SF Overnerfed?

[Corona1]

Before anyone starts taking this the wrong way, as an SF main at this moment, I am not saying SFs are trash for PvE content. Their party revive can save dungeon runs, their heal grants superior survivability, and they have fairly solid sustain and DPS when played with the right specs.

 

HOWEVER.

 

Ever since the Desolate Tomb patch, I have been incredibly let down by this new mechanic given to them. Golden Dragon. This 'buff' is in no way useful to the class in almost every scenario. It doesn't provide any passives like the Chi levels do (+5% movement speed per stack), stacks very slowly if you want to make use of the empowered Z, and generally runs out in every lategame mechanic-heavy boss fight, before you have time to even get the second stack off.
And to boot, our Offal HM skill, HM Heal, has been turned completely useless by the introduction of this mechanic. Now you need 3 stacks of a buff that takes ~2 minutes to stack up, just for a +20% heal? Come on. I'm not the only one who thinks this was the dumbest way to rebalance the class, am I? Wouldn't it be much better to give the skills a gradually increasing bonus depending on how many stacks you have, capped at 3?

Like we have our Z now, it gives +30% bonus critical damage on top of the initial +20% crit chance and crit dam for 10 seconds, IF you use it with 3 stacks of Golden Dragon only. Wouldn't it be better to give it +10% per Golden Dragon stack, up to 30% on all three stacks? And make the heal scale the same way? What am I missing in this design decision?

[Nightdash]

As a soulfighter main , im not too happy about the changes to the heals , but the movement speed bonus and the 30 second cooldown isn't too bad but our HM heal isn't that viable in all honesty . As for golden dragon stacks ,  in some scenarios you can get three golden dragon stacks without too much effort . However , I would like the idea of stacking critical damage +10% for each stack and then cap it at 30% critical damage. I think since soul fighter is a new class they are trying to make them unique with these chi stacks but they aren't doing so well as of now. 

[Iorek]

I agree with the golden dragon being completely useless (unless you have soul burn active), and still the benefits does not outweigh the cost.  However, i had the HM healing skill prior to the patch and pretty much every 3v3 tag match i entered ended with either my party winning at full health, or losing because of timer and the other team did more damage (but we were still at full health).  Personally i would like to see it a little easier to obtain those initial stacks, if they were too make the heal skill give 1 chi level, i think this could be accomplished.

[Corona1]

7 minutes ago, Iorek said:

I agree with the golden dragon being completely useless (unless you have soul burn active), and still the benefits does not outweigh the cost.  However, i had the HM healing skill prior to the patch and pretty much every 3v3 tag match i entered ended with either my party winning at full health, or losing because of timer and the other team did more damage (but we were still at full health).  Personally i would like to see it a little easier to obtain those initial stacks, if they were too make the heal skill give 1 chi level, i think this could be accomplished.

I think that might make Chi stacking too easy, but it would make it possible to stack Golden Dragon with the Cobalt Punch path at least. Right Punch is nice and all, but absolutely useless in PvE as Cobalt Punch / Breaking Claw deals so much more DPS. Even if you get to stack Kingfist a lot more. IMO the best option is to just make the buff last about 50 seconds, and give the gradually increading skill bonuses instead. And revise the HM heal skill entirely. 

 

36 minutes ago, Nightdash said:

As a soulfighter main , im not too happy about the changes to the heals , but the movement speed bonus and the 30 second cooldown isn't too bad but our HM heal isn't that viable in all honesty . As for golden dragon stacks ,  in some scenarios you can get three golden dragon stacks without too much effort . However , I would like the idea of stacking critical damage +10% for each stack and then cap it at 30% critical damage. I think since soul fighter is a new class they are trying to make them unique with these chi stacks but they aren't doing so well as of now. 

The Chi stacks do make them a lot more mobile than most other classes. The halved-cooldown was more a QoL change to be honest, as it halved both party heal, self heal, and buff durations as well. So just easier to spam in the right situations. Move speed is a nice bonus though.

But for example, during the Taikhan and Asura boss fights, I won't ever get more than a single stack of Golden Dragon. It's simply too hard to keep them up with all the delays, and frankly, the reward is not worth it at this stage. Better to use Z in the right dps windows and hammer that V-F combo.

[Nightdash]

I like that idea of golden dragon lasting about 50 seconds , in my opinion 30 seconds is too short of a duration. 

[Iorek]

I wouldn't mind having the same amount of heals applied to me as it does for the party as well, i mean why get the hongmoon skill and I still only heal myself for 10%.

[MushinKFM]

On 23.9.2016 at 0:38 AM, Iorek said:

I wouldn't mind having the same amount of heals applied to me as it does for the party as well, i mean why get the hongmoon skill and I still only heal myself for 10%.

Think of PvP at the same time. The SF already can take out ppl in one burst and heal party up. If he can heal himself to full hp everytime how are ppl gonna remove that threat?

There should be something good for both parties, like a defense decrease on the boss you stack the golden path on. So a chi fighter would have a benefit in some dungeons like the full def stacks cold storage? Or maybe even reduce drill sargeant def after a CC fail. 

[studioMagicalFox]

How does our EU/NA version of the Soul Fighter differ from the KR version? That is if they are at all different. I get the impression they are. As a SF I am only lvl 38 as yet so I can't comment on the Golden Dragon issue, but it sounds like I'm not gonna like it very much. What chances do you think we have that NC will rethink this design decision for our class because as a hybrid class that lots of non-SF players think does not bring much to parties the last thing we need is to be nerfed.

[Mangetsu]

On 9/23/2016 at 5:21 PM, Corona1 said:

I think that might make Chi stacking too easy, but it would make it possible to stack Golden Dragon with the Cobalt Punch path at least. Right Punch is nice and all, but absolutely useless in PvE as Cobalt Punch / Breaking Claw deals so much more DPS.

 

I'm hoping you meant in PvP cause right punch is not useless in pve what so ever especially with the HM skill building up chi stacks becomes a joke and will be able to drop frost storm much faster then cobalt punch ati cancel. Just the simple fact of not having to wait for Iron Shoulders CD makes it much nicer ice build has been better sustain and earth is better burst dps.

 

as for the golden dragon buff its no its not the best thing in the world but its not that bad sure on mechanic heavy bosses its not as much use hence why i never bother specing it for those bosses however if there is a warlock in party then i put the extra point in as it extends the burst dps with frost storm and dragons fury.

 

honestly with the past skill update I dont see us as getting nerfed our heal got changed to an HoT and the base heal got reduced but the cd was reduced so it balanced out imo our dodges got a CD increase but our elbow smash stage 3 got a CD reduction and the HM form had its resist increased HM right punch got a dmg buff plus howling blast got a dmg boost and now absorbs part of the dmg as hp and gives a crit dmg buff. overall i think the changes were fine and in no way a nerf.

 

plus the next skill update changes our awakened skill to awakened right punch and awakened cobalt punch idk what will change with them yet but we will see soon im sure.

[csisy]

The only way I think this golden dragon thing would be useful if it would not have time limit. So now you have 30 seconds (right?) to go to the next stage. But if you have "infinite" time to stack it to 3, that would be better. :) After an ability which get bonus from the 3 stacks, the stack would reset and that's it.

 

I feel the SF heal is... idk... weak, compared to the summoner's heal. I'm not a SF main tho, I could be wrong, I'm just doing Mushin F1-F7 with 380-ish AP once in a week. :D

[Corona1]

On 29-9-2016 at 3:18 PM, csisy said:

The only way I think this golden dragon thing would be useful if it would not have time limit. So now you have 30 seconds (right?) to go to the next stage. But if you have "infinite" time to stack it to 3, that would be better. :) After an ability which get bonus from the 3 stacks, the stack would reset and that's it.

 

I feel the SF heal is... idk... weak, compared to the summoner's heal. I'm not a SF main tho, I could be wrong, I'm just doing Mushin F1-F7 with 380-ish AP once in a week. :D

The thing with the heal, is that it does still heal a lot of health, but over 20+ seconds. So it's really just a glorified regeneration buff. As for the Golden Dragon stack, if you go Cobalt Punch, each Iron Shoulder has a 6-sec cooldown. Which you have to pull off 5, to add a Golden Dragon stack. Coincidentally, that buff indeed lasts 30 sec. So against a boss where you can't get proper counters off (which chance is great, since BMs etc. usually take the boss AWAY from the others attack-wise), the time you need to get a Kingfist ready is 5*6=30 seconds.

[Lee Ryu]

Hum... You guys do realize that SF dps got buffed last patch ? This is just a new (old) mechanic they introduced to the Sf kit. If you can use it then Gj you made something of that 3 golden stacks, if not well try harder :)

 

3 hours ago, Corona1 said:

The thing with the heal, is that it does still heal a lot of health, but over 20+ seconds. So it's really just a glorified regeneration buff. As for the Golden Dragon stack, if you go Cobalt Punch, each Iron Shoulder has a 6-sec cooldown. Which you have to pull off 5, to add a Golden Dragon stack. Coincidentally, that buff indeed lasts 30 sec. So against a boss where you can't get proper counters off (which chance is great, since BMs etc. usually take the boss AWAY from the others attack-wise), the time you need to get a Kingfist ready is 5*6=30 seconds.

I don't remember SF having only one stance :) > Displace + Burning Tundra gives 2 stacks 

So, you can use one of them to keep ahead of the golden dragon timer. 

 

I honestly think that this mechanic is really hard to pull if you don't have the right skill rotation but i also think it was made to make you play better.

[Nightdash]

In my opinion I want a rework on the heal , I want it to have more utility. Something that will make us wanted in parties , just like all the other classes have to offer. Sure,heals are great but is it really needed when all classes usually have an amethyst or self healing skill of their own? Maybe like a party iframe or dps buff , something noticeable that makes soul fighters unique.The healing skill on soul fighters no doubt is nice to have but just not enough to make us wanted in parties and it puts us in an awkward position many times in parties and that is one reason not many people play soul fighters.

[studioMagicalFox]

Again, I am curious about how our version of the SF differs from the Korean one. Are the nerfs and lack of party utility particular to the EU/NA version of the game? If our version of the SF matched the Korean version would that solve some of these problems?