Tidying up nodes for Acrobat

It's not really a secret that Acro's nodes are peculiarly... awful. With the exception of the essential nodes that define Acrobat's playstyle, every other node that the Acro tree has is either antithetical to how Acrobat is commonly played or just so bland it could have been places on any other archetype without much of an issue. I wanted to just kinda go over some of the more egregious nodes, say my piece on why I don't like them, and suggest at least something to replace it or change its purpose.

1) Flow State: a 35% damage increase that will get eaten by parry (or the other way around, I don't remember) every couple of seconds for such a short period of time is weak and frequently triggers randomly. There are many minions in a lot of the boss rooms and Acro's relatively slow air speed (shocker, it's not actually that fast in sustained flight) means that if the boss is aggrod on someone else or if it's doing a phase where it runs around a bunch a la Orphion, you're gonna lose all your damage. Acrobat isn't exactly a paragon of DPS either, barely able to scratch 200k DPS on a full ETW build, and this doesn't help Acrobat feeling so goddamn weak.

I would suggest either a re-buffing of this to 50% (since dgas no longer stacks, not a problem for tricko[which is also already dead]) or a rework of this ability to scale over time in the air. I don't think it makes much sense to go into a flow state for a couple seconds only to sit out of it for 10, Flow State thematically, at least to me, makes more sense as a gradual buildup to a... well, Flow State where you're doing more damage or have another effect apply. This effect could gradually ramp up to the 35% and reset on a variety of things; I'm partial to landing being the thing that resets it.

2) Parry: Proccing Agility gives you a brief damage buff for 1.5 seconds and one free spell. This is pretty goddamn useless, Agility related nodes like this and Counter/Riposte are boring, incentivize Agility on an archetype that frankly doesn't use nor need the agility items that bad, and its slow frequency makes relying on it for mana sustain foolish. Besides, I don't think it's really acrobatic to be intentionally tanking small hits in hopes of triggering a luck-based effect for more damage (which again no longer stacks with flow state.)

This ability is fundamentally a bad idea and should be scrapped. I'm partial to extra mana sustain in the Acro tree, since Acrobat is one of the most mana-hungry playstyles that gets the least out of its own tree in terms of sustain, but if that's out of the picture (which, I mean, fair if you want to make spellspam builds require actual investment) I would consider having every hit you do in a period of time charge up a large flurry of blows that does extra damage when you inevitably disengage. I'm not sure entirely what the ability should be changed to, but Parry needs to change especially with the buffs no longer overlapping. It's a waste of 2 AP for the most part.

3) Jasmine Bloom: This is maybe a bit of a hot take, but if CT really wants to minimize the degenerate gameplay of hovering twelve thousand meters above the boss fight and only damaging it with smoke bombs and Jasmine Bloom, maybe it's time to remove it. It will rarely impact mana sustain if you're cycling your spells properly since its ticks will often times overlap with lacerate or multihit's, and I don't think it's all that fitting for the playstyle, and rewards players for doing less.

Reworking this could be as easy as changing it to only work within a much smaller area, or work only if a certain condition is held, but if you want to really make sure that Acrobat isn't just hovering above the enemy... this node's the one to check on (after you buff the other nodes to make Acrobat's damage worthwhile for the effort required to play it.)

4) Shurikens: I don't actually hate Shurikens as much as I used to but I still find their inclusion a bit perplexing. They're free damage tied to an ability which you rarely actually use in combat, and a bit hard to aim because of how slow they come out after you left click. On top of that, they put your melee in cooldown, which makes it hard to build up powder specials even if you really, really, wanted to use them on Acrobat. (Sidenote: Dagger proficiency II on this side of the tree is really hilarious to me and I don't know why.)

Simply making it not put your melee on cooldown would be enough to satisfy me. It would be cool if it interacted with the rest of Acrobat's kit more, but eh. It's fine as it is and it works for chipping down something from a distance if you insist on doing that.

5) Blade Fury: This is an incredibly powerful ability that lets you aim where your multihits go, but locks enemies in place in front of you while you're multihitting. For the vast majority of relevant content (ergo Raids and most Dungeon bosses in the Forgery) the second ability does nothing and this is just a straight upgrade. For other content, this becomes one of the singular most infuriating abilities in the entire game. It kind of just has the same result as if Arrow Storm completely locked you into place while firing it against a single target. The enemy is closer to you, meaning more of its attacks hit, meaning you're gonna die. 3rd room of NoL tower room is egregious when playing Acrobat because you just can't really tell what he's about to do and if he explodes, that's basically all of your health gone for daring to use one of your main damage options. On top of that, pulling enemies up is annoying as hell for your teammates. Totem Smash and Uppercut already do this and it's annoying when they do it, too, since if you don't have crazy AOE you're just gonna miss your attacks. On acro especially, kidnapping bosses and making them ascend to heaven doesn't actually increase your damage and decreases team damage, as well as putting you in danger. There's practically no point to this working the way it does, no strategical value from using the ability as intended, and as a downside this is a really weak one that is too random and selective with what you're "bad against" that it's not worth considering.

If Blade Fury just straight up didn't pull, nothing of value would be lost. Remove it entirely. It's not fun to work around and is antithetical to the point of Acrobat. Can't really weave around enemies if the enemies are attached to your groin while you're trying to fly around them.

6) Wall of Smoke. This is admittedly a tiny complaint, but I also don't feel as if this really fits Acrobat. A speedy class should have something on smoke bomb that emphasizes quick gameplay, rather than emphasizing chucking three bombs from directly overhead to minimize spread so you can actually get your DPS out of the ability. It used to be good for sustain, but is now the same as landing one bomb, sustain-wise, which I'm honestly fine with. It wasn't that interesting to try to hit three on Greg's giant hitbox especially if you were already multiweaving.

I don't think this ability needs to be fixed per se, but it's just a bit odd of an ability. I don't think it needs to be significantly different, but smokes feel so tacked on in Acrobat's gameplay that I wouldn't mind them tying into something different and this being the node that "activates" that.


And I think that's about it. I'll admit that most archetypes have stinker nodes but most archetypes are also not this stinky as a whole. Acrobat is one of my favorite archetypes in the entire game to play, and I want nothing more in this world than for it to do anywhere near what other classes can do ETW. It's difficult to play, requires you to think on your feet about timing and movement to avoid the very well-telegraphed (nowadays) attacks in the air, and ultimately is just satisfying to play, what with its constant barrage of hit noises. I hope you got anything out of this post, and leave a comment if you have any thoughts, questions, criticisms, anything! I'd love to hear it.

 

add poll +1

 

Poll has been added, thanks

 

100% agree. i'm extremely partial towards the ramping damage alternative for flow, but it should be a ramp to like 50%. acro going flow with 35% is not dealing nearly enough. and acro does need a number tune up, so replace a node with a number tuner. also, choke bomb and sticky bombs should swap places, and rr should reset after being in the air for a bit
wall used to be for sustain, now it just... exists? i think its fine honestly, doesn't need a change
acro is shockingly slow in air, but it makes up for it in sheer maneuverability. opposed to bmonk, you actually have some amount of vertical control and can control where you go pretty accurately. it may need something to reset being able to vertically dash midair, just for more vertical control
main things it needs are bigger damage and flow being ramp tho

 

Agreed. Jasmine Bloom becoming more close ranged would probably be a good change, and I wholeheartedly agree with the addition of a "ramping damage" version of Flow State (hopefully to 50%, as CattenXD said).
And yea please please please split blade fury into two nodes or just remove the pull altogether. It's so... so annoying lmao.

 

I just don't get the justification that blade fury is supposed to be an intentional hitch like Flying Kick is. It's not easy to time it against old AI bosses and most well-designed bosses are CC immune anyway, leaving it as a node which requires knowledge of which mobs are and aren't CC immune which is tough. Like there's really not a reason why the first two LI bosses should be the hardest for acrobat since you can't use your main damage ability. Doesn't make sense to me.

Jasmine Bloom I think is in a weird spot, I think the AT would legit be better if it was a more damaging, closer range option. I feel like the AT team (is it more than just Salted and Xavier now?) is hesitant to buff Acrobat's damage since you could always "abuse" it with afk Jasmine Bloom and Smoke Bomb shenanigans, to which I say if Jasmine Bloom is this big of an issue, get rid of it and rework it into something that encourages swooping in and playing at close range, like you're supposed to on Acrobat.

 

Yep fully agreed, especially with your point about jasmine bloom

And yeah, there are more people on the ability tree team now but i’m not sure who exactly is working on it now.