Okay, so the hammer hit, and it.HIT.HARD.
The nerf hammer, if that wasn't clear. Was expecting it, but not this hard.
Let's summarize what happenned :
► patchnotes for batstrike
Batstrike:
Mechanical revamp, removed clunky "charge up" mechanic and replaced with conditional effects
Attack that spawns a bat nova dealing 125% weapon damage (previously charge 1)
Nova range no longer increases with level
Added mana cost and 1 second cooldown
Max level now 20, before Specialization
Summon Familiars:
New level 30 upgrade, replaces Ambush and Elemental Fangs
After teleporting with Blink, and for a brief period, Batstrike becomes a bat summoning skill (previously charge 2)
Familiars will now always expire after 30 seconds
Gains an additional Familiar per 6 Base Levels in Batstrike
Reduced delay between Familiar AI actions
Inherits all Assassin passives, including Shadow Dancer
Familiars inherit your Ways levels as Base Levels (if you have level 100 wots, they will learn it as if they had 100 base levels in it)
Max Level: 1
Winged Calamity:
Max level now 8
So, what did we win?- Reduced Delay, possibly a nice attackspeed/damage upgrade? or only between different actions, making them more responsive (I suspect the latter, a
nice QoL upgrade)
-
Shadow dancer damage passive for bats. Kinda meh, costs points and only boosts their bad and hard to scale phys damage (most of the damage comes from ways).
-
A bit of QoL (no need to hit twice then autoattack before summoning), easier to use other skills like shadow refuge etc
And what did we lose- Can't use naginata anymore by using the skill on fang and proccing on naginata-autoattack. Losing the nagi is a big damage nerf, but was quite expected and warranted (made little sense to use this nagi on a claw skill). Still a
big damage nerf.
- Ways efficiency. Since Elemental Fangs got removed, we lost the "200% efficiency" for ways, meaning
DAMAGE GUTTED.
- Having 5 bats now require level 24 batstrike, so if you wanted to only put a few points there, now not only you need to max it but you also
HAVE TO PICK SPECIALISATION, losing more points and a mastery skill choice. ouch.
- Winged Calamity nerf is also quite the nerf :
velocity (50% => 40%), bats base attack rating (10 000 => 8000) and damage reduction too, all nerfed.
Conclusions : ...Sorry guys, I felt like being truthful to the guide and starting as batsin, but the future looks very bleak. More stretched in points in a build which already was, and a thorough GUTTING OF DAMAGE, which is about the ONLY THING this build had for itself. Because no matter the nice little QoL, this is STILL :
- A melee temporary summoning skill which only lasts a frigging small 30seconds (tiring and risky summoner play)
- Bad aoe/clearspeed build
Perhaps they wanted to remove the clunkyness, which feels nice, but it's still not a great build to play and on top of that lost all of it's damage, so yeah I think I'll pass unless I feel a sudden masochistic impulsion rising from my gut at some point