wargrimnir wrote:Feedback is open for these changes.
Thanks Wargrimnir! Sometimes its best to let people cool their jets, test, and come back rather than theorycraft changes (I am guilty of this myself).
Since BG changes I have ONLY been playing my BG - both SNB as well as 2H to really dig into the changes. Overall, I love them. Its really made BG much more of a "respectable" choice. I think the two biggest changes for 2H were the KD (Get Down!) as well as Shield of Rage applying to your Dark Protector.
I do, however, see some areas that are lack luster when looking at BG builds and options. So here are my thoughts on what could be improved:
1) Hastened Doom (tactic): Everytime I respec 2H, I just cant bring myself to use this. BG is VERY tactic heavy already, basically NEEDING to use Filled with Fury as mandatory. Due to using a 2H I feel forced to also use Rugged. For guard mitigation, I feel forced to use Anger Drives me. Which gives me ONE tactic slot open. Due to the "Hate Hungry" feeling of BG, I have been toying with tactics such as Thirst for Death or Simmering Anger, or even Efficient Slaughter... I feel that without these Hate generating tactics, my BG is VERY hate starved... Or, because we ARE squishy... Ive have been toying with tactics such as Terrifying Foe or Malek's Bulwark... We have SO many good options (which is GOOD!) but because of the high competition here, Hastened Doom is not worth the slot...
Point being. I cant justify spending one of my precious tactic slots on a wounds debuff that I cannot reliably proc early in fights - since its off a crit, which we need Crimson Death (hate cost) + Spending hate to generate (Filled with Fury) to get our crit up TO crit... This often requires substantial build up time, meaning our target often has >1k health missing anyways, so a wounds debuff has its purpose defeated a little...
THEN, having to use 1 of 2 abilities that are deeper in my "rotation" to generate AA haste (P.S. or M.W.) COMBINED with the fact that you lose AA while using Enraged Beating (our main source of hate generation besides our DP taking damage) all this creates a very poor "synergy" where its just not worth the cost.
Hastened Doom Solution: Swap the effects. This tactic COULD be worth while IF
- The 120 Wounds debuff came from Murderous Wrath and Pitless Strike. Because it could be used at the beginning of the fight. The downside to this, is that is loses its AoE ability, so I would look at swapping Pitless Strike here with Monstrous Rending. So this allows you to use M.W. at the BEGINNING of a fight (AP cost not hate) to proc a S.T. Wounds debuff... However once you get Hate up, you can use an AoE via Monstro Rending. THEN...
- The 50% AA increase came from Crits.
Now THIS creates a nice Synergy of tactics. You use Wounds debuff beginning of fights, then you get C.D. Going as well as Filled with Fury, to give you crits which increase your AA speed.
This would be a "worth considering" tactic for me. Currently our tactics are FAR too valuable, and the clunkiness of this just doesnt warrant a tactic slot IMO.
2) Elite Training (Ability): Going SNB, this really only helps in PVE. The fact that it applies to your DP is great, but I honestly dont even notice when I use this on my DP because its eaten up SOOO quickly. Its a great PVE tool against NPCs that dont attack fast, but in RVR, this is gone in less than the GCD it takes to apply it.. In SCs, it lasts SLIGHTLY longer but the short "impact" combined with long CD - leaves MUCH to be desired here...
Elite Training Solution: Consider making this more of a buff for X seconds, rather than only "4 attacks". Possibly... Something like "For the next 4 seconds, you will easily Parry (and disrupt) attacks made against you. Also applies to your DP". Now this provides a valuable buff worthy of a 30 second CD and high Mastery cost. This will actually make this less impactful to PVE, it will likely be ~ the same in SCs, but where this REALLY helps is in RVR when someone is getting NUKED. YOu can toss Shield of Rage AND Elite Training on them, to greatly alleviate damage. Shield of Rage has "scaling" issues in RVR but any better than it is, and it would be OP I think. So E.T. would be a great RVR tool for SnB tanks.
3) Force of Fury, None Shall Pass and Wave of Scorn: I combined these because of them being in the same tree. FOF is lack luster because of it only reducing crit chance by a few % AND the armor buff is redundant to pots and other buffs...
Wave of Scorn is good, however the high CD and high AP cost, just make it feel so lack luster... Ive tried multiple builds with this and when I use it, I am AP starved and its a BIG CD...
None Shall Pass - IDK... Its a great solo defensive tool, but no group benefits. It generates hate (not something SNB needs) and its only a solo-selfish buff to make you tankier (something BG doesnt really need). It just doesnt scream "capstone worthy" to me...
Force of Fury, None Shall Pass and Wave of Scorn SOLUTIONS:
- FOF. I really liked THIS as the capstone and it brought back to its additive glory (lol). In reality... It makes your chance to be crit go to 0%... So it means any crit you take - relies heavily on the opponents crit % (which can still be considerable!) so I dont think it was OP this way, especially if it were a
capstone... It applying to your DP really gave BGs a nice "Umf" they needed to spec ALL the way up the tree.
- The OTHER FOF option could be too look at mimicing Knights "Vigilance" a bit... or something mixed with Chosen's Oppression... You could replace the armor buff with a flat 15% less damage, and then keep FOF Crit % as a multiplicative. This would provide ~7-8% less chance to be crit AND 15% less damage. Which now makes this a more desired ability (if you didnt want to make it 45% additive)
- None Shall Pass. I really think this one should be tier 2 ability. Its not as good (imo) as "Cant hit me" (I know its pros and cons here but I still think its not as good) so putting it at tier 2. SnB doesnt have hate issues IMO, so the hate generation is MEH to me but a nice 50% block tactic... Can be used as an "oh ****" button, warrants a Mastery point but is in no way a "Capstone" ability to me... If it stays here, I cant see anyone speccing FULL Loathing to get this but I CAN see someone going all the way up the tree to get an improved FOF and then grabbing this along the way as well.
- Wave of Scorn. This (to me) should be a tier 1 ability and available to any BG who specs into this (2H or SnB builds which right now 2H doesnt really get this due to it basically requiring RR60+ to get because you need CD, which is high in Malice). Also, I REALLY think the AP cost should be dropped to 25-30 AP. 55 is just too much. Even IB's mirror ability costs 25 AP as tier 2 ability, and the CD is 20 seconds and damage scales with grudges... So it stands to reason a "tier 1" version wouldnt be AS good... So I really think the BG's base of 284 damage vs IB's max grudge 445 is fair... Then a 30 sec CD versus a 20 sec CD is fair... But ONTOP of this... having 2x the AP cost... Its just not as useful.... SO I advocate for a 30 AP cost (higher than IBs), 284 damage (less than IBs max) and 30 sec CD (10 sec more than IB) is fair for a tier 1 - reliably used by both Malice builds, Anguish builds, and ofc Loathing builds....
My FINAL "2 cents" would be looking at
Filled with Fury... This would be the controversial piece. IMO the 5 second buff is clunky. Id rather take
10% crit with 10 second uptime than 15% crit with 5 sec uptime. The reason is, you use 1 GCD to get the buff (say CD) and then likely use Enraged Beating to generate hate (30 of it you just spent on CD to get crit up) and now you just used up basically the entire duration of the buff. It just feels like your constantly in this mode of "spend hate, enraged beating, spend hate, etc" without getting to pepper in some other fun stuff in rotation... I think making Filled with Fury 15% for 10 seconds is OP... But I think it allows for more FUN play when you get a few more seconds added to that buff to enable you to drop a few other abilities inbetween your never ending Enraged Beating cycle... Especially as 2H (which is who primarily gets this tactic) because of the high cost of CD...
Overall though, I am VERY much enjoying BG with the changes. These are the areas I feel like would make the class Synergize better and not be as "clunky" in rotations and group benefits - both in RVR and SC as well as open up more build options for the class (both SNB and 2H)