These boots are great because together with a nicely rolled Harlequin’s Crest you will hit the 75% cooldown reduction cap on Mobility skills with only 2 items, which is absolutely super and makes for a notable mobility gameplay improvement for those interested.
Their +100% movement on Mobility skill use is also fantastic! It gets you a strong option for movement speed both if you are lacking in this department and if you are well geared.
The imbue I feel is an alright addition, fun think and perhaps useful if you delve into imbue but for me the main draw is the mobility improvement. Which leads me to my critique: Assassin’s stride lack in the one, dare I say, the greatest mobility skill there is in Diablo 4: Evade.
The reason Evade is super is because of the distance traveled. I have Dash, which is a long travel. I have Shadow Step, which is variable short to long but somewhat random for me as I use a controller so caution is adviced using it, which is perfectly acceptable, but when I’m at short medium distance, reaching to touch with melee, Evade is the ultimate tool. Sure you can walk there, but that’s half a second away. You’ll travel there at easy 0.2s with Evade and that matters a big deal for your damage and your safety both.
And that’s the story why I think that Assassin’s Stride is ultimately inferior to standard legendary boots, even when it comes to mobility. Because you’ll feel this if you play around with the mobility, that vanilla Evade is no joke the perfect length. And size does matter, as always. !!
And this is a shame. It ruins an otherwise perfect gameplay style, imo. Rogue can compensate with Daze, every Daze you perform lowers the cooldown on Evade by 0.5s per level. It’s … well, great then, but I still want to complain because I don’t Daze that much. Not that it’s difficult to incorporate it into my build… it’s just that there’s other reasons also: No dodge, no stats relevant. And ultimately I rather go with a longer cooldown on Dash and Shadow step than one on Evade, or like no boost for Evade like extra charges or cdr on attack.
Anyway, having written this and thought about it an extra time… Maybe I will go for the Daze with Twisting Blades as I sure won’t need extra cdr for mobility if I get Assassin’s stride. Besides, the cdr from passing through seems worthless to me as the blades return almost immediately from my specs, at 0.25s return or something i think… umm. yea… so like i dislike cc, i want the damage up front honest and steady.
Have a good day and thank you for attention given to my ponderings regarding this item and the movement concept of Diablo 4. The developers are doing a good job with it and I’d like an honorable mention as I end this writ: LagDash. Like when u dash into something, sometimes and in long series (sometimes it always fail and the dash is immediate and its given distance, but sometimes the dash becomes about half to 75% length and it decelarates and it keeps doing that as I Dash around…), you decelerate and float in the direction you dashed, and to me this is a quite pleasant move which should be explored as it lets me float into a pack and attack them with my regular attacks as i do so.
Edit: I really enjoy the thinking back and fourth on the spec and I feel there’s a lot of tweaking to do and considerations to make, it’s fun. And it works, I can tune the gameplay myself and I don’t need the absolute finest of things to do it and still get far. But it’s just that, I feel I am never going anywhere but the next seasonal area or masterworking, if I have found something, by dungeoneering into failed rolls into more dungeons until I succeed, then it is time for the seasonal areas. I could super mix it to steel grind at helltides but it’s not as fresh as u’d hope and feel pretty much like a lamer seasonal area. So I could go pit but… i only got a few levels left on the glyph and i’ve come to accept lvl 275 to be a fair and good end of season. Almost 276 but I’m not getting much further without committing… so, like what i want to do is go and kill some stuff with others maybe. and i do but… the story has no up or down but the items. there’s no tough times in seasonal areas. not really in pit either, you’re too high then. so… what is this game about?
wherever i go, there i am.
i want to fight the monsters but it seems they’re just dummies to be blown up. if i ever need to hold my ground or retreat, i’m too high level and should scale down. Eventually I’ve found most gameplays I’m interested in and then what? I’ve tuned in, got the defense and the offense and the mobility… i’ve arranged it nicely… so now what do i do? i get more stuff, trim… but i’m beating everything so… and if i’m not doing that i’m playing it wrong. …
i really feel that a much more varied level on the monsters would be preferable. at least for me, cause i wouldn’t mind running if the monsters were too high… or like i wouldn’t mind playing against some monsters sometime. like they’d fight back, come chase me with their own mobility skills. try and cc me. circle around and pepper me with arrows and traps. idk… but i guess ppl r not here to fight, only to blow up mobs and loot to blow them up faster to loot faster to blow them up faster to loot faster to blow them up faster to loot faster… it’s like a nice gameplay loop alright, if there’s a gameplay… and there is, but the counterplay is not there, we’re only fighting dummies that will lumber slowly towards us. Until we’re not, like Lilith, who’s like fighting a check box: 1. dps, 2. mobility, 3. skill. or whatever… but if u fail any of the checks u fail lilith too. it’s not like u can tank beat her. and the ‘skill’ consist of certain movements in her phases, it has little to do with when and how you attack her or how she attacks you. She doesn’t attack you, in my opinion; she’s an environmental disaster, the environment changes and that makes her deadly. But she’s just as much a dummy as everything else. Like really, u feeling u fighting her or those damn globes whirling about? doesn’t really have the 1v1 feel, does it. it’s not like u attacking but she parries u know… and deflects u, sends u flying and into a wall. as u r reeling, she pounces and unleashes a wave of lethal steel thorns, but u dodge smartly and counters with a stunning blow knocking her to the floor… it’s not like that at all, is it. it’s more like it’s a representation of that, u could possibly imagine it. and it’s the same with the mobs. we’re not fighting them, we’re smashing them. if they ever smash back, we kinda just die cos we didn’t have the defense needed and we couldn’t kill them before they killed us, but there’s no real inbetween where we struggle and it’s … dynamic, some kind of tug of war.
i feel the game’s soulless like that. it’s all very finely crafted but there’s no play behind because the mobs aren’t dangerous and interesting enough.
but yea, i like the speccing. i think it’s cool anyway, and getting cooler. i feel they’re onto some stuff actually… but i still don’t know where to go. guess i’ll just threadmill it some more then. but i think this game could be more than that. or that it should be.