Nerfing Rapid Strike

[The_Lone_Badger]

The Rapid Strike technique, as found on a number of weapons and some martial arts styles, halves the time cost of an attack. That’s… really strong. Effectively doubles your DPS and it triggers every attack.

This also leads to odd situations where you don’t want other techniques available, because then they can trigger instead of Rapid Strike. Karate for example, when you get your skill up you gain Precise Strike which triggers on crits meaning you’ve gone from effectively-double-damage to no-bonus-damage on many attacks. Or when you upgrade your katana to a diamond katana - again Precise Strike is added, meaning your attack rate slows right down.

I think Rapid Strike is currently far too good, and should be nerfed down to where it’s comparable to other techniques. Rather than halving the time cost of an attack, how about reducing it by 25%? Or only trigger sometimes?

[Khrysanth]

To me, rapid strike should be something more like a boxer’s jab - High speed, which probes for weaknesses or sets up weaknesses in the opponent’s defenses. It wouldn’t do much damage, but might increase the crit chance of the next attack.

Hrm. Something like doing the same damage over a given period of time as normal attacks (thus, half damage but double speed), but giving a cumulative +x% crit chance to attacks (to a point, so there’s never a guaranteed crit).

[Nappist]

Your strength has to be pretty high for it to be better then stunning your opponent. Particularly against some enemies.

[KA101]

Counteroffer: audit weapons/styles and reduce the availability of Rapid Strike, including moving it later in MA styles? Realistically, yeah, stuff that speeds strikes by 50% isn’t that common.

Regenerating critters, in particular, tend to outperform rapid-strikers.

[Izicata]

I think Rapid Strike is currently far too good, and should be nerfed down to where it’s comparable to other techniques. Rather than halving the time cost of an attack, how about reducing it by 25%? Or only trigger sometimes?

I like that idea. Reducing the attack time by 25% would be a 33% DPS increase, which is still very good.

Regenerating critters, in particular, tend to outperform rapid-strikers.

There’s one regenerating creature in the game, and it’s really rare.

[vache]

It would probably make more sense to look at the way it is triggered, institute a hard cap on how often it triggers at a certain skill level (say 50% chance to trigger at melee 10 and dex 8), and then scale the chance using that maximum. Then, go back and look at things like martial arts giving a boost to chance to trigger.

[Izicata]

PR is up: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/7874

Feel free to discuss.