FalsePromises.6398

I was wanting to expand on Blood Magic with extra siphon buff effects, but I kinda lean against it because it would encounter the same issues as Ashes of the Just, or I'm pretty sure there was another issue where unique debuffs against world bosses would start to break... am I thinking OG Deathly Chill? It just seems like in the history of the game, unique damage-oriented buffs applied to allies or on enemies never seem to end well and tend to clash in large scale content. I want to cater to the emaciated power necro infrastructure as much as the next guy (probably more) but I just don't know if siphons are the way to go about it. I could definitely see Blood Bond reworked to add extra procs on dagger auto chain third strikes though. It would still work as-is given dagger would have access to Lesser Marks of Blood for enough bleeding stacks to trigger the trait, but it would be interesting to see that third dagger strike maybe apply four stacks (that the strike itself won't consume) so allies can get a little sip of your siphons, or so you really want to encourage ally-aid when fighting. I still want to build around teamplay with dagger and Blood Magic. Maybe an enhancement to Signet of Vamprism itself into something more useful to enhance damage and siphons would work better? Like, turning the passive into 100-200% increase in siphon damage when running that signet? Would do good to bolster a support scourge's arsenal, so they could pick Well of Blood when they need revives, Sand Flare when they need high on-demand barrier, and Signet of Vampirism for slight damage enhancement. Could also aid the damage of those jank siphoning offhand skills like Locust Swarm and Soul Grasp.

I'm definitely wanting to enhance alacrity dps scourge, I replied to someone else up there with some thoughts on adding more bleeding damage to Blood Magic to reinforce that style. I partially wanted to build on bleeding in Blood Magic to make Curses line (which has a good amount of passive bleeding) a little more valuable too, and let Blood Magic have a little more thematic resonance with other lines.

The goal of the extra bleeding on dagger isn't to enhance dagger as a condition damage weapon but rather as a support weapon. The intent is self-bleeding triggering Marks of Blood on you, with Marks of Blood serving to heal allies in their radius with the Blood for Blood trait and (with Banshee's Wail changes) grant ramping might as well. The angle is for an aggressive, compounding, close range boon support that doesn't focus on blood as a means of damage but rather as a means of triggering other effects. As for wanting boon application in blood magic, I proposed might on regeneration applications in Banshee's Wail not just to cater to dedicated supports but also power dps supports for competitive in this design, specifically that aggressive style with dagger/warhorn where they lock down a target with Dark Pact and then go in for some pain with Life Siphon and Locust Swarm. Granting this combo area might application feeds into allies taking advantage of the opportunity as well, which may play heavily into harbinger given their brutal crowd control and area buffs. Hard to say what this might spell for reaper, since they tend to benefit from longer duration might and don't have as much leeway weapon, build, or utility wise. I must say though, I don't see this creating something like a zealot build. It's something you kinda have to lean fully into in either direction, either power or healing and boon duration. In my experience, a healer necro without vitality tends to get swamped when they sacrifice counter-pressure... unless you're talking WvW which is out of my areas of experience.

I wanted to do something with self bleed because dagger (that self bleeds) and Blood is Power (which also self bleeds) seem to always wind up in a healscourge setup, and you don't need to run any curses or corruption traits to get those. While those conditions can be used to transfer extra damage when you're a condition build, they seem vestigial and awkward if you're a support... so I wanted to add some support streamlining to them. Ultimately, most support scourges or blood scourges are running lots of vitality and have lots of cleanses by default, so self-bleeding shouldn't be an issue, especially since it doesn't scale to deal any real damage to you either. Most importantly, the plentiful sources of regen aim to make you not rely on any particular source, so you won't need to stack corruption skills nor take corruption traits when alacrity (via Sand Savant, as proposed) is your aim. I made sure to add alacrity on entering shroud on that skill too to diversify the sources of alacrity, and allow styles that didn't lean super heavily into regeneration application. Multiple avenues for a boon role is good.

Here to add one last remark that I've just noticed holistically as of late: boon traits are starting to become cumbersome instead of rewarding or synergetic. There seems to be more concern with tradeoff than payoff: these new utility boon trait options are starting to cut away from existing, built-up styles instead of building on established elite specialization identities to feel more rewarding and organic. For example: mechanist's alacrity on barrier builds up from a multitude of organic barrier sources that rewards the player for leaning into the specialization's offerings. Conversely, tempest's alacrity on overload subtracts from options that add flavor, potency, or quality of life to your style (Elemental Bastion or Transcendent Tempest) and result in sacrificing attractive, flavorful options to obtain. Another positive example, scrapper's quickness on superspeed builds on your unique offerings (being superspeed and gyro utility) without detracting any flavor or identity for picking the trait. Another anti-example, scourge's proposed changes will subtract the quality of life from Sand Savant and sand shades in general to grant alacrity in a questionably small set of radii, resulting in what feels like a painstaking sacrifice instead of a rewarding, synergetic pick. If what I'm saying still doesn't make sense, here's a hypothetical change of a good example to a bad example: if scrapper's quickness were to be made like tempest or scourge's models, it would be akin to "on any application of superspeed, apply quickness in its place". A change like that would iron out its unique offerings to fulfill its boon role, leaving it as an incredibly unfulfilling build to play. In reality, you want to bring both your specialization's unique offerings AND your role's offerings. What I'm saying is stop making traits that cut from your elite specialization's trademark capabilities, and instead design boon roles to accentuate them. Stop making boon roles feel like a shackle, make players feel enhanced when boons are added to their specializations.

I realized after making the post I'd also like to see some synergy with bleeding application in blood magic too, in case an alacrity model based around regeneration obligates alacrity dps builds to take blood magic, incurring a sizable dps loss from giving up one of their damage lines. Maybe things like Blood Bond increasing bleeding damage or granting a strike/total damage modifier against bleeding enemies, because condition damage on necromancer is already super catered-to while power has rather weak infrastructure outside of reaper. Optimally, one of the other blood magic grandmasters should become or gain a potent damage gimmick to counterbalance transfusion, so not every necromancer that picks blood magic for alacrity support takes transfusion too, at least in PvE. Maybe something like a grandmaster that modifies the Vampiric minor trait to apply bleeding, but increases its internal cooldown, or applying bleeding siphons a small amount of health (like Predator's Cunning but much lower numbers). Ultimately I'd like to see blood magic pan out a bit like elementalist's water trait line, where it's most definitely a support line but it still can offer noteworthy damage options.

It's actually much simpler: my allies are my locusts. The real Locust Swarm is the friends we made along the way ❤️

As someone who's a fan of scourge, it kinda hurt to see the patch preview try to duct tape on alacrity in a rather awkward and problematic way that inadvertently bit a chunk out of every existing scourge style, if not outright hamstringing them. I wanted to share my ideas on buffing scourge support in a more holistic way, by building up the core of blood magic a bit better first, and altering some skills and traits that are opportunities in waiting. I also wanted to build up thematic identities around self-bleeding, regeneration, and might in such a way that it could synergize with and expand on existing styles. Weapon Skills Life Siphon: This skill now applies bleeding to yourself on activation. Locust Swarm: This skill now shares its swiftness to allies in 600 radius. Because really, why not? Oppressive Collapse: This skill now applies might in a radius around you, instead of in a radius around your target. This dodges issues in battles where an enemy's hitbox is larger than the skill's radius around the target, or the target is in a damaging field or location allies can't reach or stand in. Blood Magic Mark of Evasion: This trait is replaced by Blood for Blood. Blood for Blood: Summon a Lesser Mark of Blood at your location when you apply bleeding to yourself. Mark of Blood and Lesser Mark of Blood can now be triggered by allies (including yourself) and additionally heal allies in their radius for a small amount when activated. Mark of Blood heals twice as much as Lesser Mark of Blood. Banshee's Wail: This trait additionally applies regeneration to allies within 360 radius every 2 seconds during Locust Swarm. Applying regeneration to an ally also applies 2 stacks of might for 12 seconds (3 stacks of might for 5 seconds in competitive). Last Rites: This trait additionally makes applying regeneration to targets under 50% health heal a small amount. Scourge Trail of Anguish: This skill additionally applies a stack of stability in 360 radius on activation (PvE only). This is purely so the skill is more usable in PvE group content, and you don't need to run around inside your stack to apply the stability. Abrasive Grit: This trait additionally makes casting Nefarious Favor grant regeneration to 5 nearby allies in 360 radius. This triggers only around you, not at shade locations. Desert Empowerment: This trait additionally makes casting Sand Cascade grant protection to 5 nearby allies within 360 radius. This triggers only around you, not at shade locations. Sand Savant: This trait additionally makes entering shroud grant alacrity for 4 seconds to 5 nearby allies. Applying regeneration to an ally also applies alacrity for 1.5 seconds. With Mark of Blood and Mark of Evasion changes through Blood for Blood, I wanted to grant more support capability to the necromancer arsenal and accentuate self-bleeding as a theme, seeing as it remains in a good handful of dagger and corruption skills. I also wanted more healing from staff's Mark of Blood to separate it from dagger's Lesser Marks of Blood gained from the new trait. The changes to Locust Swarm and Banshee's Wail were with intent to build up the might aspects outside of Blood is Power and reward compounding aggression in the dagger/warhorn kit in a supportive, buffing way. With Last Rites, I wanted to build on necromancer's identity of keeping allies from dying, rather than create an unconditionally strong healer. Adding a health threshold to this trait also makes it impossible to abuse with Blood Bank, and this threshold can be raised in PvE if support necromancers wind up needing the healing. In the scourge line, I aimed to add the last bit of boons a support scourge would need, as well as a little more regeneration application, topped off with tying alacrity to regeneration and shroud with limited target counts, separate from the shade skills themselves. This dodges the issues posed by putting alacrity on barrier applications, allowing scourge to save those for key moments instead of being forced to use weaker versions passively at all times, and negating any need to rethink scourge shade coverage. Also important to note: I put alacrity on Sand Savant on purpose, since one of the biggest uses of Sand Savant is to make your shades easier to stand in for your allies, so you can actually land supportive effects on them. I wanted to share my idea in hopes of getting more discussion going on alternatives to the current proposed changes, seeing as they leave scourge with a little bit of a raw deal in many categories. What's everyone else's thoughts on a rework as such, or does anyone have any different ideas that may look better?

I know I've already made a few posts about scourge here, but I really thought hard about it and thought up a list of pros and cons to the new alacrity model on scourge, and scourge as a support in general: Pros: Gains alacrity, aegis, and fury Barrier is a little more consistently applied Cons Nerfing burst barrier in favor of passive barrier upkeep (to make mechanist's copied barrier model work on scourge) reduces the capability of scourge to use barrier to preemptively absorb big hits Shade duration reductions to "reduce target cap" of shade skills inadvertently nerfs dps scourge's stat bonuses from per-shade minor traits (Sand Sage and Blood As Sand granting 75 expertise/concentration and 5% damage reduction per shade) as well as reduce dps scourge's area damage capabilities. The alacrity trait conflicting with the radius increase on shades from Sand Savant makes scourge the game's first 180 radius alacrity support (Lord have mercy). Bonus points: you need your teammates to be standing evenly dispersed inside two 180 radius circles for it to cover them properly, since each shade can't hit more than three people. There's even boss mechanics in this game that aren't THAT strict positioning-wise. Transfusion nerfs remove the capability of scourge to preemptively or continuously save allies when a continuously lethal mechanic is present (e.g. Whisper of Jormag chains/orbs), so why not just pick druid or tempest for instant revives instead? Druid is the only class left with a preemptive revive-pull skill via Search and Rescue. There's three important parts of a support scourge at the moment: continuous ally downstate teleports, burst barrier to counter heavy hits for the team, and sand savant enhancing the radius of shade skills to cover the team easier. This change erases all three. You might be thinking scourge's transfusion is really strong, but it's a valid niche that people rely on, and makes scourge useful because of it. Making them trade transfusion's usability for alacrity is telling necromancer "you can't have boons AND a strong role", which is incredibly unfair in light of things like revenant's total projectile counter with Ventari's bubble, druid's powerful knockback and rooting, chronomancer's blocking and tanking capabilities, etc. Transfusion is not an issue. A better option that dodges ALL of the problems proposed by the current changes is to tie alacrity to regeneration applications, and then push just a little bit more regeneration quirks into scourge traits, e.g. area regeneration around you for five targets when you cast Nefarious Favor. This makes well of blood even more useful all around, and since regeneration on necromancer comes from staff too, you'll have a great foundation for the mechanic that makes less used weapons more useful. Tie alacrity-on-regeneration to Sand Savant and bam you've got a perfect model. Edit: please also do something about Trail of Anguish ally coverage. It needs a burst of stability in an area on cast, instead of having to run around inside a stack to cover allies with it. General usability improvement, that would be.

Actually a bigger gutpunch to the usability of healscourge than most might think. This means that for fights like Whisper of Jormag where there's little time between downstate and death due to mechanics like the chains or orbs, you're screwed. You no longer can cast transfusion preemptively when you know people are about to downstate to a mechanic that would kill them past downstate near-immediately, like when you place a wurm or golem in the boss's hitbox after 25% and it explodes everyone in melee radius, or when chains first appear and you know some people aren't paying attention. You would need perfect timing on a skill that already has an annoying quarter second delay. It also tanks the usability for encounters where downstates become staggered, e.g. one person downs after the next. This just tanks healscourge's trademark capability that many pug groups tend to unintentionally rely on, undoing an otherwise perfect QoL feature. What this change does is detract from what the healscourge can do to help their team, not what a healscourge can do that would make them overpower other supports holistically. Healscourge's current strength revive gimmick is fair when you look at other support builds like druid that have potent immobilizing and knockback gimmicks, or revenant having strong projectile hate gimmicks... especially when you consider how niche "ally-pulling corpse janitor" is compared to them as well. It's not even like healscourge has a monopoly on revive capabilities to begin with: let them keep transfusion's continuous ally-pulling, so their specific niche doesn't begin to falter.

Hot hot no. BIG no. It should be a golden rule to NOT design important things around combo skills in Guild Wars 2 given how jank and inconsistent they are. Scrapper quickness is fine as-is. Don't try to screw scrapper over AGAIN just because of WvW, or whatever this is for.

Big disappointment with scourge, lot of uncreative and roundabout changes that just raise more issues. Copying mechanist with alacrity on barrier, then reworking barrier applications to match is so incredibly dull. Support scourge's barrier is very powerful for its large chunk applications, not for middling passive barrier, and it's great that way. Plus, reworking shade uptimes to preemptively balance possible 10 man alac is jank as all hell. Protip: DON'T TIE ALACRITY TO TEN TARGET SKILLS TO BEGIN WITH. It could have been done much better if alacrity was tied to regeneration application instead, which is entirely limited to five man, and is granted rather freely thus far thanks to blood magic and staff, yet with no further use. All you'd need to do then is add some more area five man regeneration applications to scourge (e.g. add a pulse of regeneration to five targets around the scourge when casting F2), and then bam, you've got a good setup, maybe build a bit more identity and healing around regeneration too in the scourge line. Now dps scourge is going to be paying for this alacrity barrier change due to losing shade upkeep stat bonuses, just because alacrity got ham-fisted in in a way that lacked the consideration.

Soul Grasp as a damage skill is a bit of a lost cause unless it can crit... well really, even if it could crit it wouldn't be too hot either. It needs to either be reworked into a non-casted chip/compounding damage skill (which would be a great boon and highly synergetic with the current use of axe to capitalize on its burst style) or it needs another gimmick to make it worth casting, not siphon or life force. Something like ripping a single boon, granting fury, maybe consuming a condition, etc. would make the skill perfect. If that's too strong in competitive, lock the effects behind health thresholds. In its current state, it's chip damage, like Mantra of Pain, Lightning Strike, Arcane Bolt, Mantra of Flame, etc. and the one thing all those have in common is no cast time... yet Soul Grasp still has a cast. I don't think Soul Grasp will be worth actually casting for damage unless they do something unwise, and even then it's still a clunky skill to fit into a rotation of any sort. Soul Grasp's value is more a question of utility because Spinal Shivers is a utility pick (in PvE, at least). Look at warhorn: Wail of Doom is a great breakbar skill and the flagship utility effect for the weapon, but against defiant foes it's moot... so you have Locust Swarm providing further complementary utility. Spinal Shivers cements itself as a utility skill (in PvE) with its iconic boon strip, so you need another complementary utility function from Soul Grasp to round the weapon out. Every offhander barring torch (mostly) on necro is a utility weapon for some reason, but focus still tries to grab this identity of a dps weapon when it has been explicitly nerfed away from it.

I remember hearing something about swiftness and movement speed boost mechanics. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I heard movement speed caps at 400 units per second, and base out of combat movement speed is 300 units per second, while in-combat is 200 units per second. No matter what, you cannot go above 400 units per second, in or out of combat. Base swiftness, giving +33% movement speed, will give you effectively maximized movement speed (in terms of just moving, not leaping or teleporting) while out of combat, because 300*1.33=399 which is basically 400. Superspeed (+100%) will give you max movement speed in combat because 200*(1+1)=400.

I think the problem isn't that the summons are too weak or not rewarding, but rather that you're expecting too much from one gimmick utility skill with zero infrastructure for further use. The only truly successful summon builds in this game usually take entire traitlines and multiple utility skills (often an entire utility bar) to be effective. You're asking to compete with those on the basis of a single utility skill. Also, despite my low experience with ele, I've found that if you're spending more time buffing and not outputting control or damage, you're already at a disadvantage unless you're specifically playing a boon role for a squad. That's just how ele is: it's low healthpool and low armor with lots of control to compensate. That's why ele duelists are so scary, because of their debilitation, control, interrupts, and opportunism, not so much because of their buffs (at least that's how it was last time I did any kind of PvP). To conclude though... no, I don't think they need to buff the elementals or the skill effect-wise. It would be so disrespectful to rangers and mechanists to see ele getting free baked-in boon sharing for minions when they have to either drop another utility slot, constantly spam a heal skill, or take an entire support traitline to get that same effect. Even just a stat boost would be kinda a slap in the face to soulbeast when they... yknow... have to take their pet off the battlefield to get those stat boosts.

As someone who was originally a necromancer main, I am always hesitant to make anything "like necro pets" because necromancer minions are rather unengaging and boring. They're quaint flavor skills, but using them in a serious context (excluding competitive) always feels like a utility slot sacrificed for a puny dps increase with the added uncertainty of bad AI pathing, instead of something that can actually synergize with your build. Even using them in a non-serious context just feels lazy since there's so little you can do to synergize with them, unlike elementalist. With tempest's free boons on overloads and lots of infrastructure for boons, the elementals fit. Reducing it from 3-4 to 1 elemental would mean cutting out the flexibility of it being capable of summoning a decent composition of elementals too (e.g. throw in an earth elemental to tank among your fire elementals if you're soloing something). I think the flavor of the skill is right, and if there's a problem they can fix the burning scaling instead, like how mechanist's mech uses its own stats. As it stands, the only problem I see is the problem with mounts and the long ramp time of it... but perhaps that should remain as a balancing factor, implying shorter fights might encourage burstier skills in their place?

I recently got into playing elementalist more and I really like the use of Glyph of Lesser Elementals, but I find it awkward that I have to build them up out of combat to have more than one out at a time (barring in long duration fights), not to mention that's not feasible if I'm using a mount. I think Glyph of Lesser Elementals should be an ammo skill, so you can summon more elementals when a battle starts and reduce the rampup time of the skill. As an ammo skill, it will also make less lost value from delaying a Glyph of Lesser Elementals cast to make sure you're in the right attunement (because it'll start recharging the next ammo), which is very useful if you're on an alacrity-dps tempest and need to focus more on overload rotation for alacrity upkeep instead of your elemental upkeep. At least two charges would make the skill a LOT more user friendly, but three charges is probably the optimal number (since three is the maximum number of elementals you can upkeep without alacrity). tl;dr making Glyph of Lesser Elementals an ammo skill would streamline the skill's cooldown efficiency in a rotation and make it more immediately useful with less rampup time.

Just wanted to give my two cents... I really like the reaper shout update. I think it's really cool to add that new functionality to them and to give you benefits for being in "ooh I'm gonna getcha!" range and bonus benefits for being in "YOU CANNOT ESCAPE" range. I do think that needs to be approached a bit more realistically though: melee radius is tiny, 130 radius. When you factor in your own hitbox, most enemies might be brushing on the outside of that range. If we assume we take the melee radius from Gravedigger, which is 180, then it's a little more reasonable but still a tad small, hard to realistically get multiple targets inside of (I mean, try doing that with elementalist's Lava Font when it doesn't already have you inside of it), not to mention fear could easily bungle it up. I think a good radius for the bonus effects would be 240: it's the size of an untraited guardian symbol, which is sizable enough you can get multiple enemies inside of it easily but also not so large as to be oppressive coverage Of course I wouldn't oppose 300, but any larger like 360 radius and it can become quite oppressive (just think renegade spirits) and start to overshadow the original effects since it'll be too easy to get enemies in that range. Either way, I think it'll make for a great design to have shouts motivating you to push in close in normal form.

I'm completely not sold on scrapper changes. Consider: why on earth would you want superspeed applied on the first pulse of a stationary field? The implication there is that you don't want people standing in your fields, giving them superspeed as an implication to move away quickly? Which seems contrary to the designs of many of them? The whole point of superspeed and gyros turning into wells after their initial entity-ish forms was to make scrapper a more reliable and mobile bruiser/utility support spec, and if that is too strong in WvW that can be nerfed specifically in WvW like Firebrand and scourge have been handled: effect reductions until their overpowered gimmicks are balanced for their modes OR no longer viable. Superspeed sharing goes perfectly in hand with wells staying attached to you, to promote a mobile playstyle. If you get rid of that... I can barely guess what scrapper becomes. A boring quickness spec that has inconsistent design for its effects? You could do plenty other things to nerf the support capabilities in WvW, because it's not overperforming anywhere else really. Could alter the superspeed on well sharing to become swiftness for allies instead, and adjust traits as such, or even just apply superspeed at highly reduced durations to allies too, just for WvW. Could even completely change sneak gyro into something else and not much would be lost for other modes. Making gyro wells stationary kills scrapper's entire flavor and sensibility (Defense field could just be ground targeted though, that doesn't matter much). As a big fan of scrapper, this just doesn't sit well. From what I can tell of the current well design, they've been balanced around their attached usage, which is why things like shredder deal middling damage or why blast gyro has a three second windup. The playstyle rework for other modes when you have to consider getting to your enemy first, THEN casting gyros on top of them for the benefits... again, sits incredibly wrong. There has to be a better solution to fixing scrapper in WvW that doesn't involve sucking all the fun and coherence out of it for other gamemodes. The proposed change completely centers around one build and mechanical usage in WvW that could be handled in a myriad of different ways.

I beg of you, do not do this. That'll just trash the entire feel of scrapper. It's supposed to be a mobile support/brawler. Skills like Blast Gyro and Stealth Gyro will become almost entirely useless. If you feel like scrapper support is overperforming, attack literally anything else and make it WvW specific, because outside of WvW superspeeding it's not an overperforming spec, and the wells give it a rather unique style in PvE as a utility class. Please just make defense field alone a ground-targeted skill, because that doesn't matter much compared to wells becoming ground targeted. You could probably even turn some of the scrapper superspeed into personal superspeed and swiftness on allies instead, in WvW alone, and that'd be leagues better than turning wells into ground targeted in all modes.

I half agree, that's why I wanted to take a tempered approach and reduce the cast time enough to make the skill feel like a burst skill, but not enough to remove that strategic identity. While ranger longbow and warrior rifle are very similar, they deviate in many ways (like cooldowns, skill refreshes, burst tactics, pinning skills, general strategy, even the class you're using affects your gameplay believe it or not). Keep in mind rifle has heavy burst skills (Kill Shot or Gunflame) that you want to weed out dodges for, especially with suboptimal pinning capabilities. That's why it's reasonable for Volley to not be a uberspeed burst skill in my opinion. Optimally, I think 1.75s cast time would be best. That's the same cast time as necromancer's axe 2, Ghastly Claws, which is a nice long cast with good burst potential still. Volley sitting at 2.5 seconds cast time feels really awkward in my opinion, even if it's got good reason.

We talking Glacial Heart kinda bonus damage proc, or Pulmonary Impact kinda bonus damage proc? I could see adding traits to make cc skills deal bonus delayed damage, but bonus damage on cc immediate impact might clash with the existing competitive balance notions.

That's an interesting take on Volley, glad to learn something. I still think volley could stand a small cast speed increase. Maybe down to 1.5 or 2 seconds, still retain part of that "longer than a dodge" identity but still being somewhat faster while casting, more dangerous outside of 1v1 situations. As for Brutal Shot, I was thinking maybe an animation like deadeye's Death's Retreat (non-kneel rifle 4). Probably would look too thiefy though, so they could maybe give it a new animation kinda like how thief staff autos have unique animations from revenant staff autos and so forth.

I try to avoid making posts that wrap too many topics into one post, because it's way easier to have discussion on one specific topic than juggle like five different topics in the same thread. That said, I also focused specifically on rifle because I felt I had some good ideas on it. I'd just be spitballing random thoughts if I tried to include hammer, maces, and offhand sword, I frankly don't have any specific, developed ideas for those ones.

I want to take a long hard look at two specific rifle skills: Volley and Brutal Shot. These two skills are probably some of the most dated skills in the list, and despite reworks, have never really had a good comeuppance. They may be useful, but they're clunky and/or slow. If you don't like reading, just take a glance at the bolded parts. To start with, Volley. The skill's notoriously slow, and as a result hardly results in good damage output against well-reactive enemies and/or compared against other weapons that just cast faster. I think the very simple solution to making this awkwardly slow skill better is to treat it like just about ANY other channeled damage skill that has been looked at in the past decade and increase its cast speed. Ghastly Claws (necromancer axe 2), Siphon (necromancer dagger 2), and Rapid Fire (ranger longbow 2) all saw big cast speed increases as a result of their questionable performance. If the damage of Volley can just be rebalanced afterwards (if necessary), why can't we treat Volley like these other skills and increase its speed to make it easier to use? By the way, that's half a rhetorical question, half a genuine question: if I'm unaware of some vital balance reason there, please feel free to enlighten me. Next, Brutal Shot. This skill just... doesn't make sense. Is it a primer skill with a dodge-roll aftercast that wastes time where you could be shooting at an immobilized target? Or is it a defensive skill with a clunky windup? This skill seems suboptimal to me because it's both: it's two separate skills and animations in one button, and they functionally clash. If you immobilize someone, you want to immediately cast more skills, not waste time with a defensive move. If you cast a dodging skill, you want to be immediately evading, not winding up with a random shot. To make this skill better, try thinking of Brutal Shot as ranger shortbow 3, Quick Shot, or thief shortbow 3, Disabling Shot. Their attacks and their defensive animations are seamlessly integrated with each other, and both the dodge and the attack happen at the same time instead of in a sequential, crowded manner. The immobilizing shot and the roll backwards in Brutal Shot need to become one animation that evades backwards AND fires an immobilizing shot at the same time, like those two shortbow skills, instead of two animations that disrupt each others' purposes. I'd just like to see rifle on warrior be better. Not to say it's bad (if I do say it's bad I'll get hounded by diehard Gunflame fans), it just feels clunky in application. So many weapons saw reworks that bettered them for similar reasons, or they were just originally made well and then rifle tried to take after them unsuccessfully, and I think rifle deserves to stand on par with those skills. I encourage people to share their thoughts on warrior rifle, I'd enjoy discussion or new perspectives on the weapon skills in question. If you only read the bolded parts, I recommend reading the rest if you want to respond to something.