Endgame PVE Feedback for the new Boon Warrior Builds [ June 27 Balance Update Preview ]

[Jzaku.9765]

This thread is specifically about the Quickness Berserker and Alacrity Bladesworn builds in the context of Endgame PVE.

[General]

• Currently, several boon builds (notably, Alac Willbender) go completely unplayed because being unable to provide your boon when there's nothing to hit is crippling. Both Berserker and Bladesworn will be unable to provide their boon without something to land burst skills on - and thus unable to prebuff or allow faster CDs during fight intermissions. 

[Berserker]

• There was a massive effort in this patch to improve the gameplay of boon support builds to not need to spam Utility skills off Cooldown, but Berserker literally has to spam a full bar of rage-extension utility skills to extend Berserk.
• Losing Berserk at all will utterly and completely tank both your DPS as an offensive Support and Quickness output, since your Burst skill rate goes from 'up to once every ~2s' (Decapitate) to 'core Warrior burst CD' (which competes for Adrenaline for going back into Berserk).
• Both these issues compound to the point where having no target will utterly destroy the efficacy of Quickness Berserker. No target = no quickness, no rage extension, leading to even less quickness.
• It's also unclear from the notes what 'when you strike an enemy with a burst skill' means. What about multi-hit burst skills like Scorched Earth or Flaming Flurry? Is there an ICD on this trait? How will you balance these wildly varying burst skill hit rates? 
• For these reasons I doubt Quickness Berserker will see any use past the experimentation phase.

[Bladesworn]

• Bladesworn has similar issues to Berserker regarding utility skill usage. Will you be balancing the Alacrity uptime around the additional Burst skill usage [Flow Stabilizer][Dragonspike Mine][Tactical Reload] gives you? The community will likely expect those skills to be stapled to your bar and used off-CD regardless with low Boon Duration, just because the implementation allows it. 
• This is also an Alacrity build that takes a while to get going, and requires hitting a target to apply Alacrity. See: alacrity Willbender, this is brutal to Alacrity builds.

I hope that implementing these boon builds has shown just how little depth the Warrior especs have. The only mechanical lever to tweak for both Berserker and Bladesworn is the Burst skill (core Warrior's mechanic), which is where both specs ended up having their boon application.

Now that Warrior has both quickness and Alac on DPS specs, does this mean a defensive Support build is nowhere on the table for Warrior any longer? I would personally trade alacrity Bladesworn in a heartbeat for a promise that Heal Warrior is being worked on. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Jzaku.9765

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

All of the above is correct. Its fine to tie things to our burst mechanic, it is not fine to keep tying them to activation upon hitting with a burst. These two changes will be fine and flourish if they are on use not on hit.

[Jzaku.9765]

5 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

All of the above is correct. Its fine to tie things to our burst mechanic, it is not fine to keep tying them to activation upon hitting with a burst. These two changes will be fine and flourish if they are on use not on hit.

It's not really, e.g. for Berserker with nothing to hit you can't generate Adrenaline. And considering it's Berserker, the trait 100% expects you to be bursting extremely often in terms of it's uptime.