A shade's toolset relies on landing offensive perks on an opponent. Which means that if the opponent is not perkable, the shade has a very limited toolset.
A lot of the other professions have some form of toolset from nanos which can be used on evaders. Shade's don't.
The Spirit Phylacerty (SP) perk line has perks which DoT health + nano and perks which drain AAO/AAD, transferring some back to the shade. This is one of the profession defining perk lines for a shade.
As a defensive tool, the AAO drain works to increase the relative defense rating of the shade. Without the AAO drain running on an opponent, a shade's evades aren't much of a defense.
What if:
- DoT / nano drain perks where given 150% AMS check so they could be landed on evaders and thus have an impact with these perks.
- the AAO/AAD drain perks 'cast' two different actions on use.
1st action: AAO drain, AAO buff with a 150% AMS check. This drains AAO from the target increasing the relative value of the shade's defense rating (current amount is 502). It also increases the attack rating of the shade (current amount is 368).
2nd action: AAD drain, AAD buff with a 100% AMS check. This drains AAD from the target increasing the relative attack rating of the shade (current amount is 513). It also increases the defense rating of the shade via the AAD buff (current amount is 209).
Attack rating of an end game AI armor wearing shade with a setup that doesn't sacrifice too much defense for attack rating and no towers is between 3k and 3.2k. With 3.2k attack rating... a 150% AMS check gives an attack rating of 4.8k. Fixer/CiB professions will be able to resist with their 1k AAD perk and DoF up. It will allow shades to debuff anything but fixers with only DoF up. Some might be able to resist with DoF + Limber up. These checks are ONLY for the DoT's/Nano drain perks and the AAO drains (which increase the shade's relative defense rating and increase the shade's attack rating by 368.
So... a 3k AR shade against an opponent with 3.5k static evade close rating:
- perkable with the AAO drains and nano dot's unless they have 1k AAD perk and DoF running
- after landing the AAO drains, the shade now has 3.368k attack rating with the opponent remaining unperkable. With the shade's evade close debuff proc running on the target, then the target is perkable with 100% checking perks with no other temporary evade buffs (resistable with Limber).
- a 3.2k AR shade would be able to perk 3.5k static through limber with everything aligned.
- an opi shade would be able to add another -150 evade debuff to the mix pushing their AR to a level which woulc open up a lot more targets to being perked (everything aligned).
- a trox shade would be able to debuff anything using mongo rage and wouldn't have to wait for evade perks to go down.
A 368 temporary AR buff is similar to the temporary AR buffing or defense skill debuffing available to other professions.
Including the evade debuff proc (+200) and Blur (about +100), the effective attack rating increase is 668 (with a lot of conditions met). If this figure needs balancing, please remove the proc from the game.
ps. the reduction of the AAO debuff is a huge nerf to a shade's defense. Could shade's get the numbers for the AAO debuff and AAD buff switched. So instead of debuffing the target's AAO by 502 for 15 seconds and AAD of the shade for 209 for 60 seconds, debuff AAO by 209 for 15 seconds and buff AAD on shade for 502 for 60 seconds. This would mean that targets which aren't perkable with 100% checks would only have their offense lowered by 209 but the relative change in offense would be the same against 100% perkable targets (solds / enfs).
pps. with all SP debuffs running on a target, they'll have 11 items in their NCU from 3 different lines. If the effects were stacked like the NT NR debuff or Malpractice, this would reduce the number of items in the target's and shade's NCU.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Perking
As far as I'm aware, nothing was (going to be) changed about it the last few years.