Bladesworn Rework Proposition

[GamerToad.9248]

As right now Bladesworn is in a very bad spot, Sure it can pump damage but is very clunky and very unreliable.

Here is my proposition of how to change it to a better spot nit only by number tweaking.

Problem number 1: Casting and Aftercast animations

This spec have very annoying casts and aftercast with the ones more well known as the dragon trigger and the Artillery Slash and most of it comes by the fact that gunsaber has ranged and melee in the same skill,  way to fix it is to separate them and making gunsaber into a flip stance weapon.

Make the weapon have 2 stances one for melee and other for ranged and so you can accurately tweak the skills.

The Melee component of the gun being the strong dps and the ranged being focused on cc and rapid firing at 900 range.

The melee component of the weapon allowing for gap closing and damage and ranged for rapid firing and ccing removing long casts and aftercasts.

This will be important for what i am going to propose next.

 

Problem number 2: Dragon trigger

Outside of PVE this skill straight up is bad it is slow it has the biggest charge up in the game for mediocre damage in competitive and offer nothing other than damage.

My idea to fix it is to remove charging all together and set an damage and scaling for it.

Now how would you access the dragon trigger you ask? by using f1 and f2 and directly using it.

why only 2 skills? cause you access it by changing the weapons burst with the stance like i mentioned before having access to Dragon trigger - Force when in melee and dragon trigger - reach in ranged and having the Dragon trigger - Boost always available.

The 4 and 5 skill of

 

Problem number 3: Grandmaster Traits

The traits of the are focused on being in the charge up animation and the subsequent damage and in this new setup it would be underwhelming or not work all together.

My idea here is to add a new mechanic to Bladesworn and reworking the dragon scale defense, Make this trait to apply a unique status on the enemy called "Rend" And it works as a vulnerability but doesn't stack and only makes them receive 5% more damage from the Bladesworn it is applied when hitting from range, And a secondary component to it is whenever you hit in melee range it consumes the rend and grants buffs to allies around the bladesworn.

Here comes it grandmaster traits you can choose which buffs you want to be granting.

Immortal Dragon: Grants Regen, Protection and heals for a set amount, Blasting a grenade under the bladeworn that deals low damage but grants the buffs also is a blast finisher.

Unyielding Dragon. Makes the Dragon triggers unblocked and grants Might,Fury, and apply vulnerability with blast finisher.

Daring Dragon: Grants Alacrity, and aegis and swiftness. and also blast the area.

Problem 4: Flow 

This one goes for adrenaline too they should be depleting resources instead of a charging one and Allowing for fast recharge via skills or completing actions and traits.

Problem 5: Utility skills

Or they will become useless in this change or already are.

my proposal of change on underperforming utility or will be useless after changes

Electric Fense: just make it reflects projectiles already or allow shield trait to affect it

Dragonspike mine: Recharges slotted Dragon triggers and knock back enemies.

Tactical Reload: Recharges all ammo skills and your next attack will unleash a overloaded ammo to explode dealing extra damage. (if ranger can have a all weapon skill recharge with massive buffs I don't see where why warrior cant have all ammo recharge on a elite)

Hopefully this would make the class more fun and more viable and adding something to make the spec more high skill sealing but keeping the skill floor.

if you have ideas and criticism about my change ideas please comment here.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I like how everyone who tries to 'fix' bladesworn all come to the conclusion that the charge mechanic doesn't work and find ways to bypass it...

[GamerToad.9248]

Just now, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I like how everyone who tries to 'fix' bladesworn all come to the conclusion that the charge mechanic doesn't work and find ways to bypass it...

Fast paced game don't really work with charged or stationary skill.

Example of this is a character of Rainbow six siege called Tatchanka hd had a deployable gun that to use would needed to stand still there and it got reworked cause it doesn't work and being there would get you killed easily.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Let us move with 50% speed while charging and maybe even dodge without interrupting the charge. (No charge gained while dodging) 

 

[GamerToad.9248]

Just now, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Let us move with 50% speed while charging and maybe even dodge without interrupting the charge. (No charge gained while dodging) 

 

I love how they make Kneel being able to move but Dragon trigger you can't move.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

22 minutes ago, GamerToad.9248 said:

I love how they make Kneel being able to move but Dragon trigger you can't move.

The freaking sniper, that sits at range, can move. But the melee spec can't. 

Makes sense. 

[GamerToad.9248]

1 hour ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

The freaking sniper, that sits at range, can move. But the melee spec can't. 

Makes sense. 

And now it doesn't even stun in competitive which extra sucks 

[Dadnir.5038]

Let's be realist, we all knew that Bladesworn wouldn't have a bright futur the moment the devs showcased it. We gave all the feedback possible, even before the beta because the flaws of the spec were obvious. To this, the devs did as they always do: they gave bladesworn a piece of overpowered mechanic for a few weeks of glory and then nerfed it bringing bladesworn to oblivion.

The devs like to keep what's bad and replace what's good with things that somehow make what's bad work when the stars align.

They could very well change Dragonscale defense into a skill that make you gain boons upon using an elite skill. Obviously, there would be more boons than there is right now (let's be generous and say protection, resolution and stability) but you'd have to deal with a longer CD for the effect. And they would sell this as a buff.

[GamerToad.9248]

33 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Let's be realist, we all knew that Bladesworn wouldn't have a bright futur the moment the devs showcased it. We gave all the feedback possible, even before the beta because the flaws of the spec were obvious. To this, the devs did as they always do: they gave bladesworn a piece of overpowered mechanic for a few weeks of glory and then nerfed it bringing bladesworn to oblivion.

The devs like to keep what's bad and replace what's good with things that somehow make what's bad work when the stars align.

They could very well change Dragonscale defense into a skill that make you gain boons upon using an elite skill. Obviously, there would be more boons than there is right now (let's be generous and say protection, resolution and stability) but you'd have to deal with a longer CD for the effect. And they would sell this as a buff.

I am not fan of the balance team they seem to not really know what they are doing.... however staff exists and it clearly has insight of what warrior needed.

so is either inability to fix warrior or the unwillingness to do so, neither option for me sounds good.

[Verdict is Vengence.6912]

Bladesworn is just so unsatisfying to play. The satisfaction from other warrior specs is when you get to be a brute and smash people, which gets better if you hit a crit on a burst.

Personally, I got satisfaction using Bladesworn from Dragon Trigger because - duh - Bladesworn is a samurai spec. But the amount of time to get to Dragon Trigger takes too long and to make things worse, you have to be in the right place at the right time. So many times in wvw, the fight is simply drifting away from me as I stand there like a fool charging up to hit no one.

Gunsaber is one of the most unsatisfying aspects to Bladesworn with its rehashed animations. The damage is great but gunsaber is still so unsatisfying to use.

For me, I'd give gunsaber all the Dragon Trigger moves but maybe at a lower capacity. For Dragon Trigger itself, I'd give it just the "enhanced" versions of Dragon Trigger, which would be what it already has now.

[Aaron.1294]

 

First gunsaber skills and dragon trigger:

remove autoattacks (swift cut, steel divide, explosive thrust) stupid aftercast...

increase blooming fire damage by giving it burn stacks (1 on the att , decrease it's cast time to 1/2 sec and make it pure melee

increase dmg of artillery slash, give it 2 stacks of confusion (4 if 2 rounds are used), 2 ammo rounds should apply cripple and daze at the same time rather than daze only - makes 0 sense

add evade on break step and remove aegis from cyclone trigger (and remove aftercast)

rework Dragon trigger entirely (make it moveable, change triggerguard into evade instead of aegis, decrease cooldown to 25 sec and decrease it's uptime to 1/2 sec, change flicker step into a quick dash instead of teleport (and decrease it's cd to 20 sec per ammo charge)decrease the amount of charges, decrease cast time of dragon slash -Force, make it unblockable baseline, etc.)

1st part of overcharged cartridges should never have cast time, it should also give 3 stacks of might/fury, and cd reduced to 10 sec per charge (in pvp)

dragonspike mine should have more ranged on it's AoE, while inflicting daze

then traits :

river's flow is fine

swift as the wind is fine maaybe increase swiftness to 6 sec

Unseen sword should get damage increase 

dragonscale defense would be fine with reworked DT 

unshakable mountain should have 10 sec cd so it's not spammable, dumb and won't cause more and more problems

fierce as fire should get stacks reduced to 5 and each stack should give 2% more damage rather than 1%

lush forest - gunsaber autoattacks now apply 2 stacks of bleed, 

guns and glory should give 250 precision as well as ferocity

Immortal dragon prob can't make it to pvp, purely pve trait

Unyielding dragon should get it's might stacks amount increased to 2 and duration increased to 8 sec, and casting dragon slash 1, 2 or 3 should give resistance for 3 sec

and Daring dragon IMO should be pure condi trait ( dragon slash would apply different amount of burn stacks - DS force : 3 stacks, DS boost : 2 stacks, DS reach : 1 stack. With reworked Dragon trigger, which in my opinion should only have  3 charges at most instead of 10 charges as it is now, every stack of it would increase burn stacks per charge level)

Point of these changes - make bladesworn more interesting, active rather than a sitting duck that only and only can exist because of ridiculous aegis and healing spam, while maintaining insane amount of barrier by spamming random skills on it...

Overall this spec needs to be reworked entirely - changed from spamming healer meme to more reactive playstyle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Leo G.4501]

On 5/13/2024 at 7:33 AM, GamerToad.9248 said:

Fast paced game don't really work with charged or stationary skill.

Example of this is a character of Rainbow six siege called Tatchanka hd had a deployable gun that to use would needed to stand still there and it got reworked cause it doesn't work and being there would get you killed easily.

I felt the charge was fine when Boost didn't have the aftercast...not ideal but you could use it as a disengage or gap closer just fine. The charging was also acceptable when you could stun people with the attack. Or when you have a decent form of stability while you charged.  Using "fast pace" as the one true path ends up limiting the variety of encounters against players...because *someone* has to be "slower".

Ultimately, it feels like the dev's goal for Bladesworn is to nerf it down until the base of players that really enjoyed it wane as much as possible, then add some buffs here and there to make it seem like they're still relevant (maybe they are, in PvE. unsure about PvP as I haven't stepped in there in a while) before finally throwing the whole spec away and reworking it to be completely different than it is now.  I'm sure many would rejoice but in the back is the initial base who liked it before and become jaded with the predictable rework they put out (it still won't be good because they'll have to tweak numbers on it for years so you probably won't be coasting on the new improved Bladesworn until 2027).

Anyway, I do like the OP's concept of making Gunsaber a stance weapon. Make one of the skills act as a stance shift and then the ranged would do decent damage with good CC and the melee doing high damage + blocks/evades and a little bit of CC. 

Obligatory "bring back og Daring Dragon" and all that jazz.