[DEV] Savage Allies vs. Shadow Agent

Discussion in 'Scouts' started by Darchon6, Feb 3, 2017.

  1. Darchon6 Member

    An anonymous beastlord and I decided to compare the performance of our swarm pets -- Savage Allies and Shadow Agent -- on a single epic training dummy. Each of us cast our swarm pets exclusively without any temporary enhancements (rising tide, ethereal ravaging, dragon claws, etc). for an accurate comparison. This test was also performed after the reduction of auto-attack for Savage Allies (2/2/2017 patch).

    Beastlord's stats:
    • Journeyman quality Savage Allies (1s casting, 1m 40s recast, 7.5s duration, 2x swarm pets)
    • 22.8k potency
    • 84.1 fervor
    • 4150 CB
    • 90.3% spell doublecast
    Assassin's stats:
    • Master quality Shadow Agent (1.5s casting, 2m 20s recast, 12.8s duration, 1x swarm pet and redundant / mostly useless stealth requirement removal)
    • 29.8k potency,
    • 102.1 fervor,
    • 4150 CB,
    • 90.9% spell doublecast
    [IMG]
    [IMG]
    These abilities seem mostly balanced* if you're only looking at the spells cast by the swarms (Savage Ally's Prey on the Weak (single target) and Shadow Agent's Shadow Strike (AoE for up to 10 targets). However, Savage Ally's auto-attack is hitting approximately 1000 times harder than that of Shadow Agent, creating an enormous disparity between the two abilities (Beastlords were already beating assassins on the parses by a considerable margin before, just imagine how it's going to be now!). I can only hope that it's an oversight that will be rectified in next week's update.

    *Keep in mind that I am approximately 7k potency and 18 fervor higher than the beastlord while using a spell that is 3 tiers higher in quality.
    Whiomaju likes this.
  2. Jasmin New Member

    and who can not be here to throw DPS Ranger pet?
  3. Orthogonal New Member

    Nerf ahoy! Beastlords, you should've known better. Never ever compare your abilities with another T1 dps.

    That's pretty OP. Could we get a longer parse?
  4. kluxor Well-Known Member


    Honestly, a nerf isnt needed. BL dumbfire was already taken down a bit. The issue here is that the assassin's pet's autoatattack dmg is just flat out broken. Don't get the shorter recast and casting time either but i'll settle for fixed damage at this point.

    I can confirm similar numbers in a raid setting where the pet's "ability damage" was similar, with an edge to BL but as vynie pointed out Assassin's can do AE where'as BL is single target. Just that autoattack from the assassin pet is completely non-existent. My observations also come apprentice lvl BL pet vs ancient lvl assassin pet.

    And yes, as Vynie implied, made a HUGE difference in disparity of parses on the majority of encounters so hopefully we can see a fix in the near future
    Jasmin likes this.
  5. Jasmin New Member


    Beastlords and so stronger than other dd 2 times, you need not just nerf and global review of the mechanics
    You've seen a lot in the raid AoE mobs? =)
  6. kluxor Well-Known Member


    You are correct, these two really should be in-line with each other. In terms of both reuse and mechanics. Considering the duration of the duration of BL pet, it is indeed doing the same amount of ability damage while being up for about half the time. If the BL pets were master level also, i'm confident we'd see a huge difference between the two. /sigh
  7. Orthogonal New Member

    You know that they rarely adjust in player's favor. My money is on nerfing it.
  8. kluxor Well-Known Member

    they've already adjusted the BL swarm so i'm sure its roughly where they'd like it. Were just requesting that they take a look at the assassin pets and determine if there's an issue
  9. Entropy Well-Known Member

    If assassins want their ability buffed, they're probably going to have to ask for it to be changed to single target. Which is fine with me. Just may not be aligned with Dev vision.

    To be honest, I really wish there were more AE raid encounters. They balance abilities around this stuff and then don't give AE classes anywhere to shine. Going back through at least TOT we've had exactly one encounter (Psionists) which was a sustained AE fight.
  10. Whiomaju Member

    Well, that is a remarkably careful, passive and understated way of saying please balance the glaring discrepancy between two comparable BL and Assassin abilities. Very nice sneaking around the topic before the hidden thrust.
  11. kluxor Well-Known Member


    Personally would much rather have it be single target....but not even gonna touch on at for now.

    It's the massive difference between the autoattack damage of the two. BL produced twice as many autoattacks I nearly half the time for a median of 750m per hit whereas the assassin had less than 1m per hit.

    It's glaringly obvious something here is amiss
  12. Darchon6 Member


    The duration of the encounter changes nothing regarding these abilities -- if you're unable to reach that conclusion with the information I provided above, then I don't know what to say.

    Compared to Savage Allies, Shadow Agent has the following characteristics:
    • Takes .5s longer to cast
    • Takes 40 seconds longer to recast
    • Inflicts 1/1000th of the auto-attack damage per hit
    • Takes longer to inflict its damage (the increased duration is not a bonus but a penalty for the swarm pet!. There's 3 seconds between each Shadow Stirke for Shadow Agent and only 2 seconds between Prey on the Weak attacks for Savage Allies.)
    • Includes a redundant and borderline useless stealth requirement removal as an excuse to not give assassins the dps they need to compete with other classes (*cough* beastlords) on what is supposed to be the their turf - single targets.
    I haven't taken the time to assess the permanent pet buff for beastlords, but I imagine it's going to be more useful in the long run than 15 fervor due to statistical inflation.

    An assassin's primary role is single target dps. If another class in the game is significantly better at that role, it reduces the value of assassins, thereby making them less enjoyable to play. If switching classes was simply a matter of swapping equipment, I would have done that a long time ago. Between 56 potency tithe points, hundreds of dollars spent on ascension upgrades, no-trade items that can't be switched (e.g. ascendant necklace of kunark), and the inability to boost an alt to the same ascension level as another character on the account, switching mains is pretty much out of the question.

    If these abilities are not reassessed within the next couple of weeks, I'm done with this game. I'm tired of receiving the shaft just because a combat mechanics developer happens to be playing a beastlord. Honestly, I feel that introducing this class into the game in the first place was a mistake.
  13. Twisty Well-Known Member

    Ha.. haha. hahahahahahahahahaha. Sure it is, cause they always know what they're doing /rolleyes

    You so crazy, me love long time. BLs weren't OP enough before this, so they decided to roll summoners into the BL class just to make sure the OP was strong enough. 60% dps from dumbfires heyo summoners. Past your "surely it's where they want it to be now" nerf. Your feigned ignorance of how stupid this is not lost on anyone paying attention

    [IMG]
    Whiomaju likes this.
  14. Darchon6 Member

    I take it back -- Shadow Strike is nowhere near as effective as Prey upon the Weak. It would take a rather extreme hypothetical situation in which several adds are present for the full duration of the encounter for Shadow Strike to approach that level of effectiveness. Any raid encounters come to mind? Nope.
  15. Entropy Well-Known Member


    Based on how much damage mine do per cast at Apprentice (and I try to cast it when fervor proc is up so I'm at ~180fervor), I'm going to assume that whoever's damage you captured in that screenshot had leveled their dumbfire to GM/Ancient, more than doubling the duration of Apprentice.

    So, yeah, you captured burst damage of a max-spell-tier long recast ability in a 30 second fight, most likely POT/fervor boosted. Good job.

    Before you start crying about BLs, let's wait and see what the summoner pets do at Ancient tier (especially when they're completely fixed soon). It's entirely possible that the devs intended those pets to do 400-800M dps by themselves, in which case the dumbfire doing 40-80B every 100seconds isn't unrealistic (p.s. the dumbfires die very easily as well).
  16. Veta Well-Known Member

    The tier of the ability only increases the duration, not the damage. If you compare the amount of hits for that parse versus the amount of hits in the training dummy parse, it is rather safer to make the assumption it is apprentice/journeyman.
  17. Darchon6 Member

    Edited: This response probably would have resulted in the thread being locked, though it doesn't change how I feel about the situation.
  18. kluxor Well-Known Member

    My ancient tier, fervor boosted, 45k potency assassin dumbfore paled in comparison to savage ally. I am NOT asking for bl pets to get needed, I'm asking for mine to be brought in line and oncreased/fixed accordingly. I want BL to do good dos, I want my assassin to do good dps too
  19. Entropy Well-Known Member


    I understand that. I was looking at the total damage output they did, since it was obviously only 1 cast during a fight of that duration. It's about 2-3x the average damage mine do per cast, which is in line with the duration going from 5->11 sec by going up tiers.

    Unless that guild has a stupid amount of combat mit debuffs... which could be the case, if almost everyone has their epic.
  20. Talduke Active Member

    Twistyd posted my parse, its at adept but charm was running so 45k pot and i wait for fervor so im sure that was up too so with bolster i was probably at around 207 fervor during that cast.