Breaching Strike Damage

[oscuro.9720]

Please buff breaching strike damage. 
 

The recent bug to Breaching Strike was obviously overkill. 12k breaching strikes are hilarious, but not healthy. However, the low-damage state of breaching strike is, well, just bad. Raising its damage by about 60% would dramatically improve spell’s ability in a large set of matchups that spell has been left behind in. This is especially pertinent given it does less damage than Dagger 2 presently. 
 

Given the state of guardian GS3 (does bugged-breaching strike levels of damage), swoop, etc. this would not be an outlandish amount of damage on a power weapon’s leap imo.

[Napster.8290]

I fully agree to that, with this bug warrior finally felt on par with other modern specs/build. Breaching Strike currently, after the fix, does around 4k crit for me which is stupidly low for an adrenaline "burst" skill. 

 

But hey, they let willbenders and harbingers run around going completely mental with these cele stats, but a heavy hitting F1 warrior skill on ONE elite spec is where the fun stops, am I right? Insta nerf/fix...

[Argamir.3651]

Pretty much this. In WvW, the breaching strike nerf finally made spellbreaker a roamer to be reckoned with, still not on par with broken roaming specs like WB, cele harbinger or SLB, but good. Now the spec is back to mediocre, if not bad. 

 

Either bring back at least some of the damage or buff the spec in some other way...

[oscuro.9720]

I’m just going to use this thread to further expand on y thoughts on the topic of Spell Breaker damage in a post-good-damage era. 
 

IIRC, the tooltip damage for bugged F1 was a bit over double what it is now. Again, this was obviously outlandishly strong. However, the total damage output at that point was appropriate. The problem was it was loaded into 1 skill, which is bad. Taking this relative damage increase and spreading it out over multiple skills would likely bring the spec up in a much healthier way. 
 

So, for example, a 60% increase in the damage of Breaching Strike and a 20% increase in the damage of Dagger 2 would result in a more balanced damage output, with the payoff being more loaded towards the burst skill. 
 

To get more into dagger 2, more than a damage increase, it needs a range increase. I’m not sure why it’s 300 range, but it’s extremely easy to avoid. This isn’t so much necessary as it is a QOL and minor balance thing. Setting dagger 2 range to be 450 like most other leaps would give more reliable pressure instead of these weird, cut off leaps that don’t hit if the person moves. Spell breaker functions by moving in and out of melee with leaps and arcing. Improving the ranging on dagger 2 opens up the consistency of pressure much more. Again, I wouldn’t expect it to make a world of a difference like having damage on Breaching Strike did, but it’s one of those small things that can help spellbreaker punch up there with the other duelists. 
 

Sinilarly, that in and out style is why adding more damage to Breaching is a significant difference maker. Spell doesn’t have many skills to land outside of arcing and it’s leaps. It’s actual damage set is very restricted. When the damage values are higher on breaching, the spec has the ability to pressure other classes far better. This pressure forces them to withdraw temporarily and expend defensive cooldowns, giving spell the ability to pressure or heal itself. Given the low accessibility to separation skills, this is extremely helpful for spells survivability as well as it’s put down ability. 
 

One of the places that I did find Breaching exceptionally ridiculous was when enemies were low. Deleting 50% of someone’s health is different when they are at 90% than when they are at 50%. The damage numbers really didn’t feel preposterous early in the fight, it was later when the target was low. Perhaps giving breaching some sort of conditional increase like “deal 75% more damage to foes over 50% health” (basically an inverse arcing slice) would be the best way to go about this. After all, it’s breaching strike. It’s meant to breach defenses, which, I’m assuming, are stronger when someone has full health. 
 

This has kind of been a stream of consciousness which I don’t often do on these forums, but oh well. The point is, I am strongly of the opinion that one of the most significant changes you can make to spell to make it a competitive duelist/roamer is to raise the damage in breaching strike (and potentially aura slicer), either conditionally or just straight up. 
 

What are all of your guys’ thoughts, fellow warriors?

[Napster.8290]

Hopefully they buff spellbreaker to make it competitive with other roaming builds since we lost like half of our dmg with the CC nerf back in 2020 and didnt get any compensation for it. Then they also ripped our resistance buff some patches later.

 

I do like the deal more dmg to enemies above 50% thing for breaching strike, would feel good to hit the full combo with breaching into arcing, but I still think a straight dmg buff is the correct way to stay competitive with other specs. Don't forget Spellbreaker is our PvP spec on warrior, it should be viable! There is no oldschool resistance anymore, nor dmg on cc which made warrior super annoying... right now it is a shadow of it's past and only die-hard warrior mains stick to it.

 

What would also be good is to give Full Counter a bit of it's dmg back like they did with the Hammer F1, it's a class mechanic skill which needs setup and has to be triggered, it should be fair to make an exception to the "cc no dmg" rule. 

 

We hardstuck spelli mains tasted blood the last couple of days and we want our bae back on the menu!

[kiranslee.4829]

Even with it being so high dmg it war in wvw was not able to deal with just about anything. War in its core skills for just about any weapon set is outdated , clunky and slow.

Again, i have no trust that anet is doing anything or care even a bit for the class for a long time.

And just for the sake of saying, we used to have really skilled warriors in wvw roaming and giving effort into already underwhelming class but but lately if you see warrior playing there it is just some lost new player getting farmed.

Edited October 21, 2022 by kiranslee.4829

[eXruina.4956]

1 hour ago, kiranslee.4829 said:

but lately if you see warrior playing there it is just some lost new player getting farmed.

or it could be me. 🤣

[Heizero.9183]

YES! 1000% YES! I came here to make a post just like this but you have already so clearly laid out what has been in my head all week. It's like warriors got to feel what it was like to have fun roaming again. I understand the damage on breaching was very high. But the current damage is just SO LOW. Many of the tools on warrior are just blatantly outdated and cannot compete with modern specs. I mean just look at Hundred blades - it is archaic. It has been nerfed for a meta that does not exist anymore. Every class now has an abundance of access to stab or stunbreaks, anybody getting caught in a hundred blades these days DESERVES to get punished with damage. There needs to be a PAY OFF and a FOLLOW UP for a warrior landing his setup abilities. As it stands right now there is none. Breaching Strike being bugged reminded many warriors what it could be like to have effective damage again. I agree with the above comments that spreading the damage would be the most fair. Spread the damage across 100b, breaching strike, and even add a little bit of damage to full counter. I think this would be a great way to make many warrior players pick up this class when roaming again.  I also loved the idea I saw on another post about increasing breaching strikes damage when removing boons, much like how spinal shivers behaves. I think this is another fair way to balance it's damage output by using some sort of trade-off by dealing less damage to boonless foes. Please Anet, In my 10 years of playing this game, I have never thought about requesting changes for a class on the forums, but I really believe warrior deserves them the most.

[Fueki.4753]

At this point, I feel like Arenanet could double both base damage and scaling on all (non-Dragon Slash) Warrior abilities and Warrior would still have hard times competing with the other professions. That's how abysmal it is mechanically.

Nerfing Breaching Strike was unnecessary.

Edited October 22, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[eXruina.4956]

13 hours ago, Heizero.9183 said:

Every class now has an abundance of access to stab or stunbreaks, anybody getting caught in a hundred blades these days DESERVES to get punished with damage.

often they don't get punished, even for eating every hit from Hundred Blades honestly. 🥺😭

 

in fact, its the other way around you're setting them up to burst you down, you're a sitting duck. 🤣

[eXruina.4956]

hey at least breaching strike only takes 1 bar right, tier 3 eviscerate hits for roughly the same and it takes 3 bars. statistically breaching strike is 3x the value. 🤣

Edited October 22, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[thaniretouni.4762]

On 10/19/2022 at 8:34 PM, oscuro.9720 said:

I’m just going to use this thread to further expand on y thoughts on the topic of Spell Breaker damage in a post-good-damage era. 
 

IIRC, the tooltip damage for bugged F1 was a bit over double what it is now. Again, this was obviously outlandishly strong. However, the total damage output at that point was appropriate. The problem was it was loaded into 1 skill, which is bad. Taking this relative damage increase and spreading it out over multiple skills would likely bring the spec up in a much healthier way. 
 

So, for example, a 60% increase in the damage of Breaching Strike and a 20% increase in the damage of Dagger 2 would result in a more balanced damage output, with the payoff being more loaded towards the burst skill. 
 

To get more into dagger 2, more than a damage increase, it needs a range increase. I’m not sure why it’s 300 range, but it’s extremely easy to avoid. This isn’t so much necessary as it is a QOL and minor balance thing. Setting dagger 2 range to be 450 like most other leaps would give more reliable pressure instead of these weird, cut off leaps that don’t hit if the person moves. Spell breaker functions by moving in and out of melee with leaps and arcing. Improving the ranging on dagger 2 opens up the consistency of pressure much more. Again, I wouldn’t expect it to make a world of a difference like having damage on Breaching Strike did, but it’s one of those small things that can help spellbreaker punch up there with the other duelists. 
 

Sinilarly, that in and out style is why adding more damage to Breaching is a significant difference maker. Spell doesn’t have many skills to land outside of arcing and it’s leaps. It’s actual damage set is very restricted. When the damage values are higher on breaching, the spec has the ability to pressure other classes far better. This pressure forces them to withdraw temporarily and expend defensive cooldowns, giving spell the ability to pressure or heal itself. Given the low accessibility to separation skills, this is extremely helpful for spells survivability as well as it’s put down ability. 
 

One of the places that I did find Breaching exceptionally ridiculous was when enemies were low. Deleting 50% of someone’s health is different when they are at 90% than when they are at 50%. The damage numbers really didn’t feel preposterous early in the fight, it was later when the target was low. Perhaps giving breaching some sort of conditional increase like “deal 75% more damage to foes over 50% health” (basically an inverse arcing slice) would be the best way to go about this. After all, it’s breaching strike. It’s meant to breach defenses, which, I’m assuming, are stronger when someone has full health. 
 

This has kind of been a stream of consciousness which I don’t often do on these forums, but oh well. The point is, I am strongly of the opinion that one of the most significant changes you can make to spell to make it a competitive duelist/roamer is to raise the damage in breaching strike (and potentially aura slicer), either conditionally or just straight up. 
 

What are all of your guys’ thoughts, fellow warriors?

I disagree. We need some strong skills that do burst dmg otherwise many classes can outheal you. Especially with how many celestial builds running around. Breaching strike needs to hit around the 80% dmg of what it does in PVE. With the bug the values were the same between the two modes. We also need our axe 5 dmg back. Also, some of the old dmg to cc skills would be nice, maybe 20% would be adequate.

Edited October 22, 2022 by thaniretouni.4762

[oscuro.9720]

2 minutes ago, thaniretouni.4762 said:

I disagree. We need some strong skills that do burst dmg otherwise many classes can outheal you. Especially with how many celestial builds running around. Breaching strike needs to hit around the 80% dmg of what it does in PVE. With the bug the values were the same between the two modes. We also need our axe 5 dmg back. Also, some of the old dmg to cc skills would be nice, maybe 20% would be adequate.

I’m a bit confused, what is it you disagree with? A 60% buff would be roughly equal to 80% of the pve damage (60% over current pvp damage would be 2.112 multiplier, 60% over current wvw damage is 1.92 multiplier, 80% of pve damage is a 2 multiplier). So we are saying the same thing? Or am I misunderstanding what you wrote?

[thaniretouni.4762]

4 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

I’m a bit confused, what is it you disagree with? A 60% buff would be roughly equal to 80% of the pve damage (60% over current pvp damage would be 2.112 multiplier, 60% over current wvw damage is 1.92 multiplier, 80% of pve damage is a 2 multiplier). So we are saying the same thing? Or am I misunderstanding what you wrote?

I disagree with your statement that it was an overkill. ARguably this is what we needed if we didnt receive any other change. Also didn't check the values so I thought ur value was a bit lower than mine. Anyway, when i meanth 80% of pve i meant at the very least. Also, nothing personal.  

[oscuro.9720]

7 hours ago, thaniretouni.4762 said:

I disagree with your statement that it was an overkill. ARguably this is what we needed if we didnt receive any other change. Also didn't check the values so I thought ur value was a bit lower than mine. Anyway, when i meanth 80% of pve i meant at the very least. Also, nothing personal.  

Okay cool! Given you were talking about the actual % I was a bit confused, but it’s perfectly fair to disagree with me that it was overkill. I know several people in game who think it should just be the pve value as well (especially given guard GS 3)

[Verdict is Vengence.6912]

14 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

At this point, I feel like Arenanet could double both base damage and scaling on all (non-Dragon Slash) Warrior abilities and Warrior would still have hard times competing with the other professions.

Reminds me of the ole days when warrior was a freebee and an easy bag, but whoa mama could we hit hard. Bull's charge + Frenzy + Hundred Blades = Insta-down.

Life sucked back then with warrior trying to survive but man was it fun landing hits. Eviscerate was taking heads back then. Arching slice was an actual arching slice that looked like Hammer 5 and was just as hard to land lol. Probably the best warrior change was making arching slice mimic hammer 4's animation instead.

Funny that warrior still feels relatively the same but less fun because of the damage reduction over the years.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Since Cull the Weak needs to be fixed as a reliable weakness source, might as well make Body Blow give dmg to all our CCs without the ability to crit with a decent modifier.

This would bolster warrior damage in general (and tbf if you need dmg strength is your go-to) and only semi kill Aristocracy Cele SpB, which is arguably one of the most niche builds. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 hours ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Since Cull the Weak needs to be fixed as a reliable weakness source, might as well make Body Blow give dmg to all our CCs without the ability to crit with a decent modifier.

This would bolster warrior damage in general (and tbf if you need dmg strength is your go-to) and only semi kill Aristocracy Cele SpB, which is arguably one of the most niche builds. 

The weakness on BB can stay, it's the bleed that needs to be updated to strike damage.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The weakness on BB can stay, it's the bleed that needs to be updated to strike damage.

Yeah the weakness is great and provides great synergy with cull the Weak. Changing the bleed to either a damage buff like you suggested or doing something like granting might or applying vuln when you CC a foe would be the way to go. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

10 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Yeah the weakness is great and provides great synergy with cull the Weak. Changing the bleed to either a damage buff like you suggested or doing something like granting might or applying vuln when you CC a foe would be the way to go. 

Damage

Lets stop asking for crumbs eh?

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

2 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Damage

Lets stop asking for crumbs eh?

Again, not opposed to damage, but gaining might or applying vuln are hardly crumbs.

 

"Gain 5 might when you disable a foe" offers a significant damage boost as we as a potential synergy with MMR (something hammer had trouble doing outside of aristocracy runes, and that's a terrible synergy for a power weapon).

 

"Apply 8 vuln when you disable a foe" provides even a bigger boost for both condi and power dmg and provides a cover condi to protect your condi burst.

If those are"crumbs", I'll take a plateful. 

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by CalmTheStorm.2364

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

6 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Again, not opposed to damage, but gaining might or applying vuln are hardly crumbs.

we can already apply those in abundance though, so unless there are going to be new traits centered on them, then I'll take the damage.

6 minutes ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

"Gain 5 might when you disable a foe" offers a significant damage boost as we as a potential synergy with MMR (something hammer had trouble doing outside of aristocracy runes, and that's a terrible synergy for a power weapon).

 

"Apply 8 vuln when you disable a foe" provides even a bigger boost for both condi and power dmg and provides a cover condi to protect your condi burst.

If those are"crumbs", I'll take a plateful. 

 

You can get those via sigils already in the vast majority of the game though, so what you are asking for really is nothing new.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

we can already apply those in abundance though, so unless there are going to be new traits centered on them, then I'll take the damage.

You can get those via sigils already in the vast majority of the game though, so what you are asking for really is nothing new.

Lots of traits are approximations of runes or sigils. For example, Brawlers recovery and sigil of cleansing; restorative strength and rune of the fighter; aggressive onslaught and sigil of celerity, just to name a few. Having some redundancy in effects improves build diversity so that you don't have to take that one trait or that one sigil or whatever for your build to work.

 

Again (third time), you're not wrong to suggest adding dmg to interrupts; that's a valid suggestion. But there are multiple ways BB could be improved, and I don't think either of my suggestions are in any way inferior--they're just different, and would promote different styles of play.

 

In any event, I think we can all agree that BB sucks and needs to be reworked. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

in any event, I think we can all agree that BB sucks and needs to be reworked. 

Anything would be better and welcome, even increasing the bleeding stacks.

[thaniretouni.4762]

20 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Okay cool! Given you were talking about the actual % I was a bit confused, but it’s perfectly fair to disagree with me that it was overkill. I know several people in game who think it should just be the pve value as well (especially given guard GS 3)

if they give some dmg to other abilities, like hammer 5, bulls charge, hundred blades (also reduce cast time a little bit), dagger 4 and 5 and fix some utilities i would be fine breaching strike doing what it does now