Spellbreaker still needs buffs [PvE]

[Dahkeus.8243]

The dagger and Spellbreaker buffs for PvE were a great change in the right direction, but sadly the elite spec is still very under-tuned for even the most ideal situations you could run it. 

 

On the plus side, dagger seems to now be the highest DPS mainhand for spellbreakers and even outperforms axe.  Offhand dagger is more competitive, but still falls behind axe offhand in pure DPS. 

 

I get that they don't want to over-buff it, particularly since Bladesworn makes more sense as the ideal power DPS elite spec, but there's still a very far way for Spellbreaker to go (likely only benching 31-33k DPS in ideal conditions where you can trigger Full Counter regularly) before it's remotely a threat to other DPS options.  If it wasn't so far behind, it would at least be a viable option for when you want boon strips in Fractals and such.

[otto.5684]

The off hand need to be buffed further. Off hand 4 needs to deal close to full damage in pve, even without the interruption, since many things are immune to Cc to begin with. Skill 5 needs ~25% more damage.

[Scalacious.4139]

3 hours ago, Dahkeus.8243 said:

On the plus side, dagger seems to now be the highest DPS mainhand for spellbreakers and even outperforms axe.  Offhand dagger is more competitive, but still falls behind axe offhand in pure DPS.

But if you run offhand dagger you get a lot of sustain from sun and moon style through healing for 4% of your crit damage, which is like 4% of all your damage, since you are going for 100% crit anyways. And you can reflect projectiles with bladestorm which offhand axe can not do. Spellbreaker is pretty solid now as a pure dps or 100% quickness dps.

[Svviety.8051]

I play spellbreaker for not so long now, and I play mostly casually in OW, but I feel like full counter is the least reliable profession mechanic from all. It is saitisfying when you proc it, but this satisfaction is overshadowed by dissatisfaction when you miss it and it happens (a lot for me sometimes :D). In pve environment it is also hard to include this reliably in the rotation because when enemy attack animation does not align with your cooldown, you lose a lot of tempo or whole FC proc.

I would love to see the change for FC to make it proc on enemy attack OR at the end of casting if nothing touched it. This would buff spellbreaker and make it more consistent, won't lower the skill ceiling but only skill floor and I think it would benefit all game modes. (I am not pvp expert).

[Scalacious.4139]

 

17 minutes ago, Svviety.8051 said:

In pve environment it is also hard to include this reliably in the rotation because when enemy attack animation does not align with your cooldown, you lose a lot of tempo or whole FC proc.

Why do try to include FC into your rotations?  Ill just use it at random times during my rotations when I 100% that I would get hit (because I am standing in an AoE for example). You will do enough damage if you just use your weapons burst skill, prefably dagger.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

8 minutes ago, Scalacious.4139 said:

 

Why do try to include FC into your rotations?  Ill just use it at random times during my rotations when I 100% that I would get hit (because I am standing in an AoE for example). You will do enough damage if you just use your weapons burst skill, prefably dagger.

Landing FC is a major DPS boost--first through the dmg of FC itself, and second because it recharges your other burst skills. Thus you can do something like arcing slice, FC, arcing slice (provided you have the adrenaline to do so).

 

Failing to land FC is a major DPS loss, as you not only miss out on the dmg described above, but you also stopped attacking for 2s or so while channeling FC. 

[Scalacious.4139]

Just now, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Landing FC is a major DPS boost--first through the dmg of FC itself, and second because it recharges your other burst skills. Thus you can do something like arcing slice, FC, arcing slice (provided you have the adrenaline to do so).

 

Failing to land FC is a major DPS loss, as you not only miss out on the dmg described above, but you also stopped attacking for 2s or so while channeling FC. 

That is my point, failing FC is very bad for your damage, that is why I only use it when I am certain that I get hit. But you can't include it in a set in stone rotations because all enemys attack differently.

[Svviety.8051]

8 minutes ago, Scalacious.4139 said:

That is my point, failing FC is very bad for your damage, that is why I only use it when I am certain that I get hit. But you can't include it in a set in stone rotations because all enemys attack differently.

And that drive you back to my idea/suggestion to make FC more reliable by adding option to trigger it in worst case scenario at the end of the casting, so you won't risk standing for 2 sec doing nothing without any effect. It would help a lot to maintain consistency and open possibility to add FC into standard rotation. Sometimes it will proc instantly if you time it correctly, so you won't lose whole casting time, and if you miss it, you won't get punished that hard for it and it will be possible to keep going without falling behind with damage so much.

[Scalacious.4139]

32 minutes ago, Svviety.8051 said:

And that drive you back to my idea/suggestion to make FC more reliable by adding option to trigger it in worst case scenario at the end of the casting, so you won't risk standing for 2 sec doing nothing without any effect. It would help a lot to maintain consistency and open possibility to add FC into standard rotation. Sometimes it will proc instantly if you time it correctly, so you won't lose whole casting time, and if you miss it, you won't get punished that hard for it and it will be possible to keep going without falling behind with damage so much.

Yeah, I get it. If you fail to get hit, you atleast get a consolation price with FC still going off, but no rotation would include 2 whole seconds of doing nothing. It is true though that the change you suggest would be a small improvement.

[Tyro.8237]

Yes, they need to look at full counter and its uses. For solo play it is great. I also tried it yesterday to see how it fares with the updates and it is definitely much better than before.

 

However, when you have group content and you are not the only target anymore, you are actually worse off. Full counter  is then only usable from time to time, which basically removes the special mechanic of the spellbreaker.

 

If they add, as suggested above, that after the cast you can manually release it, then this is a "minor" Bladesworn in the end. You charge and then hit after charging up. Maybe it should be more linked to "others" in your group getting hit and it procs of that, if that is at all possible. Then you keep the same functionality of it being a reactive skill but you can still use it in the group.

 

Although if you casually just tag along a group, without being in party/squad/raid, then I am not sure how they would do that but then again, I am sure they can figure something out there.

 

[Zekent.3652]

it's time to turn meditation into actual good skills with damage, like they did with bladesworn skills.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I'm all in favor of having a flipover for FC to release the attack, but at reduced effectiveness, less damage and less daze duration, like 50% less.

 

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Tyro.8237 said:

Yes, they need to look at full counter and its uses. For solo play it is great. I also tried it yesterday to see how it fares with the updates and it is definitely much better than before.

 

However, when you have group content and you are not the only target anymore, you are actually worse off. Full counter  is then only usable from time to time, which basically removes the special mechanic of the spellbreaker.

One approach, which could also help make SB more support-y, is to make Full Counter work like Protector's Strike and trigger if a nearby ally is attacked.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

It would be nice if you could cancel FC and it would function as an instant recharge of your burst. That way if you whiff the timing you can cancel it, get the primary benefit for Warriors (Burst), and get back into the fight.

No interrupt, no damage, etc., just purely functioning as a refresh if you release it (in addition to whatever Traits proc from it)

Edited August 24, 2022 by Geoff Fey.1035

[Arewn.2368]

I agree with the full counter ideas. 

It should at least auto trigger the damage portion at the end of the cast. It's already punishing enough having lost the time fully channelling it. 

Also speed up the dagger leaps. Dagger 2 is just so slow and floaty. Feels awful.

[wirne.8256]

Once upon a time i tried to learn how to proc fc wtih 100 % success rate. Eventually i gave up but learned to proc it with decent rate anyway. Based on the fact that you are not doing anything while you are channgelling it, it should of course take as little as possible time to proc it. Its fascinating just how long some mobs can hold their weapons or whatever in action animation without actually hitting you.

But this was about daggers. Leaps have been mentioned alot and at this point their existence is just a "kitten you" but we can live with that, we are warriors. Daggers target caps go 2 1 1 1 5 1. The weapon itself is maybe best compared to greatsword, both have decent damage with some utility (evade/movment, might synergies for gs and movement, cc and some might synergies on dagger). Greatswords caps are 3 3 3 1* 1 5. Axe, still the pure dps option is 3 5 1 3 5 1. In general, dagger tries to exchange high target caps for better single target damage. Arcdps players can tell us how this ends up, but for general pve its clear which options are more "fun".

 

Dagger skills 3 and 4 next. 3 dazes and and stuff happens if the enemy is using a skill. Proccing this can be impossible or doable. Just look at that leyline anomaly and tell me which part of its animations are attacks. Extra daze might  or might not be useful so its not a great loss if this doesnt proc. 4 does damage and moar numbers if the enemy is not using a skill. Theres also ½ second of casting time so you have to glance into the future and know when the enemy is doing stuff. Or maybe the IsAction check is performed at your keypress. I have no idea how this mechanic really works. The payout - double damage is noticeable (if you are looking at the numbers on your screen) so it would be nice to also learn to proc this always. 5 seems to go to full cooldown when interrupted (i have just noticed this few times, havent actually tested if thats true) and while its satisfying skill to use the cooldown could be alot shorter because of the "combo" problem with daggers. The combo is that 2 leaps you to your target, 3 interrupts them and 4 does damage because they are hopefully still dazed. Out of 5 possible skills you just used 3 and now you can press that 1 very very hard or throw the 5 at something if you feel like it. Especially using 3 and 4 in succession feels just like the classic gw2 game design - heres a button that does nothing useful but you can press it to get 20 % moar numbers for 5 seconds at a 30 second cooldown. Wow much fun. As a side note, those "on skill use" and "not use" triggers are quite rare, does any other weapon have two of them?

[Gorem.8104]

Pretty sure you could still say *Warrior still needs buffs in all content 

[oscuro.9720]

Adding a secondary option to prematurely trigger FC baseline would be bad imo. Perhaps changing, say, top GM trait to give it that functionality would be a better path, and would help the GM traits further differentiate how full counter functions (manual activation, high damage+condi transfer, and utility with MBT). And now the spec has actual, non-penalizing trade offs that give it a diverse set of play styles, not a bad setup imo.

[RiyazGuerra.9203]

Just want to throw out a simpler change to Full Counter (FC). 

How about it functions the same as current BUT if it does not trigger (does not counter an actual attack) the adrenaline bar is NOT spent and the skill recharge is reduced to 2 seconds (keep successful FC recharge to the current 8 seconds).

If you think 2 sec recharge (for untriggered FC) is too OP I think 4 sec is more than reasonable.

Edited August 25, 2022 by RiyazGuerra.9203

[Dahkeus.8243]

On 8/24/2022 at 1:06 AM, Scalacious.4139 said:

But if you run offhand dagger you get a lot of sustain from sun and moon style through healing for 4% of your crit damage, which is like 4% of all your damage, since you are going for 100% crit anyways. And you can reflect projectiles with bladestorm which offhand axe can not do. Spellbreaker is pretty solid now as a pure dps or 100% quickness dps.

For open world?  It's ok.  You'll still clear through most of it faster and more reliably on bladesworn if you're equally comfortable on both specs.  In instanced content, SB is still only likely to barely break 30k DPS (I haven't seen anyone actually benchmark anything decent with it yet, but that's mostly because the SC benchmark people don't find it worth even trying).  Compare that to the 41k of Bladesworn. 

 

SP as a pure DPS can do damage akin to a quickness Berserker or Bladesworn, but without actually providing quickness. 

[Scalacious.4139]

7 hours ago, Dahkeus.8243 said:

For open world?  It's ok.  You'll still clear through most of it faster and more reliably on bladesworn if you're equally comfortable on both specs.  In instanced content, SB is still only likely to barely break 30k DPS (I haven't seen anyone actually benchmark anything decent with it yet, but that's mostly because the SC benchmark people don't find it worth even trying).  Compare that to the 41k of Bladesworn. 

 

SP as a pure DPS can do damage akin to a quickness Berserker or Bladesworn, but without actually providing quickness. 

Maybe bladeworn is a little bit faster and more reliable as spellbreaker in open world, but it doesn't bring nearly as much sustain.

 

I highly doubt that this is true after the recent damage increase on daggers and spellbreaker talents.

[Mungrul.9358]

13 hours ago, wirne.8256 said:

Proccing this can be impossible or doable. Just look at that leyline anomaly and tell me which part of its animations are attacks.

I know they removed the skill activation progress bar from targets that GW1 had in order to make people watch animations instead of progress bars, and to be fair, that was a viable approach on initial release when animations were quite easy to read.

But in the modern game where animations have become harder to read, and visual clutter has increased exponentially, maybe it's time it made a comeback?

[Dahkeus.8243]

On 8/26/2022 at 1:05 AM, Scalacious.4139 said:

Maybe bladeworn is a little bit faster and more reliable as spellbreaker in open world, but it doesn't bring nearly as much sustain.

 

I highly doubt that this is true after the recent damage increase on daggers and spellbreaker talents.

I understand why this is believed, but here is how Bladesworn can be run with massive sustain as well without sacrificing much damage:

 

TL;DR: You can wear cavalier gear with Immortal Dragon (dragon slash heals you) and take the guaranteed crit burst skill trait in Arms to get big damage and big sustain.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Dahkeus.8243

[otto.5684]

On 8/24/2022 at 5:04 PM, Arewn.2368 said:

I agree with the full counter ideas. 

It should at least auto trigger the damage portion at the end of the cast. It's already punishing enough having lost the time fully channelling it. 

Also speed up the dagger leaps. Dagger 2 is just so slow and floaty. Feels awful.

I think a better option, for pve purposes only, is to make pressing the skill again while the cast is active detonate it. This way no cast, no waiting. If FC procs on CD that would not make SB over performing.

[Suyheuti.1732]

5 hours ago, Dahkeus.8243 said:

I understand why this is believed, but here is how Bladesworn can be run with massive sustain as well without sacrificing much damage:

 

TL;DR: You can wear cavalier gear with Immortal Dragon (dragon slash heals you) and take the guaranteed crit burst skill trait in Arms to get big damage and big sustain.

 

This is copy of Lord Hizen's build. 

 

And yes, this is the best open world build in all specs as far I tried.