Any thoughts on latest patch changes to gladiator?

[bestshot]

Hi guys, as u guys know, april patch have some changes on gladiators. For those who dont know please see as below.

Deep Straight Decreased cooldown 13 -> 11 secs
Hacking Stance Straight Decreased cooldown Decrease 5 sec per section
Line Drive Decreased cooldown 27 -> 23 secs
Class Mastery reduced Main Skill cooldown 50% -> 20% , Removed Evasion Slash from buff
Class Mastery II Increased Atk Buff

From what i see, this is clearly nerf to increase cooldown time for gladiators user so that gladiators could use more skills. With the changes on the cooldown, are the developer trying to promote hacking stance?
Any gladiator using hacking stance currently, how u feel the damage of that skill comparing to other skill?

Share out your opinion guys.

[Mr.Shovels]

Hacking stance with the DDJ or Dream Dragon Jade is an excellent and effective skill to use, since the Blood Moon Jade counterpart improves upon triple slash, which isn't close enough to the improvement of hacking stance so yes, in terms of the removal of evasion slash buff on CM II, i think it is good to say that they want you to use more skills rather than sticking with spamming just a few particular skills in comparison.

Hacking stance with DDJ btw gets an increase of 3000% attack power and reduces the amount of hacks into probably a second? i mean they might have meant to reduce the time hacking stance is used, you need action speed in order to hack a lot more while the duration lasts, i'm really not a gladiator main but i did have an experience using the gladiator at some point but not this few latest patch updates.

Just as people say, the developers wants to collect more data so they meant to make the blood moon jade for some class pretty much redundant to the DDJ.

I forgot to answer your question, improvement on hacking stance might probably be intentional for glads who is using DDJs for their gladiator, BMJ is not a good idea, just a thought.

[Skyros]

I would say this is to balance Gladiator with his Blood Moon Jade. Triple Slash becomes OP after this patch, so in order to mediate this, they balanced it by rescaling CM 1's Cooldown Reduction effect.

Consider having the old CM1, 50% CDR at 20 (max) bubbles and Evasion Slash being affected. Evasion Slash with a 3.25s CD is about the same time as the Blood Moon TriSlash's cast time. So, if left unchanged your rotation becomes Triple Slash -> Evasion Slash -> Triple Slash again (maybe insert FA at 50% and below) and repeat till boss dies which is an absurd but effective rotation if you want to deal the most damage.

As for Hacking Stance, this is quite a nerf. Hacking Stance at Level 15 has a 20s CD (16s with current CM1 CDR effect) is too long to insert more than 1 Hacking Stance cast in between FA/Hyperdrive cooldowns. IMO, Hacking Stance before and after the skill change is quite underwhelming.

TL;DR This is a nerf to Gladiator as long as you dont use a Blood Moon Jade.

[Skyros]

BMJ is better hands down. Also I said 'This is a nerf as long as you dont use BMJ'. DDJ in itself has a nerf since old Hacking Stance at Lv15 is at 25s CD and with 50% CM1 CDR it becomes 12.5s.

Think about it this way, the Balancing Team nerfed Gladiator because the BMJ is too OP. So in order to mediate the nerf, you MUST use BMJ.

IMO, as for Saint EJ is an improvement. I dont have to a) rely on number of Relics present and b) suffer with the small ass Relic HB AoE. The boost becomes more noticeable after the Saint Rework too. I mean that's what Skill Jades do (DDJ, BMJ) improve/boost some skills by changing their damage and mechanics.

[Mr.Shovels]

So you're saying, leaving a slot for an awakening passive that isn't reliable anymore is a good thing? they could just make a fix for it like really improving Holy Burst rather than sticking with it for a long time.

Even if its still relevant for some users who are depending on using DDJ's for their saint (not sure if that's still relevant for some) i think they still need to recreate that one awakening passive over for the saint, its redundant to the BMJ and its one way to speak of their incompetence.

EDIT: sorry, i may have been harsh on my comment.

That's not how Skill jades is suppose to be, making an actual awakening passive to be useless, other characters doesn't have any redundancies on their skill jades, yet saint has one? just because they are gonna be really relevant on their revamp doesn't mean they have to actually mess things up , even if the reason is "its just one awakening passive nothing to be concerned about!" its still an inability and they should answer for that.

[Skyros]

No use expressing your thoughts to me. Even I don't understand the logic of Saint BMJ, but I just accept that 'it is what it is'. BMJ for Saint is a good choice due to the shortcomings of Awakened [Holy Burst] in comparison to DDJ.

[bestshot]

To be honest, can't really feel the OPness of the triple slash yet, given that i saw goddess heraldry give for both triple slash and hacking stance, i think it is trying to make hacking stance viable. BMJ only gives 167% of triple slash damage while DDJ give 3000% damage to hacking stance.
My math might not be good but i cant see how is triple slash better. But if a gladiator dont have both DDJ or BMJ, in terms of DPS, Triple slash should be higher than hacking stance currently right? if both skill at max level.

[ClintGL]

Triple slash awakening is not useless when you are using BMJ. 4th and 5th slash was carried over to 3rd slash, 3rd slash gives 3 hits. In addition, BMJ gives 3ple slash faster casting time and more AOE. IMO, it really depends on your skill rotation. But I will vote for BMJ for its flexbility and mobility.

[Skyros]

Hacking Stance right click deals double of your Board Damage so thats only 700+%. Casting Hacking Stance without DDJ is honestly just a waste of time.

Well, for BMJ you need to learn the Awakening as a prerequisite. So no Awakening = no BMJ effect. As for damage, BMJ TS will win over Awakened TS. In practicality, how often do you use the 4th and 5th slashes? Prolly lesser than you imagine because you need to dodge stuff as a melee class. For fast-paced melee characters such as Gladi, shortening the skill cast time is more of a necessity than dealing the maximum damage. So, in that mindset, even IF BMJ will deal lesser damage than [Awk] TS, Id go for the BMJ since the cast time is cut significantly.

As for the BMJ damage, I provided the said equation because I still havent tested the BMJ yet. One of my main questions about BMJ is what happens to the 4th and 5th slash damage. And testing is the only way to confirm that.

[ClintGL]

BMJ TS makes the 4th and 5th slash carried to 3rd slash which means 3rd slash makes 3 hits or I must say 3rd slash is 3 in 1.