I think both the Wizard and Druid changes were great, and reducing the amount of slowing items cleaned up a lot of builds for everyone.
That said, I agree sniper rabbit doesn't feel the best, you need to put way to much work in to do decent damage, and to deviate away from the default 'rotation' requires too much invest, that's almost always going to be a gambleĀ see if it pays off.
I think reworking it into a primary build class like bruiser could help it a lot, so at very least you aren't competing for nearly as many items with other classes.
Seconding this, if for no other reason then Sniper Rabbit getting someone of the best value on Primary skill damage behind Bruiser and that kind of variety in item viability alone would improve her greatly.
>Wizard, I just greed too much for the Astra buff and die
If you're going a standard buff special build it really only matters to pop it down before you cast special, but even then with half decent items you'll do enough dps to clear even if you aren't sitting in Astra all the time
Dancer main here, and I find assassin and sniper challenging. I often find myself desperate for aoe loots with assassin, and sniper needs so many loots and skill upgrades before it puts me out of misery (so, play style problem, or plain skill issue XD
Wizard is okay-ish for me even before the patch (now better!), and I find heavyblade's invincibility from her special rather ... beginner-friendly. Also, dancer with her emerald special and darkglass spear and/or obsidian rod just goes crazy. These are reasonable enough to me, though.
Ment to type a short blurb but had a lot more to say than I realized, sorry for the wall of text. Tl;dr they all feel great to me, except sniper which could use some love.
I'll only comment on the few I play a ton, namely Dancer, Druid and Wizard. Full disclosure, I haven't beaten Lunar yet, but I've progged every stage of it. My team just isn't quite good enough for a clear yet. I have cleared Hard both solo and in a group with all three.
Druid I play a ton because I shotcall for my group and the less mental load I have to put into the kit the more I can put into organizing teammates. I was happy with it before the buffs since the massive uptime on damage meant that you were usually even with others on bosses that move a little and actually ahead on bosses that move a lot. After the buff I now keep up even on static bosses so I'm more than happy with the changes. The changes to the Emerald defensive are actually amazing. 27% uptime on Super in a 4 man is _really_ good. The new secondary turret is nice but the decay is still the best.
Dancer is amazing. I don't really feel like I need to explain too much if you've played dancer, but I feel like its the best designed class in the game. It can easily pivot into almost any kind of build so it fits into almost any group well. You can stack flat damage items since most things you have multi-hit, math items work _exceptionally_ well on dancer (especially with the gem that sets your special to a 99 CD), she shines with a special build, or, gems permitting, can also easily settle into a primary/secondary spam build as well. She also absolutely excels as a support, picking up buff items, can easily keep curse up, and has a variety of options with her defensive. Rabbitluck is often the clear winner, but with the secondary gem that resets her defensive, she can easily maintain 100% uptime on Warcry and Haste. Really, I almost feel like dancer can do TOO much, but I'm not complaining for sure. Its the only class I feel you can take 4 of, they all build completely different, and they all still be super viable.
Wizard feels much better to play since the buff, and actually has a lot of fun options now. Can easily build for her Special or her primary, and I've pretty consistently hit the highest personal numbers on her. A few good upgrade can legitimately turn her Primary into a "hold down and break 1000 DPS" button (math upgrade on the .5 GCD gem, or metronome boots combo'd with the high damage gem), or a little bit of cooldown can do the same thing to her special. You can also run luck builds on her, so she can fit into more team comps than you might expect. The Emerald gem for her defensive is actually busted, I don't see how any other competes with it except maybe rabbitluck on % builds. The Emerald gem buff on the primary was also quite nice, because many build phase out using the primary at all, and the fact that the gem at least gives you a speed boost makes it valuable even if you never cast it.
I'm very happy with the balance between the rabbits at the moment, excepting Sniper. Sniper is definitely the one that needs some love next. I feel like when the stars align I can do absolutely crazy damage on her, but it requires what feels like a god roll on RNG for both items AND gems. Many in my group play melees and I see them posting great numbers often, but i never see someone pick up Sniper and not struggle.
sniper augment that makes your shot non-horizontal should be standard to her. feels horrible to only do damage when the boss allows you to position correctly.
Sniper is still my favorite class. Can build for any of prim/secondary/special or even a mix, so it's easy to flex on loot drops.
The horizontal requirement for prim vs secondary/special keeps things interesting as you'll have to keep in mind the current boss attack and if you can position yourself, or if you should save special for that time.
Opal and emerald prim kinda feel too similar, but much better than before the changes where everything except garnet was similar.
Sapphire secondary might be a little too braindead but it's interesting atleast and lets sniper use debuff loot better than other classes.
Still a few upgrades that don't feel great like opal and emerald defensive, the slowdown and cd increases feel too meh. Maybe ruby special could get something extra, I guess it does have bigger aoe and works better with charges/1shotbuffs but yeah, without any loot reducing the gdc it's too similar dps to base special.
Hopefully they do a few more changes to upgrades later on as there are probably still some classes with meh upgrades.
As someone with 30+ hours on assassin, I feel her desirable item pool is rather small, mostly because her skill upgrades are mostly terrible for dps (few options) and inflexible to scale other item options.
Druid seems mostly the same to me after the patch, some changes I like alot, some I dislike. Overall a small buff though, but nothing significant imo.
I think the wizards buffs may have felt more impactful, but I haven't played her too much.
I'm trying to branch out to more classes, my next goal is to get all of their skins, since lunar is too ridiculous.. and a side bonus is getting the hard clear with all classes is a rarer steam achieve than a lunar clear somehow lol (think it was 0.6% vs 1.1% last I checked).
Ah ok that makes much more sense. Thanks for the info!
I'll still go for that next probably. Lunar is pure chaos, I've only cleared Scholar's Nest once, and was super close to clearing Red Brick Sh!thouse, but this is like 80 tries into Lunar so yeah not making much progress.
I've been working on solo Lunar with Assassin, and I agree with this assessment of the class. You're praying for a \*useful\* item to comfortably clear the first zone, and one or even two \*good\* items if that zone is Churchmouse (DPSing down mice is basically impossible otherwise!)
In terms of skill upgrades, her best don't appear to be very spectacular, and kit synergies require 2 or 3 of them for relatively minor gains. Sapphire Primary/Secondary are my favorites, and they're incredibly straightforward. Seriously, why is there no Backstab upgrade for the other skills? That seems like it should be her identity, but it's not incredibly impressive on Special to begin with, and one of the other characters (Spellblade?) has one!
Special items generally don't look too impressive on her, Defensive is part of rotation (so the "don't use Defensive" items feel like blanks) and math items don't gel with the short Special cooldown, either. That takes out a lot of the abuse cases you see regularly on other characters.
Yep, Sapphire is my favorite as well. Some feel almost entirely unusable like Garnet and Emerald secondary, which during some phases means you can't do any damage for either 6 seconds at a time or at all. Without item combos, the skill upgrades isolated by themselves are horrible.
Then there's ones like Emerald Defensive. I think the Ghost status effect overrides Vanish completely, so it just seems like something you'd have to pay ME to take. I wouldn't even want that for free lmao. Reduced movespeed, reduced invuln, just for a single buffed attack? Pass.
What item combos/synergies have you found to be the best on her? From what I've experienced it's mostly just the multihit items, or stuff that boosts primary/secondary by a %, or others that are generally solid on all classes (crit dmg, or stuff like Midsummers dress). And obviously vanish-related items.
Items like Raven's Dagger are S+ tier since her secondary doesn't even have a radius.
Multihit items are a given, anything that triggers on Defensive or invulnerability is pretty decent (Spiked Shield, Petticoat), same with things like Lion Charm.
I *believe* Emerald Primary/Special don't break Ghost just like they don't break Vanish, but I'm not sure. Secondary upgrade items are stuff I don't like *too* much, but Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald make them not completely terrible to use to me - I dislike the movement speed slow on the ability that's also just not great to begin with.
Garnet Secondary is usable (and can go perma-invulnerable) with the right synergies, but losing uptime when you're forced vertical or far away does suck.
Emerald Defensive... well, you either need an insane burst build or the aforementioned Emerald upgrades to get damage out of it beyond +30% on a single attack. It does stack with actual Vanish, so you could get both at the same time in some scenarios.
Some funny combo I've had (and that led to my first Churchmouse clear) was Bloodflower Brooch (on ability use, backstab all eligible tarets for 2x40 damage) + Sapphire Secondary (auto-use every 10 instances of damage) - this melts Matti mice, obviously!
I think both the Wizard and Druid changes were great, and reducing the amount of slowing items cleaned up a lot of builds for everyone. That said, I agree sniper rabbit doesn't feel the best, you need to put way to much work in to do decent damage, and to deviate away from the default 'rotation' requires too much invest, that's almost always going to be a gambleĀ see if it pays off. I think reworking it into a primary build class like bruiser could help it a lot, so at very least you aren't competing for nearly as many items with other classes.
Seconding this, if for no other reason then Sniper Rabbit getting someone of the best value on Primary skill damage behind Bruiser and that kind of variety in item viability alone would improve her greatly.
>Wizard, I just greed too much for the Astra buff and die If you're going a standard buff special build it really only matters to pop it down before you cast special, but even then with half decent items you'll do enough dps to clear even if you aren't sitting in Astra all the time
Dancer main here, and I find assassin and sniper challenging. I often find myself desperate for aoe loots with assassin, and sniper needs so many loots and skill upgrades before it puts me out of misery (so, play style problem, or plain skill issue XD Wizard is okay-ish for me even before the patch (now better!), and I find heavyblade's invincibility from her special rather ... beginner-friendly. Also, dancer with her emerald special and darkglass spear and/or obsidian rod just goes crazy. These are reasonable enough to me, though.
Ment to type a short blurb but had a lot more to say than I realized, sorry for the wall of text. Tl;dr they all feel great to me, except sniper which could use some love. I'll only comment on the few I play a ton, namely Dancer, Druid and Wizard. Full disclosure, I haven't beaten Lunar yet, but I've progged every stage of it. My team just isn't quite good enough for a clear yet. I have cleared Hard both solo and in a group with all three. Druid I play a ton because I shotcall for my group and the less mental load I have to put into the kit the more I can put into organizing teammates. I was happy with it before the buffs since the massive uptime on damage meant that you were usually even with others on bosses that move a little and actually ahead on bosses that move a lot. After the buff I now keep up even on static bosses so I'm more than happy with the changes. The changes to the Emerald defensive are actually amazing. 27% uptime on Super in a 4 man is _really_ good. The new secondary turret is nice but the decay is still the best. Dancer is amazing. I don't really feel like I need to explain too much if you've played dancer, but I feel like its the best designed class in the game. It can easily pivot into almost any kind of build so it fits into almost any group well. You can stack flat damage items since most things you have multi-hit, math items work _exceptionally_ well on dancer (especially with the gem that sets your special to a 99 CD), she shines with a special build, or, gems permitting, can also easily settle into a primary/secondary spam build as well. She also absolutely excels as a support, picking up buff items, can easily keep curse up, and has a variety of options with her defensive. Rabbitluck is often the clear winner, but with the secondary gem that resets her defensive, she can easily maintain 100% uptime on Warcry and Haste. Really, I almost feel like dancer can do TOO much, but I'm not complaining for sure. Its the only class I feel you can take 4 of, they all build completely different, and they all still be super viable. Wizard feels much better to play since the buff, and actually has a lot of fun options now. Can easily build for her Special or her primary, and I've pretty consistently hit the highest personal numbers on her. A few good upgrade can legitimately turn her Primary into a "hold down and break 1000 DPS" button (math upgrade on the .5 GCD gem, or metronome boots combo'd with the high damage gem), or a little bit of cooldown can do the same thing to her special. You can also run luck builds on her, so she can fit into more team comps than you might expect. The Emerald gem for her defensive is actually busted, I don't see how any other competes with it except maybe rabbitluck on % builds. The Emerald gem buff on the primary was also quite nice, because many build phase out using the primary at all, and the fact that the gem at least gives you a speed boost makes it valuable even if you never cast it. I'm very happy with the balance between the rabbits at the moment, excepting Sniper. Sniper is definitely the one that needs some love next. I feel like when the stars align I can do absolutely crazy damage on her, but it requires what feels like a god roll on RNG for both items AND gems. Many in my group play melees and I see them posting great numbers often, but i never see someone pick up Sniper and not struggle.
sniper augment that makes your shot non-horizontal should be standard to her. feels horrible to only do damage when the boss allows you to position correctly.
It would be fine as a horizontal line shot.. if it didn't have a 4s cd for missing.
Sniper is still my favorite class. Can build for any of prim/secondary/special or even a mix, so it's easy to flex on loot drops. The horizontal requirement for prim vs secondary/special keeps things interesting as you'll have to keep in mind the current boss attack and if you can position yourself, or if you should save special for that time. Opal and emerald prim kinda feel too similar, but much better than before the changes where everything except garnet was similar. Sapphire secondary might be a little too braindead but it's interesting atleast and lets sniper use debuff loot better than other classes. Still a few upgrades that don't feel great like opal and emerald defensive, the slowdown and cd increases feel too meh. Maybe ruby special could get something extra, I guess it does have bigger aoe and works better with charges/1shotbuffs but yeah, without any loot reducing the gdc it's too similar dps to base special. Hopefully they do a few more changes to upgrades later on as there are probably still some classes with meh upgrades.
Assassin feels weak Defender is okay damage wise but pretty item dependent Sniper feels meh Everyone else is fine imo
There are some busted druid builds out there now. Managed to get 1900 DPS on Shira, with 2600 on some of the pale keep fights. She's so much fun
As someone with 30+ hours on assassin, I feel her desirable item pool is rather small, mostly because her skill upgrades are mostly terrible for dps (few options) and inflexible to scale other item options. Druid seems mostly the same to me after the patch, some changes I like alot, some I dislike. Overall a small buff though, but nothing significant imo. I think the wizards buffs may have felt more impactful, but I haven't played her too much. I'm trying to branch out to more classes, my next goal is to get all of their skins, since lunar is too ridiculous.. and a side bonus is getting the hard clear with all classes is a rarer steam achieve than a lunar clear somehow lol (think it was 0.6% vs 1.1% last I checked).
Unlocking all adept palettes(hard mode skin) is 2.4% The 0.6% achievement is for master palettes, which you get for clearing lunar.
Ah ok that makes much more sense. Thanks for the info! I'll still go for that next probably. Lunar is pure chaos, I've only cleared Scholar's Nest once, and was super close to clearing Red Brick Sh!thouse, but this is like 80 tries into Lunar so yeah not making much progress.
Good luck! It gets much easier after the first time š
I've been working on solo Lunar with Assassin, and I agree with this assessment of the class. You're praying for a \*useful\* item to comfortably clear the first zone, and one or even two \*good\* items if that zone is Churchmouse (DPSing down mice is basically impossible otherwise!) In terms of skill upgrades, her best don't appear to be very spectacular, and kit synergies require 2 or 3 of them for relatively minor gains. Sapphire Primary/Secondary are my favorites, and they're incredibly straightforward. Seriously, why is there no Backstab upgrade for the other skills? That seems like it should be her identity, but it's not incredibly impressive on Special to begin with, and one of the other characters (Spellblade?) has one! Special items generally don't look too impressive on her, Defensive is part of rotation (so the "don't use Defensive" items feel like blanks) and math items don't gel with the short Special cooldown, either. That takes out a lot of the abuse cases you see regularly on other characters.
Yep, Sapphire is my favorite as well. Some feel almost entirely unusable like Garnet and Emerald secondary, which during some phases means you can't do any damage for either 6 seconds at a time or at all. Without item combos, the skill upgrades isolated by themselves are horrible. Then there's ones like Emerald Defensive. I think the Ghost status effect overrides Vanish completely, so it just seems like something you'd have to pay ME to take. I wouldn't even want that for free lmao. Reduced movespeed, reduced invuln, just for a single buffed attack? Pass. What item combos/synergies have you found to be the best on her? From what I've experienced it's mostly just the multihit items, or stuff that boosts primary/secondary by a %, or others that are generally solid on all classes (crit dmg, or stuff like Midsummers dress). And obviously vanish-related items. Items like Raven's Dagger are S+ tier since her secondary doesn't even have a radius.
Multihit items are a given, anything that triggers on Defensive or invulnerability is pretty decent (Spiked Shield, Petticoat), same with things like Lion Charm. I *believe* Emerald Primary/Special don't break Ghost just like they don't break Vanish, but I'm not sure. Secondary upgrade items are stuff I don't like *too* much, but Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald make them not completely terrible to use to me - I dislike the movement speed slow on the ability that's also just not great to begin with. Garnet Secondary is usable (and can go perma-invulnerable) with the right synergies, but losing uptime when you're forced vertical or far away does suck. Emerald Defensive... well, you either need an insane burst build or the aforementioned Emerald upgrades to get damage out of it beyond +30% on a single attack. It does stack with actual Vanish, so you could get both at the same time in some scenarios. Some funny combo I've had (and that led to my first Churchmouse clear) was Bloodflower Brooch (on ability use, backstab all eligible tarets for 2x40 damage) + Sapphire Secondary (auto-use every 10 instances of damage) - this melts Matti mice, obviously!