS RAGE - The number of classes using charged, class-specific resources sets a precedent for the design and trade-offs of those resources. Look at the following classes for examples: Priest - Kanai, Summoner - Taint. Both of these classes generate their resource through their offense, much like Berserker - Warchants. A notable absence in the design of the former two classes, however, is a penalty for 'sitting' on your resources. Of course, neither class gains a benefit for sitting on them either; Berserkers gain a 15% damage bonus at the expense of permanent recklessness. I believe that permanent recklessness, while 'cute' and flavorful, is a line of trinket text that is not necessary. A Berserker is required to expend no Rage (thus not modifying any Warchant) to gain this damage bonus, with the only outlier of this behavior being saving up to Enrage. I believe that opportunity cost is more than enough. I don't see why a permanent affliction would be used as a balancing solution.
Remove the permanent recklessness on Rage. The downside of stacking Rage is the lack of ability to utilize Release modifiers; it does not need an addition downside. A Berserker will need to choose between a 15% damage bonus on weapon attacks, or modifying the back end of their combos with Release. This leaves the possibility of floating at 80% by exclusively using Strengthen Release, at the expense of more dynamic options like Release or Repeat, or the more high-powered option of Thunder.
If we must retain this flavor-oriented downside, then allow the Rage damage bonus to scale dynamically. If 80 - 100% Rage = 15% extra damage, that logically means that 10% rage is roughly equal to 1.5% extra damage at the very least, meaning that 1% Rage is equal to 0.15% extra damage. Allow this bonus to ramp up dynamically instead of all up front at a certain threshold, and then designate this threshold with permanent recklessness. Adjust scaling to allow for the top end of the curve to be worth more, meaning every point of Rage matters more than the next, eventually leading to either the existing 15% damage bonus, or a new, higher damage bonus (say ~20 to 25%.)
? I had a suggestion here but it was stupid, so nevermind.
2. AB MAIMING NEW - Bleeding as theme has been constructed in to the Berserker class. Without another remake to gut this part of their design, we are instead going to need to salvage the theme. It takes up a not-minuscule part of their design space and finishers in Warchants, i.e Bloodflow, Bleed, Vesselburst. The class was designed in an Anti-Magick ecosystem, then let loose as a Neutral profession. It needs some tools to make itself self-sufficient, one of which is the ability to survey bleeding themselves to make intelligent decisions on usage of the aforementioned bleed-focused abilities.
Add a new ability in Maiming or Rampage, called Bloodlust. This ability would function identically to AB WYRMRIDING BLOODSCENT.
Build AB WYRMRIDING BLOODSCENT's functionality in to AB WARCHANTS RAGE, handwaving it as 'smelling the blood of your enemies keenly'.
?
I think the foremost problems with the class, as I already detailed, are their scaling and their inability to take advantage of their own kit. They already have plenty of finishers, we just need to give them a route to one. I think disembowel would be the best 'solo' closer, as you could follow up with a shatter if need be, or build up more affs for an assured win. This means finding a way to adjust their affrate, as it is currently gated by the exceptionally slow 2.9s shield attacks in a combo. Places this could happen:
adjust release costs on certain warchants.
provide a new release called 'empower' that adjusts warchants a la Voice Resonance Ta.
adjust the thresholds on shield attacks to give double-aff earlier.
consider giving Berserkers the ability to dump enough rage to double-modify shouts.
provide a new warchant that provides affs scaling on bleeding - modify bloodflow for similar payoff?
give maiming bloodlet a toxin modify - does this trample weaponmastery longswords?
provide scaling speed bonus based on rage% - if this is taken, repeat recklessness, add scaling damage%taken penalty, maybe keep %damagedone bonus?
find a way to get dryblood in to the Berserker kit - it seems like bleeding is a theme to provide pressure to both mana and health, which helps get closer to that Shatter threshold. I'm really leery of doing this because then we're pushing them closer to Outriders with verbal tics, but whatever. It would be another physical aff to stack with nightshade and towards a disembowel. It wouldn't be the perfect solution and it would not be the only thing they need.
Thoughts, sirs?
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Honestly, Berserker just seems unfinished. The biggest problem with the bleed portion of the offense is that Bloodflow, their only ability capable of delivering haemophilia... requires the target to already be bleeding by ~25 or more. This simply won't happen unless the person you're fighting somehow already can't clot. Adding a way to track a target's bleeding will be great but also ultimately pointless without remedying this, unless you're looking to use bleeding as a way to whittle away mana for Shatter or something equally ridiculous (and unfeasible with the current numbers).
The speed of shield attacks doesn't really seem like an issue to me. 2.9s for three affs, with an extra one tossed in by Eviscerate every 10s, is a pretty workable rate considering affs->damage is the only synergy that exists in the kit. As I see it, the things Berserker is most hungry for include a way to deliver impatience, toxins on Bloodlet, more accessible Bloodflow, and maybe some shoring up on the defensive side.
Edit: Also, make Warchant damage con-based. That will definitely help and is not silly or unbalancing.
Honestly, Berserker just seems unfinished. The biggest problem with the bleed portion of the offense is that Bloodflow, their only ability capable of delivering haemophilia... requires the target to already be bleeding by ~25 or more. This simply won't happen unless the person you're fighting somehow already can't clot. Adding a way to track a target's bleeding will be great but also ultimately pointless without remedying this, unless you're looking to use bleeding as a way to whittle away mana for Shatter or something equally ridiculous (and unfeasible with the current numbers).
The speed of shield attacks doesn't really seem like an issue to me. 2.9s for three affs, with an extra one tossed in by Eviscerate every 10s, is a pretty workable rate considering affs->damage is the only synergy that exists in the kit. As I see it, the things Berserker is most hungry for include a way to deliver impatience, toxins on Bloodlet, more accessible Bloodflow, and maybe some shoring up on the defensive side.
I agree that Berserker feels super unfinished. Bloodflow could stand to just deliver haemophilia without a bleeding requirement - other classes get it on demand, it isn't like Knights can't already crap it out for a team anyways. Jury's still out for me on shield attack speed, but I'm interested to hear that others have a more favorable view and that gives me some scope.
I hadn't thought about providing impatience, but a 'Shield Addle/Thrash' might be an interesting addition. Affpool would be Impatience, plus maybe two from Disorient, with a special effect having to do with mana usage or something?
I don't have much I can supply for input on defenses. What it sounds like is that a lot of things are needed to really bring Berserker around, but they're all little things.
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To get the first bit out of the way: Assassin has good afflicting, but my artifacted aps during setup is ~1 aps (bounces between .8 and 1.2), equal to shaman. With a snapped trance, I hover around jinxed porcupine aps. Hypochondria (excluding the double proc which I already agreed needs to go, and I even suggested non-aps changes to it in this thread) inches that up slightly higher with another .1 aps. Deadening is a dramatic boost to snapped trance aps (from .1ish to .5ish). Shaman doesn't have hemotoxin, but assassin has heavily gated impatience use + focus is a better lock breaker + failure. Shaman turns into sabre dsl on crack once marks ignite, where assassin has to stop aps entirely to devour or puncture, or they go for one of the more req heavy true instas in the game in Annihilate.
So, no, assassin is not as bad as shaman is right now. Strong? Sure, but the sample size of Assassin is also literally someone who has been playing only that class for years.
Inhibit still gives confusion, but later. You can also swift/throw inhibit, if you didn't know.
'I only have just under 1 aps while you shield' is kind of funny, especially considering how underutilized bat has been. Breaking shaman momentum requires running, active cures, or killing them. No class is going to hinder a shaman before they do the same. To compare, assassin can pull 0.5 aps on a shielder and can't flat out ignore fenugreek.
In summary, Shaman is far more powerful right now than it seems you want to give it credit for, which is odd considering you went from losing consistently as Outrider to winning against literally everyone as Shaman.
I've missed much of these comments lately, cause I haven't been checking the forums. Going to keep these short: your 1-1.2 aps assassin is equal to the aff-rate of my 1aps artifacted shaman. You brought up Shaman's ability to hinder movement and brought up obstruct, but traps are way better than obstruct is.
Just one more thing: his point about shield was not the aff blocking. The 1aps with you shielded really does nothing for shaman. His point about shield was that it blocks porcupine from flaring. No porcupine flaring means no damage. There are absolutely ways to beat Shaman. I'm not arguing that it doesn't need tweaking; I am saying though that it's not as bad as you're making it sound.
EDIT: With shield it's less than 1aps, because 1 aff per round. If you're telling me you can't find the time to get rid of jinxed which is probably one of your highest prios while fighting a shaman while you turtle (which of course reduces that aff-rate further, because you can't swift + flare reliably without it with porcupine), then you probably need to look at your defense for shaman.
EDIT EDIT: I'd fight him as outrider, but if it's any consolation to you, his shaman doesn't beat mine.
The reason why warchants are physical instead of mental is that we wanted to avoid the situation that Templar was in, where the class was being balanced around a few outliers(me, Septus, Juran) who had artifact collars/sashes as well as artifact swords/strength and thusly had much more powerful flares than the average Templar.
It's a lot easier to balance a class when you're not balancing the class' main offense around str AND int AND weapon AND collar.
It's also worth noting that other classes have damage sources that can't be boosted at all by artifacts. Not every facet of your offence needs to be artifact boostable and this is especially true of passives.
It's 1 aps roughly for both in setup (I can flail and sacrifice control and my aff spike to consistently hit 1.2), and I discussed the setup time disparity. And traps (snare specifically) are great, sure. The classes are strong and comparable in many ways with Shaman edging out in some key areas. That's as 'bad' as I've been making it sound, which is accurate.
It's more like .9 aps (.87ish) with solo swift and confound into shield, enough to outpace curing and certainly not nothing. Vamp bat also suffers no downsides from going into shield or a lack of jinxed. Relevant, that's barely less than Berserker unhindered aps, with damage that should be at least comparable near ignition.
Neither of the nerfs I suggested mess with the top-end aps, either. Shaman doesn't need a double aff with confusion or shield bypass without any gating. If you want to talk gating truecurse, I'd be amenable. Honestly, linking it to another mark + jinxed, a mark's ignited phase, or requiring no curseward all came to mind, but I opted to suggest removing it based on the comparison that keeps coming up here (shielding is an effective yet beatable defense versus assassins).
To be honest I think the comparrison is irrelevant anyway. Assassin and shaman play very differently (assassin is arguably far more of an attrition aff class whereas shaman is a lot more bursty). It probably doesn't matter a huge amount as one being op (or not as the case may be) doesn't inherently mean the other is or isn't.
They're both incredibly strong classes. I don't think anyone is going to contest that fact.
I would kind of like to give all unhidden affs a 3p, especially toxins. Clan aff calls are so icky, and I can never get people on board with the coding necessary to make in-line calling a thing (but it is technically feasible without any changes).
Just out of curiosity, are there people regularly and actively fighting as assassin other than Kabaal (with 10+ years of dedicated play in that class + artifacts?)
The sample size seems a little skewed for this discussion.
Comments
Shaman needs a thwack. They come in at 1 aps (.9 curse/throw + .1 from .5s slow from confound body), ignoring inhibit's double aff til jinxed is on (IMO, inhibit before jinxed is worth but I don't see that often) and the failure prophecy. Swiftcurse and taking the 50/50 on the throw + confound is 1.15 aps (e: had a wrong number here). Neither are bad rates (arti assassin is 1.3ish without trance/hypochondria, dropping lower depending on how shadowplants play out), and this setup phase lasts til about t+4.4 (mark/curse/confound, curse/jinx, curse/jinx).
Then that jumps to 1.63 aps (1.53 swift/throw + confound) with jinxed on. It can technically spike a little higher with delayed curses, but that's not relevant for top aps. Shifting jinxed to a high prio helps (and is really the only way to try fighting them). The only way to defend otherwise is by using active cures [basically whenever you have 2+jinxed or more affs], slowing balance or hindering some other way [I've had limited success with two inhibiting queues], or ending the fight, since yew runestone or tiger make curseward not a thing + truecurse. They 'can't truelock', but the one they can't deal with via an aff can be eliminated via prophecy or coinflipped past since it's on a long cooldown, so I don't think anyone would pretend they aren't a lock-capable class. They don't technically need to lock, since just stacking for bat with addiction and 3 DoT affs in the mix is pudding (pure swiftcursing with confound on is .86 aps, enough to maintain/slightly build pressure). Ignited porcupine + swiftcurse aff or steal+throw is also an option.
And that's before we throw in fetishes and some astounding holding skills (vortex, obstruct, laguz [or whatever bone picture it is], the best holding affs in agora and claustro, double sleep for tumble if they don't want to/can't take the easy totem hit, plus likely having dizziness from inhibit). The one downside is they lack much in the way of long-term momentum (ironic considering Vodun), so you can reset the fight if you manage to escape for about 15s to let confound fade and regain tree/purge balance.
For anecdotal stuffs, when I fight a shaman with half a brain, I need the stack sealed and ready before I really commit to eating the totem (only reliable way to 'dodge' is if they drop vortex, oddly), entering my offense route, and snapping the trance. In practice, that means entering, eating totem, standing, dropping 1-2 suggestions, running, repeat. When I commit, I try to at least get tree and purge down before snapping, but I can't usually stack enough to make sure they won't shield/flee/dust cure unless they commit to their offense. Also, I can still effectively die before the trance pays dividends (fastlocking on snap has seen the best results; trying to mask impatience for a more reliable lock tends to get me killed). Dstab/plants or confounded whispers for the fastlock doesn't win versus theirs since it basically becomes a 6s focus versus a blockable purge with the aff rate in their favor.
And all of that is just 1v1 balance. Tex/totem is one of the most obnoxious things for teamfighting, with or without the 8-slot arti. That discussion also brings in RG, though.
Solutions have been more trying than the problem. I keep wanting to type 'delete totems'
Aside: I wish Demonic Shaman kept the old Shamanism
Claustrophobia/Agoraphobia. I'm going to assume here, since you said it's 1v1, that you're talking about the shaman using shell in conjunction with. The AB says that it makes the room indoors, but as far as claustrophobia is concerned it actually does not. I've tested this.
Onto tex/totem. Everyone has access to them now; before shaman's rework I'm pretty sure only magick had totems (but correct me if I'm wrong.) Talking about getting rid of them is talking about the one thing magick has ever really had to be a real movement nuisance with.
Moving onto obstruct: obstruct is pretty nice. I don't use it, but it can be nice. It does throw off balance in a failed movement attempt, but obstruct can be dodged with a 100% success rate if you use certain abilities or have certain artifacts. It is single target and only lasts for 8 seconds.
I'll be honest, I don't know why you have laguz in here; that's kind of laughable. It's just rubble.
Demonic and AM both have a piety/gravehands to keep people in rooms. Magick does not. Magick doesn't even have the one skill that was single-target comparable kept to itself anymore, as the profession that has it is now also neutral. Now, if you want to get into a REAL nuisance... how about we talk a piety/tex/taunt combo or a gravehands/tex/taunt combo. That's absolutely brutal.
Magick also has piety :O Sorta (Spatium Blizzard). Not in a position to do a circle v circle holding comparison at the moment, though (mostly cause idfk what mage has for holding).
I'm not suggesting deleting Vortex, either. It has pros and cons, just the pro of 'making them hit a totem' is massive. Vortex also isn't the cancer that is watching someone flip/eat unblind/undeaf/6 pain 2 times in 4 seconds. Vortex on its own would still be rather strong for bringing in people who flip/tumble in any situation where you have blockers instead of needing to wall.
And re history: Wytch was 'neutral' for a bit then Demonic then true Neutral. Tex/totem was never Magick exclusive. E: Curse you @Caelya I WAS BEING INFORMATIVE
Aside from wondering vaguely if we considered what we were doing by putting them in the Neutral category, I only have passing thoughts about Shaman. I think their affliction rate is pretty strong, but I'm still tweaking the way I change my priorities and I don't have any terrific active curing in Outrider. I traded that away for things like easy lethargy, et cetera when I picked the class. Classes like Shaman are delicate beasts, though - if the affliction rate is truly too high, just gently dial something back about their cure tampering.. ideally one thing and one thing only.
You have a bow and wormholes. You shouldn't be walking into vortex or a totem. As for canopy and xeroderma, you still have a way to proc xeroderma even indoors, so that shouldn't be an issue at all. It feels like some of these issues are more about someone not using the full renegade/Saboteur kit, and less about shaman.
Like a daydream.. or a fever
As for the bow, that simply doesn't work unless they are vortexing you. E: They'll just reprop before you recover balance from the lengthy net snipe otherwise, leading into a pointless loop that goes nowhere until you enter the room.
Basically, don't think we are starting classleads next week or something.
1. Backend the power of inhibit, making it instead do dizziness -> dementia (or some other low tier mental hinder) -> hallucinations -> confusion + lethargy.
2. Remove Truecurse.
3. Make propping a soft channel that is delayed shortly before activating.
1 puts confusion further back whereas now it's both providing a significant aff surge and strong hinder that either masks the most vital aff (jinxed) or makes the fight effectively over for eq users. Getting confusion+lethargy after three gating affs available in both curses and the skill is still pretty strong, IMO.
2 allows defensive reduction in shaman APS and an opportunity to break momentum that currently does not exist with curseward bypass having negligible opportunity cost. The class has a high rate of affliction and ample access to numbness, so there's no reason it should ignore shields as well as its intended protection without some sort of tradeoff (even ignoring curseward's actual eq cost over the analogous rebounding).
3 is simply the lightest nerf to totems that I can really think of. None of its burst damage or afflicting is removed, but it's more difficult to chain totem hits and makes running after a totem/fetish user not asking for a face full of ouch every single time.
Do I think a fetish is crazy strong? I certainly do. I personally don't think it should be anymore than 3 slots on a totem(arti or not).
Inhibit has a longer balance cost on the ability to make up for the extra affliction. It's also the only way I have to give confusion. If you take confusion off of it, it'd at least need to be given as a curse or bonedust attack. (Granted, I don't find this near as strong as your current hypochondria ability. )
Remove truecurse? Shield already stops porcupine so that gives us only one affliction. I far from see this being an issue.
There are quite a few ways to break Shaman momentum. I know of at least 3 combatants that have learned them that I've been fighting often.
In summary, only thing I truly agree with you on is totems.
It might be a 'team fight king' just because of WARCHANTS HASTE and their ability to work with others, but we need to analyze the actual state of the class here. From everything I can see, the class is still stuck in the era where it was solely Anti-Magick. It operates under the assumption that an Outrider will be there. It actually has been designed entirely dependent on the ecosystem of Anti-Magick, never once having a consideration that a Berserker might go and do his own thing or not have a team around to play with. I want to talk about some of the problems I've identified just looking at this data.
1. Lots of bleeding synergy, but not a lot of ways to push the theme : Berserkers come with a lot of things that care about bleeding, but their actual ability to take advantage of this is sort of bottlenecked. They possess Bloodlet in Maiming, which does not deliver a toxin and has a soft cap, as well as Bleed in Warchants, which has no soft cap.. but the nature of the skill means it pushes the Bloodlet softcap. These would be their enablers, and they are few and far between. However, they have payoff skills for this bleeding - Warchants Vesselburst (deals damage based on bleeding - looks like roughly BLEEDING*2.5=RESULTANT_DMG - this is a Psychic Bloodfreeze, basically) and Warchants Bloodflow which, from my testing, I needed somewhere around 21 to 30 bleeding based on 460maxHP, to get haemophilia to trigger. Basically, Berserkers lack a way to take advantage of this avenue due to the nature of their bleeding skills. They don't just generate a bunch of bleeding like Outriders might while pushing their normal offense. They need somebody else pushing the bleeding because they won't stick haemo. Finally, this might seem small, but they have no way to accurate get a readout on bleeding themselves - an Outrider has WYRMRIDING BLOODSCENT, which gives them a readout on all bleeding when it occurs. Berserkers seem like a class that truly want this, and it could have been built in to WARCHANTS RAGE or even as a separate defense elsewhere. In addition, for Bleeding being such a core theme in their design, they sure seem to be lacking a Shield skill in Maiming to generate bleeding or act similar to Batter, Bash, and Smash.
2. They sure have a lot of closers, payoffs, and unique buffs, but no way to get to them alone : I am referring to Maiming Batter, Bash, and Smash, as well as Warchants Pierce and Bewilder. Berserker rewards having a set list of afflictions present on the target, some of which cannot be tracked with any true reliability and some of which do not come from toxins. Pierce scales on Weaken's aff list, of which two are not available in any way aside from Warchant Weaken or help.
3. Their numbers are just all wrong - they scale like shit and they're about as slow : I'll be upfront here: the shield attacks that a Berserker performs are by far the biggest gate on their offense, clocking in at 2.9s with a Level 1 Balance bonus and a Level 3 Shield. Warchant balance is faster than 2.9s, but you cannot perform another Warchant until you regain full balance. This means that the speed at which Berserker combos come out at is roughly 2.9s or slower. It feels like this would take too much time to build up to your specialty shield hits - in the time you would use to stick all of this, your opponent definitely isn't sitting still. They've likely worked their way to their own kill condition too. If this wasn't bad enough, their damage is terrible by all accounts. They deal physical damage on all accounts, even Warchant damage. Maiming damage is not particularly high due to Blunt and Cutting resists being so easy to stack up. Warchant's Psychic type is still blocked by surcoat due to physical sourcing, and can be reduced by class defenses, Philosophy, and the psychic resist ring. Pierce's scaling seems to be in the ballpark of roughly 4% extra maxHP in damage per aff, topping out at ~19% of maxHP with all affs. The totals at which they deal damage feel very stunted, making it hard to lead up to Overwhelm - a skill that would make Shout do roughly 9.3% of maxHP for the duration. Their shit damage means that Warchants Shatter is only going to see prominent use in teams, when it could be a primary Berserker closer alongside Disembowel.
The potential of this class feels gated behind being in a team, and that is not okay. We shouldn't be releasing new classes when we can't even make our remakes of classes work. It's not alright for an entire class to lack any potency outside of a team situation. If Berserkers are gods of teamfights, where are they on all of our teams in Imperian right now? More importantly, if their 'team fight god status' is why they can't have their own functioning offense in a vacuum, can we please put that on the chopping block in exchange for a functioning class?
So, no, assassin is not as bad as shaman is right now. Strong? Sure, but the sample size of Assassin is also literally someone who has been playing only that class for years.
Inhibit still gives confusion, but later. You can also swift/throw inhibit, if you didn't know.
'I only have just under 1 aps while you shield' is kind of funny, especially considering how underutilized bat has been. Breaking shaman momentum requires running, active cures, or killing them. No class is going to hinder a shaman before they do the same. To compare, assassin can pull 0.5 aps on a shielder and can't flat out ignore fenugreek.
In summary, Shaman is far more powerful right now than it seems you want to give it credit for, which is odd considering you went from losing consistently as Outrider to winning against literally everyone as Shaman.
For my opinion both classes are already disgustingly OP with regards to affliction load. With assassin redesigned specifically to mess the internal autocuring system around. Power classes designed by power players.
That said, carry on.
E: And I'm not ignoring the Berseker post, but there's a lot going on there and I'm not comfortable weighing in on it yet.
Here's some things I'm toying around with as reports, and I'd like some people to poke holes in my logic so I know if I'm nuts or not:
1. AB WARCHANTS RAGE - The number of classes using charged, class-specific resources sets a precedent for the design and trade-offs of those resources. Look at the following classes for examples: Priest - Kanai, Summoner - Taint. Both of these classes generate their resource through their offense, much like Berserker - Warchants. A notable absence in the design of the former two classes, however, is a penalty for 'sitting' on your resources. Of course, neither class gains a benefit for sitting on them either; Berserkers gain a 15% damage bonus at the expense of permanent recklessness. I believe that permanent recklessness, while 'cute' and flavorful, is a line of trinket text that is not necessary. A Berserker is required to expend no Rage (thus not modifying any Warchant) to gain this damage bonus, with the only outlier of this behavior being saving up to Enrage. I believe that opportunity cost is more than enough. I don't see why a permanent affliction would be used as a balancing solution.
2. AB MAIMING NEW - Bleeding as theme has been constructed in to the Berserker class. Without another remake to gut this part of their design, we are instead going to need to salvage the theme. It takes up a not-minuscule part of their design space and finishers in Warchants, i.e Bloodflow, Bleed, Vesselburst. The class was designed in an Anti-Magick ecosystem, then let loose as a Neutral profession. It needs some tools to make itself self-sufficient, one of which is the ability to survey bleeding themselves to make intelligent decisions on usage of the aforementioned bleed-focused abilities.
I think the foremost problems with the class, as I already detailed, are their scaling and their inability to take advantage of their own kit. They already have plenty of finishers, we just need to give them a route to one. I think disembowel would be the best 'solo' closer, as you could follow up with a shatter if need be, or build up more affs for an assured win. This means finding a way to adjust their affrate, as it is currently gated by the exceptionally slow 2.9s shield attacks in a combo. Places this could happen:
- adjust release costs on certain warchants.
- provide a new release called 'empower' that adjusts warchants a la Voice Resonance Ta.
- adjust the thresholds on shield attacks to give double-aff earlier.
- consider giving Berserkers the ability to dump enough rage to double-modify shouts.
- provide a new warchant that provides affs scaling on bleeding - modify bloodflow for similar payoff?
- give maiming bloodlet a toxin modify - does this trample weaponmastery longswords?
- provide scaling speed bonus based on rage% - if this is taken, repeat recklessness, add scaling damage%taken penalty, maybe keep %damagedone bonus?
- find a way to get dryblood in to the Berserker kit - it seems like bleeding is a theme to provide pressure to both mana and health, which helps get closer to that Shatter threshold. I'm really leery of doing this because then we're pushing them closer to Outriders with verbal tics, but whatever. It would be another physical aff to stack with nightshade and towards a disembowel. It wouldn't be the perfect solution and it would not be the only thing they need.
Thoughts, sirs?The speed of shield attacks doesn't really seem like an issue to me. 2.9s for three affs, with an extra one tossed in by Eviscerate every 10s, is a pretty workable rate considering affs->damage is the only synergy that exists in the kit. As I see it, the things Berserker is most hungry for include a way to deliver impatience, toxins on Bloodlet, more accessible Bloodflow, and maybe some shoring up on the defensive side.
Edit: Also, make Warchant damage con-based. That will definitely help and is not silly or unbalancing.
I hadn't thought about providing impatience, but a 'Shield Addle/Thrash' might be an interesting addition. Affpool would be Impatience, plus maybe two from Disorient, with a special effect having to do with mana usage or something?
I don't have much I can supply for input on defenses. What it sounds like is that a lot of things are needed to really bring Berserker around, but they're all little things.
Just one more thing: his point about shield was not the aff blocking. The 1aps with you shielded really does nothing for shaman. His point about shield was that it blocks porcupine from flaring. No porcupine flaring means no damage. There are absolutely ways to beat Shaman. I'm not arguing that it doesn't need tweaking; I am saying though that it's not as bad as you're making it sound.
EDIT: With shield it's less than 1aps, because 1 aff per round. If you're telling me you can't find the time to get rid of jinxed which is probably one of your highest prios while fighting a shaman while you turtle (which of course reduces that aff-rate further, because you can't swift + flare reliably without it with porcupine), then you probably need to look at your defense for shaman.
EDIT EDIT: I'd fight him as outrider, but if it's any consolation to you, his shaman doesn't beat mine.
The reason why warchants are physical instead of mental is that we wanted to avoid the situation that Templar was in, where the class was being balanced around a few outliers(me, Septus, Juran) who had artifact collars/sashes as well as artifact swords/strength and thusly had much more powerful flares than the average Templar.
It's a lot easier to balance a class when you're not balancing the class' main offense around str AND int AND weapon AND collar.
It's 1 aps roughly for both in setup (I can flail and sacrifice control and my aff spike to consistently hit 1.2), and I discussed the setup time disparity. And traps (snare specifically) are great, sure. The classes are strong and comparable in many ways with Shaman edging out in some key areas. That's as 'bad' as I've been making it sound, which is accurate.
It's more like .9 aps (.87ish) with solo swift and confound into shield, enough to outpace curing and certainly not nothing. Vamp bat also suffers no downsides from going into shield or a lack of jinxed. Relevant, that's barely less than Berserker unhindered aps, with damage that should be at least comparable near ignition.
Neither of the nerfs I suggested mess with the top-end aps, either. Shaman doesn't need a double aff with confusion or shield bypass without any gating. If you want to talk gating truecurse, I'd be amenable. Honestly, linking it to another mark + jinxed, a mark's ignited phase, or requiring no curseward all came to mind, but I opted to suggest removing it based on the comparison that keeps coming up here (shielding is an effective yet beatable defense versus assassins).
To be honest I think the comparrison is irrelevant anyway. Assassin and shaman play very differently (assassin is arguably far more of an attrition aff class whereas shaman is a lot more bursty). It probably doesn't matter a huge amount as one being op (or not as the case may be) doesn't inherently mean the other is or isn't.
They're both incredibly strong classes. I don't think anyone is going to contest that fact.
I would kind of like to give all unhidden affs a 3p, especially toxins. Clan aff calls are so icky, and I can never get people on board with the coding necessary to make in-line calling a thing (but it is technically feasible without any changes).
The sample size seems a little skewed for this discussion.