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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
The Problem with Fighter in Group Content
iznebula
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Some caveats before I go into my concerns. As of right now I think Fighter feels amazing to play even despite this and I have no problems with the kit as it is for the moment to moment gameplay loop except with cataclysm feeling way to rigid with it's long casting animation and maybe whirlwind cancelling when buffering it from another move if you press it too fast, but other than that I think the overall kit is just fun, specifically when playing solo.
This is where my problem lies. When you go into groups, you literally bring nothing to the table and the debuffs you provide other classes also can do as well. A lot of the buffs we apply are temporary. Why pick-up a fighter when you just have ranged dps like a ranger/mage, that do just as much if not more aoe/single target dps than Fighters, while also providing group wide utility.
Additionally our baseline abilities seem completely useless the higher lvl you get. Form of Ferocity which is 1.5% attack speed per 10 momentum and it caps out at 15% when you reach 100. IT sounds great until you realize that once you reach 100% you immediately deplete momentum so fast you barely see any use for this. The bleed you can apply sounds great when you think about it, but when your weapon auto attacks and other abilities also apply it and so do other classes, again useless once more.
In comes Overpower, our other baseline ability that gets completely overlooked the minute you get Brutal Cleave, which is a better version of Overpower that's also aoe at the cost of using slightly more mana (mana is not a huge problem later on with proper cooldown management) and it can also be used without a direct target unlike Overpower. At around lvl 5 you begin to access your later parts of the tree and your other Forms and Form of Ferocity is no longer used really.
I get it, it's an Alpha, some of these classes aren't fully fleshed out being only capped at lvl 25. However, we will probably be lvl 25 for quite some time since none of the phases show any mention of a lvl cap increase.
Here are my suggestions:
#1 Remove Overpower and make Brutal Cleave baseline.
#2 Make Form of Ferocity provide 1.5% critical chance per 10 Combat Momentum instead of 1.5% attack speed. This could potentially be too strong, but again this is not a passive you would share, it would only benefit the fighter.
#3 New Capstone Talent: Be Water - Become formless like water, gaining the bonuses of your inactive forms. Combat Momentum is not consumed while in this formless state. Lasts 15 seconds. 120 second Cooldown. (Would need to be tweaked with it's duration and cooldown)
#4 Make it so the existing passives for Form of Celerity and Form of Fluidity apply to your group members while in that form or while formless.
#5 New Baseline Passive - Heroic Presence - Allies within 10 meters have increased 5% increased penetration rating.
This is where my problem lies. When you go into groups, you literally bring nothing to the table and the debuffs you provide other classes also can do as well. A lot of the buffs we apply are temporary. Why pick-up a fighter when you just have ranged dps like a ranger/mage, that do just as much if not more aoe/single target dps than Fighters, while also providing group wide utility.
Additionally our baseline abilities seem completely useless the higher lvl you get. Form of Ferocity which is 1.5% attack speed per 10 momentum and it caps out at 15% when you reach 100. IT sounds great until you realize that once you reach 100% you immediately deplete momentum so fast you barely see any use for this. The bleed you can apply sounds great when you think about it, but when your weapon auto attacks and other abilities also apply it and so do other classes, again useless once more.
In comes Overpower, our other baseline ability that gets completely overlooked the minute you get Brutal Cleave, which is a better version of Overpower that's also aoe at the cost of using slightly more mana (mana is not a huge problem later on with proper cooldown management) and it can also be used without a direct target unlike Overpower. At around lvl 5 you begin to access your later parts of the tree and your other Forms and Form of Ferocity is no longer used really.
I get it, it's an Alpha, some of these classes aren't fully fleshed out being only capped at lvl 25. However, we will probably be lvl 25 for quite some time since none of the phases show any mention of a lvl cap increase.
Here are my suggestions:
#1 Remove Overpower and make Brutal Cleave baseline.
#2 Make Form of Ferocity provide 1.5% critical chance per 10 Combat Momentum instead of 1.5% attack speed. This could potentially be too strong, but again this is not a passive you would share, it would only benefit the fighter.
#3 New Capstone Talent: Be Water - Become formless like water, gaining the bonuses of your inactive forms. Combat Momentum is not consumed while in this formless state. Lasts 15 seconds. 120 second Cooldown. (Would need to be tweaked with it's duration and cooldown)
#4 Make it so the existing passives for Form of Celerity and Form of Fluidity apply to your group members while in that form or while formless.
#5 New Baseline Passive - Heroic Presence - Allies within 10 meters have increased 5% increased penetration rating.
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Comments
Sharing forms sounds cool too!
I lean towards the opinion that the current extremely low TTK we are experiencing breaks the fighter archetype even more, and makes already extremely powerful mage a total easy mode. Your one hope as a fighter is using terrain and hoping people are stupid enough to close the gap for you.
Blown past falling sands…
Blown past falling sands…
PTR changes for Fighter are in a good direction for the most part, they just opted to buff the most underused, most janky feeling/looking ability in the Fighter's kit, just to limit our ability to trip. It now forces us to pick Wallop to get a single target low cooldown trip, but the move looks like dogshit and feels like dogshit when pressing it. We have to resource dump both mana and momentum to get a trip off. Maim after Wallop feels extremely janky to use as a combo, like you're locked into the Wallop animation for so long, that a 3 second trip turns into 1 second if you want to follow up with Maim after Wallop lol.
Idk how they went "Yeah that feels nice and fluid to do"....I've mentioned how terrible Wallops animation was for months and we get balance changes to move, and the animation isn't even considered.
Adding trip to Wallop is a great thing IMO, as long as the skill continues to damage quickly after button press
IMO Lunging Assault needs a usability upgrade. If I am targeting someone and lunging in their direction, I want to stop before I lunge through them. I think it's supposed to do that from the wiki description, but I lunge through my targets all the time.
In general, fighters need more skills that generate Momentum in single target situations and small scale PvP situations. Charge+Overpower/Cleave is not enough. Adding +5 momentum to every single target skill that does not already have +momentum (or a momentum cost) would help.
Was talking to some Fighters in my guild and we were saying this exact thing. Give all the attacks some momentum build up, this will give it that feeling of getting in and open top of opponents rather than just poking with a bow at range and then going in.