Ironbreaker warband improvements

[Tamtam]

Currently the IB suffer from lack of armor penetration and group utility.

So here is some ideas, not necessarly to implemet all of them:
- Avenging the Debt: now damage is spiritual
- Oath of vengence: Passive - get +XXX weaponskill (XXX proportional to toughness)
- Told Ya So!: Inspiring attack will provide +XX morale to all your group (IA has 5s cooldown already)
- Overprotective: When your oath friend is hit, a 25% chance to remove XX points of Morale from attacker
- Oathstone: Decrease timer to 8s, increase number of attack blocked to 8
- Juggernaut: now makes the IB immune to pull/thow effects for 10 seconds

[CountTalabecland]

Ironbreaker can do a lot of tanky tank stuff in a warband but at the end of the day the Knight does the core stuff better and for more grpmates. I can't argue with 4x Knights being the priority over IBs and even then Knights mixing auras is still probably better bc they dont have to interrupt HTL to buff every 10 seconds.

[Ostabenny]

First off - worth noting that if you want any of these suggestions to get looked at, they probably need to be submitted to the balance proposals forum:
viewforum.php?f=95


Some great points in this thread though. I heartily agree that Path of Stone is just a waste past Oathbound at the moment, and Avenging the debt is perhaps the biggest waste of mechanic for the class.

My changes would be:

Oath of Vengence: Now applies to all allies within 50ft of you OR oathfriend - 20ft is laughable.

Avenging the debt: grants a buff for you and your oathfriend for 10 seconds, and any final blow in that time will heal you and your oathfriend for the amount (can multiply with multiple kills) or to really power it up, heal any ally within 30ft. Its such a tiny heal I suspect this still wouldn't be taken anyway. If its going to stay the same mechanic, at least make it 1000-1500 health.



Ostabenny

[Gargis]

Earthshatter: Currently does 0 damage at 0 Grudge. Scale that up to 221 @ 0 grudge, 331 @ 25 grudge, 461 @ 50 grudge, 591 @ 75 grudge, and 891 @ 100 grudge. Add secondary effect effect of reducing AA attack speed by 10-15% for duration to all enemies affected.

Combine; Shield of reprisal and Furious reprisal tactic. No tactic required.

Runic Shield; Make baseline, convert to group buff.

Avenging the Debt; Does X damage and heal group for 100% damage dealt. Reduce cost to 15 Grudge and add CD of 10 seconds.

Guarded attack, Inspiring attack, Vengeful attack, and Stubborn of Stone convert to group wide buffs.

Rune-Etched Axe increase range w/o necessity of tactic.

Shield sweep; Increase enemies affected and reduce or attenuate morale.

Lower Shield Mastery tactic to 9 pt requirement.

Oathstone; Timed duration buff on IB, increase # of enemies hit.

You want more s/b IBs....this is good way to start.

[zakgrin]

Nefarian78 , just want to say thank you for taking the time to comment. We almost never get this much action on a thread specifically about IBs. That being said, I want to reiterate that the whole point of this thread is to come up with ideas, no matter how strong or weak, to potentially improve the IB in warband/city play. By throwing out ideas, no matter how wacky or ridiculous, it may make others think of ideas that they wouldn't have thought of otherwise. The goal is not to make IBs better than Knights, the goal here is to get the IB some group utility, because at this point it has almost 0. There is a reason why IBs have 0-1 spots in order city premades, and it has to do with the fact that Knights and SMs bring far more group utility to the table. I am the only IB my alliance takes when we are able to find enough Knights and SMs.

At least half of these suggestions are purely l2p issues and have nothing to do improving Ironbreakers in a warband while others are just ridicolous.

Oathbound and Ancestor's Fury 20s? If you have trouble sustaining 100% uptime with those two along Stubborn as Stone, that's on you. 10s duration is perfectly balanced. This might sound weird, but IBs actually are not and are not supposed to be an aoe buff class. The buffs are incredibly potent and that's why they're single target. 2+ targets with 10% crit, 25% parry, 50+ ini, 75+ str at 100% uptime isn't balanced nor fun to play as a pure buffbot.

I think everyone, including IBs, agree that Oathbound and Ancestors Fury are fantastic buffs. But for a class that is supposed to be a strong single target buffer, that's about all they got. Not to mention, you are not getting both of those buffs on 2+ targets unless the only thing you are doing is standing and buffing. By the time you get Oathbound and Ancestors Fury on your second mdps target there will only be a MAX of 4 seconds left on the 1st buff fired on the first target to do something other than buff. Meaning... in that 4 seconds, you can only get off 2 of (PK, Kneecapper, or Stonebreaker) before you have to start rebuffing again. The idea of increasing the up time of these two abilities and the grudges cost is so that IBs can do something other than buff. Keeping 2 mdps buffed at all times (in a 24 man wb) literally pails in comparison to what Knights have in their Aura's and what SM's get in WW and Crushing Advance.

Stubborn As Stone (corp buff) - Will be nearly equivalent to or get overwritten by Knights Gather Your Resolve! which buffs all parties members resists and reduces destros resists. Note the auto-attack speed increase on Stubborn As Stone does not apply to your Oathfriend. So if you are in a party with a Knight, there is almost no reason to use this buff outside of increasing your own auto-attack speed, but really that isn't that helpful because you aren't going to be doing much damage anyways, and having a dummy buff slotted on yourself ahead of your other buffs.

Vengful Strike (toughness) - Toughness in general has been nerfed on this server, but if a Knight runs Stand Strong! they will probably overwrite your single target toughness buff for the entire party.

Watch An' Learn (WS and AP) - You get WS and your oathfriend gets AP. Has a 20s cooldown. Most Knights typically run To Glory! anyways, so this buff honestly is only a marginal improvement with a really long cooldown, while Knights have 100% up-time with theirs proccing every 5 seconds.

Guarded Attack - This buff is nullified by armor pots.

Inspiring Attack (str, willpower) - This buff is decent but is overshadowed by ancestors fury. You'll be using this ability as often as possible in a city/wb situation for the heal debuff, not so much for the strength buff. Another downside is it does not stack with ancestors fury.

Runic Shield (magic absorb) - This is the same story as the others. It is marginally better than SMs protection of the hoeth, but the difference is, protection of the hoeth applies to your entire group.

What the above should have illustrated to you is that the Knight's AOE buffs are usually on par or better than most of the IBs single target buffs. Not to mention most Knight/Chosen Aura's go over a longer distance than any of an IB/BGs single target buffs. In literally every other facet of the game that is not the case. Lets look at damage. AOE damage does quite a bit less damage per tick than single target does generally, but the benefit of AOE is that you can hit a lot of things at once. Conversely if you need kill an individual target, single target specs/damage is the best option. Why shouldn't that also be true for buffs? Knights and Chosens essentially have AOE buffs, IBs/BGs only have single target buffs. The actual stat value by which an IB improves itself and someone else by should be at worst marginally better, at best substantially better than an AOE/full party buff.

There is one problem here that could be tricky, but I think I've offered a solution that addresses it. If all IB/BG buffs are improved substantially (not including things like Oathbound and Ancestors Fury), then their 2h build could become overpowered and they'd dominate in small scale. What I've proposed is that all IB/BG buffs should be marginally improved, and when wearing a shield they should be even stronger. For instance, maybe with a 2h slotted, Vengeful Strike gives you and your ally 150 toughness, and with a shield it gives 200 toughness. Obviously those numbers could be anything and it will be up to the devs to decide, but I hope that makes the point. 2h build would get a marginal buff and S&B builds would get a bigger buff. It would also require IBs to think harder about what they should bring into small groupplay.

Percentage Armor Debuff? Who even suggests these abominations? Armor debuff, % Armor debuff, Tactic armor debuff, Morale armor debuff. Can't see anything wrong that could happen from making even tanks hit 0 armor. Kappa

Stonebreaker hasn't gotten any love since RoR basically launched. The same problem happened on live. When conq was the top gear set stonebreaker was awesome. When sov was the top gear set(as we are seeing now), it isn't great anymore. Stonebreaker frankly has not scaled with the many tiers of gear sets that have come out since RoR launched. An IB running a S&B city build (with Ancestor's Fury), at max grudge, will only have a 960 armor debuff. You aren't even going to get the most well geared tanks below the armor soft cap with that. WL/Mara's armor debuff are both better and are much more meta than IBs or BGs are. So there are three options, do nothing, increase the flat values (which could potentially decimate squishes and low geared players), or come up with a percentage based reduction (such as 25 grudge: 10% debuff, 50: 15%, 75: 20%, 100: 25%). Personally I don't know exactly what the best percentage values should be, but the values I just listed would maybe be a marginal improvement. Tankier players would have more armor reduced, and squishier players would have less armor reduced than the flat value. They certainly wouldn't get tanks to 0 armor.....

Stacking buffs with auras and potions? Why should IB buffs be any different than those from BOs, BGs, SMs and literally everyone else? And that rationale... what is "tactical" in having the buffs you use on rotation stack with Auras and potions? I can answer that. Nothing.

This is a wacky idea. If I remember correctly this used to be the case on this server. It isn't going to come back so we can move on from this one .

While there certainly are some things that need to be looked at, but the suggestions in this thread clearly show great lack of understanding on how this game works and of how class balance works. Nothing more than "Buff my class" with weak arguments and flawed or no rationale.

I disagree. I think the fact that order premades are only taking 0-1 IBs speaks for itself in the same manner that order premades are only taking 0-1 engies/SWs. We need changes that give IBs more warband utility. We are brainstorming potential changes right now. I don't think any idea necessarily needs to be justified right now (although it helps, gives me more reason to add it to the OP), that can be done when we actually make a formal proposal.

You want to make IBs more attractive to warband play? Increasing the attacks reflected by oathstone to 8 would be a good start.

Not sure I'm understanding you correctly here. Oathstone pretty much guarantees you'll reflect back damage 4 times, but it can be more, it just depends how many times you block in that 10 second window. So in its current state now, it could reflect 8 times or more. That being said, even if that was guaranteed, I still would not spec into it, because that isn't bringing much to a skill that has a 30 second cooldown. However, you have given me an idea, and it fits with IBs hardnosed, angry, tanky lore. Oathstone could be an AOE reflect, in that every time you block in that 10 second window, it reflects damage back to the X closest enemy players. It may dissuade the destro melee ball from mindlessly attacking the way it does now.

Make Avenging the Debt apply a debuff on the target that lasts X seconds and add an AP component to it.

Others have proposed similar things. What debuff would you suggest? How will the AP component work?

Oath of Vengeance also reducing the target's toughness by the same amount.

Reduces just the targets toughness, or all targets within 20 feet of your oathfriend?

These 4 changes would go a long way in actually making IBs better for WB, but don't expect to see more than 1 in an optimized warband because that is not going to happen.
BGs are in the same spot, they are there only for Wave of Scorn and Crimson Death and that's fine. IBs are taken to buff the main slayer that is in group with a SM with Whispering Winds and Axe Slam which is also perfectly fine.

1. We are trying to make more than one IB viable in a city warband. At this point the optimal comp is 4 Knights and 4 SMs. We'd also like the same for BGs.
2. I don't know of any IB taking Axe Slam into a city. Rarely does either side get to its M4, and the side that will get to it if it happens is destro. Forts and RvR totally, but not cities.

[zakgrin]

First off - worth noting that if you want any of these suggestions to get looked at, they probably need to be submitted to the balance proposals forum:
viewforum.php?f=95


Some great points in this thread though. I heartily agree that Path of Stone is just a waste past Oathbound at the moment, and Avenging the debt is perhaps the biggest waste of mechanic for the class.

My changes would be:

Oath of Vengence: Now applies to all allies within 50ft of you OR oathfriend - 20ft is laughable.

Avenging the debt: grants a buff for you and your oathfriend for 10 seconds, and any final blow in that time will heal you and your oathfriend for the amount (can multiply with multiple kills) or to really power it up, heal any ally within 30ft. Its such a tiny heal I suspect this still wouldn't be taken anyway. If its going to stay the same mechanic, at least make it 1000-1500 health.



Ostabenny

We are still in the brainstorming stage and are not ready to post in the balance proposals forum. I'll get your ideas added to the OP. Let me know if you have any other ideas!

That being said, I still don't think I'd take Oath of Vengeance even with your changes, unless they buffed the toughness output of Vengeful Strike.

[Ostabenny]

We are still in the brainstorming stage and are not ready to post in the balance proposals forum. I'll get your ideas added to the OP. Let me know if you have any other ideas!

That being said, I still don't think I'd take Oath of Vengeance even with your changes, unless they buffed the toughness output of Vengeful Strike.

Awesome - you are well on top of it

[zakgrin]

OP has been updated and categorized. Let me know if I missed anything!

[Nefarian78]

Spoiler:

Nefarian78 , just want to say thank you for taking the time to comment. We almost never get this much action on a thread specifically about IBs. That being said, I want to reiterate that the whole point of this thread is to come up with ideas, no matter how strong or weak, to potentially improve the IB in warband/city play. By throwing out ideas, no matter how wacky or ridiculous, it may make others think of ideas that they wouldn't have thought of otherwise. The goal is not to make IBs better than Knights, the goal here is to get the IB some group utility, because at this point it has almost 0. There is a reason why IBs have 0-1 spots in order city premades, and it has to do with the fact that Knights and SMs bring far more group utility to the table. I am the only IB my alliance takes when we are able to find enough Knights and SMs.

At least half of these suggestions are purely l2p issues and have nothing to do improving Ironbreakers in a warband while others are just ridicolous.

Oathbound and Ancestor's Fury 20s? If you have trouble sustaining 100% uptime with those two along Stubborn as Stone, that's on you. 10s duration is perfectly balanced. This might sound weird, but IBs actually are not and are not supposed to be an aoe buff class. The buffs are incredibly potent and that's why they're single target. 2+ targets with 10% crit, 25% parry, 50+ ini, 75+ str at 100% uptime isn't balanced nor fun to play as a pure buffbot.

I think everyone, including IBs, agree that Oathbound and Ancestors Fury are fantastic buffs. But for a class that is supposed to be a strong single target buffer, that's about all they got. Not to mention, you are not getting both of those buffs on 2+ targets unless the only thing you are doing is standing and buffing. By the time you get Oathbound and Ancestors Fury on your second mdps target there will only be a MAX of 4 seconds left on the 1st buff fired on the first target to do something other than buff. Meaning... in that 4 seconds, you can only get off 2 of (PK, Kneecapper, or Stonebreaker) before you have to start rebuffing again. The idea of increasing the up time of these two abilities and the grudges cost is so that IBs can do something other than buff. Keeping 2 mdps buffed at all times (in a 24 man wb) literally pails in comparison to what Knights have in their Aura's and what SM's get in WW and Crushing Advance.

Stubborn As Stone (corp buff) - Will be nearly equivalent to or get overwritten by Knights Gather Your Resolve! which buffs all parties members resists and reduces destros resists. Note the auto-attack speed increase on Stubborn As Stone does not apply to your Oathfriend. So if you are in a party with a Knight, there is almost no reason to use this buff outside of increasing your own auto-attack speed, but really that isn't that helpful because you aren't going to be doing much damage anyways, and having a dummy buff slotted on yourself ahead of your other buffs.

Vengful Strike (toughness) - Toughness in general has been nerfed on this server, but if a Knight runs Stand Strong! they will probably overwrite your single target toughness buff for the entire party.

Watch An' Learn (WS and AP) - You get WS and your oathfriend gets AP. Has a 20s cooldown. Most Knights typically run To Glory! anyways, so this buff honestly is only a marginal improvement with a really long cooldown, while Knights have 100% up-time with theirs proccing every 5 seconds.

Guarded Attack - This buff is nullified by armor pots.

Inspiring Attack (str, willpower) - This buff is decent but is overshadowed by ancestors fury. You'll be using this ability as often as possible in a city/wb situation for the heal debuff, not so much for the strength buff. Another downside is it does not stack with ancestors fury.

Runic Shield (magic absorb) - This is the same story as the others. It is marginally better than SMs protection of the hoeth, but the difference is, protection of the hoeth applies to your entire group.

What the above should have illustrated to you is that the Knight's AOE buffs are usually on par or better than most of the IBs single target buffs. Not to mention most Knight/Chosen Aura's go over a longer distance than any of an IB/BGs single target buffs. In literally every other facet of the game that is not the case. Lets look at damage. AOE damage does quite a bit less damage per tick than single target does generally, but the benefit of AOE is that you can hit a lot of things at once. Conversely if you need kill an individual target, single target specs/damage is the best option. Why shouldn't that also be true for buffs? Knights and Chosens essentially have AOE buffs, IBs/BGs only have single target buffs. The actual stat value by which an IB improves itself and someone else by should be at worst marginally better, at best substantially better than an AOE/full party buff.

There is one problem here that could be tricky, but I think I've offered a solution that addresses it. If all IB/BG buffs are improved substantially (not including things like Oathbound and Ancestors Fury), then their 2h build could become overpowered and they'd dominate in small scale. What I've proposed is that all IB/BG buffs should be marginally improved, and when wearing a shield they should be even stronger. For instance, maybe with a 2h slotted, Vengeful Strike gives you and your ally 150 toughness, and with a shield it gives 200 toughness. Obviously those numbers could be anything and it will be up to the devs to decide, but I hope that makes the point. 2h build would get a marginal buff and S&B builds would get a bigger buff. It would also require IBs to think harder about what they should bring into small groupplay.

Percentage Armor Debuff? Who even suggests these abominations? Armor debuff, % Armor debuff, Tactic armor debuff, Morale armor debuff. Can't see anything wrong that could happen from making even tanks hit 0 armor. Kappa

Stonebreaker hasn't gotten any love since RoR basically launched. The same problem happened on live. When conq was the top gear set stonebreaker was awesome. When sov was the top gear set(as we are seeing now), it isn't great anymore. Stonebreaker frankly has not scaled with the many tiers of gear sets that have come out since RoR launched. An IB running a S&B city build (with Ancestor's Fury), at max grudge, will only have a 960 armor debuff. You aren't even going to get the most well geared tanks below the armor soft cap with that. WL/Mara's armor debuff are both better and are much more meta than IBs or BGs are. So there are three options, do nothing, increase the flat values (which could potentially decimate squishes and low geared players), or come up with a percentage based reduction (such as 25 grudge: 10% debuff, 50: 15%, 75: 20%, 100: 25%). Personally I don't know exactly what the best percentage values should be, but the values I just listed would maybe be a marginal improvement. Tankier players would have more armor reduced, and squishier players would have less armor reduced than the flat value. They certainly wouldn't get tanks to 0 armor.....

Stacking buffs with auras and potions? Why should IB buffs be any different than those from BOs, BGs, SMs and literally everyone else? And that rationale... what is "tactical" in having the buffs you use on rotation stack with Auras and potions? I can answer that. Nothing.

This is a wacky idea. If I remember correctly this used to be the case on this server. It isn't going to come back so we can move on from this one .

While there certainly are some things that need to be looked at, but the suggestions in this thread clearly show great lack of understanding on how this game works and of how class balance works. Nothing more than "Buff my class" with weak arguments and flawed or no rationale.

I disagree. I think the fact that order premades are only taking 0-1 IBs speaks for itself in the same manner that order premades are only taking 0-1 engies/SWs. We need changes that give IBs more warband utility. We are brainstorming potential changes right now. I don't think any idea necessarily needs to be justified right now (although it helps, gives me more reason to add it to the OP), that can be done when we actually make a formal proposal.

You want to make IBs more attractive to warband play? Increasing the attacks reflected by oathstone to 8 would be a good start.

Not sure I'm understanding you correctly here. Oathstone pretty much guarantees you'll reflect back damage 4 times, but it can be more, it just depends how many times you block in that 10 second window. So in its current state now, it could reflect 8 times or more. That being said, even if that was guaranteed, I still would not spec into it, because that isn't bringing much to a skill that has a 30 second cooldown. However, you have given me an idea, and it fits with IBs hardnosed, angry, tanky lore. Oathstone could be an AOE reflect, in that every time you block in that 10 second window, it reflects damage back to the X closest enemy players. It may dissuade the destro melee ball from mindlessly attacking the way it does now.

Make Avenging the Debt apply a debuff on the target that lasts X seconds and add an AP component to it.

Others have proposed similar things. What debuff would you suggest? How will the AP component work?

Oath of Vengeance also reducing the target's toughness by the same amount.

Reduces just the targets toughness, or all targets within 20 feet of your oathfriend?

These 4 changes would go a long way in actually making IBs better for WB, but don't expect to see more than 1 in an optimized warband because that is not going to happen.
BGs are in the same spot, they are there only for Wave of Scorn and Crimson Death and that's fine. IBs are taken to buff the main slayer that is in group with a SM with Whispering Winds and Axe Slam which is also perfectly fine.

1. We are trying to make more than one IB viable in a city warband. At this point the optimal comp is 4 Knights and 4 SMs. We'd also like the same for BGs.
2. I don't know of any IB taking Axe Slam into a city. Rarely does either side get to its M4, and the side that will get to it if it happens is destro. Forts and RvR totally, but not cities.

I'll just touch the main points.

Everyone has the right to post whatever suggestion or idea they wish to, just like i have the right to debunk them and call ridicolous suggestions ridicolous.

IBs are not an should not be aoe buff class. They have a very specific and single target mechanic which is Oathfriend.

Expecting to see more than 1/2 IBs in a perfectly built warband is futile. It's not going to happen, just like you're not going to see more than 1/2 BG/WE/WH/Engi/Magi/AMs. IBs not being as effective as kotbs when stacked doesn't mean they don't have a role to fulfill or that they are weak. That is not a good balance metric.

Percentage armor debuffs are one of the most stupid and overpowered things i've ever read. Between % armor debuff, flat armor debuff, tactic armor debuff and morale armor debuff, it would be easy to reduce a tank's armor by more than 3.5k+, depending on how the % works. You can already debuff someone's armor by 3k with the current debuffs + you have armor pen bonuses and WS, getting a target to 0 armor isn't difficult at all.

You're underselling how strong 10% crit, 25% parry, str/ini with 100% uptime on a single target is. Having 100% uptime of those buffs on 2+ targets would be absolutely insane, especially in 6v6.

A perfect warband on Order usually has 2 AMs. One to pump a Kotb with Desolation and Solar Flare and one free to pump whoever. Pumping a second solar flare is not needed now that a Kotb can drain 12 targets of morale on his own. Pumping BWs is not needed since the morale drain nerf and the stopper still doesn't even work. You can either drop the AM entirely or run an Axe Slam IB that brings both buffs but trades earthshatter and always have a 8 to 10k drop with a balanced comp.

Moving on to the things i suggested.

Oathstone guarantees up to 4 blocked attacks, which in turns means 4 reflects. My idea is to increase that number to 8 and guarantee up to 8 reflects. Making it reflect aoe dmg would be overperforming. It's not uncommon to hit for 300+ on guarded choppas with Oathstone. You make it aoe, you have a SnB tank dealing 300-400 aoe damage every second (assuming it has ICD) 10+ targets at once. Wasn't Dire Shielding op when it covered 10+ people all at once and hit unguarded targets for 77? This is the bugged Dire Shielding but on steroids. If you want to make Oathstone more group based a good solution would be to make your oathfriend also defend the next 4 attacks on them without the reflect part.

Oath of Vengeance reduces only the target's toughness. The tactic is "soft mirrored" to the baseline BO's No Choppin' Me. Difference being that Oath of Vengeance affects ALL allies instead of only groupmates. 114 aoe toughness with 13pts isn't bad.

Some other IBs are brainstorming what Avenging the Debt should do.

[jbrutal]

more suggestions for skills

overprotective - 25% chance to lower attackers 5% damage done to oathfriend

furious reprisal - increase to 10secs cd and silence if immune to knockdown

furious sweep reprisal 2 - switch with shield sweep and increase to all targets cooldowns in 30feet similar to shatter limbs

vengeful strike - reduces targets toughness

oath of vengeance - morale drain all enemies 30ft around oathfriend also switch with Shield Mastery tactic on mastery tree

away with Ye - have it scale with grudge like BG

Avenging the dept - increase cd 20secs increase grudge cost to 65 increase heal to you and oathfriend 1000+ add debuff window 4secs to kill target

oathstone - asborb x amount of damage for 10secs and blow up reducing armor 30feet around player

oathstone 2 - asborb x amount of damage for 10secs enemy's around player have armor reduce while spell is active spell ends if x amount of dmg is taken

oathstone 3 - increase block rating 50% for 10secs and strike back attackers per 5 grudge also switch with avenging the dept on mastery tree