Ironbreaker buff ability update suggestion

[amaroq]

Hello,

First big thanks for all the effort into the project. I absolutely LOVE the work being done for SC's - is some of my favorite developments so far. Keep it up!
I'd like to share a particular pain point when playing IB and try and offer some simple suggestions or at least spark some, hopefully, constructive discussion on improveing the mastery related buff abilities in the IB kit, specifically.
The abilities I'll be discussing for this post are:
Ancestor's Fury
Oathbound
Watch An' Learn (not a mastery but core skill and mechanically same as those listed above)

I understand this is going to likely impact 2-handed IB gameplay more than shield/wb focused gameplay but I think 2-handed tanks are fun and a setitment I shared by many players.
The issue with the buffs above is the amount of "deadspace" it leaves in your ability to perform any kind of rotation or active up time on offensive skills in particular. Tri-spec IB's I don't think are uncommon, even more so amongst 2-handed players. The spec and the buffs associated are very strong and gives IB great synergy to work with very closely with a DPS player.

These skills being on the GCD and offering nothing in terms of offensive power means your wasting nearly 5seconds(refreshing 2 to 3 buffs) every 15-20seconds to maintain the effects. The buffs gained from these skills are quite crucial in IBs overall "power and identity" offering large stat increases to STR, INIT, WS, as well as both defensive and offensive stats, crit% and parry% for both themselves and their Oathfriend.
The fact that you want to refresh these buffs to maintain as much up-time as possible means your spending nearly 20%-25% of our GCD's in rotation on just buffing. Most classes only juggle a single buff ability like this or are more situational or longer CD making them less "rotational" and more "CD management" however for IB these buffs start to play a crucial role and spot in our "rotational" gameplay. An important part of playing a 2-handed tank is being able to add pressure damage alongside CC and mitigation. Micro managing these buffs puts IB out of the offensive part of the equation for what will lead to a large part of their gameplay. As is these buffs aren't "free" they come with a decent cost to class resources, no arguements here btw!

The two maybe simplest solutions to easing some of this awful wasted space in rotation would be to consider:
1.Removing them from the GCD entirely - allowing players to activate the buff whilst performing their other actions - akin to Drowning in Blood on DoK and similar effects. This option is likely the most "op" solution as abilities off the GCD generally perform very strong.

2. Add some sort of "offensive" effect to the skills. I would point to the Black Orc skill "WAAAAAAAGH!" where it has a great group wide buff but also does moderate plash damage. I know it also has a debuff built into it but for the sake of this arguement I am not suggesting that much of a change or buff to the IB skills. I think giving the 3 IB skills listed above in the post some moderate dd on use would go a long way.

Now I am not one to ask something for nothing. I recognize that adding damage to skills that already give a large return in the form of buffs is going to make these skills just that much stronger. My suggestion would be to lower the "buff" portion of the skills to reflect something like:
Ancestor's Fury crit% reduced from 10% > 7% and -10% to the value of the strength portion of the buff.
Similarly lower the parry buff of Oathbound from 20% > 17% and lower its stat bonus by 10%.
Watch An' Learn - AP per proc from 50 > 40 and 10% redux to stat bonus.

Just suggestions. I understand internal testing and data may yield different values for both the reduction and damage sides of this suggestion. Overall I think this would give the IB class a much more enjoyable gameloop and "feel" to its gameplay, allow the buffs to remain impactful enough to take when spending mastery points, and increase the flow of activating abilities.

Now the last skill I'd like to mention is: Stubborn as Stone. This ability would also fall under the "buff" abilities for the IB kit. As I mentioned above most classes with a buff - on GCD they tend to be situational or longer CD based. I think this skill falls into that catagory as it is specific to magic damage only and is still a strong buff. Sense it is not something you would always need to maintain in every fight I would think leaving it as it is, on the GCD, and without dealing dmg or offensive effects, would suit it just fine.

Thanks guys and hopefully we can get some great ideas flowing here!

[Fey]

This iteration of the game would do well to have more class specific, class defining abilities off of the global CD. Particularly since the changes to general CD. It just makes the game more fun to play, and rewards you for playing an archetype.

5 point abilities like conduits, or oath friend buffs should be off gcd. Magus and engi pets should be off gcd. We/wh relics should be off gcd. Similar to the way changing da plan is off gcd.

It rewards quick thinking and spices up the gameplay.

[Shieldslam]

It rewards quick thinking and spices up the gameplay.

While I absolutely encourage more skill added to the slow gameplay I don't think it'd work. The average player plays like a demented 70+ years old war veteran who lost a hand and an eye and it really shows with how terrible the majority is at using their characters. Most people don't even know their abilities, let alone when to use them and adding more depth may sound like a great idea but it probably would just alienate the elderly playerbase and upset the 2 button aoe spammers as well as clickers. We got characters with 20+ abilities yet most decide to not press more than a few buttons and are even overwhelmed by that already. Imagine off-gcd abilities, the horror.

Regarding the orginal post:
Both BG and IB feel unplayable to me since tank rework because they just spend way too much time buffing and then refreshing those, in the case of BG there are also offensive debuffs you want/need to keep up and monitor. Feels like half the buttons you press are just "refresh x effect" and if something gets defended it's even worse. Keep track of Hatred/Grudge, debuffs on enemy(ies), buffs on yourself and ally, it's just too much effort for too little reward in comparison to other tanks where a lot of things are passive or require little work. Sure the ressource is fun to play around and was the reason I mained BG on live and here but realistically the yield is simply too little because running an optimized (lol) buff/debuff rotation barely has more impact than just afk sitting at 100 Hatred with block/parry/disrupt tactics at max value so why bother. Not sure how to fix it though, off-gcd would be a start and help a lot but at the end the buttons still feel unrewarding to press.

[amaroq]

It rewards quick thinking and spices up the gameplay.

While I absolutely encourage more skill added to the slow gameplay I don't think it'd work. The average player plays like a demented 70+ years old war veteran who lost a hand and an eye and it really shows with how terrible the majority is at using their characters. Most people don't even know their abilities, let alone when to use them and adding more depth may sound like a great idea but it probably would just alienate the elderly playerbase and upset the 2 button aoe spammers as well as clickers. We got characters with 20+ abilities yet most decide to not press more than a few buttons and are even overwhelmed by that already. Imagine off-gcd abilities, the horror.

I think thats a pretty fair point to consider too. Thats why personally I was kind of leaning toward my second suggestion of leaving these skills on the GCD but adding some splash DD effect to them similar to WAAAAGH! which does roughly a 250 delve dmg +/- aoe dd. Adding something similar to that and lowering the bonus of the buffs slightly would make the skills "play" the same in rotation and buffing purposes while still being an effective part of their offensive gameplay rather than being reduced to a buff bot haha.

[Jajcek12]

Oftop duno why drawning in blob is off-gcd but what ever.

Being on gcd is some kind of artifact balancing those abbilities when they ware with synergy with (old)" told ya so '"
And now imagine how op would be buffing all party and all players around you(oath friend is ofgcd and out of party) with ofgcd so strong buff in split second. Everyone around you would have parry crit and ap all the time.

Other aspect is that its part of high level cap of playing IB , each gbcd must be effective as possible so spaming buff is not effective playstyle. No adding buff into sequencer because there is no A-B-C skill rotation.
Buffing as ib is not " prefight" its playstyle itself on top of othere tank tasks.

[gyps]

It rewards quick thinking and spices up the gameplay.

Regarding the orginal post:
Both BG and IB feel unplayable to me since tank rework because they just spend way too much time buffing and then refreshing those, in the case of BG there are also offensive debuffs you want/need to keep up and monitor. Feels like half the buttons you press are just "refresh x effect" and if something gets defended it's even worse. Keep track of Hatred/Grudge, debuffs on enemy(ies), buffs on yourself and ally, it's just too much effort for too little reward in comparison to other tanks where a lot of things are passive or require little work. Sure the ressource is fun to play around and was the reason I mained BG on live and here but realistically the yield is simply too little because running an optimized (lol) buff/debuff rotation barely has more impact than just afk sitting at 100 Hatred with block/parry/disrupt tactics at max value so why bother. Not sure how to fix it though, off-gcd would be a start and help a lot but at the end the buttons still feel unrewarding to press.

IB/BG skill buffes could be upgraded to 30s/40s to give them more freedom, the other option would be changing these buffes and turning them into an "aura like" skill that you keep active so you can switch them during the fight for you and your oath friend instead of clicking them over and over but this will change its mechanic, this for the skills that grants only a buff and consumes hatred/grudge.

The rest of buffes that are linked to an attack are not a big problem as they are part of the rotation itself that you change depending on the combat you are in.

[amaroq]

Oftop duno why drawning in blob is off-gcd but what ever.

Being on gcd is some kind of artifact balancing those abbilities when they ware with synergy with (old)" told ya so '"
And now imagine how op would be buffing all party and all players around you(oath friend is ofgcd and out of party) with ofgcd so strong buff in split second. Everyone around you would have parry crit and ap all the time.

You're mentioning it would be op to place these skills off the GCD because you could juggle Oathfriend and buff everyone in party. This literally can't happen lol the skills mentioned require 25grudge (Watch An' Learn is 15grudge) so just those 3 buffs being casted = 65grudge of our max 100grudges and thats without even adding Vengeful Strike = 10grudge and Stoutness of Stone = 5grudge not to mention our PUNT is also = 25grudge and if we go one step further and spec for "Blood of Grimnir" thats another 30grudge buff that you're trying to maintain every 20secs along with the other buff skills in this post.
There is no version of the game where an IB would generate such insane resources they could endlessly buff several people. In fact there is many times, outside blob PvP, where IB/BG have to micro manage their resources in order to keep their other skills which scale with higher resources. Not to mention how many players are actually coordinated enough to constantly click defensive targets, hit buffs, repeat, all while continuing to perform tank duties?

I am not sure of which option would be "best" for IB/BG but I do think their class mechanic was sorely overlooked during the tank rework and even though IB holds a solid place in zerg RvR due to their defensive builds and certain utility picks, both of these tanks are lacking quit a lot in certain content. BG is likely even in a worse state than IB overall and are even more "niche" in terms of synergy or "meta".

On a slightly different note I think maybe adopting something similar to Slayer/Choppa mechanic in terms of generating resources and "dumping" those resources to gain powerful effects could be another interesting option although likely a much bigger undertaking in terms of developement.
Buff the abilities using Grudge/Hate, tune the skills that "scale" with resources to no longer have the scaling effects, and place that "loss" of power into "buffing" the resource dump skills. Making it more a generate/dump playstyle rather than micro-managing and hold max resources to use certain skills. I am also thinking of mechanics akin to Warrior in World of Warcraft or Barbarians in Diablo in terms of resource generate/dump gameloop.

Another pain point I would point out is their punts requiring resources to use, well IB requires 25grudge upfront and BGs punts require it to get longer punts, but not being able to meet opposing tanks with punt on-ready, especially in SCs where punts can be crucial to the maps win conditions, can often be a not so small handicap. Of course this will mean a lot less I am sure in large scale zerg RvR but does hinder on the side of coordinated game play. Perhaps a CD to generate some inital resources? Or allowing their base-line single punts to be matched to other tanks? I mean even BlackOrc and Swordmaster got more or less matching punts