Game Mechanics Throwing Knife - a smoke bomb replacement for Acrobat

Hello, peaceful forum dwellers. Today I return with another Acrobat suggestion, this time with a new purple node that will replace the normal smoke bomb with something that better suits Acrobat and its playstyle - the Throwing Knife!

As always, this could not have been done without the legendary @ChrisWildfire for helping me design and balance this ability, along with making the visual representation of it b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶ ̶a̶m̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶e̶n̶t̶ because he is a nice person.

The ability


uncreative names be like

How does it work?

When casting Smoke Bomb, you will instead fling a throwing knife in the direction you are aiming. It will have a fairly straight trajectory, about the same as an arrow with Power Shots. If it hits an enemy, it will reduce their resistance by 15% for a maximum of 6 seconds. This ability will not deal damage by itself, only amplifying yours. Casting it again and hitting the same enemy will reset the duration, not add to it.

• This will replace the original smoke bomb entirely, so any time you cast R-R-L after taking this ability, you will always throw a throwing knife instead.
• Other players will not be affected by the resistance debuff. This will only apply to your character, so using it in a raid or other multiplayer activity won't buff other players' damage.

Where is it on the tree?


my art is so amazing i know

Throwing Knife will be directly below Jasmine Bloom, making it fully optional for endgame builds.

Why would I take this over the regular Smoke Bomb?

The default smoke bomb suffers from being hard to consistently hit enemies with; though Sticky Bomb can help this issue, Assassin already is low on AP and having to take an extra 2-3 AP to make a single spell worth using is not always worth it. You might be thinking, "wElL tHrOwInG kNiFe cOsTs AP tOo!!" And, yeah, you're right. So to fix this, we're going to make Righting Reflex only cost 1 AP. I think this is something that has been suggested in the past anyway, so I think it is a reasonable change to make.

As I was saying, the default smoke bomb is hard to consistently hit enemies with, but the Throwing Knife wouldn't be, boosting your damage by a significant amount without having to worry about herding enemies into the radius of a smoke bomb.

What about Weightless?

Smoke Bomb can be good for getting extra mana from Weightless, but with the consistency issues and mana costs, it is often more trouble than it's worth to cast Smoke Bomb during a Lacerate/Multi/Dash cycle unless you don't have enough mana regen to sustain flight without using Smoke Bomb.

Luckily, Throwing Knife is in a very convenient spot in the ability tree and is completely optional. If you have a lower mana regen build, you can choose to not take Throwing Knife without losing out on any useful abilities and use the default Smoke Bomb for Weightless instead. But if you feel like you have enough mana regen and want the extra damage, you can take Throwing Knife instead.

The end

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed it and like the suggestions we've proposed. Make sure to leave your feedback in the replies and vote in the poll. Hope you have a nice day/night :)

 

first shurikens, now throwing knives, acrobat is ninja but without costing money

 

Personally has more shadestepper vibes imo

 

lol yeah, we couldn't think of a better name (actually chriswildfire did think of a cool one but i was too picky so now it is officially Throwing Knife™)

________________________________

fair, i think it would be good for both archetypes. maybe it and blade fury could switch places in the tree so it's possible to hybrid shade with throwing knife, but i feel like that might cause issues with other hybrids, lol. there's a weird shade/acro hybrid with nightcloak and weightless that uses blade fury which would get screwed by that change lol.
but shade has easier use of default smoke bomb IMO, it's a grounded archetype with better smoke bomb so you can throw it farther, plus shade's smoke bomb has a better range. so i think it would see more use on acro but it would prolly be good on both archetypes

 

Also you forgot to list the AoE if there is any. If there's no AoE we now have the problem of it basically only being good for bosses

 

I think having no aoe is okay, but it could probably just explode in a 3 block radius or something like that. But anything that you really want the 15% bonus for is probably a boss, so I don’t think it’s too big of an issue if it’s single-target.

 

I could see that, like bomb -> dash -> lacarate -> multi or something like that during a boss
Jasmine Bloom ticks with flow state would be pretty strong.
I think some AoE would make it better(?) since it would have more appeal in like lootruns and such. Though it would prob have to be a diff node since aoe -15% res kinda goated if you can like time multi correctly

 

You’re right, I totally forgot about lootruns. Maybe it could be -15% resistance to the enemy directly hit, and then anything that got hit from the aoe effect just gets like, 10% or something like that.

 

That’s what I’m here for your forums Acrobat enthusiast to proof your posts Xd

 

bro you could've asked me to take a screenshot of the page lmao

________________________________

Anyway, cool and awesome W post! Though you give me way too much credit, I practically only contributed with the node screenshot.

Smoke Bomb's performance with late-game acrobat can be a little inconsistent, and can use some changes that would make Smoke Bomb's use for acrobat more clear. I see this ability would put Smoke Bomb in the acrobat spell-cycle, similar to how Coursing Restraints gave Arrow Bomb a proper use for sharpshooter!

 

wdym, that is a screenshot of the page, my art is just so impeccable that you couldn't tell. but yea i don't think i'm giving you too much credit, i prolly wouldn't have ended up posting this without your help lol. though we didn't do much balancing and decided fairly quickly iirc, the visuals were very important and i do not have the brain capacity to make them myself, so yeah thank you lol

 

This idea looks good but what about area Control? And the same mana cost?

 

who needs balancing it's an endgame thing
it's not like it's gonna be abused or whatever

 

The idea is that it's an optional tradeoff for more damage, so if you have enough mana sustain and feel like you want more single target damage, you can sacrifice Smoke Bomb's aoe and mana gain for more damage. However, I agree with what FlyingNon suggested for having a small AoE effect for the throwing knife so that it isn't purely single target. So you can sacrifice some of Smoke Bomb's utility for more damage, if you want.

 

And what about wall of smoke ability and chocke bomb

 

Yeah, those add to the AoE or utility of smoke bomb. So if you would rather have that, you can take those abilities and not Throwing Knife, and if you would rather have more damage, you could take Throwing Knife. Wall of Smoke and Choke Bomb wouldn’t affect the throwing knife.

 

I would see that working with other of you balances. But there is a problem wall of smoke is not skipable it should effect it on some way. Going of topic you should do a post of all of yours and chris balances changed.

 

That's true. Though considering it isn't skippable I don't think it should do anything at all. If it's unskippable to get throwing knife but also does something for throwing knife, that's kinda redundant and at that point you might as well just add whatever it does to base throwing knife. So I think the ability should stay how it is and not be affected by Wall of Smoke.