Overall I like the direction of these changes; making active attacks more useful across the board and across level ranges. There are a bunch of attacks sprinkled throughout enhancement trees that are neat, but are so weak they're essentially just another basic attack. It'll be nice that they'll actually stand out a bit now.
I still think there could be some more balance tweaking on individual attacks, though.
Bumping down Drifting Lotus and the Shadar-kai chain attacks is reasonable, since they are AoE, hit multiple times, and have critical threat and multiplier bonuses. But I don't think it's necessary to lower the other cleaves so much. They don't hit multiple times and don't have any critical modifiers, which greatly limits their damage in comparison. And there are quite a few other AoE active attacks that have 5 or more [W] bonuses anyway (Sweeping Strikes, Staff Lunge, Wide Sweep, Shield Rush, Blighted Charge, and maybe some others). Rather than bringing all of these down to 10%-20%, I would suggest keeping them at least at something like 20%-40%. Keep in mind that THF can use single target attacks with high [W] bonuses with strikethrough, making those single target attacks better cleaves than the actual cleaves. So it'd be nice if cleaves could at least keep up.
A couple of attacks I do think might end up a little too strong are ones with high [W] bonuses, high critical multiplier bonuses, and high critical threat range bonuses. For example:
- Fast and Furious (+3[W], +2 critical multiplier) (paired with Adrenaline)
- Boulder's Might (+5[W], +2 critical multiplier) (paired with Adrenaline)
- Shoot Later (+5[W], +2 critical multiplier, +2 critical threat) (paired with Hunt's End)
- Legendary Rally (+5[W], +2 critical multiplier, automatic critical) (Additionally, it seems to produce multiple copies like Drifting Lotus or Whirlwind Attack. So it further doubles or triples its damage.)
- Eldritch Tempest (cleave for +5[W], +3 critical multiplier, +10 critical threat range) (Wiki even lists that these values are doubled, but not sure if that's the case or if it's been fixed)
Getting an automatic critical plus extra critical multipliers is already a large multiplicative bonus, making them some of the strongest active attacks in the game. So giving them another multiplicative 30% or 50% on top of that might be a little excessive. They'll benefit way more from these changes than the more plain +3[W] attacks elsewhere throughout the game.
Technically you can even pair Adrenaline/Hunt's End with the Shadowdancer/Grandmaster of Flowers Epic Strikes (+5[W], +3 critical threat and multiplier). You just wait out the cooldown, then use the Shadowdancer/Grandmaster of Flowers Epic Strikes while the buffs for Adrenaline/Hunt's End are still active. Impractical, of course, but still possible.
What I would love to see is for Adrenaline/Hunt's End to simply be made into active attacks and given +2 critical multipliers in addition to their usual effects.
- You always want to pair them with +2 critical multiplier attacks anyway (or even +5[W], +1 critical multiplier attacks with these changes).
- It removes the annoyance of lag messing up your combo. (Adrenaline/Hunt's end goes off, but your active attack doesn't, wasting the Adrenaline/Hunt's End on a normal attack. Or Adrenaline/Hunt's End doesn't go off, but your active attack does, wasting your active attack.)
- It prevents the cheesy combo of Adrenaline/Hunt's End + Shadowdancer/Grandmaster of Flowers Epic Strikes.
- Removes the need for every active attack to have to be balanced around its interaction with Adrenaline/Hunt's End. (Though Legendary Rally and Eldritch Tempest might still bit a tad strong with their innate critical threat bonuses.)
Pretty please!!
