Willbender Shattered Aegis

[Bear on the job.6273]

So the same interaction that was found during beta has popped up again. Could we please get a different fix for it this time instead of the 1second cooldown put on Shattered Aegis when Willbender is selected? That change killed a lot of potential build diversity with Willbender, when a more appropriate fix would have been to fix Crashing Courage. Put the 1second CD on the Aegis provided by Crashing Courage instead and you can fix this properly from the start. 

[Saiyan.1704]

17 minutes ago, Bear on the job.6273 said:

So the same interaction that was found during beta has popped up again. Could we please get a different fix for it this time instead of the 1second cooldown put on Shattered Aegis when Willbender is selected? That change killed a lot of potential build diversity with Willbender, when a more appropriate fix would have been to fix Crashing Courage. Put the 1second CD on the Aegis provided by Crashing Courage instead and you can fix this properly from the start. 

What issue is it? Did the icd get removed or something?

[cat.8975]

The SA fix is fine. This only popped up again because someone found an exploit that let you keep the WB Courage buff on other specs.

[Bear on the job.6273]

12 hours ago, cat.8975 said:

The SA fix is fine. This only popped up again because someone found an exploit that let you keep the WB Courage buff on other specs.

Yeah but it's just bad design from a development perspective. With EOD, they introduced a new feature (Crashing Courage) that interacted poorly with an existing feature (Shattered Aegis). Instead of fixing the new feature to minimize impact, they changed the existing feature that was part of a core traitline, and reduced build possibilities by doing so. 

Sure it works, but there are better ways to fix it (by adjusting Crashing Courage) that will be more robust against exploits.

[cat.8975]

Shattered Aegis is only changed on Willbender, the other specs don't have the ICD.

I think a better would've been to turn SA's damage procs into something that doesn't contribute to on-hit effects (such as the virtue passives), the same way lifesteal effects don't. 

[Thron Stal.9367]

13 hours ago, cat.8975 said:

The SA fix is fine. This only popped up again because someone found an exploit that let you keep the WB Courage buff on other specs.

Yeah and it took 10-days for them to fix this in WvW.  

[Saiyan.1704]

14 hours ago, cat.8975 said:

The SA fix is fine. This only popped up again because someone found an exploit that let you keep the WB Courage buff on other specs.

So wb f3 can be active on say, Core Guard, using Whirling Wrath in a mob? Noice... niche but noice.

[Bear on the job.6273]

Just now, Saiyan.1704 said:

So wb f3 can be active on say, Core Guard, using Whirling Wrath in a mob? Noice... niche but noice.

Yeah it's kinda silly that they disabled Shattered Aegis and not Crashing Courage in this situation. The root issue of keeping the WB passives when you swap templates is still there, and there are probably more exploits to be found. 

1 hour ago, cat.8975 said:

Shattered Aegis is only changed on Willbender, the other specs don't have the ICD.

I think a better would've been to turn SA's damage procs into something that doesn't contribute to on-hit effects (such as the virtue passives), the same way lifesteal effects don't. 

Yes the ICD is specific to Willbender, and that's the bad design I'm talking about. Why make a special exception when you can adjust Crashing Courage and make no exceptions? And I don't understand the logic in making more changes to SA. That would kill a lot of build diversity for all guardians, for something that's not currently a problem. Change Crashing Courage and you fix the root issue without affecting other guardian specs.

[cat.8975]

16 minutes ago, Bear on the job.6273 said:

Yeah it's kinda silly that they disabled Shattered Aegis and not Crashing Courage in this situation. The root issue of keeping the WB passives when you swap templates is still there, and there are probably more exploits to be found. 

Disabling a niche trait that doesn't see much use versus disabling one of the core skills of an elite spec. I'm not surprised they chose to disable SA here.

18 minutes ago, Bear on the job.6273 said:

Yes the ICD is specific to Willbender, and that's the bad design I'm talking about. Why make a special exception when you can adjust Crashing Courage and make no exceptions? And I don't understand the logic in making more changes to SA. That would kill a lot of build diversity for all guardians, for something that's not currently a problem. Change Crashing Courage and you fix the root issue without affecting other guardian specs.

Putting an ICD on Crashing Courage would be a pretty severe nerf. I'm not a fan of traits functioning differently based on elite specs, but I can see why they did it this way instead of gimping f3 on WB just to avoid abuse from a niche trait that only sees use in WvW.

[Bear on the job.6273]

On 8/11/2023 at 1:26 PM, cat.8975 said:

Disabling a niche trait that doesn't see much use versus disabling one of the core skills of an elite spec. I'm not surprised they chose to disable SA here.

Putting an ICD on Crashing Courage would be a pretty severe nerf. I'm not a fan of traits functioning differently based on elite specs, but I can see why they did it this way instead of gimping f3 on WB just to avoid abuse from a niche trait that only sees use in WvW.

Saying Shattered Aegis is a niche trait, and disabling it has less impact than disabling Crashing Courage is a debatable statement. And there are other solutions than just putting a flat ICD on Crashing Courage, like putting an ICD on just the aegis application of the skill.

Or if they really must keep the 1s ICD on Shattered Aegis, make it per-target, not global. So that way if you want to use Shattered Aegis with other skills that apply aegis to allies, you can without it causing this bad interaction with Crashing Courage. That really is the crux of my complaint, you can't use skills like Advance or shield 4 with Shattered Aegis on Willbender. 

[Junkpile.7439]

That is like only way to balance game when they wanna add these new totally broken elite specs. Just make traits and skills weaker when elite spec is selected.

[Ezrael.6859]

The ICD needs to stay.

They just need to make sure that Willbender Virtue effects also get stripped when you swap specs as several people have been exploiting those to stack Willbender buffs on DH.

[Bear on the job.6273]

5 hours ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

The ICD needs to stay.

They just need to make sure that Willbender Virtue effects also get stripped when you swap specs as several people have been exploiting those to stack Willbender buffs on DH.

Yes there should be a general fix to remove all profession-specific buffs when swapping traits. That issue is not isolated to WB, other professions can do it too (some to funny effects). But none of them were as exploitive as WB.

If the ICD stays, I think it should be per-target not global. If you put Aegis on 5 allies, Shattered Aegis should trigger on all of them with their own independent ICD. Other traits have that, it's not a new invention. 

Also it's Tuesday (patch day), and no update on this yet from the devs...

Edited August 15, 2023 by Bear on the job.6273

[Esufer.8762]

Did they ever re-enable Shattered Aegis? I've tried searching but can't find a mention of it being back yet. Not a guardian main so I haven't tested myself.

[Saiyan.1704]

11 hours ago, Esufer.8762 said:

Did they ever re-enable Shattered Aegis? I've tried searching but can't find a mention of it being back yet. Not a guardian main so I haven't tested myself.

They probably put it on the backlog, meaning they'll get to it in 6 to 9 months :)!