Game Mechanics Silent killer change

Change silent killer to reset vanish on a successful backstab, this rewards a proper playstyle and feels satsifying. Currently it's situational and feels random and not really satisfying, this could make shade more fun and allow for good escapes if you are able to pull it off.

 

This would also be able to fix the fact that most of the time, when fighting a boss, Shadesteppers will most likely get hit after backstabbing a boss. With this change, people will be rewarded for being able to time a vanish well after a backstab.

 

yeah again the issue with back stab not working on many bosses is here but this is good change

add poll pls

 

Oh hey I remembered when I first suggested this on the discord

Anyways I feel like a full reset might be a little too op for Weathered users who can endlessly backstab with no consequences, or even non-Weathereds who are able to escape and return easily with walkspeed or the right mana sustain. Maybe reduce the time to one second instead, or give a cooldown to when the vanish cooldown reset can be activated again? Would be really great if this was an ability somewhere along the tree after Backstab, otherwise the Silent Killer only really applies to battles where you can one-shot enemies, or else you're practically a sitting duck throughout the entire battle.

With both the small hitbox and the bug that makes mobs randomly change directions while being damaged by other sources (pets, smoke bomb, etc.), Backstab at the end of the day is incredibly difficult to do. Adding a reward like this from pulling off a successful Backstab would be a great option here.

Also yes I agree the mobs should not be able to immediately attack you the nanosecond you unvanish

 

Wait, I have another idea
What if a successful Backstab doesn’t bring the player out of vanish? It won’t be overly op since the player still only has a maximum of five seconds to get in and get out, but it also rewards and encourages the player for going for a Backstab even with the time limit risk involved.

 

um why is no one mentioning normal attacks and quake, something that effectively replaces backstab and is actually better in some cases? like i use melee so this would be negative for me

 

Maybe backstab works for melee too like how satsujin works for melee, so melee does double damage behind the enemy and counts as a reset.

 

I cannot wait to deal over 1 million dmg Wind Prisons

 

uh my melee already can deal double the damage of a backstab build.
yeah

 

Honestly I'd rather have vanish have no cool down and silent killer simply puts you back into vanish if you successfully kill an enemy out of vanish or something. Vanish feels really bad right now, with both the damage bonus and duration being nerfed.

 

This just brings back the whole reason why Vanish was nerfed to begin with. 1.20 Vanish was broken AF, being able to just stay permanently invisible. Vanish with a cooldown sucks but Vanish without a cooldown is overpowered. It's one of those abilities that just can't be balanced due to how powerful it is. I personally would rather have the Cooldown be based on how long you were vanished for (being Vanished for 2s = 2s Cooldown) that way it's less punishing for players who are knocked out of Vanish, without having it be overpowered

 

Honestly, it never felt more overpowered to me than heal or totem or archer. I think the constant mana drain helped keep people from spamming it too much, and it was similar to teleport or escape in terms of being able to get someone out of combat.

 

Heavy melee assassins could easily abuse vanish if they had mana steal

 

Oh yeah, forgot about quake. Still, I don't see how that's different for them now. They still get the damage bonus and if they kill an enemy they can still vanish again.

 

It's less abusable against bosses (unless you're just a glass cannon that can just casually one shot the eye phase 1)

But you typically you have to be glassy to get full damage potential so it's not something a lot of players are probably gonna do

 

Yeah, that is true. Still, I'd rather see heavy melee rebalanced than have all other assassin builds nuked.

 

the cooldown for vanish should be 4 or less seconds after leaving vanish, not after you cast it as if you get knocked out of it like lemonalade said, you have a 9 or 8 second cooldown to deal with and not a 5 second one

 

The fact that Heavy Melee Shadestepper is 100x more reliable than spell Shadestepper (excluding Weathered) just shows the flaws with Shadestepper, especially early game.

I think my biggest issue with Shadestepper is that mana sustain really sucks for spell based builds (especially without Marked) and the spell costs are freakishly high. (Note I've only played early game Shadestepper without Marked)

The only way you can consistently chain Vanish on a spell build is if you either have:
A) an unholy amount of mana regen/mana steal
B) Weathered
C) Harvester

And typically investing into mana sustain results in less damage, and Backstab is difficult enough to land properly as it. Heavy Melee is just superior in every form so while I don't think Heavy Melee should be rebalanced, I think spell Shadestepper should be adjusted to not be...crap. I hate early game Shadestepper so much

 

Yeah, it feels like assassin wasn't balanced all that well in general. It feels like spell assassin was ignored in favor of melee, especially with stuff like that. I don't think vanish should be a permanent buff, but being able to go back into vanish after a combo really boosted spell assassin, because it gave you some time to reposition. But since heavy melee doesn't use as much mana it can kinda just spam. Maybe if the vanish damage boost had a cooldown, it would work for both.

EDIT: that would actually make a lot of sense for shadestepper too: if you kill an enemy it resets the damage boost cooldown. That gives a very slight boost to heavy melee and a boost to spell assassin because it allows both to re-vanish to escape after doing a combo. Heavy melee can often already do this as you noted, but spell assassin is less likely to be able to. This would just guarantee them an escape when they've used up most of their mana.

 

Wait, Vanish damage boost Cooldown? My god, this may have been the answer we've been looking for the whole time...