I tried to write down a proposal for one of the problems I encountered a lot of times while playing WL. I am not a native speaker so please don’t get mad about wrong grammar and spelling.
I hope I did everything right. Ok lets go!
The Problem: AP Management and its impact on burst damage
One of the major problems WL had in the past and still have is the lack of any solid AP management possibilities in his skill set. Even with AP gain tactics from party members the WL ends up AP starved after a very short period, often even during his initial burst. This is a major problem for fulfilling his duties as a MDSP in any party or warband.
Reasons why:
1.The WL is a burst heavy class and a good chunk of his burst comes from “Coordinated Strike” and the pet attack skills and almost all forms of CC are bound to the lion too. Unloading your alpha strike damage without the pet leads to very sup pair results. (Let’s leave “Loner” out of the discussion)
= You are forced to recast your Lion immediately after the cooldown is gone. While the pet is a major asset of the WL toolset, the AP costs of recasting the pet (55 AP) is very hurtful in mid to big scale fights (the pet has a shorter survivability than its cooldown most of the time).
2. A lot of his damaging skills have rather high AP costs for the damage they do, varying between 30 and 55 AP.
3. Because of the lack of strong defensive “oh ****” buttons or easily available defensive boosting tactics, the main way of playing WL is to use “Pounce” to become a super mobile “I jump on you and try to burst you down” class but here again the 30 AP for getting alive to your target hurts getting your alpha damage rotation off.
(This point might be a good topic for another balancing proposal -> “Pounce” is much to mandatory and this narrows build variety)
Conclusion from the reason why:
In longer lasting battles the WL does very often engage enemies with 50 to 85 AP missing because of recasting pets and the need to close gaps fast. His damaging skills are also rather AP intense and is burning the rest of his AP fast. Because of that he is lacking the needed pressure over a timeframe of lets say 10 seconds to actually threaten a healer or dsp class (which is his job as a MDSP). Combine that with his expensive to access heal debuff that is also outgoing and not incoming heal and you have the reason why WL do have problems pressuring backlines. (Example: You vs. a heal DoK is almost pointless because the DoK can out sustain you with ease)
Available skills and ways to manage your AP
Lions Fury:
“Lions Fury” is indeed a very good tactic because it helps to make your alpha strike hit harder and also helps to spare some AP for getting one more skill in your rotation but it does not solve the general problem of being AP starved a lot of time.
Hack and Slash:
“Hack and Slash” is making the associated skills much more efficient but would force you to spam “Hack” which is undesirable at best.
Moral 2 “Relentless Assault” and “Force of Will”
The last changes to moral gain helps the WL in general. Both Morals helps with AP management but the problems descriped with AP management makes “Force of Will” the way to go Moral in almost every situation. You are going to fire it as soon as it up just for getting the AP. Tactical use of the drain is secondary most of the time. This leads again to less build variety.
Anyway: The health of a class should not be bound to the use of moral abilities.
Possible solutions:
I think there are several possible solutions or combinations of them.
1. Lower the costs of recasting the pet by:
- a. Lowering the pet summon costs in general
- b. Expand the “Speed Training” tactic with a AP discount for summoning the lion
- c. Lower the summoning costs (and maybe also the cooldown) if the pet is killed by several different damage sources. This is for the standard case that the lion dies in aoe storms. (I know that mirror class examples should be avoided but I just want to point out why loosing the pet is a huge problem for WL . While SH can fire and forget the pet and still dish out damage from the backlines, the WL absolutely needs his pet and the cc it delivers for getting his main job done -> deliver heavy burst to the point.)
- a. Lower the AP costs of your attacks if the target is under a HP threshold (Lets call it “Go Down!”)
- b. Lower the AP costs if your pet is near to you (don’t really like that but it might work)
- c. If you spent 50-60 AP or more in the last 3 seconds your next attack will cost less or is free. (The downside of that solution is, that you need to plan your action in advance to get the most out of it)
- d. Standard AP drain tactic on crit or with a positional constraint
4. Lower the AP costs of “Pounce” by 5 AP. Now after it is not spammable anymore the AP costs can probably go down a little. (Thanks for taking my feedback regarding “Pounce” balancing into account. It feels great to contribute to WAR)
