How would you rate Bladesworn during this beta?

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1/10. Nothing warrior needs.

 

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

I voted for "complete re-work," although I think there is a good foundation here.  However, I think the Dragon Trigger mechanic is irredeemably flawed and should be re-worked or abandoned--preferably the latter.  I just posted this in the BS Feedback thread, but I think it's relevant here, too:

 

"I wanted to bring this up again because, after thinking on it all week, I am more convinced than ever that the suggestions below would be both the most effective and the simplest way to address the mechanical issues with the class.  

 

1.) Scrap Dragon Trigger altogether.  Instead make the Dragon Slash skills (Force, Boost, and Reach) be the burst skills available while on Gunsaber and make them available F1-F3.  Either make swapping to gunsaber just use the regular weapon swap key or reassign this mode to F4 or something so as to preserve muscle memory for us Warrior mains that F1=burst.

 

2.) Scrap Flow and return to 3 bars of adrenaline.   The old adrenaline system is tried-and-true, and it "flows" much more effectively/fluidly than Flow does (in part because max adrenaline =30 instead of max flow =100).  It also provides better continuity between Bladesworn and the other Warrior specs.

 

3.)  Return F1 bursts on your non-gunsaber weapon set.  This will be made easier by returning to the old bars of adrenaline as well.

 

These changes would solve all of the issues surrounding the clunkiness of DT (including the weapon-swap CD, standing still for an exorbitant amount of time, and having to hit essentially 3 buttons to get off 1 burst (F1, F2, 1-3)) .  Returning the burst to the non-gunsaber weapons allows makes this weapon set have much greater value and offers more dynamic play rather than relying on the gunsaber for the vast majority of offensive skills.  And returning to adrenaline makes the spec integrate so much more easily into all the traits and skills that Warrior has had up to this point.  

 

In short, adopting these changes would allow BS to offer a brand new weapon with 3 new burst abilities while no longer being bogged down with clunky DT mechanics or a different profession mechanic (flow) that does not mesh with the rest of the profession.  

 

Related skill change suggestions:

I realize that anime-style "charge up for your big attack" is part of the idea behind BS, but that feeling can be preserved by tweaking the Dragon Trigger skills.

 

Dragon Slash-Force: self-root with 1s activation.  Keep the 300 range.  T3 burst should do as much damage as Arc Divider

Dragon Slash-Boost and -Reach:  1/2s activation time; no self-root

 

This will make DS-F, the hardest hitter, be situational and likely require a CC to land.  But that's 90% of Warrior skills anyway, so we're used to it.  Moreover, the 300 range will keep it relatively useful.  And the self-root and 1s activation will offer plenty of counter-play.

 

Yes, the damage in PVE would have to be adjusted down to less eye-popping numbers.  The the greater ease of access of these skills and ability to use them without huge charge-ups should more than compensate for that.  Besides, I'd wager that people doing 350-450k in a hit isn't actually all that healthy for the game mode.

 

What about Triggerguard and Flicker Step?

Not needed anymore!  Their existence is predicated on the idea that you'll be standing rooted for up to 5s (which I think the vast majority of people realize is a very bad idea, especially in competitive modes).  Now that you're able to move freely and have at most a 1s activation time, these skills aren't needed.  They do offer some interesting abilities, though, and I could see them being recycled into BS utilities (most of which are pretty useless), especially flicker step.  But that's beyond the scope of this post.

 

What about Burst CDs?

Now that the bursts are no longer locked behind DT, they ought to have regular Burst CDs (8s customarily).  However, I would propose this one variation:

-When using a gunsaber burst, the skill used goes on 8s CD, but the other 2 burst skills that weren't used go on a 4s CD.

-Example: You use Dragon Slash-Force.  It goes on 8s CD.  DS-Boost and DS-reach go on 4s CD.

-This prevents you from bursting back-to-back on the same weapon, but it does allow you to use the un-used bursts faster.  Combined with judicious use of Lush Forest, and you could see rapid bursting from the gunsaber, which I think would be a neat dynamic--one that requires a high skill level to pull off well, and thus offers ways for highly skilled players to "raise the ceiling" of what Bladesworn has to offer.

 

What about DT-specific traits like Daring Dragon?

Yeah, they would need to be re-worked.  While a full treatment is beyond the scope of this post, I personally would like to see options for a more condi-oriented way to play BS.  BS's current focus on power-only builds is a serious design shortcoming, one that will greatly limit the variety of ways to play the spec.  

 

Beyond these changes, damage numbers, pistol skills (should totally be main-hand at least, if not MH and OH), and utility skills all need a lot of attention,  but they can be topics for other posts and other authors."

 

 

Edited September 25, 2021 by CalmTheStorm.2364

[draxynnic.3719]

While I doubt that scrapping Dragon Trigger altogether is on the table, if it WAS, Triggerguard could be made into a trait. Gain aegis when activating a burst skill.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

19 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

While I doubt that scrapping Dragon Trigger altogether is on the table, if it WAS, Triggerguard could be made into a trait. Gain aegis when activating a burst skill.

That's a good idea about trigger guard. If DT were scrapped, you could use your idea to replace Dragon scale defense (or whatever the name of the minor trait is that grants protection when hit in DT).

 

And yeah, I'm not holding my breath about a DT rework, but the overwhelming majority of feedback on BS had been negative, esp in competitive modes, so I hope they'll at least consider it. We can hope! 

[RevaN.9316]

it's 5/10 . The idea is great , but you should change many things for a competitive PVP class like : remove f1 cooldown when u use f2, more smooth animations, decrease cast of f2, increase range of number 2 skill of Gunblade. F1 must be consider as a swapping weapon and f2 as burst skill, but not sharing cooldown with f1, this breaks PVP and class.

Edited September 26, 2021 by RevaN.9316

[Peacekid.1463]

when using f2 in gunsabre there should be no more charging it should be automatically in full charge we just have to choose which DS we use

[Raolin Soulherder.3195]

The amount of time needed to charge up an effective DS seems a bit high, especially in PvP. You'd think this would be an effective skill for fighting on a capture point, but it seems like most of the time, it is *much* more dangerous to the user than the opponent, as you are tanking so much damage while standing still and waiting, even assuming that you can scrape together enough stab and aegis to avoid interrupts. Which is a 50/50 proposition due to the prohibitive CD's of all the stab skills (Last Stand can only be used like once per match). Even with shout-heals traited and the triple-Combat Stimulant and a few other things, your hp just gets melted if you wait in one spot. 

 

The skill itself is still pretty easy for opponents to mitigate. If you fire it prematurely, it barely tickles and even at full charge, the damage feels mediocre. And they can easily LOS you, dodge, or leisurely stroll out of range, or just move to a slightly different elevation and it misses entirely. Or block/blind you if you don't take the obligatory Unyielding Dragon grandmaster. 

[Kodama.6453]

6 hours ago, Peacekid.1463 said:

when using f2 in gunsabre there should be no more charging it should be automatically in full charge we just have to choose which DS we use

The damage in PvE has to get reduced a ton in this case. Like hitting for say 50k max. 

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

The damage in PvE has to get reduced a ton in this case. Like hitting for say 50k max. 

If it takes 5 seconds to cast (not charge) it would need to hit at least 75K to match autoattack damage on axes.

Right now the high damage in PVE (where 90% damage of those 50K+ benchmarks is Dragon Trigger) is masking overarching issues with it mechanically.

[Ausar.9542]

Bladesworn has lots of build options, which is what make these elite specs good. 

 

[Kodama.6453]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

If it takes 5 seconds to cast (not charge) it would need to hit at least 75K to match autoattack damage on axes.

Right now the high damage in PVE (where 90% damage of those 50K+ benchmarks is Dragon Trigger) is masking overarching issues with it mechanically.

Why should it take 5 seconds to cast? His suggestion was to remove the charge time all together and the dragon trigger 1 has a cast time of 1/2 second if I remember correctly.

And if there is no build up of 5 seconds anymore and the skill really just becomes a burst with 1/2 seconds casttime, then 50k damage would be more than enough reward for that, don't you agree?

[Infusion.7149]

23 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Why should it take 5 seconds to cast? His suggestion was to remove the charge time all together and the dragon trigger 1 has a cast time of 1/2 second if I remember correctly.

And if there is no build up of 5 seconds anymore and the skill really just becomes a burst with 1/2 seconds casttime, then 50k damage would be more than enough reward for that, don't you agree?

If there's no cast windup then 50K is probably too much unless that is the damage and not tooltip damage. A Decapitate on axe is 2.5 coefficient , Arc Divider is 4.2 in coefficient in PVE, while currently minimum damage on Dragon Slash--- Force is 1.66 coefficient with maximum at 50.0 coefficient (<2.6 in PVP) and a 5 target cap.

On meta berserker warrior you're looking at ~30K Decapitate , ~17K x3 hits per Arc Divider (~51K).

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Fun factor is big & fat, and that's one big & fat I approve of.

But it also has major issues that need to be addressed to unlock more builds paths, with smoother and more versatile gameplay.
Two major issues (followed by fair number of average ones) are denial of weapon swap after Dragon Slashing and flow generation which seems next to impossible without flow boosters, while crazy fast with'em.

Fierce as fire also needs a rework - we can't do any real condi damage on current iteration of bladesworn. Either this trait needs some condi friends in there, or be scrapped and reworked into something else.

Edited September 28, 2021 by ZeftheWicked.3076

[Gorem.8104]

The thing is, what was Bladesworn meant to do best? pve? 

 

We already have 3 pve specs, Core Bannerslave, SBbannerslave and BeserkerBannerSlave. 

 

It would have been nice for this spec to be a pvp/wvw spec, but its easily the worst purely because of bugs and kinks and "Flow" being the opposite of flow. It needs to stay out of combat, remove it draining entirely unless used. And of course fix it so that it actually hits because right now you can jump over all attacks from a Bladesworn. 

 

For pve, it could be our best pve spec by far. By super far. Might healing makes you always have extra flow charge forever. In combat its fine, and easy to not die in pve long fights. (unless of course the target can cc you, in which case the class is garbage). If they gave us cc immunity during Dragon Trigger that would be perfect. 

 

Also the pistol should have been main hand and had a longer range AA. 

 

But seriously, I do hope they change the class a lot and listen to suggestions. (Please swap the F keys and please don't make Dragon Trigger give swap CD and please let us DT when not holding the sword) 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Gorem.8104

[Lighter.5631]

14 minutes ago, Gorem.8104 said:

The thing is, what was Bladesworn meant to do best? pve? 

 

We already have 3 pve specs, Core Bannerslave, SBbannerslave and BeserkerBannerSlave. 

 

what warrior need the most is BladeSwornBannerSlave

[Verdict is Vengence.6912]

Should've differentiated between PVE and competitive. Most PVE people are vibing with Bladesworn from what I can tell. Its the competitive Warrior players that are disliking it.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

21 minutes ago, Verdict is Vengence.6912 said:

Should've differentiated between PVE and competitive. Most PVE people are vibing with Bladesworn from what I can tell. Its the competitive Warrior players that are disliking it.

I mean, don't get me wrong in PvE I see it being tons of fun, even just tapping Dragon Slash for leet weeb deeps. But competitive? That will be a different story.

[BlackTruth.6813]

Garbage/10

 

[draxynnic.3719]

On 9/29/2021 at 4:19 AM, Verdict is Vengence.6912 said:

Should've differentiated between PVE and competitive. Most PVE people are vibing with Bladesworn from what I can tell. Its the competitive Warrior players that are disliking it.

Hardly surprising that a factor of 10-20 in power scaling is the difference between high risk, high reward... and high risk, no reward.

[Kodama.6453]

34 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Hardly surprising that a factor of 10-20 in power scaling is the difference between high risk, high reward... and high risk, no reward.

I get the feeling that people are using it not correctly in PvP, tho. 

Anet told us that they adjusted the scaling to not be exponential in PvP like it is in PvE and that it scales faster with the first charges and then falls off. It seems the intention is to not commit to a full charge, but using several small charges in a row with the trait which lets you reenter dragon trigger over and over as long as you have flow.

Might be counterintuitive for people, since it is exactly the opposite of what you want to do in PvE, so it needs to be communicated well that this skill functions entirely different in both game modes. But I think it might not perform so badly once people realise that you don't have to make yourself a sitting duck for 5 seconds.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1 hour ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I get the feeling that people are using it not correctly in PvP, tho. 

Anet told us that they adjusted the scaling to not be exponential in PvP like it is in PvE and that it scales faster with the first charges and then falls off. It seems the intention is to not commit to a full charge, but using several small charges in a row with the trait which lets you reenter dragon trigger over and over as long as you have flow.

Might be counterintuitive for people, since it is exactly the opposite of what you want to do in PvE, so it needs to be communicated well that this skill functions entirely different in both game modes. But I think it might not perform so badly once people realise that you don't have to make yourself a sitting duck for 5 seconds.

Problem is that the entire mechanic is unusable in PvP without Unyielding Dragon. 

 

[Kodama.6453]

53 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Problem is that the entire mechanic is unusable in PvP without Unyielding Dragon. 

 

Don't believe that this is true.

It would be unusable in PvP without unyielding dragon if the intention would still be to charge one single attack for a long time. The usage in PvE is basically putting all resources into one single and heavy attack. If this attack gets blocked or blinded, you just wasted alot of resoures (time + flow, etc.).

But with daring dragon, you don't put everything into one single strike anymore. You are splitting it over multiple weaker attacks in quick succession. Blind or block does not affect this playstyle nearly as much as if people still try to push a 5s channel through just to get one single big hit out of it.

And I think this is the general misconception and problem of PvP players with the spec. How it was advertised for PvE, you channel 5 seconds for that really big attack. If you try to copy that for PvP, it obviously doesn't work, hence why people complain "this doesn't work, sitting still for 5 seconds in PvP gets you killed!", when this is actually not what you are supposed to do in that environment.

[Rune Darkmoor.3269]

As someone who's never been able to jell with the base Warrior, Berserker, or Spellbreaker, and I've tried as I have WANTED to play warrior more. I found myself catching onto Bladesworn rather well actually.

 

It does need some tweaks, which people have already questions the design decisions behind. Why is dragonslash locked out while not in Gunsaber if we don't have access to our other burst skills? Why F2 IS Dragonslash when F1 has been bursts historically? Why the after-cast CD on weapon swap after Dragonslash when it essentially has a cast time? Why is Positive Flow a square buff on the already overloaded buff bar when the arrows to indicate positive resource gain on a bar already exist on reverent and positive flow is a core mechanic of the elite spec?

 

None of these feel like they BREAK the spec, but would make it FEEL better to play in general.

[Mesket.5728]

On 9/25/2021 at 10:29 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

While I doubt that scrapping Dragon Trigger altogether is on the table, ..

yeah, this is a shame. BS already looks like a rushed work and as such, it wont have the proper development it needs. Most likely ANET already settle on delivering something mediocre because they know it wont affect sales that much.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Mesket.5728

[Mesket.5728]

1 hour ago, Kodama.6453 said:

And I think this is the general misconception and problem of PvP players with the spec. How it was advertised for PvE, you channel 5 seconds for that really big attack. If you try to copy that for PvP, it obviously doesn't work, hence why people complain "this doesn't work, sitting still for 5 seconds in PvP gets you killed!", when this is actually not what you are supposed to do in that environment.

You are describing a design flaw. You don't make something to work sooo different in-between modes. One thing is a value tweak, another is to completely change how you should do it. It is no longer a matter of strategy. People should stop thinking the devs are some kind of design gods we should interpretate. They made mistakes. A lot actually. And this is one of them. This class didn't have enough thought and it is obvious. ANET dropped the ball here.