Patch Notes 06/02/2024

[Detangler]

Spoiler:

Heavy Blow was always extremely strong. For reference DoTs with a 3s tick interval often have a scaling of 0.9 * Damage Bonus (DB). Translating that to a 1s interval like the DoT of Heavy Blow would be 0.3 * DB. Heavy Blow DoT had a scaling of 1.5 * DB. That is 5 times standard scaling.

Lets take a look at a similar skill of the Slayer: Relentless Strike. With 200 damage bonus Relentless Strike does about 680 damage in total. Heavy Blow did about 1700 damage. That is 2.5x the amount.

I've seen some peole say the damage was nerfed by 50%, which is not true. Only the damage bonus scaling was nerfed from 1.5 to 0.75. The total damage nerf depends on how much strength you have. Rough number would be somewhere between 20% and 35%. So with 200 DB HB still does about 1100 damage, still significantly more than Relentless Strike as reference.

I can only assume why Heavy Blow was made so strong by Mythic. Likeley to compensate for having to cast buffs that deal no damage, like Ancestor's Fury and Oathbound. Now Heavy Blow is still a very strong ability, but with the duration of Ancestor's Fury and Oathbound doubled and a buff to their channel and potential AA damage, bringing Heavy Blow down a bit is necessary to not have IB damage get completely out of line. I don't think anyone wants to see 4 tank 2 healer groups with DoK/WP bringing heal debuff.

It is kinda pointless to compare abilities without taking the actual class into context.

Slayer's do have a lot more melee power/ weapon skill than IB's who is a tank class and as such can't build offensive stats to empower abilities to that level, nor does he have the tactics for it.

A fair comparison would be 800 melee power IB / 550 ws vs 1150 melee power / 800 WS slayer.

Relentless strike is just a filler for the slayer whereas Heavy blow is significantly more important to the IB's damage rotation, not to mention the Grudges the IB has to build and maintain to ramp up the dot component. Mind you on a class that does not have the privilege of the mirror class Black Guard who get the + 5 hate on strike (free tactic / rising anger) for free and has a channel attack to regenerate surplus amounts of hate on crit.

The more powerful attacks of the IB were always balanced to their harder to regenerate resources, this is obvious to anyone who does small scale.

After this nerf they should definitely consider giving the IB rising anger as inherent effect.

Are you trying to tell me that an IB with 160 damage bonus and 550 ws should deal equal damage to a Slayer with 230 damage bonus and 800 weapon skill? Else I'm not following what argument you're trying to make there.

For the record, we do take class differences into account and what role each ability has. We didn't nerf Heavy Blow to mirror Relentless Strike, it is still way stronger. I simply aimed to give some context to how strong the ability was exactly. I would think anyone unbiased could see it was a bit over the top. IB damage potential is still strong. And in a group context the total damage you bring has only been increased with Blood of Grimnir. Which can also increase your damage a lot, especially if you can proc your own AA haste.

Only a 2H IB would care about increasing their own damage, so how exactly do you expect a 2H IB to spec up high in both trees and not sacrifice other key abilities/tactics?

If you were part of this change, I'm sorry that you seem to have taken all your knowledge of the class from looking at tooltips and career builders, cause it doesn't seem like you have actual experience playing the class or you would have seen the fault in your own logic.

[zumos2]

Spoiler:

It is kinda pointless to compare abilities without taking the actual class into context.

Slayer's do have a lot more melee power/ weapon skill than IB's who is a tank class and as such can't build offensive stats to empower abilities to that level, nor does he have the tactics for it.

A fair comparison would be 800 melee power IB / 550 ws vs 1150 melee power / 800 WS slayer.

Relentless strike is just a filler for the slayer whereas Heavy blow is significantly more important to the IB's damage rotation, not to mention the Grudges the IB has to build and maintain to ramp up the dot component. Mind you on a class that does not have the privilege of the mirror class Black Guard who get the + 5 hate on strike (free tactic / rising anger) for free and has a channel attack to regenerate surplus amounts of hate on crit.

The more powerful attacks of the IB were always balanced to their harder to regenerate resources, this is obvious to anyone who does small scale.

After this nerf they should definitely consider giving the IB rising anger as inherent effect.

Are you trying to tell me that an IB with 160 damage bonus and 550 ws should deal equal damage to a Slayer with 230 damage bonus and 800 weapon skill? Else I'm not following what argument you're trying to make there.

For the record, we do take class differences into account and what role each ability has. We didn't nerf Heavy Blow to mirror Relentless Strike, it is still way stronger. I simply aimed to give some context to how strong the ability was exactly. I would think anyone unbiased could see it was a bit over the top. IB damage potential is still strong. And in a group context the total damage you bring has only been increased with Blood of Grimnir. Which can also increase your damage a lot, especially if you can proc your own AA haste.

Only a 2H IB would care about increasing their own damage, so how exactly do you expect a 2H IB to spec up high in both trees and not sacrifice other key abilities/tactics?

If you were part of this change, I'm sorry that you seem to have taken all your knowledge of the class from looking at tooltips and career builders, cause it doesn't seem like you have actual experience playing the class or you would have seen the fault in your own logic.

The whole idea of Mastery Trees is that you have to make choices and cannot get everything you would want at the same time.

And if you think personal attacks are gonna help, I can assure you they wont.

[Alubert]

No doubt the IB will be strengthened.
25% AA crit dmg is a great enhancement for the party.
I don't understand why there is so much crying about one skill that beats less. After all, IB is a tank not a dps.
Looking only at IB itself if someone already cares so much about dps then 25% more crit dmg will compensate him completely for the reduction of dmg from one skill and in addition gives a big bonus to party.
MDPS AA dmg is around 30% so this is an amazing boost.

BG chop fasta is a good decision because no DD class should have such a skill but I think cd shortening should be eliminated from the game completely.

Rampage, it's hard to say if it's a nerf or an enhancement.
No gdc, no drop rage hmm.

Knight Unbalacing Attack cool idea it's just a shame that all the recent changes in abilities/tactics affect the whole party and in chosen not. Maybe enough of this inequality between these classes in the end?

[Kloaner]

25% AA crit dmg is a great enhancement for the party.

is that the case or does it just look nice on paper? but I guess it doesn't matter, most of the time you will take knight/sm anyways

BG chop fasta is a good decision because no DD class should have such a skill but I think cd shortening should be eliminated from the game completely.

skills like that are always bad for the game because they have a high chance to make one class a must have in a group.

[JohnnyWayne]

I don't understand why there is so much crying about one skill that beats less. After all, IB is a tank not a dps.

That is because you dont play tank in small scale. For zerg fights, we basically need no balance changes at all, as nothing matters there.

If heavy blow was too strong for SnB IBs then maybe you just should have changed the strength scaling. The new skill is unattainable for 2h IBs thats for sure.

[Alubert]

I don't understand why there is so much crying about one skill that beats less. After all, IB is a tank not a dps.

That is because you dont play tank in small scale. For zerg fights, we basically need no balance changes at all, as nothing matters there.

If heavy blow was too strong for SnB IBs then maybe you just should have changed the strength scaling. The new skill is unattainable for 2h IBs thats for sure.

Well, I am just a small scale player.
I never join anything bigger than 6man and yet I find whether you hit with a tank for 300 or 600 is a negligible difference. But there is a major difference as everyone in your party hits 25% harder with AA it already makes a difference.

[Fenris78]

...I find whether you hit with a tank for 300 or 600 is a negligible difference. But there is a major difference as everyone in your party hits 25% harder with AA it already makes a difference.

Depends of your setup, if your party is partialy or entirely rDPS, there is few interest even with Engi/SW since ranged AA is usually slow and not that high.

With 2-3 slayers in your party, especially with the 2H weapon wich is about 2s speed, your got about 1200 damage per hit instead of 1k, wich can make a difference.

But anyhow it will only be strong buff for small scale since it only affects ST damage, it's not really giving any more use in WB setup to the IB class...

[normanis]

I don't understand why there is so much crying about one skill that beats less. After all, IB is a tank not a dps.

lets take away chosen deamonclaw, he is tank not dps

[nat3s]

BG looks so good and has some insane utility (crit buff, wounds debuff, armour debuff, 40 yard slow) and some genuine AoE potential. I have a lowbie IB so my inclination is to want to shield the BG from nerfs, but I've got to be honest here, when I think about giving my IB another go, I look at the talent spec options and feel like I'm missing so many nice bits compared to my BG that it puts me off, another small example is the shield being all dmg (BG) vs magic dmg (IB).

BG has done very well from RoR but that shouldn't mean nerfs, bring the IB up to the same level imo.

[Bozzax]

This new trend with no CD-abilities is confusing. Now there it is no penalty for not spamming it off CD mindlessly example both MRD and Slayer more or less included in any build/setting.

Simply feels like poor design may we have some input on the thinking behind this kind of change (no CD abilities that bump damage)?

Other examples of "similar" abilities that you haven't touched would be SORC **** 13 proc that takes a CD or even worse obsessive focus / even more crazy bad with the tactic? I bet there are more examples but Im to lazy to find them (VoN mebbe not sure after all change tho)