WaterMud.8106

At least since we're not apathetic you know people still care ANet. + Alacrity makes much more sense on [Lush Forest] or [Immortal Dragon]. As is implemented now new [Daring Dragon] both provides dumb amounts of alacrity and boosts Bls DPS because you also charge faster. And destroyed an entire PvP/WvW play style to do it. Undo this & put Alac on LG or ID instead please. Or just put Alac/bullet on old DD. The damage was fine for a boon support (~35-37k) it just wasn't on SC or Discrtize. This is exactly what you did with Berserker 6 years ago. Please don't do it with Bladesworn for literally no reason.

There's like 4 threads of this essentially saying the same thing. But bumping this one as well. ^ There are objectively better places for Alac that don't destroy entire unique & really fun variants of this Specialization.

This ^ Bump. Alacrity does not belong on a DPS trait. (Which it is now b/c: same damage/less time.) Nor is it necessary to destroy an entire playstyle to add it. Both [ID] and [LF] are better places. The only reason to keep it on DD doing more DPS than any other Grandmaster now is because you don't want the old play style to exist. People clearly thought it was fun. Please don't do this when the alternative(s) are both so much easier to implement & objectively better.

Even if you can manage to 10-bullet-charge and actually connect with a DS - Force. Which of course does even less damage if you use [Dragon Slash - Boost] or [Dragon Slash - Reach]. I know that I'm in the minority here, but I was personally really enjoying the old [Daring Dragon] at least for the fun & utility. (& frankly have 0 idea why they didn't put alacrity on [Immortal Dragon] instead.) Clearly Bladesworn is the currently unloved step-child of competitive' with people saying "Well it's just a PvE class." -- Similar to how Berserker was treated for nearly 4 years. But now that old [Daring Dragon] is dead there is literally 0 reason to use Dragon Trigger at all: [Immortal Dragon] -- Provides redundant protection & Heals you for 8% of your slash damage (4-8k, so... 320-640 hp... yay...) [Unyielding Dragon] -- The "Best" option. Yet only gives 10 stacks of might MAX and only for 5s. So after the slash is done the might is gone. [Daring Dragon] -- Old one was cool and actually good if you built for it. New 3s of alac is basically useless. Let alone the actual problems with trying to charge Dragon Slash off in a PvP scenario. I just don't see why ANet seems to have sacrificed the only fun & semi-viable PvP and WvW version of this Spec on the altar of providing alacrity for PvE at all. They could have just put alacrity on [Immortal Dragon] And did so in the stupidest, most half-baked (it didn't even have a finished tooltip,) possible way. Not perfect, but my proposed solution: *Increase the scaling on Dragon Slashes in PvP from +20-80% depending on how many bullets are loaded. + Put alacrity on [Immortal Dragon] & make it heal the party. + Have [Unyielding Dragon] give 2 might per charge in PvP for 10s so it doesn't actually expire while you're waiting to line up your slash. + Restore old [Daring Dragon] limit the number of slashes to 5 if you're worried about "skill spam" or 3 and make each one do progressively more damage. Even taking [Daring Dragon] out of it, having removed stability from both [Dragonscale Defense] and [Flow Stabilizer] the idea of waiting to charge a Dragon Slash in PvP without getting CC'd let alone WvW is completely idiotic. I know Warrior has been on life support for a long time (21/45) of it's core traits are completely unused anywhere, along with 22 of its utility skills. But a long with [Dragon Slash - Boost] and [Dragon Slash - Reach] just failing on flat, let alone uneven, ground for no reason this is just pathetic. And there's no reason for it.

Hopefully this comes across as constructive. I'd like to reiterate my thanks for actually DOING these previews. Point #1 But after thinking about it I also have concerns with adding a pulsing power damage packet to dagger on necro. The weapon obviously needs a bump, (& imo, it should be the core-"support" weapon in some way,) but if you're going to add a D-O-T to it, shouldn't that DOT be condi, isn't that what condi's for in this game? A pulsing, uncleansible debuff al-la guardian focus beam has the potential to be extremely strong, especially if it's not a projectile, giving it little to no counter-play. Even if it was 50 stacks of burning for 5 minutes or something ridiculous there would still be the opportunity to cleanse it before you died to something invisible. With the increasing number of these skills in PvP a-la: [Dragon's Tooth] - Forces a Dodge :: Could be fixed by tracking you "most of the cast" and stopping just before it fired so that if you had swiftness or anything greater you could move out & there would be counter-play. [Ray of Judgement] - Already was a problem in PvP and had to be nerfed out of existence instead of balanced. :: Could be balanced if there was an obvious cast animation. [Impale] - Applies a debuff that applies torment over time. (Not a problem right now because 5 stacks of torment to 1 target on a projectile has counter-play, is pretty terrible, & the rest of off-sword's kit sucks.) & now [Necro Dagger Pulsing Thing] - Likely won't be a projectile, will have the same animation, a low cast time & will just be "A better, uncleanable condition" :: Could be fixed by making it high condi dmg. ...I fear that the game will eventually move away from traditional condi applications and more towards these "mechanically superior" forms of DOTs. Just something to think about. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Point #2 After-Thinking-About-It: I also feel that much of this preview / write-up was pretty unclear. And I'm curious about how much of people's concerns, (including mine,) are actually founded at all. For example: Yes I'm still HIGHLY in favor of preserving class identity over dumping support boons onto places where they don't make sense. However, for example, [Daring Dragon] just says it's getting "reworked" & since the actual trait description or functionality was not shown & knowing ANet that could mean anything. If the trait retains it's existing identity / fun gameplay of "Letting you pay a cost to re-enter Dragon Trigger" but also adds group alacrity whenever you slash: Awesome! That could be both the bump the trait needed as well as eliminate people's concerns of just "spamming little Dragon Slashes" because the flow-cost-per-bullet would be higher. OR If the alacrity-on-scourge trait could somehow just decrease res potential of traits, awesome, balanced, done. Options are great! BUT If the new [Daring Dragon] just makes the Dragon Slash shorter + group alacrity as people including myself seem to be interpreting it / fear, that would both: eliminate the cool playstyle of repeated slashes that the trait affords as well a kind of invalidate the other Grandmaster traits that Bladesworn currently has in pretty much every game mode. (Because you would be doing the same-ish damage, faster, and also now with alacrity. So we'd be back to the problem of the 2 other Grandmaster traits pretty much never being taken. / Support Scourge is forced to take the [Alacrity Trait] then: Druid just becomes the new res-bot & scourge isn't taken in raids anyway because Druid just now does it's new job AND it's old job better. -->> In which case the [Alacrity Traits] of both classes should probably just be put somewhere else. i.e. [Immortal Dragon] / [Sand Savant] or have modifiers attached to them. Just something to think about I suppose. I really hope we continue to get more unique playstyles/builds, not less. & The unique playstyles of all the classes aren't sacrificed on the altar of including everything in the "currently-technically-viable-if-you-force-it-meta-pool" of raid classes.

ANet please don't get rid of the few remaining unique traits in service of giving things like Scourge or Bladesworn alacrity. Res scourge is fun. Noone wants to sacrifice the 1 existing res bit in the game that's used to teach new players fights in service of alacrity in a sh*itty healer. Daring Dragon is a cool trait. Idk who thinks it isn't. Immortal Dragon is a functionally useless trait. If you have to put alac there. I have literally gotten people to buy your game just on both of these unique Necro & War playstyles. Also what's with the Dramitc discrepancies between the level of ranger buffs / reworks and something like Warrior or Guardians this patch? Kinda seems like most of their useless weapons are still useless... Cal said fun is the priority. Not feeling that with this patch honestly. You can do better.