Improving SpellBreaker Part II: Disenchantment

[oscuro.9720]

My first post, “Improving SpellBreaker Part I: GM traits”, focused on how the GM traits could be buffed and slightly changed to make each a strong, viable choice on par with Magebane Tether. 
This post will be focused on how to incorporate Disenchantment into Spellbreaker to make it a more oppressive boon destroyer. 
Design Theory: 

Spell Breaker has had its damage parsed down dramatically. I don’t think adding back more damage is the proper solution. Rather, improving Spell’s ability to remove boons/conditions/stealth and once again become a truly “anti-mage” class outside of WoD is a better move. One key part of this is expanding the application of Disenchantment to more than WOD, giving spell not only the ability to remove boons, but to prevent their application in general. 
Traits:

Minor Master:

Dispelling Force: Add “Removing a boon from a boonless for applied 1s Disenchantment instead”

This will provide spell the ability to apply disenchantment frequently in small quantity throughout a fight, giving the potential of causing high-boon-uptime classes to waste cool downs or have less effect from their skills.

Applying to a minor skill drastically changes how the class works by restructuring how all boon strip skills function. 

Example: Breaching Strike on a boonless foe will apply 2s of Disenchantment (1s for each boon it attempts to remove.

Master:

Sun and Moon Style: Change the first bonus from 10% damage vs boonless foes to “Burst skills apply disenchantment (2s)”.

Since this is limited to dagger, it really only creates a buffed version of Breaching Strike by guaranteeing disenchantment in strike. Also applies to FC when MH dagger is equipt. I would then consider moving the 10% damage mod to the offhand dagger instead of the heal on crit, but I don’t know how useful people find that 7% healing. I would personally prefer the damage though. 

Grand Master:

Magebane Tether: Add “tethered foes have disenchantment (1s per pulse)”

This will give a single target duration of boon denial that can really help in small scale (vs supports you want to burst down for example)

Utilities:

Imminent Threat: Replace Resolution with Protection, replace adrenaline gain with Disenchantment for the same duration as the taunt

This gives the skill a more powerful taunt, preventing taunted foes from receiving external breaks via stability or resistance. It can also prevent defensive CDs from triggering their protective boons (namely protection). Now if we could just reduce the cool down for a 1 1/4s taunt pls 🙂 

Thats it. Just four places it really needs to be added to change the dynamic of how the specialization functions and giving the spec a lot more depth. Specifically by adding it to the minor, as it completely changes how the interactions of boon removal works and better rewards the class for getting boons off of a target, as now-a-days even if you get everything off, they have their boons up within 5s usually. 

Thank you for reading my ideas, everyone have a great day 🙂 

Edited December 13, 2021 by oscuro.9720

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

3 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

My first post, “Improving SpellBreaker Part I: GM traits”, focused on how the GM traits could be buffed and slightly changed to make each a strong, viable choice on par with Magebane Tether. 
This post will be focused on how to incorporate Disenchantment into Spellbreaker to make it a more oppressive boon destroyer. 
Design Theory: 

Spell Breaker has had its damage parsed down dramatically. I don’t think adding back more damage is the proper solution. Rather, improving Spell’s ability to remove boons/conditions/stealth and once again become a truly “anti-mage” class outside of WoD is a better move. One key part of this is expanding the application of Disenchantment to more than WOD, giving spell not only the ability to remove boons, but to prevent their application in general. 
Traits:

Minor Master:

Dispelling Force: Add “Removing a boon from a boonless for applied 1s Disenchantment instead”

This will provide spell the ability to apply disenchantment frequently in small quantity throughout a fight, giving the potential of causing high-boon-uptime classes to waste cool downs or have less effect from their skills.

Applying to a minor skill drastically changes how the class works by restructuring how all boon strip skills function. 

Example: Breaching Strike on a boonless foe will apply 2s of Disenchantment (1s for each boon it attempts to remove.

Master:

Sun and Moon Style: Change the first bonus from 10% damage vs boonless foes to “Burst skills apply disenchantment (2s)”.

Since this is limited to dagger, it really only creates a buffed version of Breaching Strike by guaranteeing disenchantment in strike. Also applies to FC when MH dagger is equipt. I would then consider moving the 10% damage mod to the offhand dagger instead of the heal on crit, but I don’t know how useful people find that 7% healing. I would personally prefer the damage though. 

Grand Master:

Magebane Tether: Add “tethered foes have disenchantment (1s per pulse)”

This will give a single target duration of boon denial that can really help in small scale (vs supports you want to burst down for example)

Utilities:

Imminent Threat: Replace Resolution with Protection, replace adrenaline gain with Disenchantment for the same duration as the taunt

This gives the skill a more powerful taunt, preventing taunted foes from receiving external breaks via stability or resistance. It can also prevent defensive CDs from triggering their protective boons (namely protection). Now if we could just reduce the cool down for a 1 1/4s taunt pls 🙂 

Thats it. Just four places it really needs to be added to change the dynamic of how the specialization functions and giving the spec a lot more depth. Specifically by adding it to the minor, as it completely changes how the interactions of boon removal works and better rewards the class for getting boons off of a target, as now-a-days even if you get everything off, they have their boons up within 5s usually. 

Thank you for reading my ideas, everyone have a great day 🙂

Neat ideas, Oscuro. I like it!

 

I would add that Break Enchantments should also apply disenchantment.

 

Personally, I think breaching strike should have disenchantment baseline, allowing Sun and Moon Style to stay as is (it's ok for PvE), although I'd def be down with a rework to let it do more damage (+10% to boonless is ineffectual currently given high boon output). I'd prefer something like "+5% dmg for each dagger wielded" for the MH bonus.

Edited December 13, 2021 by CalmTheStorm.2364

[oscuro.9720]

1 minute ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Neat ideas, Oscuro. I like it!

 

I would add that Break Enchantments should also apply disenchantment.

 

Personally, I think breaching strike should have disenchantment baseline, allowing Sun and Moon Style to stay as is (it's ok for PvE), although I'd def be down with a rework to let it do more damage (+10% to boonless is ineffectual currently given high boon output). I'd prefer something like "+5% dmg for each dagger wielded" for the MH bonus.

I’m going to do a utilities portion eventually. My suggestion is for Break enchantment to strip more boons, which, if paired with Thais change, would allow it to stack disenchantment when used against a foe with minimal boons. That’s the reason I didn’t put disenchantment on it. Though I wouldn’t be opposed to it xD

[Opopanax.1803]

Magebane tether is already strong... rather have disenchantment incorporated to every utility and heal skill vs the talents.

[Jzaku.9765]

Huge fan of the idea of spreading the distribution of Disenchantment.

Just concerned that the way your buff to Dispelling Force is worded, Winds (Elite) will practically double it's disenchantment duration, which probably wasn't your intention.

Dagger's lifesteal is incredible for PVE - I would suggest just making the 10% extra damage apply to all dagger skills and baseline to the trait, on top of it's main/offhand effects. It's competing with some very strong traits in it's tier, on top of imposing a buildcraft restriction. 

And just to play off the idea of spreading Disenchantment, I think a great (non-minor) trait to have would be to let all Burst skills remove a boon OR apply disenchantment on hit, giving spellbreaker a possible reason to use the condi weapons (that have multi-hit bursts) despite having no real synergy with a condi build. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

A point to consider.

Should there be a skill(s), either a burst (Breaching Srikte and/or Full Counter) or utility like Break Enchantments, or a trait like Enchantment Collapse that strips a target of ALL of their boons?

Disenchantment being spread around to traits and skills would be very healthy for Spellbreaker in PvP, and help greatly in some high end PvE content. But that does not help the fact that some classes in competitive are able to vomit out a large variety of boons in short amounts of time. Removing 2-4 doesn't help very much when there are several more problem boons laying around.

What I'm seeing in my head is use said skill, and I think it would have to be a skill, to strip all boons from a target, apply Disenchantment for a few seconds, and then have a small window of time of having the advantage.

We're coming to the point in the game's life where certain especs will be able to grant EVERY boon in the game in an AoE with very few button presses. There should be a straight counter to that, and the natural spec for that is Spellbreaker.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

A point to consider.

Should there be a skill(s), either a burst (Breaching Srikte and/or Full Counter) or utility like Break Enchantments, or a trait like Enchantment Collapse that strips a target of ALL of their boons?

Disenchantment being spread around to traits and skills would be very healthy for Spellbreaker in PvP, and help greatly in some high end PvE content. But that does not help the fact that some classes in competitive are able to vomit out a large variety of boons in short amounts of time. Removing 2-4 doesn't help very much when there are several more problem boons laying around.

What I'm seeing in my head is use said skill, and I think it would have to be a skill, to strip all boons from a target, apply Disenchantment for a few seconds, and then have a small window of time of having the advantage.

We're coming to the point in the game's life where certain especs will be able to grant EVERY boon in the game in an AoE with very few button presses. There should be a straight counter to that, and the natural spec for that is Spellbreaker.

That's a neat idea. I think it would be OP to straight up remove ALL boons, but what about this:

 

Disenchantment becomes an effect where all boons on a target are ineffective (like how resistance works with condis) AND the target loses 1 boon every second.

 

This would create windows where the target is effectively "boonless" (could even make the dmg buff on Sun and Moon and Rune of the Spellbreaker apply in this situation) while not requiring the target to reapply all of their boons; they can just wait out the disenchantment and whatever boons they still have on them become active again.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

27 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

That's a neat idea. I think it would be OP to straight up remove ALL boons, but what about this:

No more so than This. Keep in mind that such a counter would also have to have a longer-ish CD.

Quote

Disenchantment becomes an effect where all boons on a target are ineffective (like how resistance works with condis) AND the target loses 1 boon every second.

Now that would be powerful, but consider that I'm suggesting a skill, maybe two, that will end up possibly having very long CD's or a trait on a long CD (like strip all boons on a burst hit) and would be something that would require skillful gameplay. Having Disenchantment inhibiting all boons like how Resistance works with condis would promote braindead gameplay. It would at least be braindead gameplay that counters another braindead gameplay.

Quote

This would create windows where the target is effectively "boonless" (could even make the dmg buff on Sun and Moon and Rune of the Spellbreaker apply in this situation) while not requiring the target to reapply all of their boons; they can just wait out the disenchantment and whatever boons they still have on them become active again.

It's worth discussing more. Like I mentioned above I'm concerned that approach would become yet another brainless spec to play and one that does not require skill to be good with. Don't get me wrong, plenty of other specs have those and warrior really doesn't atm, but its those specs that need the brainless gameplay removed and not warrior that needs it added in.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Lan Deathrider.5910
typo

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

56 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

No more so than This. Keep in mind that such a counter would also have to have a longer-ish CD.

Now that would be powerful, but consider that I'm suggesting a skill, maybe two, that will end up possibly having very long CD's or a trait on a long CD (like strip all boons on a burst hit) and would be something that would require skillful gameplay. Having Disenchantment inhibiting all boons like how Resistance works with condis would promote braindead gameplay. It would at least be braindead gameplay that counters another braindead gameplay.

It's worth discussing more. Like I mentioned above I'm concerned that approach would become yet another brainless spec to play and one that does not require skill to be good with. Don't get me wrong, plenty of other specs have those and warrior really doesn't atm, but its those specs that need the brainless gameplay removed and not warrior that needs it added in.

I definitely appreciate the concern that disenchantment could become "brainless" but I don't think it would necessarily be so. As long as the mechanisms for applying disenchantment were relatively few (e.g., breaching strike, FC, break enchantments, and WoD) and the duration were relatively short (2-3s), it wouldn't become too spammable (and therefore brainless). I actually think it could lend itself to much more "brainfull" gameplay where you're trying to set up your burst combos by first applying disenchantment to prevent getting screwed over by aegis, protection, etc. I think that could be good for the spec and the game. 

 

It would also allow SpB to be much more impactful in team fights by being able to hamstring multiple players via boon negation. This would be a big step forward for War, as we currently don't bring much to a Zerg outside of WoD and maybe spamming arc divider.

 

All that said, reworking one or more utility skills or traits to provide complete boon removal wouldn't be a bad thing either. And your idea and my idea are not mutually exclusive; in fact, I'd like to see both ideas implemented. SpB could benefit quite a bit, I think.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 minute ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

I definitely appreciate the concern that disenchantment could become "brainless" but I don't think it would necessarily be so. As long as the mechanisms for applying disenchantment were relatively few (e.g., breaching strike, FC, break enchantments, and WoD) and the duration were relatively short (2-3s), it wouldn't become too spammable (and therefore brainless). I actually think it could lend itself to much more "brainfull" gameplay where you're trying to set up your burst combos by first applying disenchantment to prevent getting screwed over by aegis, protection, etc. I think that could be good for the spec and the game. 

You have to think to scale there though. BS+FC+BE themselves if each applied Disenchantment with it denying the effects of boons would have something like an 80% uptime of the effect with only one Spellbreaker. Then port that over to WvW with 50 man squads and you'll see what I mean.

1 minute ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

It would also allow SpB to be much more impactful in team fights by being able to hamstring multiple players via boon negation. This would be a big step forward for War, as we currently don't bring much to a Zerg outside of WoD and maybe spamming arc divider.

If Disenchantment denied the effects of boons then it would be too impactful, especially if it ended up on the skills being discussed. No zerg would have boons at all, but they would still be flashing about on the screen causing various server load issues, if not issues on people's PCs. I know of some players that can't get near the boonball zergs because it causes their game to lag or freeze.

1 minute ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

All that said, reworking one or more utility skills or traits to provide complete boon removal wouldn't be a bad thing either. And your idea and my idea are not mutually exclusive; in fact, I'd like to see both ideas implemented. SpB could benefit quite a bit, I think.

Personally, I like the original version of Disenchantment coupled with 1 or two means of complete boon removal. Either way I hope that Anet does something to either affect during their post EoD rebalance.

[oscuro.9720]

12 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

Huge fan of the idea of spreading the distribution of Disenchantment.

Just concerned that the way your buff to Dispelling Force is worded, Winds (Elite) will practically double it's disenchantment duration, which probably wasn't your intention.

Dagger's lifesteal is incredible for PVE - I would suggest just making the 10% extra damage apply to all dagger skills and baseline to the trait, on top of it's main/offhand effects. It's competing with some very strong traits in it's tier, on top of imposing a buildcraft restriction. 

And just to play off the idea of spreading Disenchantment, I think a great (non-minor) trait to have would be to let all Burst skills remove a boon OR apply disenchantment on hit, giving spellbreaker a possible reason to use the condi weapons (that have multi-hit bursts) despite having no real synergy with a condi build. 

WoD would double it’s effect if the targets are boonless, yes. That may be overpowered, as I do not frequently engage in the large-scale scene anymore and bias towards signet or rampage for small scale and dueling. It would still require a boonless target to stay in the bubble for a full 5 seconds to then have an additional 5 seconds of Disenchantment. While it would certainly be buffed, I’m not certain it would completely break things, since most people maintain a minimum of 3 boons in Zerg fights and do not stay in WoD for its full duration. Additionally, people complain about boom balls, so I don’t think enhancing its counters is a horrible idea per say. This is just speculation though. 

[oscuro.9720]

7 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

A point to consider.

Should there be a skill(s), either a burst (Breaching Srikte and/or Full Counter) or utility like Break Enchantments, or a trait like Enchantment Collapse that strips a target of ALL of their boons?

Disenchantment being spread around to traits and skills would be very healthy for Spellbreaker in PvP, and help greatly in some high end PvE content. But that does not help the fact that some classes in competitive are able to vomit out a large variety of boons in short amounts of time. Removing 2-4 doesn't help very much when there are several more problem boons laying around.

What I'm seeing in my head is use said skill, and I think it would have to be a skill, to strip all boons from a target, apply Disenchantment for a few seconds, and then have a small window of time of having the advantage.

We're coming to the point in the game's life where certain especs will be able to grant EVERY boon in the game in an AoE with very few button presses. There should be a straight counter to that, and the natural spec for that is Spellbreaker.

I would, personally, not add a means of complete boon strip. Already, a combo of Breaching Strike+Disrupting Stab+Absorption Sigil can strip 7 boons. Getting someone to 0 boons is not a frequent problem, at least for me. The hard part is that they can almost immediately restack 3 boons on demand. 

Perhaps more boonless-independent Disenchantment would be beneficial, I don’t know. I didn’t want to go overboard though, and I find quite a few spell breaker traits to be good. 

Also note, in my GM trait thread, I suggest that enchantment collapse causes Full Counter to remove 3 boons, which would greatly help keep boons off of the particularly difficult-to-strip classes that are easy to FC on, such as FB. These threads are, in a sense, meant to compound upon each other because I’m not going to write a thesis on the topic in one sitting 😂

Edited December 14, 2021 by oscuro.9720

[oscuro.9720]

13 hours ago, Opopanax.1803 said:

Magebane tether is already strong... rather have disenchantment incorporated to every utility and heal skill vs the talents.

Magebane is strong for warrior, but has quite a few conditions to set up and has been needed significantly. I don’t think putting 1s pulses on a 12s ICD, single target skill that is predicated on the person hitting you in a 1.5s window and then not dodging the extremely obvious and long animation would be overly strong.

As I said, I don’t want to boost Spell’s damage because high damage warrior is where you get severe reactions. However, increasing its utility in uniquely warrior ways would give it a solid, long lasting niche imo. 

Edited December 14, 2021 by oscuro.9720

[Mungrul.9358]

Is there maybe room for some mechanic that punishes re-application of boons?

Say something that does damage per boon applied for several seconds after being struck?

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

There were similar things to that in GW1.

Here is a thought, with the assumption that there is a built in source of Disenchantment built into a minor trait:

Enchantment Collapse: As is.

Revenge Counter: add in that foes afflicted with Disenchantment suffer burn for 1s whenever a boon is attempted to be applied while Disenchantment is in effect. Might stacks will not trigger this multiple times.

Magebane Tether: add in that foes afflicted with Disenchantment take 200 points of damage per boon that is attempted to be applied while Disenchantment is in effect. Unblockable, cannot crit, might will not proc multiple times per stack.

Numbers can be different between WvW and PvP.

[Mungrul.9358]

5 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

There were similar things to that in GW1.

Yeah, that was my thinking, similar to GW1 Mesmer's Wastrel's Worry / Demise & Empathy.

Punish the unobservant 😈

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Yeah, that was my thinking, similar to GW1 Mesmer's Wastrel's Worry / Demise & Empathy.

Punish the unobservant 😈

Which is what Full Counter did and look where it is now.