Martial Assault Nerf?

[Justisaur]

From the patch notes, red mine:

 

Martial Assault:

• Shuriken Throw: Was doing less damage than intended. This has now been fixed.

• Thunder Kick: Recharge increased to 7 seconds. Damage increased to 86.4.

• Spinning Kick: Recharge increased to 10 seconds. Damage increased to 78.4.

• Envenomed Blades procs now ignores damage buffs and enhancements

 

Will this make Marital Assault no longer good?

[SeraphimKensai]

The language is vague. One could interpret that the change implied envenomed blades procs were mutually exclusive with other damage buffs/enhancements. So optimistically it could of made it better.

 

However I'm not sure one way or the other as I don't have a martial assault Domi.

[lobster]

1 hour ago, Justisaur said:

From the patch notes, red mine:

 

Martial Assault:

• Shuriken Throw: Was doing less damage than intended. This has now been fixed.

• Thunder Kick: Recharge increased to 7 seconds. Damage increased to 86.4.

• Spinning Kick: Recharge increased to 10 seconds. Damage increased to 78.4.

• Envenomed Blades procs now ignores damage buffs and enhancements

 

Will this make Marital Assault no longer good?

I don't think so. These are buffs to both the melee attacks (over the previous patch, which was a bigger nerf, which overall winds up as a slight nerf in damage, but the DPA on these attacks is still very good), and it looks like a damage boost to the T1.  Envenomed Blades is crazy good, this will just make it slightly less so - but it's still going to be up most of the time, giving you that extra damage (and tohit, which will boost insta-snipe!).

Keep in mind that this is happening in parallel with the insta-snipe change, which is just a flat out buff to every set with a snipe (including MA).

As far as EB specifically, my understanding was that the proc amount was based off the attacks total damage, now it will just be based off of the base.  Still a solid amount of extra damage, just not as overboard.    EB is very strong.  When I started playing on HC and looking at this I couldn't figure out how it went live as is...Embrace of Fire is 30s duration with 180s recharge and NO tohit buff, EB is 40s duration, 160s recharge WITH a tohit buff.  It looked like someone's fantasy power that hadn't been properly balanced.  This is doing some of that balance. 

Edited August 20, 2019 by lobster

[Mercurias]

I don't think this is going to be a large nerf to Martial Assault. All it really does is put Envenomed Blades more in line with powers like Aim and Build Up. It's still a long-duration boost to your overall damage.

[Planerunner]

So it got worse than that for Envenomed Blades. This could really be a big nerf:

Quote

Martial Assault

• Envenomed Blades: Fixed a bug where this power would sometimes proc more than once. Procs now ignores damage buffs and enhancements.
• Thunder Kick: Recharge lowered from 8 seconds to 7 seconds. Damage lowered from 95.8 to 86.4 damage.
• Trick Shot is now a proper chain attack, hits up to 5 targets. Damage lowered from scale 1.4 to scale 1.1
• Spinning Kick: Recharge increased to 10 seconds. Target cap reduced to 5, same as all other melee cones. This power was also doing Single Target damage despite it being a cone. This has been fixed but recharge increase should keep damage decent.
• Dragon's Tail: Recharge reduced from 20 seconds to 16. Damage scale from 1.1 to 0.8985.
• Explosive Shuriken should no longer state it's an AoE, but still will do splash fire dot damage to foes around the main target.

 

So not only was Envenomed Blades accepting damage buffs and enhancements, it was actually procing multiple times. I don't know if the procs were stacking damage, or where simply extending the duration. Sounds like they may have stacked damage, making the ability as insane as it was. If so, this may be a bigger nerf than anyone first realized. Worse, the ability was powerful because it was bugged. Would have been nice to know before rolling a martial dom. Haven't tried this out in Beta, so don't know how this will work on live yet.

[Dr Causality]

On 8/20/2019 at 10:39 AM, lobster said:

Keep in mind that this is happening in parallel with the insta-snipe change, which is just a flat out buff to every set with a snipe (including MA).

I'd argue that instant snipe changes were more of a nerf to MA since it put the set more in line with other sets that had snipes.  Before one of the standout things that made MA exceptional was being able to perma instant snipe because of the long duration +Tohit from Evenomed Blades.  Whereas other sets that could not get perma instant snipe without external buffs...     But now all snipe sets are more of less on equal footing.

 

I'm pretty sad about these changes on one hand.  But on the other I'll acknowledge that MA felt kinda broken compared to the other sets, so this balancing made sense.

[XaoGarrent]

Honestly, I can't lose too much sleep over the nerfs that went through. The reason being is that the devs seem determined to make Dominators, as a whole, better. Not just in this patch, either, I think that people are forgetting that the changes to immobs now allowing knocks is something that benefits Dominators even more than Controllers, because Dominators lack mitigation, debuffs and other features that can help survivability in their Assault sets.

 

I expect that if Martial comes out of this looking too weak, it'll get a revisit at some point. Because thankfully, they're not treating Doms like the redheaded stepchild of non-armor classes.

[Planerunner]

Quote

Before one of the standout things that made MA exceptional was being able to perma instant snipe because of the long duration +Tohit from Evenomed Blades. 

Personally, as long as Martial still has it, I'm fine with other sets getting it too. I like alts, and I like options. 

 

Quote

 I think that people are forgetting that the changes to immobs now allowing knocks is something that benefits Dominators even more than Controllers...

I didn't realize that! That's thanks to me starting my dom this week, however. Altitis is powerful disease.

 

 

Quote

 The reason being is that the devs seem determined to make Dominators, as a whole, better....I expect that if Martial comes out of this looking too weak, it'll get a revisit at some point.

I hope so. I started a Plant/MA dom and I love the play style. Plant just . . . kills things in interesting ways, and Martial gives it more flair and more options. I'll keep playing it regardless of the nerfs, but I certainly hope the devs keep things balanced.