U51 Preview 3: Shadowdancer

[Lynnabel]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

Hi all!

So much has changed with this tree internally that using any sort of color coding would make it impossible to read, so here's the entire tree again with the changes incorporated. I am also replacing the text of the OP with this just to cause as much confusion as possible.

Core 1 (level 20 NOT 21!): Shadow Training: You gain the Magical Training feat if you didn't have it already. Each core ability including this one grants +5 Melee Power and +4 Ranged Power, +1 Sneak Attack Dice, 50 Spellpoints, +1 Epic DC, and 5 Force Spellpower and 5 Universal Spellpower.

Core 3 (level 23): Step Through Shadow: Dimension Door clickie. 2m cooldown.

Core 6 (level 26): The Darkest Luck: You have Evasion, normal Evasion rules apply. If you have Evasion already, you gain Improved Evasion. If you have Improved Evasion already, you no longer fail Reflex Saves automatically by rolling a 1.

Tier 1 (req level 20):

• Stealthy: +1/2/3 Reflex Saves, +2/4/6 hide and move silently. Rank 3: Hide in Plane Sight feat.
• Cover of Darkness: +10/20/30% less threat from all sources. Rank 3: Nightshield permanently
• Well of Darkness: +30/60/100 Spellpoints, Rank 3: +5 Force/Universal Spellpower
• Assassinate: +2/4/6 Assassinate DCs.
• Technician: +2/4/6 to Search, Spot, Disable Device, Open Lock. Rank 3: If you have the Nimble Fingers feat, +1 sneak attack dice.

Tier 2 (req level 20):

• Dance in the Dark: +1/2/3 Sneak Attack Dice
• Sleight of Hand: +2/4/6 UMD. +25/50/75% damage and healing of your wands, scrolls and other items that cast spells. Adds +1/2/3 to the save DC's of your offensive wands.
• Shadowform: Shadowdancer Destiny Mantle. Grants +30% enhancement bonus to movement speed, 25% Insight bonus to Sneak Speed, 25% Insight bonus to Cast Run Speed, and grants ghost touch on all attacks.
• Multiselector:
  
  • Shadowstrike (melee or ranged): Epic Strike: +5W, +3 Threat and Mult. Enemy must make a fort save vs (20 + highest ability score + assassinate) or be cursed with Shadow Loss. Cooldown: 10 seconds.
  • Nightmare Lance (spell): Epic Strike: Illusion Spell, deals 1d6+6 Force damage per caster level. Enemies must make a will save vs (20 + highest ability score + illusion bonuses + fear bonuses) or be cursed with Shadow Loss. Cooldown: 10 seconds.
    
    • Shadow Loss. You no longer cast a shadow. In addition, you have -5 PRR, MRR, and Spell Resistance.
• Lithe: Passive Bonus: +2/4/6 reflex saves, AC and light armor Max Dex Bonus, Rank 3: +5 Force/Universal Spellpower.

Tier 3 (req level 23):

• Depths of Darkness: While in your Shadowdancer Destiny Mantle, you gain 25% Incorporeality and 25% Concealment.
• Multiselector:
  
  • Meld into Darkness: Your Epic Strike now grants you 10% uncapped dodge for 10s
  • Dark Imbuement: Your Epic Strike now imbues your weapons with Evil energies for 10s: You deal 1d6 per Sneak Attack Dice in Untyped damage on hit (scaling with Melee or Ranged Power, or Force spellpower if its higher), and on a vorpal strike, your attacks blind enemies with no save. This blind lasts 5 seconds and can only apply to each monster once per 60 seconds.
  • Paranoia: Your Epic Strike now imbues your spells with Evil energies for 10s: Your Sneak Attack dice are now applied to your harmful spellcasts. Your spells deal 1d6 Untyped damage per Sneak Attack Dice you have (scaling with Melee or Ranged Power, or Force spellpower if its higher). This may only trigger once per spellcast per monster, so multi-hit spells will only have one additional damage value.
• Grim Precision: +1/2/3 Spell Penetration, and you bypass 5/10/15% enemy fortification.
• Shadowdancer Spell Focus: +1/2/3 Illusion, Necromancy, Enchantment or Abjuration DCs
• Multiselector:
  
  • Shadowcaster: -10% Spell Cooldowns. Immunity to Energy Drain.
  • Shadowstriker: +5% Doublestrike and Doubleshot. Immunity to Energy Drain.

Tier 4 (req level 26):

• Pierce the Gloom: +1/2/3 Accuracy, to-hit with Sneak attacks, to-hit while flanking. Rank 3: You gain immunity to Silence, Quell, and Blindness.
• From the Shadows: From-Stealth Active: From a stealthed position, dissolve into shadows, before appearing some distance in front of you. This grants you the buffs from your Shadowdancer Epic strike if you have them trained.
• Dark Mercy: Your Shadowdancer mantle now grants you +5/10/15% helplessness damage.
• Bring Darkness: When you roll a natural 20 on a melee or ranged attack, you envelop the target in shadow, applying the Darkness debuff. If you have the feat First Blood, the trigger of First Blood now also applies the Darkness debuff, and First Blood now triggers on Harmful Spellcasts.
  
  • Darkness: You are no longer immune to Sneak Attacks. -3 Spell Resistance, -3 PRR and -3 MRR per stack. Lasts 12 seconds, stacks drop 1 at a time. Max 3 stacks.
• Multiselector:
  
  • Linger in the Dark: Meld now grants 15% uncapped dodge. When enemies miss you in combat while Meld is active, they are blinded by shadows with no save. This blind lasts 5 seconds and can only apply to each monster once per 60 seconds.
  • Long Shadows: Dark Imbuement now increases your melee range.
  • Shadowed Insight: Paranoia now reduces the cost of all of your metamagics by 1 each.

Tier 5 (req level 30):

• Improved Shadowform: Adds to your Destiny Mantle: You float as if you had feather fall, +20 hide and move silently, and no longer trigger pressure plate or bear traps. +10 Force/Universal Spellpower
• Just a Taste: +1 mult on 19-20 with bows, thrown, crossbows, quarterstaves, and finessable melee weapons
• Multiselector:
  
  • Weird: You gain the Weird spell - AoE Phantasmal Killer, scales off Illusion DC. You must be able to cast level 9 spells. Cooldown 60s, SP cost 50 (matches implosion). DC 20 + highest of int/wis/cha + illusion bonuses
  • Consumed by Shadows: From-Sneak Active attack. Enemy must make a will save vs 20 + highest ability score + assassinate or be beset by your shadow. Enemies affected have their AC set to 0 for 5 seconds, and when they are hit, they take a stack of Vulnerability. Cooldown: 30 seconds.
• Enhanced Shadowdancer Spell Focus: +1/2/3 Spell DCs
• Shadow Mastery: Epic Moment: Dissolve into a whorl of shadow, leaving your corporeal form behind. While in this form, you are considered Sneaking and Invisible regardless of what you do. You also gain 3d6 Sneak Attack Dice, 50% Incorporeality, as well as the effects your Epic Strike as if they had been fully trained and upgraded. When non-boss enemies miss you in this state, they are slain by their fear, automatically taking a Phantasmal Killer effect with no save. Duration: 20 seconds. Cooldown: 5 minutes.

As always, we appreciate your feedback. If you have further suggestions, questions, or thoughts, please feel free to post them below!

[MistaMagic]

So as you have not made any changes then I presume that this has not been fixed?

Core 6 (level 26): The Darkest Luck: You have Evasion, normal Evasion rules apply. If you have Evasion already, you gain Improved Evasion

I did say about it on the preview 2 shadowdancer thread but I will re-iterate.

If you have taken Evasion as a Monk it shows under Monk Feats so when you take core 6 you now have Evasion in your normal feats list and Evasion in Monk Feats so NO Improved Evasion

[Ganak]

I'd like to suggest a split of Dark Imbuement Tier 4: "now increases your melee range and reduces the cost of all of your metamagics by 1 each."

Tier 2 of Dark Imbuement does split into a melee/ranged and spellcaster version.



Suggested revision:

Tier 4 (req level 26):
Dark Imbuement:
Melee/Ranged: Increases your melee range and on a vorpal strike, your attacks blind enemies with no save. This blind lasts 10 seconds and can only apply to each monster once per 30 seconds.

[Hawkwier]

Again, nothing has changed here from Preview II. I therefore have no further comments to make.

[Assassination]

This tree has tried to do more than it should do. In doing so has lost its identity, and become a splash tree for even an assassin. Tree does not feel epic.

The lack of active abilities really stings. The removal of "stat" abilities was to open up space for interesting things... where are they?

[Lynnabel]

So as you have not made any changes then I presume that this has not been fixed?

Core 6 (level 26): The Darkest Luck: You have Evasion, normal Evasion rules apply. If you have Evasion already, you gain Improved Evasion

I did say about it on the preview 2 shadowdancer thread but I will re-iterate.

If you have taken Evasion as a Monk it shows under Monk Feats so when you take core 6 you now have Evasion in your normal feats list and Evasion in Monk Feats so NO Improved Evasion

That's on my bug list to do for this release!

[Gloomfall]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

Given that nothing has changed from the previous iteration, does this mean you've pretty much locked in all of these changes and Shadowdancer is where you're wanting it? What sort of options will Rogue Shadowdancers have for survival in higher end content and reaper content? Will the general consensus be "You can't take a hit, so just go ranged or don't play in content above what you can handle." forcing a heavier ranged meta than currently exists in the game?

Also, will Shadowdancers be getting anything that better help them represent their shadowy/stealth nature to empower stealth players besides a slight increase to stealth speed? Still hoping for an auto-invis on stealth and full movement speed while stealthing. As it is right now, with 3 points in the Assassin stealth speed enhancement and the Shadowdancer mantle bonus it's still not that close to full speed.

[elvesunited]

--- Thoughts ----

Still too many abilties that apply only to assassins or only to illusionists making this not a destiny of choices but one of just taking the abilities that apply to you.

The Destiny mantle compared to mantles in other destinies is incredibly weak with many abilities that are more flavor than practical power boost.

Meld needs to be much stronger to be a realistic choice or simply removed from the Epic Strike and added to the destiny mantle instead. You could add the 10/15% uncapped dodge to the mantle for 100% of the time to bring the mantle up to closer to the power level of the other destiny mantles.

Dark imbuement is potentially a very strong ability if you have the sneak attack dice to back it up. If you are going to activate it part of an attack then you'll need 3 attacks not 2. A melee, a ranged and a spell. Make it a strong spell to make up for the casters having only a fraction of the sneak dice that the rogues do.

The Drop is pointless as its linked to an unpopular feat and won't process enough to maintain its stack of debuff.

Dark Imbuement needs a stronger upgrade. Or in the case of ranged and caster an upgrade period. Draconic upgrade doubles the damage. Fury upgrade adds adrenaline damage. Dark imbuement should do better with its upgrade.

Consume shadow is a cool ability but that doesn't change that this destiny needs an assassin insta-kill ability to replace those it has lost.

[draven1]

This tree have too many things to fix, I am not sure where to start to mention.

It is very strange there are so small changes from preview 2 to 3.
There were many feedbacks in preview 2, but, no changes? What's the point of feedback?

[CraithRhandir]

Shadowdancer has improved quite a lot in Preview 2, I didn't have time to comment then, so I will add those comments here (since it is unchanged)

disclaimer

everything seen on the preview server, lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

this tree had no functional changes from preview 2, but that does not mean no changes are coming. Here is what we are thinking of changing for this tree before release:

• adjust meld and dark imbuement to be an active attack (for both melee or ranged) that will automatically apply the expected buff to you even if the attack does not land. We think that will help these abilities feel as if they are a part of a rotation instead of just a buff to click.

a good approach would be to structure it similar to the Legendary Dreadnought Strikes, improving over time with the best abilities gated behind Tier 5
T1:
- Meld: attack + dodge buff
- Dark Imbuement: attack + extra damage buff
10s uptime, 8s cooldown - the current situation of only having them for 2/3rd is frustrating gameplay - I ended up using different strikes, they are not good enough to keep them in reserve for emergencies and not worth it/frustrating to keep in a rotation
Maybe add a third choice for casters or add a SLA version too.
T3:
- Meld: increase dodge, add blind on being missed, include assassinate DC but remove the once per 60s limitation
- Dark Imbuement: increase melee range, add blind on crit, using assassinate DC but remove the once per 60s limitation
T5:
- Meld: on sneak attack from stealth: Target hit is dominated for 1 minute, after which they die if they fail a save (aka: Shadow Manipulation)
- Dark Imbuement: on sneak attack from stealth: Target is killed if it fails a save
Give back some reason to use the corresponding skills and assassination DCs, while also making it harder to spam. Alternatively add the old executioners strike mechanic.

• improved shadowform: adds to your destiny mantle: You gain +25% incorp, float as if you had feather fall, +20 hide and move silently, and no longer trigger pressure plate or bear traps. You also are not automatically detected by monsters with tremor sense (aka all-hearing - this is for spiders and ooze), but remain detectable by all-seeing monsters (like dragons or reapers).

the wraith-like animation together with the forced featherfall is a reason to not use the mantle - I don't like it in live, I don't like it here. It makes the character feel sluggish and slow, not what I have in mind when playing a shadowdancer

• multiselector:
  
  • weird: You gain the weird spell - aoe phantasmal killer, scales off illusion dc. You must be able to cast level 9 spells. Cooldown 60s, sp cost 50 (matches implosion). Dc 20 + highest of int/wis/cha + illusion bonuses
  • consume shadow: From-sneak active attack. Enemy must make a will save vs 20 + highest ability score + assassinate or be permanently cursed with shadow loss.
    
    • shadow loss. You no longer cast a shadow. (literally. We literally turn their shadow visuals off). In addition, you have -20 prr and mrr.

Add back the old consume as an option - might not be necessary if the epic moment gets fixed.

• shadow mastery: Epic moment: dissolve into a whorl of shadow, leaving your corporeal form behind. While in this form, you are considered sneaking and invisible regardless of what you do. You also gain 3d6 sneak attack dice, 50% incorporeality, as well as the effects of dark imbuement and meld into darkness as if they had been fully trained and upgraded. When non-boss enemies miss you in this state, they are slain by their fear, automatically taking a phantasmal killer effect with no save. Duration: 30 seconds. Cooldown: 5 minutes.

A few things did bother me with the epic moment - generally it was ok, it felt a bit like the old dark imbuement. The insta-kill part was useless and the few times I got it to trigger (against weaker enemies I could have killed in a fraction of the time it took me to get them killed by the effect) the overused phantasmal killer animation was a big downer.

• duration vs. cooldown: 20 seconds with 3 minutes would make the epic moment much better
• change the phantasmal killer effect back to an implosion effect similar to the old consume. the tentacle animation does not fit with a shadowdancer, while the old one was simply awesome. This was actually the biggest disappointment with Preview 2. Mostly about the animation, but also the types of enemies affected.
• change it to an offensive version triggered by sneak attack - or at least make the effect work when attacked. If you need to be attacked multiple times for the ability to work, you are either going down from those attacks that don't miss or are playing low difficult quests and let yourself be hit instead of killing the enemies.

There was a comment about the Shadowdancer losing its instant kill abilities to not infringe on the assassins territory, then the fatesinger gets a much better instant kill version. Currently the shadowdancer has not much going for it, except that it thematically fits a sneaky character - mechanically he's better of in fury of the wild or fatesinger.

I still think the new Destiny Rework is a big mistake, destroying something unique to make it more mainstream, but this ship has sailed, sunk cost fallacy and all that, so I hope it will at least shape into something that is still fun to play (even if someone wants to play a character that is neither a big hulking brute nor a spellcaster).

On a plus side, my whole family is having a blast on live, I even bought some expansions for my kids due to being slightly less pessimistic about U51. *fingers crossed*

[delsoboss]

I'm quite disappointed in how this ED shaped up review after review.

DPS-wise, it seems it might be a wash with what's on live (considering you can get passive boni from other trees to supplement it) and Dark Imbuement seems nice.

Active abilities are basically all gone, which is a big downer and makes investing into assassinate (in terms of gear and enhancement point spend) look less convenient than on live.

Survivability is gone out of the window. Preview 1 stated "Shadowdancer is a hybrid tree focusing on both spellcasting and melee/ranged damage, as well as a large amount of avoidance defenses." but the avoidance defenses are just not there.

You need to wait until level 30 to get 25% incorporeality that people can get at level 12, there is no standing dodge bonus in the tree, there is only a few points of increased dodge cap that only works if you use light armors, there is no concealment, meld gives now too low of an increase to be a meaningful and reliable choice. So exactly where is the "large amount of avoidance defenses"?

The epic moment either is a 30 second +3d6 SA buff when you don't have aggro (not very epic) or if you do have aggro is basically suicide in challenge appropriate content unless you change it to hard code that you are automatically missed, then it becomes an emergency panic button to avoid being ganged by trash (but still there is so much stuff that can't be IKed that I'm not sure it will see regular use).

Make the incorporeality in the mantle start sooner (lower tiers) and ramp it up to 25%+ at level 30 but most importantly make it stacking (with items too, so you can get 40% or some such with ghostly and other niche 5% stackings here and there).

Give us back "Improved Invisibility" that leaves a displacement like effect when it's gone (this is supposed to be the hybrid rogue/illusionist tree right?)

Give us some way of playing with the mobs with some new "turn-around-on-bluff" ability that grants sneak attack.

Gives us something defensive that scales with hide/move silently (as the original purpose of those skills has been banished from the game). Thinking crazy here, what about an active that gives you +AC = to the highest of hide/move silently? Yeah I know it can be above +100 but that's what you would need to make AC partially viable in epic/legendary content (make it work only in cloth or light armor). Or +Uncapped Dodge = 1/3 or 1/4 or the skill scores? I noticed you killed the Mabar candies for this so maybe you don't want to mess with coding it.

But give us something.

EDIT: forgot to add that acrobats are rogues too so you have to add quarterstaves to "Just a Taste".

[dgtgtd]

Is there a reason the epic strike has to be an ability with a duration shorter than its cooldown, with both also being so short? That means 5 out of every 15 seconds at the minimum your "strike" isn't working. It isnt some powerful hit like a special cleave, so you can't just pick a priority target to use it on, so to get maximum effectiveness you are shoehorned into just spamming it every 15 seconds to keep it up as much as possible. Please do something about this because this just makes it unfun to use.

[Gloomfall]

I'm really trying hard to justify the pure decreases in survivability on this Epic Destiny.. When comparing this to something like my Barbarian with Fury of the Wild for example, my Rogue Shadowdancer is running around with something close to 900 health. Nothing terrible, but in legendary or reaper content that's one or two hits until death. Trying to benefit from some sort of self healing will be few and far between. The damage isn't terrible, but it's not too great and it's definitely not reliable with many things being immune to sneak attack damage.

My Barbarian on the other hand is closing in on 2000 health with some easy layering. They also have Improved Uncanny Dodge and a TON of PRR/MRR stacking on top of normal defensive layers. I can crit for almost 13,000 damage on him with the right attacks with normal attacks hitting pretty **** hard too. Against a Helpless Target he does almost 50% more damage, and he has a fairly easy way to make targets helpless with trip attacks. Whenever he uses a Primal Scream he hits everything around him for a large chunk of damage (in the 3k+ range), buffs himself for +6 Strength/Con, AND heals himself with a heal spell that benefits from scaling off of Melee Power.

There's no real comparison with how much damage, movement speed, number of targets hit, and survival between the two characters.

When you start factoring in some of the more... powerful characters such as Paladins, Favored Souls, and the insanity that Warlocks can be it really makes you feel like a Rogue Shadowdancer just isn't... worth it at all anymore.

Shiradi's Epic Moment is leagues better than Shadowdancer as well. With 100% chance to proc a ton of extra damage and a ton of other passive effects to help movement speed and attack potential.

[Synthetic]

Dark imbuement still doesn't proc on multiple targets when using an AOE spell. Dark imbuement is still super weak for a caster needs some significant help.

[JoeCamb02140]

So once again did some testing and:

Assassinate:
Since there have been zero changes to assassinate dcs on items, all I can say is that assassinate is still lackluster.

Consume Shadows:
Yay! A sparkling new ability to try. I get to debuff the mobs from sneak attack instead of assassinating them, because, you know, I like pain.... First thing, please fix the icon. It currently uses the same icon as Shadow Mastery. Other than that, this is a totally useless skill. You have to be sneaking, not sneak attacking but in sneak mode. Why would you even use this instead of assassinate? With a 1 minute cooldown on an ability with marginal usefulness, this is utter garbage. Even in my epic moment, where I am supposedly "considered sneaking," I cannot use Consume Shadows. Why is that you ask? Who knows! But it's fun to try and simply get squished by a mob that I could have easily assassinated... oh wait I can't do that anymore because I lost 10 points to my assassinate skill. Never mind, I'll just leave my stone here as a marker.

Avoidance:
This tree needs more damage avoidance. Make Meld an actual ability. Even if you're going to make it into the crappy thing it is now, don't make us choose between damage i.e. Dark Imbuement and survivability i.e. Meld. My rogue assassin went from being okay in R1 to being super squishy. This needs work. If you do not want to go with Meld, then figure something else out. Make an avoidance only tree if you want and stick the avoidance abilities there, but do something. Heck tie a new ability on this tree to defensive roll so that your rogue has an increased chance of triggering it and avoid damage or tie it to elusive target. Think of something.

Dark Imbuement:
I really want to like it. When it is up, it is great, but keeping it up is a PIA. Please fix this. Make it like a trance and give a longer up time. It would be fine if you made it last 90 seconds and have a cool down of two minutes. Or make it like an action boost. It's just hard remembering to smash that button. Find the right balance, but what you have now is not it. IF you are going with an active attack as you suggested, please give it something besides the usual "attack with +3W damage." Make it cleave at the very least so that we get some way to deal with the trash.

[Hafeal]

• Technician: +2/4/6 to Search, Spot, Disable Device, Open Lock. Rank 3: If you have the Nimble Fingers feat, +1 sneak attack dice.

I am contemplating the tree as level my Assassin through another life ... I don't recall other abilities requiring a feat to get the bonus out of a tree for something unrelated to the feat. This seems off to me.

So if you don't have the feat Nimble Finders you get +6 ... uh, ok. Feels like a very steep price to pay to get a +1 sad, as I can't say my rogues have taken NF since pre-2009 as it really isn't necessary. Shouldn't it just be a +1 sad for taking the 3 ranks?

[charlieman]

Is there any chance of reducing the % but changing the type so shadow forms speed grants an increase to movement speed for those of us with haste/blinding speed/augments?

Even if it is reduced to like 5% instead of 30% just so it does something instead of nothing.

[R1ncewind]

Considering that this is in part and even in theme a rogue tree, Quarterstaff should be supported in Just a taste. Someone mentioned before but Im joining the choir.

[Gloomfall]

I feel like Shadow Form should increase sneaking speed by at least another 30% over what it does right now. While sneaking my speed dropped to 119 even with full ranks in the Assassin sneak speed enhancement. My normal movement speed without that is 149. I'm guessing those numbers are supposed to be 120% and 150% but has some weird rounding.. Either way it feels bad to slow down even slightly while sneaking when you're fully specialized in it. I'd rather get full stealth movement speed than a useless 30% enhancement bonus to speed at the very least. I've usually got that on at least 2 pieces of gear.

[Blerk]

It looks like this tree is getting there, but what concerns me is we're quite late in the preview process now and the core problem hasn't been addressed. There seems to be too much focus on adding new stuff for flavour builds, at the expense of rogue gameplay and how this new ED will work with existing class features and enhancements.

Playing a melee rogue effectively in harder content is not an easy thing to do and unfortunately some of the interesting tools we had for that, which were especially useful when playing solo or shortmanning, have disappeared or were changed to become much less useful. I don't really see the need for some of these to go away but I can live without them if it has to be that way and hope they might return in legendary levels. And without testing it myself it seems assassin DPS will remain solid so hopefully we won't go back to the bad old days of being unwelcome in raids.

By far the most serious problem in the proposed tree is how Meld has been changed. Although it's a stated goal for the tree to provide a large amount of avoidance defence, that is simply not being realised in the abilities we are being shown. The proposed version of Meld is not much use at all. My expectation is that this ability would just be ignored most of the time, at least by assassins and this is meant to a linchpin ability in their home tree. As proposed Meld is just needless and repetitive button pressing for its own sake if you're positioning yourself and managing your aggro properly, and it doesn't do enough to be really useful if you do pull aggro. So it seems to be failing on two counts.

It would be much more useful if Meld granted passive bonuses to dodge and the dodge cap AND provided a cooldown reduction for Improved Uncanny Dodge. This approach means Meld benefits builds that invest enough in the class the qualify for this feat and prevents it from being a must-have ability that everyone dips into SD to take. A passive increase to the dodge cap would be handy because right now the cap is quite low, meaning assassins currently get little to nothing from the dodge increases available in their enhancement tree. This is an opportunity to make the epic tree shore up heroic level abilities that are going to waste in epic play.

But even reinstating a toned-down version of old Meld as another 20 second dodge clicky offering a 50% dodge and dodge cap raise (still capping at 95%), and with the same armour restrictions required to use evasion would be much more useful than what we are being offered. That checks the ability design boxes of an ability that isn't too powerful, can't be used constantly so requires some decision-making about when to deploy it, and supports class gameplay style both thematically and mechanically. I assume the thinking behind new Meld was it would complement IUD in those something went wrong moments but it's just not really any good and the end result is rogues will become significantly less survivable. This will be a particular problem for less experienced players with characters that are less well-geared and lacking the past lives that help mitigate damage to an inherently squishy melee build.

The other thing I'd like to request is a cosmetic toggle for shadow form which gives us the option of retaining a normal appearance. Some of us like the way the form looks, but others don't, and offering the choice would be a really nice quality of life improvement. Please let those of us who don't like the way it looks use this ability without forcing a change to the appearance of our characters at the same time. It sounds minor but to some of us this will be a really important detail, both aesthetically and also because it makes our characters easier to see in amongst everything else happening on screen.

Hope to see some more developer interaction on the forums with these points and those being made by other contributors. Not everyone is or can be on Discord.