Jzaku.9765

As a PVE player, I know most of the dev time probably went towards Staff but these are seriously boring notes for a balance update. PVE (Endgame) Warrior is the third most unpopular class only behind Ele and Thief, and the biggest changes of the patch went into the most popular class in the meta, Revenant? Literally the only note on here that affects PVE is a likely unintended NERF to Wild Blow since CMC said it's going to be an interrupt daze meaning it even does less breakbar damage.

When does he ever say the quote in the title? I was paying close attention, and the closest he ever gets to saying something like this is when he mumbles "I don't know the word I'm looking for" and rephrases his sentence to get his meaning across.

I'm really glad your testing uncovered this bug but please post this thread in the Bugs section of the forums instead, and make a bug report ingame. We pretend otherwise but everyone knows the visibility of the class subforums is abysmal.

You dramatically misunderstood the thrust of my post. Effectively I am saying that the shell of Spellbreaker is too shallow, because I'm being realistic about how much work they are willing put into this fringe build. There's far more levers that already exist in Bladesworn to tweak. Of course nothing I say matters when your vision of "Spellbreaker the Alac spec" is a massive rework on the level of adding brand new spec mechanics. No realistic change can outshine your unchecked imagination.

I mentioned it in my previous post but I'll say it again: Reworked utilities will have to compete with Shouts AND/OR Banners, which are already pretty strong skills. We already have good support utilities. You would just be spending a lot of time and effort making brand new skills for no reason because some minor buffs like Banner cast time reduction would make our existing ones incredible. Support Warrior's utility slots are insanely pressured as it is, trying to squeeze everything other classes offer into the 5 buttons on the right side of your bar. What Warrior lacks, as many people in this subforum point out but somehow don't draw the connecting line, is a support Elite spec. Something like Druid that slaps an entire form change with 5 more skills onto the Ranger shell. As some other people rightly conclude in unrelated threads, more skills = more good. There's a reason why pre-initiative Firebrand was the most busted spec in the entire game with 15 extra skills on their F-keys. Also, with current balance numbers Bladesworn doesn't need to get off "as many dragon triggers as possible" on a support build. If Alac Bsw can upkeep 100% Alacrity with 0 boon duration (which it does and in fact overcaps substantially), Support Bsw with 100% boon duration could be afk for half the fight and still upkeep Alacrity, spending all that time doing other support related things. I could say the same thing about Spellbreaker, netting neutral between us. (I don't actually feel this way about Spellbreaker)

Look at it this way - the Spellbreaker shell is literally just Core Warrior with an extra button. If I were in charge of making a rework of Spellbreaker to turn it into a support spec I would be incredibly hard-pressed to make something both exciting and competitive, because it would just be all the same stuff they've been trying to staple onto Core Warrior for years. Busted sustain traits, reworks to utility skills that compete with Shouts AND Banners for space on your bar. You slap an effect on "Full Counter" which is literally no different from an effect on "Burst Skill" except now you have to caveat it with suddenly needing to make Full Counter triggerable without being attacked. Gameplay-wise, it would just be more Core Warrior. Which I guess is what some people keep saying they want. But it certainly isn't for me - I've had 11 years to play with Core Warrior, thanks. It's not like it's going to go away anytime soon. Bladesworn's shell at least has a LOT of new buttons and form changes to play with were you to rework it into a support spec. Even just a trait that turns Dragon Slash into something that heals + supports allies it hits (with optional Ally targeting) is already a more fun gameplay changeup than anything you can do to Spellbreaker. Just something to think about to push against this wave of "Spellbreaker should be the Alac spec!" that's been going about recently. Spellbreaker, at least in PVE, is even more one dimensional of a Spec than Bladesworn is. Which is quite an achievement.

The problem comes from many different angles. Maybe if Bladesworn's utility wasn't so forced into basically exactly [Overcharged Cartridges][Flow Stabilizer][Dragonspike Mine][Tactical Reload] it would be less of an issue that the Bladesworn provides utterly 0 utility without [Unyielding Dragon]. (Most obvious with the Alac Bladesworn build which unironically is one of the most do nothing builds in the game) Absent that though, yeah they should move/add some utility into the Bladesworn shell. It's unbelievably one-dimensional.

You are talking to someone that looked at 10+ logs of Staff heal Tempest gameplay capped at 25 might and still believes that it doesn't give might. And watched a video rating Heal Tempest A tier and their takeaway was that everything under A tier is unplayable garbage. We're not their therapist.

1) These are all PUGS and nobody will kick you purely for being a heal tempest provided you fulfill the LFG requirements 2) Here's some tips about how to read a log - you can go to Buffs > Generation Group/Squad and see that I am the single source of a lot of stab for the group 3) I'm going to stop responding to this insufferable goalpost shifting ad hominem. You have been presented good builds and factual evidence, I suggest you at least try to reassess.

I regularly play Heal Tempest in all content including CMs. It is not some galaxy brain build that only the elite can play, and has it's own great strengths that set it apart like incredible res power and low maintenance heal over time.

As of the time of this post Ele is literally #2 AND #3 on the Snowcrows benchmarks with #1 being a build even harder to play than any Ele build: https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks For what it's worth, I'd recommend the new Condi Tempest build listed there as current #3, it's relatively simple to execute compared to many previous Condi Ele builds. I find it extremely difficult to respond to your backbreaking back-bending to convince yourself that good utility like one of the top movement skills in the game is bad actually, to the point of manifesting holes in the ground that appear mid-movement. You do remember that Blink, Flesh Wurm, and Shift Signet are utility skills that shouldn't even be compared with a weapon skill? Ele is an unpopular class for a few reasons, but I'd say a primary reason is precisely because people like you keep perpetuating this narrative that it's an unplayable wreck that's bad at everything. It even supports incredibly simple to play builds that do ~88% of top ranking DPS builds doing nothing but camping Fire Attunement: So Ele in current patch is a class that supports both simple and complex gameplay loops, and has a wide range of both DPS and support builds. It's at minimum a B-tier class that it's "mains" keep insisting is a D-tier one.

And to be on-topic, frankly, Arms changes were not enough because people keep crying for it to be a Strength replacement purely for variety in the builds they've played for years, when you already have Strength. That, or they just want power creeped Strength that's just as strong but lets them run 0 Precision. All that development effort would have been much better served adding utility traits into Arms that fit into the Arms theme instead of trying to make it Strength-esque for Power DPS builds.

First, the issues you point out that hold Support Warrior back are not mutually exclusive with having a bad second support traitline. Both can be true. But within Tactics line itself, you have: Warhorn's Boon trait competing with Warrior's only team Protection trait in Adept Extra Shout + Cleanse = Heal competing with increased Soldier's Focus Radius in Master Stab trait competing with Shout Heal trait competing with Phalanx in Grandmaster When Warrior would have had a significantly better starting foot were some of these traits in ANY other traitline, as opposed to all being in Tactics "because it's the Support traitline". Second, Stop conflating theme/flavour with game mechanics. Once again by your own definition you are saying that [Might Makes Right] is in the "wrong" traitline, by pigeon-holing Strength as the "Power DPS" traitline. Strength is simply about "Strength", in all forms. Hence why a trait like [Brave Stride] which has nothing to do with Might OR Power DPS is also in the line alongside MMR, providing the traitline another utility pick while still being in theme as bravery is a form of "Strength" of will. It is not rocket science that having traits of varying effects within one traitline is nothing but a positive. You've never needed 9 Power DPS traits in all of Strength's Major Traits, just as you don't need 9 [Condi DPS/Support/On-burst] effects in [Arms/Tactics/Disc].

I literally bring this exact scenario up in my previous reply.

You are wrong on a fundamental level insisting on pigeon-holing traits. For example, all of PVE Warrior's support traits have been in tactics these past ~8(?) years (since the new trait system) competing against each other, the end result being that Warrior can't scrape together a decent support build at all since you have... Tactics, and 2 other traitlines that do literally nothing. Ask yourself if you would prefer Might Makes Right in Defense instead of Strength, since it's "clearly a self-sustain trait and therefore belongs in Defense". Have fun dropping anything in Defense for Might Makes Right, since it would compete with all the S tier traits in there.

Yes? Might is an essential part of any support build. More than that, Burning Retreat is one of the best movement skills in the game. It's an evade. That's like complaining that dodging is a DPS loss. It's just an extra dodge that also heals you. This is a crazy take that is extremely common in this subforum. The fact that Ele essentially carries around a whole bunch of utility focused skills on their weapon is a STRENGTH of the class. Which build is better, the DPS build that uses every single skill in all 4 Elements for DPS, or the DPS build that only uses Fire/Air, with purely utility skills in Water/Earth? They do approximately equal DPS btw, it's basically comparing most of Ele's Sw/Sc + Wh builds against its Hammer builds in the current patch. Even back in the Era this subforum loves to talk about when Staff was the best Ele DPS weapon with Staff Weaver, it used exclusively Fire/Earth and that was considered a strength of the build.

Here's a video from 8 years ago. It's a tale as old as time. That's just the intended class identity of Ele even from launch.

It's literally Fire Wizard all Fire all day for 40k DPS. You can't get easier than this.

I think you are close but miss the mark on why anet went with 1) in the end. It's far more likely to be because there are multiple fights in the game where you could essentially be in Berserk mode 100% of the time the boss is available to burn - this was commonly felt all throughout Banner Warrior's life cycle. It's way easier to balance around Berserker being in perma Berserk. And second, I implore you to reconsider your opinion on Warrior utility skills. The way I see it, it is nothing but an absolute positive that Warrior has """"bad"""" DPS utilities, leaving you to just slot Signets for lack of something better. The less DPS your utility skills represent, the less of an opportunity cost you are paying to bring something with actual utility. Warrior's actual issue is having utility skills "with actual utility". The alternative is a class like Ele which has nothing but big DPS utility skills representing an upwards of 7k+ DPS, or Bladesworn which has unbelievably painful opportunity cost for dropping anything on the utility bar. As for the actual thread topic, qDPS Warrior has shaken out to be exactly as I predicted. It's approximately doubled Berserker's playrate as it's now able to fill a key boon dps role it couldn't before, but is still too high APM and offers little in terms of utility for it to, as OP put it, overtake the meta. I can totally understand them nerfing the DPS as DPS Zerk should be much higher than qZerk, but ideally keep it above qHerald in DPS, as a build that offers much less to the team.

What the kitten is this thread even about. Why are you like, unironically pushing a more useful thread off page 1 for this blogpost.

Just saying, look at all the recent Ele weapon design (Hammer, Pistol). If Staff gets a "rework" in the current environment, it will require you to cycle through every attunement spamming 90% of your skills to perform well. It will be completely unrecognizable as a weapon and your good memories of "when Staff was good" will be completely incongruent with the new design. I'm fairly confident most people clamouring for a "rework" associate Staff with a relatively relaxed gameplay loop, either camping Fire for FIRE WIZARD gameplay or camping Water for chill healer gameplay. To this end, it really just needs some minor buffs to enable these playstyles again.

You don't want a skill that randomly changes functionality.

This is an interesting quirk of the beta Staff 3's [Line Breaker] - it supposedly copies [Rush]'s animation, but is affected by quickness and sends you flying at incredibly high speeds. Maybe [Rush] should just do that.

Kick has to be a contender for the worst skill in the game. The ammo system did absolutely nothing for it too - turns out that when you let people cast a terrible skill more often, still nobody wants to use that skill. My proposal is to apply Bladesworn's Ammo mechanic (seen on Gunsaber 3 and Pistol 5) for Kick, making it stronger for every charge of Ammo you have. So at max charge of 3, you press Kick, consuming all 3 Ammo, and can punt someone, say, 1200 range away.