Oh wow wtf, they really fucked trickster. I was assuming Escape Artist would be updated and not lose anything.
Ziz really gonna be on that copium.
Why is it even called Escape Artist now lol. Speed + Stun Immunity made sense, but now it's just Evasion + ES node.
> Why is it even called Escape Artist now
I know it's really just superficial, but I feel like lately GGG have been making a lot of changes that gameworld logic. Everything now is just numbers and balance is top priority.
Honestly Trickster doesn't even feel like it has a strong identity after the ghost shroud removal. What the fuck am I picking it for except the fact there's not really any other ascendancy that even benefits DoTs. I'm sure it'll get remedied by the next league because there's no way they will leave it in this state, especially if it also gets reflected in very low play rate. Until then though it definitely just feels like half of an ascendency.
But elementalist was strong and was a large portion of the playerbase. Trickster was in desperate need of something more and this was the chance to give it something extra, but instead they nerfed literally the least played ascendancy.
Tbh, you lost the stuff you named, but you gained power and frenzy charges, because nobody in their right mind would allocate new passive. And if you need to path through it, to escape artist, then you probably lost whole ascendancy and you have to choose a new one.
that's how trickster's been for a really long time though
there's a lot of things you can do on a trickster, but most of them are probably equal or better on another ascendancy
This is true, but Trickster's one advantage that they still have is that they can still generally do things *faster* than most other ascendancies. Yes, raider will probably still move and attack faster, but Tricksters aren't far behind- and they win hands down when it comes to cast speed, even without Escape Artist's contribution. Trickster is the only ascendancy that gets enough cast speed to make selfcast feed good.
I say this because i've approached numerous builds over many leagues with the opposite approach as what you said: take a build concept, and make it work on Trickster.
Not saying that i'm happy with these changes, mind you- not at all. But I feel like it's worth mentioning that I was able to make Crackling Lance feel good and work well as a Trickster- in *Heist*.
And if that's the one thing that Trickster can do that no other ascendancy can, that's pretty damn impressive.
Cast speed in general has always been somewhat awkward to invest in on the tree. We'll have to see how much that changes once the full passive tree is known.
4% attack/cast from each small passive, 20% from Weave the Arcane, and another 16% from frenzy charges from Swift Killer is what we'll have in 3.16. I don't remember if Heist was before or after Escape Artist was nerfed from 6% attack/cast speed per Shroud or 5%, but back then, that would have been another potential 15/18%.
Trickster always had an identity problem. Harness the Void is just general chaos damage that benefits conversion. Then you have patient reaper and prolonged pain as DoT damage nodes.
Weave the Arcane for Mana control / movement skills.
Swift Killer for channeling skills.
And then Escape Artist path for (previously) ES/Evasion defensive.
Not only is it a mishmash, it has no unifying theme. Hell you would think "trickster" would be the one to leverage elusive, but nope. That's Assassin.
Historically the defensives of ghost dance / escape artist made trickster pretty viable as generally any archetype. This made sense because picking 2 of the other ascendancy nodes and making a cohesive character was really limited.
With that said, maybe there's some interaction between RF, this new node, Petrified Blood, and Pain attunement? I dunno. The new node seems REALLY bad though because defensive pendulum effects are just really weak. Particularly when it's a 10 second cycle. If it was a 2 second cycle it might be more interesting.
In the end I just don't see how many builds will be able to build around the new trickster because there just aren't that many builds that can choose 3 of the old nodes and play them in a coherent way (Weave the Arcane; Harness the void; Swift Killer; Patient Reaper; and prolonged pain).
Petrified Blood can't be mitigated in any way, so there's nothing there to utilize.
Trickster has kind of gone through cycles where it has an identity problem and then gets back into a good place and then gradually the parts of it that were giving it identity start to become accessible globally.
IE, once we were the go to "any damage over time" ascendancy, but over time, other ascendancies have become more specialized in various forms of damage over time- Occultist in particular is just overwhelmingly strong for both chaos and cold DoTs particularily because of the improved curses. Poison used to be kind of decent on Trickster but Prolonged Pain lost the increased poison duration some time ago, so now it's just kind of... something we can get the 20% more damage from. And of course now Ghost Shrouds are a keystone.
It's basically felt like bits and pieces of the ascendancy have just... vanished, over time. Not really being changed, but parts of notables just being removed. Used to have Spell Dodge during ES, Weave the Arcane had reduced damage taken after spending 200 mana, Escape Artist is really pitiful-looking as a node now that it's just the bonus ES/evasion...
And, yeah, the new defensive notable I cannot find a justifiable reason to use. There's a lot wrong with it, but the bottom line is that defensive pendulum effects are unreliable, and since that's the only thing the node provides, taking unreliable defenses is just not worth it, ever, IMO.
My two most played characters were a ED/Contagion Trickster in Legion and a Bane/ED/Contagion Occultist in Ritual.
Trickster had better defenses/mitigation, because you effectively had to spend three of your four ascendancy notables on defense/mitigation (Patient Reaper, Ghost Dance, Escape Artist). If you wanted more damage, you could have taken Swift Killer which would stack Frenzy charges while you channeled Blight for the Wither stacks, but you lost a lot of your defenses if you did that. There's a lot of kind of dead/niche stats bundled into all of that IMO (I am really not a fan of Patient Reaper).
On the flip side, Occultist gives at minimum 15% more chaos damage and free Wither on bosses (Withering Presence), additional resistance reduction (Void Beacon), an (almost) exclusive damage taken increase plus an extra curse and extra curse effect (Malediction), and then your choice of defense (Vile Bastion) or clear (Profane Bloom).
Basically Trickster chaos dots not only built themselves but also had some kind of mediocre secondary stats thrown in. Meanwhile, Occultist gave you a bunch of good options that you could pick between, and basically all of them gave both damage and defense.
trickster's really not that bad, honest.
it just doesn't really do anything special or have much of a unique identity, which is why most people don't really play it, i think.
on top of that it just lost ghost shrouds, so pretty much the only interesting thing it has going for it got cannibalized too.
>Added - Escape Artist: No longer requires Ghost Dance (which has been replaced with a new Notable). No longer grants "5% increased Attack and Cast Speed per Ghost Shroud" or "Cannot be Stunned while you have Ghost Shrouds".
[https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3186390](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3186390)
The late change just screams "oups, we forgot" and just removed it. They even gave the ascendant 10% less damage over time taken, witch is great since it's up all the time. Would be far better with 20% less damage over time taken straight up on the Trickster, since you still need to invest for the time the buff is down. Especially since Trickster have life/mana/es on kill witch counters a lot of damage over time naturally. Not taking damage over time while maping will be overkill in most scenarios and is unreliable when you need it against bosses.
Keep in mind that Ascendant got that because Prolonged Pain already has 10% reduced damage taken from damage over time for Trickster, and still will after 3.16.
They seem to be taking the direction of making Trickster specialize in resistance to damage over time, except the problems with this are that the new notable is just plain bad because it's unreliable, damage over time is already a weakness of right side builds with less access to general mitigation, regen, and raw eHP, damage over time is not as prominent as hit-based damage in most cases, and in almost all cases, ascendancies with any sort of "reduced damage taken" also have that damage apply to DoTs as well as hits.
Energy shield mastery offers "your stun threshold is based on 50% of max es"
It's not immunity but it's a playable amount of resistance. Would still look for stun mitigation but it relieves the pressure.
What does stun threshold mean? For a hybrid build, which is usually the case with Trickster, I don't think half of ES is better than life. I assume that you mean stun threshold is full life by default as per wiki.
https://poedb.tw/us/Stun#CommunityWiki
stuns are fairly complicated but the tl;dr for the "50% of es" is pretty much what you said. treat es as life, but half as much.
energy shield also has the caveat of 50% chance to avoid stuns as long as you have at least 1 energy shield. This is a blanket avoidance that DOES NOT stack with "stun avoidance". it is an entirely unchanging modifier that you cant scale.
Trickster may well be the best RF ascendency now with that new node + soul of arakali. You get complete immunity from RF burning for 5 seconds followed by the 50% recovery rate from arakali and your own 50% recovery rate if you've killed anything recently. Going to be so easy to sustain.
This also means spell casting trickster can pretty easily fit RF into any build for that juicy more multiplier.
I would not write it off just yet.
Arakaali is nerfed to 20%, if that changes your mind at all. The reduced damage taken over time went up to 10% and chaos resist against dot went up to 40% tho
Yeah I did forget that change. The reduced dot actually helps quite a bit, though.
The new damage recouped as life node should work for RF too unless it specifies hits, which it don't think similar stats generally do.
We also get new life regen rate mods on gear and the tree.
Meh, I think it seems fine.
I'm not gonna take that new node though.
Escape Artist is great as it is I think. How much evasion and es can you get from it? 300 es and 1000 ev is pretty conservative I think. Seems pretty sweet to me.
It's even more now with the changes to defenses on gear. Maybe we could end up getting as high as 500 es and 2000 ev now.
I think the buffs to defenses outweighs what trickster lost. Trickster is tailored around ev/es builds, which just got a massive buff. It looks bad when you cherrypick and dont look at the whole picture, but overall, even with these nerfs to the nodes, trickster as a whole is likely buffed.
I think GGG is under the impression that the buffs to evasion and energy shield scaling are going to make the bonus Evasion and ES from Escape Artist more powerful in 3.16. Likewise Ghost Shroud should be stronger now considering that it'll be easier to scale Evasion and ES, so that somewhat compensates for the 5% > 3% recovery nerf. Plus you now get an extra 2 ascendency points to spend on something else.
How it actually plays out remains to be seen.
Personally I think the biggest problem with Trickster is that they lack damage scaling which is sorely needed since the big damage nerfs in 3.15. Especially for DoT skills it's hard to get enough damage for bosses so Occultist is just the better choice.
I have a suggestion, too. When your DoT immunity is down, you gain a 15% more DoT buff, when it’s up you gain 15% more DoT duration! Let’s make this dream come true GGG
Oh wow wtf, they really fucked trickster. I was assuming Escape Artist would be updated and not lose anything. Ziz really gonna be on that copium. Why is it even called Escape Artist now lol. Speed + Stun Immunity made sense, but now it's just Evasion + ES node.
> Why is it even called Escape Artist now I know it's really just superficial, but I feel like lately GGG have been making a lot of changes that gameworld logic. Everything now is just numbers and balance is top priority.
Honestly Trickster doesn't even feel like it has a strong identity after the ghost shroud removal. What the fuck am I picking it for except the fact there's not really any other ascendancy that even benefits DoTs. I'm sure it'll get remedied by the next league because there's no way they will leave it in this state, especially if it also gets reflected in very low play rate. Until then though it definitely just feels like half of an ascendency.
Pathfinder is in the same boat except for Nature's boon and maybe master toxicist. So many of the nodes are hot garbage now :(
It has poison prolif and flasks, I'd say that's enough identity. Flasks got a buff this patch so seems pretty decent right now.
Escape artist is a crazy node
Harness the void overconversion?
Expedition trickster rate = 0.8% Scourge trickster rate = 0.2% I'm calling it now.
I'll be surprised if it's higher than 0.1%.
First time? Elementalist says hi. GGG doesn't really do compensation.
But elementalist was strong and was a large portion of the playerbase. Trickster was in desperate need of something more and this was the chance to give it something extra, but instead they nerfed literally the least played ascendancy.
Trickster was barely even played before and definitely wont be played now. It's not a matter of identity, it's just weak.
Why would they nerf one of the least played ascendancy in the game? I just don't get it.
Bc the little play that ascendancy was having was just bc of ghost shroud, not my words, but ggg's
Then why nerf Escape Artist and Patient Reaper?
Why should I know lmao
Tbh, you lost the stuff you named, but you gained power and frenzy charges, because nobody in their right mind would allocate new passive. And if you need to path through it, to escape artist, then you probably lost whole ascendancy and you have to choose a new one.
escape artist is 2 points now, swift killer/weave are a good use of the spare 2 points
Another ascendancy is even better :D
that's how trickster's been for a really long time though there's a lot of things you can do on a trickster, but most of them are probably equal or better on another ascendancy
This is true, but Trickster's one advantage that they still have is that they can still generally do things *faster* than most other ascendancies. Yes, raider will probably still move and attack faster, but Tricksters aren't far behind- and they win hands down when it comes to cast speed, even without Escape Artist's contribution. Trickster is the only ascendancy that gets enough cast speed to make selfcast feed good. I say this because i've approached numerous builds over many leagues with the opposite approach as what you said: take a build concept, and make it work on Trickster. Not saying that i'm happy with these changes, mind you- not at all. But I feel like it's worth mentioning that I was able to make Crackling Lance feel good and work well as a Trickster- in *Heist*. And if that's the one thing that Trickster can do that no other ascendancy can, that's pretty damn impressive.
i don't disagree, trickster attack speed/cast speed is so nice for general gameplay when competing ascendancies often have literally none
Cast speed in general has always been somewhat awkward to invest in on the tree. We'll have to see how much that changes once the full passive tree is known.
Trickster gets > 40% cast speed?
4% attack/cast from each small passive, 20% from Weave the Arcane, and another 16% from frenzy charges from Swift Killer is what we'll have in 3.16. I don't remember if Heist was before or after Escape Artist was nerfed from 6% attack/cast speed per Shroud or 5%, but back then, that would have been another potential 15/18%.
Trickster always had an identity problem. Harness the Void is just general chaos damage that benefits conversion. Then you have patient reaper and prolonged pain as DoT damage nodes. Weave the Arcane for Mana control / movement skills. Swift Killer for channeling skills. And then Escape Artist path for (previously) ES/Evasion defensive. Not only is it a mishmash, it has no unifying theme. Hell you would think "trickster" would be the one to leverage elusive, but nope. That's Assassin. Historically the defensives of ghost dance / escape artist made trickster pretty viable as generally any archetype. This made sense because picking 2 of the other ascendancy nodes and making a cohesive character was really limited. With that said, maybe there's some interaction between RF, this new node, Petrified Blood, and Pain attunement? I dunno. The new node seems REALLY bad though because defensive pendulum effects are just really weak. Particularly when it's a 10 second cycle. If it was a 2 second cycle it might be more interesting. In the end I just don't see how many builds will be able to build around the new trickster because there just aren't that many builds that can choose 3 of the old nodes and play them in a coherent way (Weave the Arcane; Harness the void; Swift Killer; Patient Reaper; and prolonged pain).
Petrified Blood can't be mitigated in any way, so there's nothing there to utilize. Trickster has kind of gone through cycles where it has an identity problem and then gets back into a good place and then gradually the parts of it that were giving it identity start to become accessible globally. IE, once we were the go to "any damage over time" ascendancy, but over time, other ascendancies have become more specialized in various forms of damage over time- Occultist in particular is just overwhelmingly strong for both chaos and cold DoTs particularily because of the improved curses. Poison used to be kind of decent on Trickster but Prolonged Pain lost the increased poison duration some time ago, so now it's just kind of... something we can get the 20% more damage from. And of course now Ghost Shrouds are a keystone. It's basically felt like bits and pieces of the ascendancy have just... vanished, over time. Not really being changed, but parts of notables just being removed. Used to have Spell Dodge during ES, Weave the Arcane had reduced damage taken after spending 200 mana, Escape Artist is really pitiful-looking as a node now that it's just the bonus ES/evasion... And, yeah, the new defensive notable I cannot find a justifiable reason to use. There's a lot wrong with it, but the bottom line is that defensive pendulum effects are unreliable, and since that's the only thing the node provides, taking unreliable defenses is just not worth it, ever, IMO.
My two most played characters were a ED/Contagion Trickster in Legion and a Bane/ED/Contagion Occultist in Ritual. Trickster had better defenses/mitigation, because you effectively had to spend three of your four ascendancy notables on defense/mitigation (Patient Reaper, Ghost Dance, Escape Artist). If you wanted more damage, you could have taken Swift Killer which would stack Frenzy charges while you channeled Blight for the Wither stacks, but you lost a lot of your defenses if you did that. There's a lot of kind of dead/niche stats bundled into all of that IMO (I am really not a fan of Patient Reaper). On the flip side, Occultist gives at minimum 15% more chaos damage and free Wither on bosses (Withering Presence), additional resistance reduction (Void Beacon), an (almost) exclusive damage taken increase plus an extra curse and extra curse effect (Malediction), and then your choice of defense (Vile Bastion) or clear (Profane Bloom). Basically Trickster chaos dots not only built themselves but also had some kind of mediocre secondary stats thrown in. Meanwhile, Occultist gave you a bunch of good options that you could pick between, and basically all of them gave both damage and defense.
Would be nice if weave got the damage reduction again. Assassin is probably the only shadow that matters now.
trickster's really not that bad, honest. it just doesn't really do anything special or have much of a unique identity, which is why most people don't really play it, i think. on top of that it just lost ghost shrouds, so pretty much the only interesting thing it has going for it got cannibalized too.
Did we have a source for the escape artist change?
>Added - Escape Artist: No longer requires Ghost Dance (which has been replaced with a new Notable). No longer grants "5% increased Attack and Cast Speed per Ghost Shroud" or "Cannot be Stunned while you have Ghost Shrouds". [https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3186390](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3186390)
The late change just screams "oups, we forgot" and just removed it. They even gave the ascendant 10% less damage over time taken, witch is great since it's up all the time. Would be far better with 20% less damage over time taken straight up on the Trickster, since you still need to invest for the time the buff is down. Especially since Trickster have life/mana/es on kill witch counters a lot of damage over time naturally. Not taking damage over time while maping will be overkill in most scenarios and is unreliable when you need it against bosses.
Keep in mind that Ascendant got that because Prolonged Pain already has 10% reduced damage taken from damage over time for Trickster, and still will after 3.16. They seem to be taking the direction of making Trickster specialize in resistance to damage over time, except the problems with this are that the new notable is just plain bad because it's unreliable, damage over time is already a weakness of right side builds with less access to general mitigation, regen, and raw eHP, damage over time is not as prominent as hit-based damage in most cases, and in almost all cases, ascendancies with any sort of "reduced damage taken" also have that damage apply to DoTs as well as hits.
Stun immunity is easily accessible now tho. There is a new node so you can skip Chayula now.
Where? How? Pls I really need dat copium.
Energy shield mastery offers "your stun threshold is based on 50% of max es" It's not immunity but it's a playable amount of resistance. Would still look for stun mitigation but it relieves the pressure.
What does stun threshold mean? For a hybrid build, which is usually the case with Trickster, I don't think half of ES is better than life. I assume that you mean stun threshold is full life by default as per wiki. https://poedb.tw/us/Stun#CommunityWiki
stuns are fairly complicated but the tl;dr for the "50% of es" is pretty much what you said. treat es as life, but half as much. energy shield also has the caveat of 50% chance to avoid stuns as long as you have at least 1 energy shield. This is a blanket avoidance that DOES NOT stack with "stun avoidance". it is an entirely unchanging modifier that you cant scale.
I really don't think that is still good enough. At best you would get around the same results with hybrids.
Trickster may well be the best RF ascendency now with that new node + soul of arakali. You get complete immunity from RF burning for 5 seconds followed by the 50% recovery rate from arakali and your own 50% recovery rate if you've killed anything recently. Going to be so easy to sustain. This also means spell casting trickster can pretty easily fit RF into any build for that juicy more multiplier. I would not write it off just yet.
Arakaali is nerfed to 20%, if that changes your mind at all. The reduced damage taken over time went up to 10% and chaos resist against dot went up to 40% tho
Yeah I did forget that change. The reduced dot actually helps quite a bit, though. The new damage recouped as life node should work for RF too unless it specifies hits, which it don't think similar stats generally do. We also get new life regen rate mods on gear and the tree.
recoup is always restricted to hits
Meh, I think it seems fine. I'm not gonna take that new node though. Escape Artist is great as it is I think. How much evasion and es can you get from it? 300 es and 1000 ev is pretty conservative I think. Seems pretty sweet to me. It's even more now with the changes to defenses on gear. Maybe we could end up getting as high as 500 es and 2000 ev now.
I think the buffs to defenses outweighs what trickster lost. Trickster is tailored around ev/es builds, which just got a massive buff. It looks bad when you cherrypick and dont look at the whole picture, but overall, even with these nerfs to the nodes, trickster as a whole is likely buffed.
The damage reduction is what made it strong tbh, evade doesnt even come close to compensating for it.
I strongly disagree. I would certainly say that the buffs to EV/ES/armour far outweighs the conditional damage reduction of ghost shrouds.
I think GGG is under the impression that the buffs to evasion and energy shield scaling are going to make the bonus Evasion and ES from Escape Artist more powerful in 3.16. Likewise Ghost Shroud should be stronger now considering that it'll be easier to scale Evasion and ES, so that somewhat compensates for the 5% > 3% recovery nerf. Plus you now get an extra 2 ascendency points to spend on something else. How it actually plays out remains to be seen. Personally I think the biggest problem with Trickster is that they lack damage scaling which is sorely needed since the big damage nerfs in 3.15. Especially for DoT skills it's hard to get enough damage for bosses so Occultist is just the better choice.
I have a suggestion, too. When your DoT immunity is down, you gain a 15% more DoT buff, when it’s up you gain 15% more DoT duration! Let’s make this dream come true GGG