Test Discussion Episode 36: La Mort Card - Artifact

QoL improvement for this Artifact: apply a vertical line on the Health bar of the targeted enemy (The Display in the top middle of the screen) at 35%, so that a Person using this artifact can time his/hers Supply drop for a better crit Chance.

The other route would be to have a constantly taped piece of paper or something on the screen but that would be kind of annoying.

Just got off test and tested this artifact with celest, gadgets and fire. Actually not bad on fire with solar, grim and LaMorte but you have to work hard and be extremely skillful since you will be rotating 3 channeled abilities while grim and your sidekick do the heavy lifting.

It could work on celest and you could rotate consume soul and 35% finisher while waiting for your big hitters to get off cool down. Unlike fire, celest can hold range out of it in order to cancel it early. You still get a few ticks of decent damage from finisher while building a stack (As bonus, upon holding ranged attack to get out of your finisher asap- you gain 1000% damage on the actual tap)

Gadgets sucks with 35% finisher, definitely damage loss since it cannot be cancelled early by tapping out of it.

Now, the question begs, how come some powers and their 35% finishers can be cancelled immediately by jumping, holding block or tapping ranged attacks while other power sets cannot even block while performing a finisher and are stuck in the animation? Powers unable to cancel mid cast include earth, fire, gadgets and I’m sure there’re others, will test more tomorrow.

It should be noted that that is still (for Fire at least) significantly lower than the damage we lose by using current BiS artifacts. That's either using a finisher loadout or current BiS loadout. This artifact is currently a boondoggle, with us paying ~2mil Nth to do notably less damage at best in ideal conditions and considerably less overall damage in practice, especially anytime there's a wipe. The gimmick is a liability that doesn't deliver and, unlike some of the other new underperforming DPS artifacts that are at least multi-roll so they're valuable in that you can kill two birds with one stone and save Nth, this is just kinda dead. There's no reason to level this.

It should also be noted that the artifact's mechanic straight up sucks in any fight where a boss gains immunity, becomes untargetable, or resets effects (which does not seem to be a historically negligible amount of bosses), further making it a waste.

Is the proc damage affected by buffs like Neo Venom Boost, Supply Drop, and combat trinket? Trying to find any way of making it remotely viable but the hurtles it has to overcome right now are just too extreme imo.

Suggestion: Instead of "Increase damage of finishers on targets above 35% health by 30%" can we not just have it be "Increase damage of finishers by 30%?" At least then it would be a universally useful/valuable artifact. This would also help offset the slight gains made by prec recently that allow it tedge might out slightly.

Valid point... Vert very very narrow and situational artifact. Maybe would have been somewhat useful on Tera in Hive Elite at content. A total waste in Throne E on Sea beast/corum rath since they disappear or become invulnerable. Most power sets are losing out on damage by using a finisher especially if unable to cancel out of it. All powers already have set rotations that perform a lot better. Why would a fire dps drop something out of their loadout and use a 35% finisher over channeled abilities such as heat vision/absorb heat that deal more damage regardless if you have this artifact on at max rank. Stat loss>potential subpar proc of damage that isn’t even guaranteed.

They should just make finishers an AOE up to 4 targets.. Would be super flexible vs what we have now.