Agreed. The shadow dance/bleed combo does major damage like fb/brim. They also both work will with attack (multiple hits over time means more crit hits over time) and damage. SD/bleed might do more damage but both combos can be survived with full armor (i'm guessing this is why Cinco added the extra armor....to offset the extra damage from bless 5...which if left without the extra forge armor and damage in the game would have set a balance between the top and bottom arms of the skill tree. I've waited six years for this power and STS killed it with the forge. It was a fun three days while it lasted smh).

What makes the sd/bleed combo nearly useless is that it hits far less frequently than fb/brim. This has increased SLIGHTLY since the last set of updates but so has the frequency of an fb/brim combo hitting (ie. you'd be dead so many times over before the sd/brim combo hits when faced with an opponent with the fb/brim combo). A second reason why the sd/brim combo falls short as a counter measure to fb/brim is that it's range is severely limited. Brim on it's own is very sensitive to lag but has a range of 12m. Sd may have a range of 12m but unholy force (uhf) has the tiny range of 3m. If you are lucky enough to shadow dance over to an opponent you still have to try and land charged uhf. This short range is shorter than a melee weapon strike and the slightest bit of lag will put you out of range. God forbid you try and use this in ctf or a real dm game. You'll never make it to an opponent before you get hit with brim or held back by their teammates fatal burst. Thus fb/brim dominates because it's less disturbed by "false range" due to lag and the frequency at which it normally hits making shadow dance an impractical counter measure for that arm of the skill tree. We've all tested sd/bleed and have been allured and enticed by the damage it does....but there is a reason why everyone respecs BACK to fb/brim.


So I agree with your assessment of how attack works with both of these combos but it becomes clear that one kills at a higher frequency than the other rendering the sd/bleed combo a weak if nearly impractical countermeasure to fb/brim. I've mentioned before in other posts ways to decrease this asymmetry between the two conbos. In this post i'm more concerned with how attacks work with non-combo attacks. Brim and bleed combos hit like a million times while they are doing damage over time increasing the likelihood that many powerful crit hits will occur. If however you use shadow dance, ghost strike, fatal burst, curse, leap, uhf or any other non combo power set you only have 1-3 times that your attack has a chance to make it's presence felt. My suggestion is to make attack more useful for these powers to the point where you could kill someone who misses their brim combo before they kill you with the inevitable second or third brim. This has been possible in the past but is very unlikely to happen now given how the values for attack+damage and defense+armor (for the non combo powers)are set now.

high attack+damage should counter high defense+armor but it doesn't really do that. You die very easily if you use high attack and damage (you inflict waaay less damage than you incur) when confronted with a high defense+armor opponent....forcing most if not all people to high defense + armor builds (check everyones stats while they play). This clearly illustrates the asymmetry between these two opposing forces. If you throw your high damage attacks viciously enough you should be able to kill an opponent of the opposite high defense + armor roughly 50% of the time and vice versa (even if the high attack/damage person dies very quickly). If you have the attack+damage and defense+armor stats diametrically opposed then this could allow for a non brim combo user to get a kill roughly 50% of the time (skill/ability level aside). This does not happen. Even if you consider it balanced....the probability to land a higher power crit attack with non combo powers is very low in comparison to the defense/armor that is CONSTANTLY active. With the fb/brim combo this is no problem...attack works great. But it's another reason why nearly all people use brim combo. Which brings us back to the real asymmetry in the game...the fb/brim combo. Making attack more potent for non combo users or non combo powers is just one potential way to make for balanced game play across the whole skill tree (to see other potential suggestions find my post buried in the suggestions section).

Thanks to everyone who took time to read my lengthy posts