Cloak of Bloody Surprises was nerfed?

#1

In Patch X.26.0.0, most of the Lost Halls items received a change. Almost all of the changes were straight buffs to the items, except for the white bag that is dropped from the Lost Sentry: the Cloak of Bloody Surprises.

Here is the change that DECA made to the cloak:

Cloak of Bloody Surprises

  • Effect on Self for 3.5 seconds: Damaging -> +25 ATT

This is the tooltip when hovering over the cloak:

image

For those unfamiliar with the item, the cloak gives the player a damage boost with the downside of having Slowed image. This means that the cloak is impractical to use when you need the mobility to dodge shots, but can pack a punch in situations where this can be ignored.

I was lucky enough to get one as a drop from farming Lost Sentries about 8 months ago. In my experiences with the cloak, I found that the Slowed image status effect prevented me from using it against most enemies in an effective way. The 3.5 second buff duration doesn’t feel much of a boost either as I felt that it didn’t last long enough to make a significant impact. Keep in mind that this was back when the cloak gave a Damaging image buff and not +25 Attack.

Now that they’ve changed the buff, this is what the DPS (damage per second) looks like:

image
image.png920x690 103 KB

The red line is the DPS when the cloak gave the Damaging image buff.
The cyan line is the DPS with the current +25 Attack buff.
The black line is the DPS without any buffs. This is to show the difference in DPS that the cloak gives.

Here is the DPS of the setups on enemies with 0 DEF:

image

From the data, we can see that the Damaging image buff provided 975.47 more DPS (compared to having no buffs) while the +25 Attack buff provided 602.12 more DPS. This means that the update to the cloak made it lose 373.35 DPS.

So yes, this means the change did technically nerf the cloak.

One remark I hear people say is something along the lines of the following:

"Because the cloak provides an Attack buff now, you can combine this cloak with the buff from a Paladin to receive both +25 Attack and a Damaging image buff!"

This is true, and the DPS chart shows that you can gain a huge increase in your damage:

image
image.png930x686 111 KB

The green line represents the DPS of both the +25 Attack buff and Damaging image buff.

The thing to note here is that as a Rogue, to get the best benefits out of the cloak, you need to be next to other players. This contradicts the Rogue’s playstyle as it renders the invisibility on the cloak useless due to other players being nearby.
Another point I’d like to make is that while you do gain a good amount of DPS, you are Slowed image for a solid 3 seconds. This means if any nearby players drag enemies towards you, your chances of running away are nil with the debuff.

What can be done?

This is just a quick idea so it’s prone to having drawbacks, but I propose that the Slowed image duration be lowered slightly and the +25 Attack buff last slightly longer as well. This is to compensate for the loss in DPS that it used to have with the old buff.

Remember that this is an event white and as such, I feel like it needs to be in a better spot to match its rarity…although the same could be said about many of the other event whites.

Thoughts and comments appreciated.

Reviewing the Decaract's unique drops
Discussing event bosses and their items (AKA event whites)
#2

As someone who does not actually own this item my opinion might not be as valid as others but from what i have seen this item did not need to be nerfed. It was already a situational item but now it just does not look like it would be that useful even in the situations it would be good in. An item that is this rare should definitely be stronger.

#3

Solo wise, it’s nerfed. But the whole reason behind the change is that you can add the pally buff now making it even more insane dps. Before, the damaging buff from pally would be canceled out by the cloak if you used it.

I know rogue is suppose to be solo play style but giving it damaging would make it completely unrely on other characters. So all in all smart move by DECA.

#4

Solo wise, it’s nerfed. But the whole reason behind the change is that you can add the pally buff now making it even more insane dps. Before, the damaging buff from pally would be canceled out by the cloak if you used it.

If you use a Mystic’s orb to berserk and a Warrior is nearby, they both cancel out.

In the situations where you can use a Paladin’s buff and the +25 Attack buff, you’d generally want the mobility to move around and dodge shots. If you’re Slowed image, that isn’t going to happen.

I know rogue is suppose to be solo play style but giving it damaging would make it completely unrely on other characters. So all in all smart move by DECA.

You don’t need to rely on other characters to play Paladin since you can simply self-sustain with the seal, and the same goes for the Necromancer.

Even though you do get a lot of DPS for stacking the buffs, you actually have less than 3.5 seconds to be able to deal the damage. Due to the Slowed image debuff, not only is running away from enemies difficult, running towards enemies is also difficult. By the time you reach whatever you’re killing, you will waste time from the debuff which in turn takes away from the already-short buff duration.

This is why I don’t feel like it’s strong.

#5

slow should be changed to -25 spd instead so that you are still slightly slowed, but it can be combated with speed sprout

#6

an easy fix would be to buff it to 40 ATK, crazy high and immune to damaging while it is in effect

#7

they gave a solo class an ability that made it useless without other people.

#8

As an UT, it is a situational item. A large portion of the game is spent in groups with other plays in which the rouge’s ability is literally worthless. This change provides an item that can be used instead not be quite so useless.
Also as an UT, it is an item that can completely change the play style of the class. So going against what it has done previously isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

#9

and it’s a fairly rare ut dropping from a fairly hard boss which does fairly high damage. It’s a ut because it’s different than just more stats and more invis. so you can make a rare item like that drop and still be used as a solo item just like planewalker.

#10

thats the thing though, rouge is already covered in that department. Anything more would just be dead content, or make other content obsolete. Why have it do more of the same when it can (partially) fill a complete content void?

#11

Considering that 25att gives you less dps than damaging and how much less your own dps matters when you got other classes like a paladin around, its definetly a nerf.

#12

Yes, its not like they’re brainless people. Besides, it use to be a rare drop and now it isnt. Ive seen some people get 8 before. You cant have everyone running around with such a powerful item.

They should lower the slow affect slightly though

#13

I don’t like the nerf much, rogue is the solo class of Realm, I don’t get why they would try to change that. But whatever, I’ve still yet to get one

#14

rouge means red in french to proper name of the class is rogue.

how exactly does it make it dead content lol? the class is useless in a group so the cloak is useless and that’s the end of it.

#15

Even though it’s a “farmable” event white, it’s still an event white, which means the rarity of the item should somewhat match its uses. This is an issue with not just the cloak but other event whites like the Orb of Conflict.

#16

I can agree with this 100%.
Conflict needs a buff.

However, in large groups where this cloak now shines, some people might have puri(s). This would leave rogue as a semi ranged damage dealer, out damaging ninja and approaching the sword classes in dps

#17

for what it’s worth (unless I simply know nothing about this game), couldn’t you abuse this in a group with a puri priest? yeah, it’s awfully specific, but use this cloak -> get purified -> 75 atk with no slow for what remains of that 3.5 seconds atk boost.

Yes, I get that the damaging gave you 1/3 more dps, (0 atk = 50% of base damage, each point of atk is +2% so an atk stat of 50 is actually 75 - that +25 temporary atk is only 2/3s as effective as the damaging buff at 50 atk, give or take some depending upon atk bonuses from gear) but I feel like they (overall) nerfed the cloak from being too good for an event that is much more forgiving and less time-consuming than its 1.0 cousin. Might they have over-compensated for the cloaks sudden new rarity? sure, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to forgo the damaging buff entirely because they thought it might be too powerful and useless in a group, (?) even though the item itself is situational and is supposed to be used to solo.

If the rather remote combo I mentioned above of puri + bloody surprises is what they hoped players would figure out, I don’t think people would be co-operative enough to make this worthwhile, let alone a puri priest common enough to do this. However, I feel like they could easily increase the damaging to 4 seconds, decrease the slow to 2.5 seconds, and call it a day.

#18

The specific scenario you described makes sense from a cooperative standpoint, but granted:

  1. That requires coordination.

  2. Most players don’t really have that coordination.

  3. Even if they had that coordination, you need to account for server lag and a human’s reaction time to seeing a rogue getting slowed from the cloak and thinking “Ok, let me purify his slow!”. That all together takes a lot of time away from the 3.5 second attack boost.

  4. Priests have a lot of items to switch between (the well prepared ones) and will likely have to switch from a different tome to the Tome of Purification to cleanse the slow, which adds even more time to the third point.

Also, a big point I forgot to mention in the main post:

The rogue’s increase in DPS in a group situation doesn’t mean much when you look at the overall group DPS. In a solo or small group, that DPS difference is a lot more noticeable than in a large group.

I used the cloak in more solo situations, so the change to the effects were definitely noticeable to me.

Helmet of Brutality
#19

I Have one myself, and when doing bosses/events with other people, its absolutely broken. Its also pretty good solo, but the +25att with a pally buff can let me hit for 700 with an etherite. So I would say that it was a buff.

#20

that bump