Forceful Persistence - a lackluster in all gamemodes (improvement idea)

[Virdo.1540]

Lets take a brief overview about what defines what role on a herald. 

It all depends on the grandmaster traits:
Elevated Compassion - The go-to for Quickness support herald. It gives good heals, perma quick(or vigor) and on top, giving a ton of boonduration.
Draconic Echo - Lets your Facets pulse after usage & grants very strong passive effects. Granting more boons to everyone & basically a ton of free stats to the herald. A good option to mix "boon support" and "dps"
Forceful Persistence - Increases damage. Thats all. The Numbers look high, the impact isnt, due to being calculated additively, not multiplicatively.
It offers no personal sustain. It offers no support to others.

So far Forceful Persistence is granting low damage bump & nothing else. In PvE, its nowhere to be seen. Only Elevated Compassion for Quickness Heralds is common, rarely even Draconic Echo (tons more boons, damage difference to Forceful Persistence is very small). In WvW and PvP, its Draconic Echo all the way through. You simply need the energy there, so upkeeps arent common.

So i thought, instead of bumping up the Damage-mod numbers by a ton, how about we align with the other options?
Elevacted Comp. gives free boon duration, increasing survivability by booning.
Dragonic gives basically free stats in form of "passive buffes (-10% damage, can be traded with Toughness etc.)

My idea:
At first, make Forceful Persistence look less bloated. Instead of differentiate between "Upkeep" and "herald Upkeep", how about we simply make it:
-gain 3,5% dmg increase PER Pip upkeep in use...And let it stack as a buff, like all other upkeep-traits. Would clear the description up a lot. Why 3.5%? Because calculated into any current power dps herald-rotation, it would result in the exact same damage outcome is it is right now.
So now, with the same damage modifier result, lets throw extra stats on it, like the other traits have, just to equalize. Which stat to choose?

Solution: Add a "Convert 13% of your vitality to precision". As a basic example: Full Berserker + Jade core, gives 10% crit chance. So its not super good, but neither bad at all.
Why Precision? Because Dragon-Stats. Combine Dragon-Stats with THE "DRAGON" Specialization. It gives more Vitality, less precision, more ferocity. In the end you get bonus ferocity (a small damage gain) as well as a Vitality gain. Vitality is needed for Forceful Persistence, because unlike the others, it doesnt have anything included for personal sustain. It even works well with "Draconic Fortitude" (+10% health trait).

In short, a small damage bonus;  a decent (bitterly needed) sustain-buff & a great way to fit into lore (dragon spec using dragon stats). What do you guys think about it?



small bug: At the moment it has a bonus for "weapon skills upkeep" in description included. But after scepter beta, there are no weapon upkeep skills. Could be fixed with this change

Edited July 14 by Virdo.1540

[Jobber.6348]

On 7/15/2024 at 4:35 AM, Virdo.1540 said:

At first, make Forceful Persistence look less bloated. Instead of differentiate between "Upkeep" and "herald Upkeep", how about we simply make it:
-gain 3,5% dmg increase PER Pip upkeep in use...And let it stack as a buff, like all other upkeep-traits. Would clear the description up a lot. Why 3.5%? Because calculated into any current power dps herald-rotation, it would result in the exact same damage outcome is it is right now.
So now, with the same damage modifier result, lets throw extra stats on it, like the other traits have, just to equalize. Which stat to choose?

The reason why they kept it like this is because they wanted it to be useful with all Upkeep types but Herald specifically can turn on all Facets and get more damage total than other Legend Upkeeps while pulsing boons. It's a dated design for sure but there is a design there. This is an old trait after all. 

I don't mind Vitality to Precision bonus. Allows me to run more Valk or Dragon pieces lol. 

And honestly if the idea is to make it more used, one crucial change will immediately make it more appealing: 
Change Strike Damage into All Damage 

This will make people consider running Forceful Persistence on things like Condition Herald in PvE and PvP.

[ArthurDent.9538]

In pve it's one of the best damage mods in the game, the rest of power herald just doesn't quite do enough. Same can be said for pvp except impossible odds is also so insanely expensive that it can't get good uptime.

[arazoth.7290]

So better to change it to something usefull if even in the best used situations it isn't good enough. And buffing the numbers up on it to be "good" shouldn't be done either

[Virdo.1540]

14 hours ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

In pve it's one of the best damage mods in the game, the rest of power herald just doesn't quite do enough. Same can be said for pvp except impossible odds is also so insanely expensive that it can't get good uptime.

It looks like one of the best damage mods in the game, but its calculating very badly. 

for example you can hit 35k easily on golem as quickness herald, but throwing like +26% of the FP mod on top wont bring you over 39k, so its a lot worse than real calculations than what it appears to be via tooltip

[zeyeti.8347]

Let's just say elevated compassion is too good , the free Bd , some healing , and perma quick/vigor without need of any BD is awfully usefull.

The reason the others are not played much is because there is far better deeps than herald and nobody needs some fury and might in group content because it's already covered , even in open world having quickness all the time feel very confortable , choosing between having +25%/28% dmg or perma "action goes 50% faster" is a no brainer , and you give this to your allys too...

Herald is designed as the most easiest long range , no brain quickness provider with this staggering 600 range and little action required , sure it isn't a catalyst design 😁.