5 replies to this topic

[DoubleRose]

Launcher artis are garbage offensively (and defensively but that's not the topic of this post). Bourg can spam their aoe burns and never worry about normal attacks, but arti has weaker and single target skills. Gun arti has much stronger dps. Part of the problem is the clunkiness of launcher artis. Even with 100% bonus attack speed they still attack slower than a katar with no bonus attack speed, and it's important to note that it is significantly easier to get attack speed on a raider. .35 isn't an attack speed. I don't know of any other game where characters attack every three seconds. There's no reason to let the update kill a type of build, especially one that was already regarded as the weakest class.

[Feuer]

There's nothing wrong with a Launcher Artisans offensive capability. They need more survival period. Sorry, but I'm tired of the DEV's wasting time fixing things that aren't broken. Either they fix the crap defensive/survival of the artisan, or they just leave it the hell alone. [angry] 

Edited by Feuer, 23 July 2016 - 05:58 AM.

[DoubleRose]

Yeah sorry, but their offensive ability is lacking. They don't scale nearly as well as other classes.

 

Katar gets .154 attack speed for 10 sp while launcher gets .07 for the same 10 sp. Each passive for katar pumps out more offense or defense while artisan passives are a grab bag of things that don't work together, and that means other classes grow to far greater power.

 

Here is the damage per second of my launcher arti and my raider. My arti has better gear, but they are overall close.

 

Raider 1416 (ap) x 1.71085 (average critical damage amp) x 2.51  (attacks per second)                     =  6, 081

Artisan 1782 x 1.4541 (high because of the 30% crit damage gem which is sleeper op) + 140 x 0.82 =  2, 240

 

To be fair, artisans get defense penetration. The defense formula is a mystical secret that the devs won't tell me so I don't know how much of an impact it has, but certainly not enough to close that gap. They also get dread knight, but we've already discussed the issue with summons. It's not comfortable having a lot of a character's power budget locked away in a virtually uncontrollable summon.

 

In terms of skills, it's a mixed bag. The best raider skills have 3.75 ratios while the best arti skill has a 2.5 ratio, both have a dot component. Both have aoes, but artisan aoes are better.

 

I don't want to spend too much time discussing defense because raider is obviously better, but I'd like to point out an unintended consequence of the paradigm shift. Sen no longer gives crit defense. Before, artisans had pretty solid crit defense because they got 50 sen through passives, but that is no longer the case.

 

No matter how you look at it they have the worst offensive and defensive capabilities. That means they are underpowered, period. There's no reason for a class to exist when it's a straight up weaker version of the other dealer classes. I don't think they should have the damage per second of raider. I know I'm comparing a strong and favored class to a weak niche one, but that comparison means the game is imbalanced. I'd be fine with artisans if the base attack speed got buffed to .4, if they could somehow get their innate crit defense back, and if they got the craftable shields you mentioned in a different post.

[Feuer]

You're basing it off Attack Speed and nothing else.

 

Look, Artisans are strong when you build them correctly. You never, ever, use melee attacks with a cannon. It simply doesn't happen.

 

The proper stat proportions for a Cannon Artisan are:

 

Attack Power > Critical Rating > Critical Damage > Skill Power > Accuracy > Enhance Damage.

I don't know if you've ever seen my Cannon Artisan in action, but even unbuffed against fully buffed Characters with full gear, Full passives and a King set advantage, using Clan Passives [while I was clanless] was able to kill anything and everything except Knights. Literally, everything, and everyone, died. 

 

Even people that hate me or have personal vendetta's against me know that my Artisan was well balanced and a total nightmare to deal with 1 on 1. The only way they could beat me was if they managed to CC lock me down or out range me. 

 

If you want proof of just how ridiculously strong Cannon Artisans are, I can log into Pegasus and show you, but for the time being I'm tired of dying in group content constantly [like AA and War/group fights in JC]. So I took the Cannon away and changed Classes. 

 

My average stats were:

2,000 AP.

2,200 Accu.

80% Critical Damage.

1,150 Critical Rating.

40% + 200 Pierce Defense.

75% + 7xx Skill Power.

Combined with a 45% Def Down.

 

Mind you, every stat I listed also increases Explosive's Damage values, which are incredibly quick to cast.

 

All of that is more than a Katar Raider could ever hope to achieve offensively. But they have the best Defensive's in the game hands down. So it equals out. 

[DoubleRose]

I'm basing it off attack speed because I said I'm talking about dps from autos and showing that it's not viable for them to auto. You said you shouldn't be normal attacking, that's exactly my point!  Why not buff them in a way that opens up more build options? The purpose of this game is to let people create their own character, not pigeonhole them into builds. The optimal build is the defense pen + crit damage explosives build. Buffing attack speed wouldn't make the best build any stronger but other builds and noobs trying out the game will have a better time.

[Feuer]

They have several build options, all revolve around Skills and CD usages.

 

AP + Pierce.
AP + Crit Damage.

AP + Skill Power.

Crit Damage + Pierce.

Crit Damage + Skill Power.

Skill Power + Pierce.

 

That's more core build aspects than most classes have. You can't have it all, and legitimately the only thing they're missing is the Speed. But seeing as Cannon Spells were all increased in cast time by 25-50% animation time, there really isn't a need or reason to do an attack speed even if it was viable. 

Hell, the only Advantage auto-attacking has is if you get muted, but you can use Explosives while muted, so .... why bother? 

 

But like I said. I will not get behind any messing around with the Artisans offensives until they add some survival options and tweaks. 

 

Decloak is a must.

I'd like to see some Crit Defense added back where it was taken away [to get them back to pre-Paradigm Shift]

Finally to put them where they SHOULD be, I'd like to see some type of Barrier or Bunker type spell that sacrifices movespeed for a heavy increase to mitigation in some form.