SICK of pvp bladesworns already...

[draxynnic.3719]

People looking to score told-you-so points on Bladesworn in PvE need to brush up on their subforum history. One of the earliest epithets regarding Bladesworn was "sworn to PvE". The potential of massive damage against bosses whose mechanics allow Dragon Trigger to be practical were immediately apparent. 

More broadly, though, I think it needs to be remembered that "powerful" and "well designed" are not necessarily the same thing. ArenaNet could probably make anything meta if they went in and doubled its damage and healing coefficients on everything, but I wouldn't say this means that the new top dog is well designed. Or to give a more concrete, if possibly even more extreme, example, what if there was a skill that basically turned the player into Gorseval in PvP. You channel it, you get a slowly growing circle around you, and when you release it, every enemy within that circle dies, regardless of any defenses they might have. Is this powerful? Assuming that the rate of growth isn't so slow it's never going to get anything at all, yes. Does it have counterplay? Sure. Kill or disable the user before it's worthwhile for them to release it. Is it fun to play or play against? Ehhhh...

Bladesworn isn't as extreme as either of those examples, obviously, but it does have a fundamental design issue. The class fantasy is "channel for several seconds, during which you're all but completely helpless (an aegis or two and a single stability stack only go so far) in exchange for one really powerful attack". In PvE, they can absolutely make that work by scaling up the damage of that one attack. In competitive, there's really only two ways that can go - either you've got something that doesn't really have enough impact to make up for the downsides, or you've got something that DOES have that impact, but concentrating two and a half seconds of DPS leads to something that is incredibly binary (if that lands, you've essentially decided the combat, if it doesn't, you've wasted close to three seconds to no gain, and that's crippling in competitive modes) and is therefore not particularly fun to play or play against.

ArenaNet chose option 1. The damage in competitive is fairly anemic for the time spent setting it up - with a coefficient of 1.3 and a stun that can still be stunbroken. To put that in context, regular burst skills on power weapons are doing that sort of damage baseline, and while they don't have a stun or the unblockable/unblindable characteristic, they also don't require sitting still for a couple of seconds doing no damage at all to set up. I'll be blunt here - I'm using Bladesworn in PvP at the moment because warrior is the one profession I don't have the PvP title with, and I'm using it despite the dragon trigger mechanic rather than because of it. It's sometimes worth Dragon Slash: Boosting through a teamfight for the disruptive effect, but that's about it. In the competitive balance context, I'd take regular burst skills, even if I could only have it on axe, in a nanosecond if I had the choice.

So why is it worth taking?

Because the Bladesworn numbers on everything else is high in sPvP. Pistol is a 2.0 multiplier on the first shot, then Gunstinger for 0.9 multiplier, and follow up with a 1.0 multiplier with five stacks of vulnerability. With a teammate providing stealth, you can do that to someone from stealth right at the start of a fight. The end of the gunsabre autoattack chain does almost as much damage as a fully charged Dragon Trigger. Skills 2 and 4 do more (albeit at the cost of being blockable and blindable, but they're ammo skills, you can follow up by hitting them again), and skill 3 isn't even split from PvE. If you want to finish someone off, you don't DS them, you just go ham on them with your other skills.

And then you add the healing, boons, condition cleanses, and debuffs from shouts, and the ability to refresh most of your bar once a minute with Tactical Reload, and it has some good sustain and utility to go with those teeth. The main weakness is that "Shake It Off!" stunbreaks only go so far against heavy CC pressure.

It's honestly at the point where it'd probably be solid advice to just forget about using Dragon Trigger unless you can hit multiple targets in a teamfight, you really need an unstoppable CC, or you see an opponent approaching and you have flow you might as well burn seeing if you can open up with a Dragon Slash. Or just using DT immediately followed by Boost for mobility. And it will probably always be like this, because if it was ever good enough to really justify the setup and vulnerability time, it'll set up that binary situation I described above, where fights are decided based on whether a successful DS lands or not. It's not doubling the damage and healing coefficients, but it's definitely in the area of that first example I gave where poor design is compensated for by scaling up the numbers until it works despite the design flaws.

 

TL;DR: The Dragon Trigger core mechanic IS poorly designed for the competitive context. The build holds up purely because the rest of the kit is overtuned to compensate.

Edited August 5, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[tunococman.7324]

15 hours ago, Kayberz.5346 said:

Is it "one skill propping up the spec"

Or is it, "a fundamental part of the spec that was intentionally designed to have synergy with the core class"

 

How dare anet create a spec that actually works

It's more like how dare ANET destroy other builds by making builds that are just 1000% stronger.

Why play Core Warrior when BsW is just better in every way. Spellbreaker? Still telegraphed, doesn't have a constant cleanse because its easier to proc cleansing ire as bladesworn. Can't really teleport over ledges like BsW either once you get used to daring dragon. And even the unyielding dragon one is good too because finally Warrior has a way to ignore blind/block.

That's the real problem, they trashed build variety by making BsW good because other specs are so stupid that you may as well overbuff one Warrior so "each class has 1 good spec"

So now we are in a position where PLAY THIS OR YOU LOSE. And it just isn't fun anymore. So I understand that ANET should make good specs because a class should at least have 1 good spec, but ANET shouldn't be trashing build variety because it just becomes stale and boring.

Because they didn't want to balance around the 2015 pre-HoT era, there is powercreep, really stupid on their part.

Edited August 5, 2022 by tunococman.7324

[JTGuevara.9018]

2 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

It's like the harbinger players rerolled to bladesworn xD, like 1 out of 10 bladesworns, is actually a warrior main.

I wondered why bladesworns all of a sudden popped overnight! You used to see 1/10 players play it, now it's 6 or 7 out of 10. Convenient, isn't it?

Edited August 5, 2022 by JTGuevara.9018
typo

[Zekent.3652]

5 minutes ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

I wondered why bladesworns all of a sudden popped overnight! You used to see 1/10 players play it, now it's 6 or 7 out of 10. Convenient, isn't it?

Yes but how many of them are actual warrior mains xD?

[tunococman.7324]

45 minutes ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

Yes but how many of them are actual warrior mains xD?

None, they're boring meta-slave FOTM kids shareholders that probably paid ANET to do this balancing lol.

Edited August 5, 2022 by tunococman.7324

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

12 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

People looking to score told-you-so points on Bladesworn in PvE need to brush up on their subforum history. One of the earliest epithets regarding Bladesworn was "sworn to PvE". The potential of massive damage against bosses whose mechanics allow Dragon Trigger to be practical were immediately apparent. 

More broadly, though, I think it needs to be remembered that "powerful" and "well designed" are not necessarily the same thing. ArenaNet could probably make anything meta if they went in and doubled its damage and healing coefficients on everything, but I wouldn't say this means that the new top dog is well designed. Or to give a more concrete, if possibly even more extreme, example, what if there was a skill that basically turned the player into Gorseval in PvP. You channel it, you get a slowly growing circle around you, and when you release it, every enemy within that circle dies, regardless of any defenses they might have. Is this powerful? Assuming that the rate of growth isn't so slow it's never going to get anything at all, yes. Does it have counterplay? Sure. Kill or disable the user before it's worthwhile for them to release it. Is it fun to play or play against? Ehhhh...

Bladesworn isn't as extreme as either of those examples, obviously, but it does have a fundamental design issue. The class fantasy is "channel for several seconds, during which you're all but completely helpless (an aegis or two and a single stability stack only go so far) in exchange for one really powerful attack". In PvE, they can absolutely make that work by scaling up the damage of that one attack. In competitive, there's really only two ways that can go - either you've got something that doesn't really have enough impact to make up for the downsides, or you've got something that DOES have that impact, but concentrating two and a half seconds of DPS leads to something that is incredibly binary (if that lands, you've essentially decided the combat, if it doesn't, you've wasted close to three seconds to no gain, and that's crippling in competitive modes) and is therefore not particularly fun to play or play against.

ArenaNet chose option 1. The damage in competitive is fairly anemic for the time spent setting it up - with a coefficient of 1.3 and a stun that can still be stunbroken. To put that in context, regular burst skills on power weapons are doing that sort of damage baseline, and while they don't have a stun or the unblockable/unblindable characteristic, they also don't require sitting still for a couple of seconds doing no damage at all to set up. I'll be blunt here - I'm using Bladesworn in PvP at the moment because warrior is the one profession I don't have the PvP title with, and I'm using it despite the dragon trigger mechanic rather than because of it. It's sometimes worth Dragon Slash: Boosting through a teamfight for the disruptive effect, but that's about it. In the competitive balance context, I'd take regular burst skills, even if I could only have it on axe, in a nanosecond if I had the choice.

So why is it worth taking?

Because the Bladesworn numbers on everything else is high in sPvP. Pistol is a 2.0 multiplier on the first shot, then Gunstinger for 0.9 multiplier, and follow up with a 1.0 multiplier with five stacks of vulnerability. With a teammate providing stealth, you can do that to someone from stealth right at the start of a fight. The end of the gunsabre autoattack chain does almost as much damage as a fully charged Dragon Trigger. Skills 2 and 4 do more (albeit at the cost of being blockable and blindable, but they're ammo skills, you can follow up by hitting them again), and skill 3 isn't even split from PvE. If you want to finish someone off, you don't DS them, you just go ham on them with your other skills.

And then you add the healing, boons, condition cleanses, and debuffs from shouts, and the ability to refresh most of your bar once a minute with Tactical Reload, and it has some good sustain and utility to go with those teeth. The main weakness is that "Shake It Off!" stunbreaks only go so far against heavy CC pressure.

It's honestly at the point where it'd probably be solid advice to just forget about using Dragon Trigger unless you can hit multiple targets in a teamfight, you really need an unstoppable CC, or you see an opponent approaching and you have flow you might as well burn seeing if you can open up with a Dragon Slash. Or just using DT immediately followed by Boost for mobility. And it will probably always be like this, because if it was ever good enough to really justify the setup and vulnerability time, it'll set up that binary situation I described above, where fights are decided based on whether a successful DS lands or not. It's not doubling the damage and healing coefficients, but it's definitely in the area of that first example I gave where poor design is compensated for by scaling up the numbers until it works despite the design flaws.

 

TL;DR: The Dragon Trigger core mechanic IS poorly designed for the competitive context. The build holds up purely because the rest of the kit is overtuned to compensate.

All of this ^

I'd go further and say that Dragon Trigger as a mechanic is poorly designed even for PvE and the only reason it works is because of how much damage it does there. If Gunsaber had more active defense on it, then as a kit it would be well designed, but DT? Dragon Trigger is all of the bad design choices from the entirety of the warrior's kit rolled up into one mechanic except allowed to do bonkers damage in PvE.

I think we as customers have the right to complain about something so poorly designed, especially given the state of the other warrior specs in all game modes leading up to EoD's release.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Lan Deathrider.5910
typo

[Obtena.7952]

The best part is where Anet is going to check their metrics for how much it's played and probably come to some different conclusions about the success of their BsW design than most of you are. 

Sure BsW isn't without it's issues but, like I have said many times before, you can't ignore the good things it does if you are going to be critical about it's design. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, Obtena.7952 said:

The best part is where Anet is going to check their metrics for how much it's played and probably come to some different conclusions about the success of their BsW design than most of you are. 

Or they'll nerf it for the same reasons as the alleged but non existent quick catalyst stacking.

[Obtena.7952]

43 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Or they'll nerf it for the same reasons as the alleged but non existent quick catalyst stacking.

I don't see the multiplicative effect stacking BsW's would have that would warrant a nerf (seriously, what is the stacking effect here?) ... but we do know Anet is sensitive to class stacking so I can see preventative nerfs to a potential situation before it gets out of control (even though I don't understand why they aren't seeing the same thing in Mechanist with bot tanking.)

Regardless, I don't think that really changes what I'm saying. Some people think megaDPS is a compensation for bad design, some people think it's part of a thoughful design. That's just academics. Neither of those points of view matter if people are playing it at a level Anet is happy with. There are indicators that BsW is AT LEAST better than "the garbage espec no one will play" that many people were chanting just a month ago. People just say things ... critical thinking is a valuable skill. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[felix.2386]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The best part is where Anet is going to check their metrics for how much it's played and probably come to some different conclusions about the success of their BsW design than most of you are. 

Sure BsW isn't without it's issues but, like I have said many times before, you can't ignore the good things it does if you are going to be critical about it's design. 

BsW literally has no good thing.

the over sustaining which is the only thing that makes it meta right now in pvp, is toxic, unfun to play, unfun to play against

not interactive and the gameplay and skills are clunky AF.

 

before you talk about PvE DPS numbers on damage sponge, it is literally the easiest thing to tweak about a class and is not part of the actual class gameplay design.

Edited August 5, 2022 by felix.2386

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, felix.2386 said:

BsW literally has no good thing.

There we go ... that's the echo chamber I'm used to. I don't mind when people serve me up some fast balls straight up the middle. Let's go with that:

So you say nothing is good about the BsW ... yet somehow, there are a bunch of people using it. That's great actually because it means they are choosing it because they like the way it works and enjoy it for what it is, not influenced by the lobbyists telling them it 'literally has no good thing' . That's how this game is meant to be played. BRAVO Anet. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder to keep it civil. I've removed a few recent posts.
Regards.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

11 minutes ago, Kayberz.5346 said:

sniff

Lmao, it's like saying that Catalyst is good spec because it deals decent damage, when in reality it's trash design from tops to bottoms. Bladesworn is half good idea and half garbage that is usable because of broken gimmick, does it make it overall "good"? KEK No.
The only reason why Bladesworn is not a complete and utter trash is because of the mechanic of Gunsaber, which is half kitten and unfinished in my eyes. Dragon Trigger is something and completly unnecessary for that spec. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

13 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

People looking to score told-you-so points on Bladesworn in PvE need to brush up on their subforum history. One of the earliest epithets regarding Bladesworn was "sworn to PvE". The potential of massive damage against bosses whose mechanics allow Dragon Trigger to be practical were immediately apparent. 

More broadly, though, I think it needs to be remembered that "powerful" and "well designed" are not necessarily the same thing. ArenaNet could probably make anything meta if they went in and doubled its damage and healing coefficients on everything, but I wouldn't say this means that the new top dog is well designed. Or to give a more concrete, if possibly even more extreme, example, what if there was a skill that basically turned the player into Gorseval in PvP. You channel it, you get a slowly growing circle around you, and when you release it, every enemy within that circle dies, regardless of any defenses they might have. Is this powerful? Assuming that the rate of growth isn't so slow it's never going to get anything at all, yes. Does it have counterplay? Sure. Kill or disable the user before it's worthwhile for them to release it. Is it fun to play or play against? Ehhhh...

Bladesworn isn't as extreme as either of those examples, obviously, but it does have a fundamental design issue. The class fantasy is "channel for several seconds, during which you're all but completely helpless (an aegis or two and a single stability stack only go so far) in exchange for one really powerful attack". In PvE, they can absolutely make that work by scaling up the damage of that one attack. In competitive, there's really only two ways that can go - either you've got something that doesn't really have enough impact to make up for the downsides, or you've got something that DOES have that impact, but concentrating two and a half seconds of DPS leads to something that is incredibly binary (if that lands, you've essentially decided the combat, if it doesn't, you've wasted close to three seconds to no gain, and that's crippling in competitive modes) and is therefore not particularly fun to play or play against.

ArenaNet chose option 1. The damage in competitive is fairly anemic for the time spent setting it up - with a coefficient of 1.3 and a stun that can still be stunbroken. To put that in context, regular burst skills on power weapons are doing that sort of damage baseline, and while they don't have a stun or the unblockable/unblindable characteristic, they also don't require sitting still for a couple of seconds doing no damage at all to set up. I'll be blunt here - I'm using Bladesworn in PvP at the moment because warrior is the one profession I don't have the PvP title with, and I'm using it despite the dragon trigger mechanic rather than because of it. It's sometimes worth Dragon Slash: Boosting through a teamfight for the disruptive effect, but that's about it. In the competitive balance context, I'd take regular burst skills, even if I could only have it on axe, in a nanosecond if I had the choice.

So why is it worth taking?

Because the Bladesworn numbers on everything else is high in sPvP. Pistol is a 2.0 multiplier on the first shot, then Gunstinger for 0.9 multiplier, and follow up with a 1.0 multiplier with five stacks of vulnerability. With a teammate providing stealth, you can do that to someone from stealth right at the start of a fight. The end of the gunsabre autoattack chain does almost as much damage as a fully charged Dragon Trigger. Skills 2 and 4 do more (albeit at the cost of being blockable and blindable, but they're ammo skills, you can follow up by hitting them again), and skill 3 isn't even split from PvE. If you want to finish someone off, you don't DS them, you just go ham on them with your other skills.

And then you add the healing, boons, condition cleanses, and debuffs from shouts, and the ability to refresh most of your bar once a minute with Tactical Reload, and it has some good sustain and utility to go with those teeth. The main weakness is that "Shake It Off!" stunbreaks only go so far against heavy CC pressure.

It's honestly at the point where it'd probably be solid advice to just forget about using Dragon Trigger unless you can hit multiple targets in a teamfight, you really need an unstoppable CC, or you see an opponent approaching and you have flow you might as well burn seeing if you can open up with a Dragon Slash. Or just using DT immediately followed by Boost for mobility. And it will probably always be like this, because if it was ever good enough to really justify the setup and vulnerability time, it'll set up that binary situation I described above, where fights are decided based on whether a successful DS lands or not. It's not doubling the damage and healing coefficients, but it's definitely in the area of that first example I gave where poor design is compensated for by scaling up the numbers until it works despite the design flaws.

 

TL;DR: The Dragon Trigger core mechanic IS poorly designed for the competitive context. The build holds up purely because the rest of the kit is overtuned to compensate.

Eloquently stated and objectively correct. 

[JTGuevara.9018]

6 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The best part is where Anet is going to check their metrics for how much it's played and probably come to some different conclusions about the success of their BsW design than most of you are. 

Sure BsW isn't without it's issues but, like I have said many times before, you can't ignore the good things it does if you are going to be critical about it's design. 

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 minute ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I would put the wingman stats up but they're not updated yet for the recent changes.

[JTGuevara.9018]

Man, I can't WAIT until bladesworn gets inevitably nerfed to irrelevance to make room for the 4th expansion shinies. The "big brained analysts" are going to be hush-hush spinning the next round of talking points.

[Obtena.7952]

27 minutes ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Hey ... I'm not telling you something that's a secret or untrue here. Anet is looking at how much these things are played. If the amount things are played ingame doesn't match the amount people claim BsW isn't played, then it's obvious what information Anet will use to assess the situation. If the complaints are attached to these claims people are making, they won't be taken seriously. 

So what is the best way to argue BsW needs attention? Seems to me it's not to pretend no one is playing it because there is 'literally has no good thing" that it does or claim it's all just a big pile of bad because those are easy things to fact check for Anet. We HAVE to acknowledge the things it's good at giving people a reason to use it if we are going to be critical about the things it's NOT good at to be taken seriously.  

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[KryTiKaL.3125]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Hey ... I'm not telling you something that's a secret or untrue here. Anet is looking at how much these things are played. If the amount things are played ingame doesn't match the amount people claim BsW isn't played, then it's obvious what information Anet will use to assess the situation. If the complaints are attached to these claims people are making, they won't be taken seriously. 

So what is the best way to argue BsW needs attention? Seems to me it's not to pretend no one is playing it because there is 'literally has no good thing" that it does or claim it's all just a big pile of bad because those are easy things to fact check for Anet. We HAVE to acknowledge the things it's good at giving people a reason to use it if we are going to be critical about the things it's NOT good at to be taken seriously.  

 

The problem is if they only look at the statistics of the matter and not the feedback across the spectrum of how it is being perceived/received in terms of playing it and playing against it. Realistically of kittening course Bladesworn play statistics are going to show it being played over anything else on Warrior because 1) new and shiny 2) very strong 3) very strong. Though, I do agree with you, there has to be acknowledgement that it does good things, even if the method of executing those good things is the problem.

Anything meta on literally any game is going to see hyper inflated usage numbers because it is meta. That is how us monkey brained gamers think these days, even on GW2. Ook ook buttawn press does goodly damage numbers. It is ANets job in those circumstances to try and understand the "why" of this, as well as understand the "why" of why other Specializations are not being played and course correct for those underplayed Specializations and builds. Otherwise you get a situation where only the one Specialization is viable for 80% of an Expansions lifespan.

Which is why the fanboying over it, or ANet, helps nothing in these contexts (Not saying you are doing these things, I've seen you have plenty enough criticisms of them already). Praise them where its deserved, be critical of them where its deserved. I sometimes feel like, and others may feel this way I'm sure, that I have to be, or are, the overly critical pessimist when it comes to ANet because I see so much absolute just blind faith in them that has little to no basis outside of just unabashed bias being put on full display. Its why sometimes I ask if some of these people have even played another MMORPG outside of this game, or if their only other experience is WoW which is its own barrel of crazy issues.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

15 minutes ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Its why sometimes I ask if some of these people have even played another MMORPG outside of this game, or if their only other experience is WoW which is its own barrel of crazy issues.

In regards to that I have to say that some of these people never had to go on a corpse run fully naked after losing enough XP to lose a level and it shows.

[Opopanax.1803]

Once they nerf shout healing coefficient in pvp and wvw, then you'll see the tears really start to flow....

Anet is letting this roll because it is a bandaid that buys them time; only reason it hasnt been nerfed yet.  

[JTGuevara.9018]

2 minutes ago, Opopanax.1803 said:

Once they nerf shout healing coefficient in pvp and wvw, then you'll see the tears really start to flow....

Anet is letting this roll because it is a bandaid that buys them time; only reason it hasnt been nerfed yet.  

Yup. Then the bladesworn pushers are going to go REAL quiet and hush-hush and pretend they never supported it or come in with that hindsight bias ("I knew it all along!"). They're not going to have any grounds to deny and spin its real limitations with a straight face.

And Opopanax, congratulations to you. You shall be the lucky recipient of my 1000th forum post!

[Opopanax.1803]

53 minutes ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

Yup. Then the bladesworn pushers are going to go REAL quiet and hush-hush and go back to Guardian pretend they never supported it or come in with that hindsight bias ("I knew it all along!"). They're not going to have any grounds to deny and spin its real limitations with a straight face.

And Opopanax, congratulations to you. You shall be the lucky recipient of my 1000th forum post!

Fixed.  And thanks!

[Broxxgar.6801]

When you see that Rifle  weapon doesn't work with Bladesworn them you will understand what is happening with this spec.

[draxynnic.3719]

Let's be realistic here - ArenaNet isn't going to change the core mechanic. They've invested too much into the iaijutsu fantasy, and there are people who genuinely enjoy it (at least in PvE).

Which means that the only practical way to make it viable in competitive modes is to accept that having Dragon Trigger instead of the more conventional options is a handicap and buffing everything else to compensate. That means the weapons, the traits, and, because bladesworn gets special benefits with ammunition skills that make them stronger on bladesworn than other warrior specialisations, ammunition skills (including shouts). 

However, this doesn't change the reality that they're compensating for what is, for competitive at least, poor design. They're just finding ways to paper over the flaw.