Feedback on Glancing Blow playing as a Bleed Dancer

Rogue
1

Hi there,

I’m currently playing a bleed dancer (self proclaimed); High mobility with high survivability, DoT based (bleed) with heavy burst on demand from the bleed/puncture synergy (instantly burst all your bleed stacks)

I have a 100% up-time for GB the moment I get hit once, and rocking a solid 50% damage reduction while I’m moving around in the arena created by Dancing Strikes (wearing the 5% damage reduction while moving, unique boots), specializing in Smoke Cloud and a synergised Shift with Poison Bomb, I have a almost constant Frailty and Blind effect running on enemies, increasing damage reduction by 18% more.

So in theory, I have 103% damage reduction while fighting.

Here is my suggestion for a Glancing Blow re-work:
Make it a 4 second effect that reduces damages by 30-40% with a downer of 1 second where you get 10% increased damage, only proccing every 8 seconds or so.

This comes as an idea while I’m playing this build, I like my playstyle and build but I feel like this would make it more interesting and something to strategise with more when you incorporate GB as a part of your build.

Something that came to mind as I was playing, great game, looking forward to next patch!!

2

Damage reduction doesn’t work like that, all the sources are multiplicative with each other, so if you have:

  • 25% from 5 points in evasion
  • 20% from Dancing Strikes arena
  • 5% Lessons of the Metropolis
  • 18% from Frailty
  • Blind doesn’t give any direct damage reduction
  • 35% from Glancing Blow

You would have 69.6% damage reduction from hits (plus any from armour).

6 Likes
3

It’s a no for me on the proposed change to GB. Pendulum effect is not fun and also not popular mechanic.

3 Likes
4

Cool thanks for the info!

5

What if it could work like ward? But instead it builds up damage reduction the more damage you take? If you stop taking damage it goes down…

Just sharing some ideas, do you have a suggestion that could add to the system or do you think its fine where it’s at?

I feel like it has room to make it more rewarding and unique, hence why I wanted to share some insights

6

Yeah, that might be interesting, though it’d presumably be less useful against bosses & more useful against trash (when you tend not to need it).

I’m in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” camp I’m afraid.

7

I would say that GB in general is pretty unique compared to many other ARPG, having a %chance based %DR defense layer is pretty cool.
Only thing that does make GB not so unique is, that it’s essentially working very similar to Block in LE, without being able to scale the DR.

I think LE already has more than enough defense layers (~9 depending on what you call a proper defense layer: Health, Ward, Armour, Block, Glancing Blow, Dodge, Endurance, Resistance, Critical Strike Avoidance) and adding more, for the sake of adding more would not be the right move.

Adding some unique defense layer via uniques would be cool.

8

I guess it came from the idea that while I was levelling my rouge, I felt like: why invest into dodge when I can invest into 35% damage reduction that’s more reliable and less rng…

This got me thinking about legendary’s and how they could have they’re own skill trees or branches that could grow the more you use the item, it could ‘nest’ itself into specific stats, changing the way they work. Just thinking outside the box for a second here.

9

Dodge and Glancing Blow, together with Block are all in the same boat: RNG-based defenses.

While dodge is pretty much a bad primariy layer, due to the incoming damage spikes, don’t forget that Dodge is 100% damage mitigation.

Both Block and GB are more reliable, but to get them to the same level of average damage mitigation you need to invest A LOT into them.

Just to give you some numbers:
If you achieve 100% GB, that’s 35% average damage reduction
To get 35% average damage reduction of dodge you need laughable 1200 Dodge Rating on a Level 100 Character. You can achieve that on a blade dancer with a few passives and affixes.

As Blade Dancer you can very easily reach 40-50% dodge without any major investment and then focus on something else, like max hp or endurance for example (or glancing blow on top of dodge, but that still gives you 2 unreliable defenses)

Without Apostacy it’s pratically impossible to get 100% uptime on 100% GB unless you play marksman with Arrowguard.
So while Glancing Blow is definitely more reliable than dodge, it’s still a RNG-based defense.

Also pratically every blade dancer build will get some dodge and some glancing blow, because it’s just very easily accessable in the passive tree.
You could still focus on full HP/Endurance/Resistances as BD and still get 31% GB and 20% Dodge from just the passive tree.

There is already a cool set revolving around converting GB into Block for example.
These are the types of Uniques/Sets that are interesting, to give classes access to a defense layer, that is usually not that well supported.

Legendaries obviously can bring a lot to the table, both offensively and defensively.

All I am saying is, that we don’t need more base defensive stats IMO.

2 Likes
10

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation Heavy

11

Don’t forget damage taken from mana. And less damage taken.

I don’t think that’s correct. If you go dual swords you can get 71% glancing blow from passives which means you then need 6 stacks of Dusk Shroud to hit 100%. 5 points in the Veil of Night passive gives you 30% chance on use of a melee skill to get a stack plus you can get up to an additional 45% with a t5 chest prefix for up to 75%. So as long as you’re attacking more than 2 times per second (and the base attack speed is ~1.49 times per second so that would be something like 33% increased attack speed) you’ll have your 6 stacks up all the time, ignoring any you get from Smoke Bomb.

It will require some investment, certainly, but 1x t5 affix plus the decision to DW swords certainly isn’t practically impossible.

12

Don’t you also take 15% more damage taken cos you have to be dual wielding tho ? that pretty much evens it out Imo.

I’m using this kinda setup on my bleed shurikens+puncture build (no chest mod). Its good but not insanely tanky.

13

You do, but even after that is taken into account you only take 75% of the hit damage compared to not having glancing blow and not dual wielding. You’d also take 115% of the DoT damage compared to not dual wielding.

14

You mean 80% right (100-35+15) ?
Crimson Shrouds counter the DoT part kinda perfectly as long as you have em up.

15

No, they’re both multiplicative (I believe unless @EHG_Mike can correct me).

(1-0.35) * (1+0.15) = 74.75% of the “normal” damage.

16

I wouldn’t call that a baseline defense, but then GB also kinda is not a baseline defense, because both are not accessible to all classes.

Yeah I forgot Weapons of Choice.

This one or arrow guard as marksman makes it possible to have 100% uptime if you keep attacking and move fast enough through the levels.

1 Like
17

The way I see it, something like the Sent is much more stable, less ‘random’, then something like the rogue. Yes, dodge may fail, and phys resist might be shredded, but at the end if the day if you’re happy with your defenses than so be it. I like the rogue as it seems like a “high risk, high reward” type of char, and I like that. It’s also not for everyone, and that’s OK too.

Edit: I was curious, and without the 2 swords for 40% GB buff (as my offhand dagger is too good to pass up at the moment), I’m hitting between 70-80% GB depending on the length of the fight. These figures seem to be consistent over time from what I’ve seen. This is with a 25% base GB (15% from dodge and parry, 10% from cloak of shadows) and running smoke bomb with the veil of night passive. FYI.

1 Like
18

Yes, that’s the class archetypes. The Rogue is supposed to be more of an RNG-based defence class with more tools to actively manage not being turned into a smear on the ground. The Sentinel is supposed to be a more traditionally tanky class with less RNG-based defences (though there’s still block for that), fewer active methods to mitigate/avoid defences (Rebuke & Vengeance being the only ones) and more ways to stay in the fight without needing to disengage to “heal to full & make them pay” (thanks SWTOR devs for that particular gem).

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