Stat Redistribution - Tier 3 PvP Weapons

And so as foretold by Game Director Letter – December 2013 T4 pvp gear is coming and T3 pvp gear is getting an upgrade. Neat eh? Well since this is handled by Senior Designer Matt "already beloved by all" Bennett aka CirithGorgor he simply jumped into the task (instead doing it the usual funcom way) and already posted  Stat Redistribution - Tier 3 PvP Weapons thread on TL. For those of you who don't have access to TL forums (and are milking me for free news) here is the whole post:

CirithGorgor Senior Designer

Stat Redistribution - Tier 3 PvP Weapons So following on from posting new additions to PvE loot on the Testlive forums I want to continue with this same trend when it comes to PvP items too. As mentioned in the recent GD letter we do want to look at the Tier 3 PvP gear, particularly the weapons, and make them more competitive in their primary purpose (PvP). Now bear in mind these are still Tier 3 weapons and so they might not be quite as powerful as T4 Jade Citadel weapons but they should be a lot closer and we do need to leave room for the now announced PvP Tier 4 items to come in (which of course should be more viable in PvP than their PvE equivalents). That said the following posts will contain the screenshots of where we are at the moment, as always all stats are WiP at this point and please try to keep feedback constructive.

Here are the revamped weapons

In this post I will only cover assassin's dagger "Highlord's Dirk".

The differences are:

78,9 dps vs 81,4 dps

48 crit rating vs 50 crit rating

56 crit damage vs 60 crit damage

Old PvP dagger

T4 level of power

T4 level of power

This is rather disappointing as the dagger hardly changed at all except small DPS bump. I do understand that PvP T4 is intended to be a march for T4 PVE gear (BTW it should be BETTER as PvP weapons should be best for PvP) so I am not setting my expectations to Shiv of the Autumn Night's level, but at the same time in it's current shape PvP T3 is still just "pretty good" as opposed to "the weapon of choice for non-raiding pvpers".

Even if pvp T3 weapons can't reach T4 pve weapons in their current shape those are not even viable alternative to T3 crafted weapons and those are the most wide spread and used weapons in pvp

Since Highlord's Dirk has so little of stats diversity it is easy to compare it other non-T4 daggers.

Constitution:

Hightlord's Dirk needs constitution to be a viable alternative to other daggers. This added survivability is especially important considering that assassin is cloth wearing melee fighter with shortest weapon range in game. In other words: from purely melee mechanics perspective assassin is at biggest disadvantage compared to any other class in game. Both Requiem of Pain and Skirmisher Dirk have constitution and to add insult to injury Skirmisher's Dirk, a pvp T1, is still looking as a viable offhand alternative to revamped Highlord. 

Suggestion: add 25 constitution to Highlord's Dirk

Critical rating and Critical Damage rating:

The adjustment of CR and CDR on Highlord is negligible. It needs noticing that assassin class in PvP is pretty much based on CR and CDR as those stats are needed to take advantage of Tenacity. Assassin players are using master assassin perk which bumps up Tenacity up to 105%, but all of that is useless if assassin doesn't crit often enough.

Highlord dirk with its 50 crit rating and 60 crit damage doesn't even scale up to Spine of Dagon and Blade of the Ancient Sands which both are packing 55-56 CR and 65-66 CDR. If anything Highlord must match those since it doesn't have the massive benefit gemming that of Spine of Dagon dagger can take advantage of. If you look at gemmed T3 crafted dagger it surpasses T4 in few things.

Suggestion: bump critical rating to 56 and critical damage rating to 66 on Highlord's Dirk

Weapon Damage

Weapon damage is very important for Face Stab damage - the staple of assassin damage. Putting it at 81,4 DPS only matches Blade of the Ancient sands (also at 81,4) and is far from Spine of Dagon with it's 84.

At very least get it up to 82 so at very least it can beat some pre-T4 PVE daggers. Putting it up to 82 still places is behind anything T4/T3 crafted.

Suggestion: bump weapon damage slightly to 82 dps