gke96 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:28 pm
I will complain about some problems with Whispering Wind here.
First of all I don't know what the person who initially designed the ability was thinking, but the "silence" is a major DOWNSIDE to the ability. It just gives free immunity and this is definitely not an ability you use in order to silence people.
It's actually an interesting example of indirect mirroring. BO has a silence core ability and SM has aoe resist debuff as core, SM has mastery ability for silence and BO has mastery ability for aoe resist debuff.
The cd reducer part is open to opinion for which is better, but with the move away from smallscale to wb, BO overall will be better imo. SM only needs 1 mastery point and no tactic slots to get cd redux, this is good for 2hander in small scale with offensive sov+2 bonus, you can get cd reducer while retaining your damage.
BO can't do this even with sov+2 since you need extra mastery point and lose an offensive tactic slot to get the cd redux, so you need to pick one or the other not both.
In wb scale, Waaggh ease of use, reliability and uptime makes it far superior and you don't miss the tactic slot as much as if you are 2hander in smallscale. Think this causes a lot of grief since SM could easily accomodate extra tactic (snb sm tactic options not great compared to BO) to make WW aoe and not require target but option not available.
Imo the silence component of WW is not really an issue, in small scale you use on someone who already has immunity, in wb it's not ideal but generally giving immunity to 1 guy is not going to change much in grand scheme of things, the main problem I found with it is defendable and you need a target which limits when you can use it, never really worried about the silence component.
Example, attacking/defending funnel, BO can have cd redux running on cooldown where SM can't use it at all until push etc.
So I think that was the original idea, SM better for 2hander smallscale, BO better for snb wb, but now with heavy focus on city and wbs etc I think it's a good idea to trial changes to freshen things up and monitor the impact and then make additional adjustments as needed.
Minor change:
WW buff procs even if attack is defended. This gives more reliability to WW while still being inferior to Waagh since Waagh needs tactic, WW still needs target and will give free immunity if target isn't already immune.
More direct mirroring approach:
Wrath of Hoeth is now Silence, SM and BO both have silence ability as core
WW now debuffs spirit resist and does aoe spirit dmg, SM and BO both have mastery ability for aoe resist debuff.
BO still needs tactic but retains +25 aa dmg component.
As it stands SM cd redux better than BO for 2hander smallscale, BO cd redux better than SM for everything else. If these changes came in, WW would be straight up better than Waaggh in all formats, it would be a nerf for all 2hander SM not running Sov+2 who can no longer debuff spirit resists as core. This moves more toward direct mirroring which is a direction this server generally doesn't head in, but I'd like to see some change come in and then trialled for a time to monitor impact and can always revert or adjust as needed.
Finally for people asking why snb BO better than snb SM: