zumos2 wrote: Thu Feb 08, 2024 12:25 pm
You still seem to want to have it all: Both highest personal damage and great group utility. Yes if you want to take Blood of Grimnir, you won't be able to take GBF. Something that could even change in the future. But 11-0-13 spec is still a great option for 2H build using Blood of Grimnir. And 5-5-13 is a great option for SnB build with Blood of Grimnir. Both would be very potent builds for small scale groups.
As for warband, if I'm an order dps, there is no tank I'd rather have as my guard than an IB.
Overall I believe IB is in a strong spot at the moment. But obviously we keep an eye on how they perform over time.
Let me try to word it differently tho. Amount of your choices should be optimized around group composition synergies (and in the end define your role in it) and its efficeincy in overall scheme of things, the meta. When you change something like this you have to be simulating anyhow how it will be playing out, what groups people will build around it, how effective those groups will be, what will be their role and how meta will look like. Depending on detalization of such simulation you make a decision. The more data you have, the better. Here you took away stable role of ap pump and replace it with +25% aa dmg. Reasons and possibilities to utilize it are misty for me, exact efficiency too (yet).
So, we (you) have data for BO's WAAAGH doing pretty much the same thing but no critical resource cost, with lower uptime and big corp debuff. What group synergies have been built around this skill, how efficient they were? Were BO's taking it, were groups have been built utilizing this skill? What game modes (city, orvr, sc, 6v6) have been utilising this skill? How could it be translated into order realm considering order classes? All that without CD reduction of course. You know the answers.
So now back to IB:
11-0-13 spec where should it shine? you skip runic shield and ap pump or trade crit for one of those but its a false choice, i believe that crit >>> unsupported ap pump (also you would be getting 3 of them if required by kotbs, rp, wp) and runic shield, you skip parry (its exact effiecency is very questionable in reality btw, i admit, ive posted before detailed opinion why i think so, so its not like skipping parry is definitely no go, there are no all arounders, there are game modes where its possible and there are game modes where its impossible)... 6v6, random SCs? How effective in reality will be a group build around such IB spec? How in comparison to other possible choices they perform? other 2h spec option is with +2 13-0-13 or 9-5-13 with alot of trade offs that i cant atm thinktank how to overcome to build proper group. What IB will bring to justify its spot with this ability? Why take this ability if you can still get all the shinies and play like before? you could 15-5-5, 13-5-9, 13-0-9 etc etc. IB still has alot of options but now minus ap pump with gnm and no soloyolo shenanigans (lower diversity which i believe overally worse for the game).
5-5-13 is orvr/city only (or some RDPS favoring SCs) and incredibly questionable. i call it a plain nerf (lackluster to stay consistent, ok

) to what IB could do being 5-5-13 or 0-11-13. Once BoG gets fixed you will have what tooltip says and its +25% AA dmg which is irrelevant in big aoe fights.
All hopes is that im just stupid (thankfully here i think im not alone, ha) and dont see something very strong around this new skill. The other possible outcome is that its useless so you guys just created another dead 13 pointer. Time will surely tell.
I would totally understand if you would introduce it with elemental debuff on it of the same value as BO's WAAAGH. Synergies are very clear, overall slight dmg buff into order for orvr. Ok. Why not do that i dont understand. You could finetune it afterwards by either just removing it or adjusting the value if looking into statistics you would find it overperforming.