zakkles.4158

I was hoping to see longstanding animation clunkiness addressed in this update - warrior GS, guardian GS, ele staff all feel AWFUL to play. Especially guardian GS: the amount of precise aftercast cancelling you need to get good DPS is just absurd. Not every aftercast on every weapon needs to be addressed, but outlier skills like guardian GS4/5 and berserker GS F1 really hamper newbies trying to learn these builds. Oh well, maybe next patch. My thoughts on these notes: I think the team would benefit from looking carefully at how boon generation, especially alac generation, interacts with actual PvE encounters. Builds like alac mirage and alac willbender can't upkeep alac between phases, which makes them feel a lot worse. Maybe that's just a tradeoff those builds have to make - but then they should be compensated in other ways. I'm not sure why staff clone conditions are getting nerfed. Was the predicted DPS too high with the condition changes? Staff mirage already has a bunch of problems - slow ramp time, reliant on external regen application, recent nerfs - and wasn't seeing a lot of play. Scrapper quickness generation shouldn't be changed. Gyros fit fluidly into the DPS rotation and just feel fun to use. I support shifting boon generation away from "mash profession skills off cooldown" but scrapper was a spec (maybe the only spec) that didn't need this change. And I'm nervous about how this change will interact with Heal Scrapper. (Same story for the quickness changes on herald and Heal Herald.) Arc Divider (berserker GS F1) is one of the most iconic skills on warrior; it feels and looks amazing to use. Even with the bad aftercast that needs to be stowed. If you want to change it, please change the aftercast only! (And then look at the horrible outdated base GS skills... every single one of them feels bad in PvE, except when you can GS3 into a wall.) I don't play scourge, and have always thought that certain scourge builds have too much rez power... but these changes look pretty f***ing sus. Putting the alac on Sand Savant and scrapping the shade changes would probably be best. I don't want to be a doomer, and see some things in this patch to cautiously look forward to. Build diversity is always good - it IMO doesn't hurt class identity for a class to be able to provide quick or alac. (Or if it does, the class identity was already on life support, lol.) But I hope the team will listen to the community on some of these specific changes being bad news.

With the recent buffs ren needs ~37% BD to comfortably maintain alacrity, down from ~83%. Way more attainable than it used to be - you actually run more zerker pieces than diviner's now.

Mirage (axe+pistol/staff) is probably your best bet. Any condi build will lose out to bursty power builds for clearing trash mobs, but the axe burst isn't all that terrible. (If you can't live with it you can gear a power virt for another template and swap as needed.) In return you get insane survivability and enormous damage ramp for champions. Other builds that do similar things are cele firebrand, trailblazer weaver, power untamed, condi herald. Again, most of these classes have better options for dealing with trash mobs (e.g. condi firebrand, power weaver) but should be fine to run everywhere.

GS Vindicator has an easier rotation, a slightly higher damage potential, and access to Jalis roads by default, in addition to all the other advantages of a power rev build (staff 5 and legend swaps in particular are excellent for fractals). I personally enjoy Bladesworn more (the rotation is great) but I hesitate to recommend it over vindi for an all-purpose power DPS. Especially with the 2/14 changes that made gunsaber feel more clunky. The gear and trait changes are more involved in for qherald and alacren, but those builds are also more useful than quicksworn. So I would still recommend going rev if you're looking at potential boon supports in the future. Last but not least, Bladesworn will very rarely get to wield Sunrise, while Vindi will have it on all the time.

https://pastebin.com/Dm7495tX read my newbie guide yall 🥰

This may have been floated already, but why not add a shared cooldown between tomes to the current system? Say, if tome 1 is ready, tome 2 is on a 5-second cooldown, and I open tome 3, set the cooldown of tomes 1 and 2 to 10 seconds. (Or 15, or 20, or whatever cooldown.) This would force support FBs to pace out their abilities, and DPS FBs would have to meaningfully compromise on damage if they want to provide utility. But it wouldn't kneecap either variant, and it preserves the tomes as separate entities rather than effectively combining them into one 15-skill monstertome. I'm worried that the changes as proposed will turn cFB into "press tome 1 4/5 off cooldown" and will make support FBs of all variants more frustrating to play.

Targeting staxe for nerfs while saying nothing about BSW stacking (which is used much more in high end raiding!) is weird. Either DPS that covers boons with no downside is a problem or it is not. The bladesworn thing isn't a difficult fix - only Martial Cadence needs to be changed. That being said, given how cata stacking was nerfed back in June, maybe bladesworn being untouched is a good thing. 🙃

DPS alac mirage has used staff 3 for clone generation for a number of weeks now (higher DPS than self-deception). link

PVE elementalist: ❌ staff buffs ❌ sword buffs ❌ core util buffs ❌ conjure rework ❌ summons persist after mounting ❌ pulse alac on overload ✔️ scepter 3 heal removed

Most important (IMO) bolded. QOL Make summons persist after mounting Do... something about weapon skills feeling clunky (scepter is the biggest offender here, followed by dagger autoattacks) CORE UTILITIES Replace Conjures with Engineering Kit-style skills Buff Cantrips (compare Cleansing Fire to Mantra of Lore, or Lightning Flash to Blink) Rework Arcane skills (feels like a good place for defensive utilities) More and easier access to CC in utilities (maybe an Arcane skill) Add a pull skill of some kind - something to help with grouping and controlling trash mobs TEMPEST Make Overloads pulse alacrity, rather than backloading it all Give condi cleanse to Feel The Burn or Flash-Freeze Change the movement of Lightning Orb Make Gale Song give fury rather than prot WEAVER Restore power weaver as a playable DPS Buff sword autoattacks (earth/water for open world especially) CATALYST SolarizedRed's comment earlier has some excellent ideas for Cata. Removing the energy mechanic and decoupling profession mechanics from Hammer seem like no-brainers. I would also like to see quickalyst be playable again.

#12 still bugged 🙃