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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.
Fighter's Much Needed Improvements.
Punkte
Member, Alpha Two
Going off the current tree, here are my suggestions.
Fighter is meant to be a berserker type class, so it feels relatively badly when you have to waste a GCD on a buffing/debuffing/cc spell. Because we are already at a disadvantage, let us weave things in where appropriate.
Crippling Blow
Make this off GCD, can be used while any other spell is being cast (Like Blood Fusion).
Lunging Assault - Lunging assault should act as a pushback, pushing the enemy back to the same ending position as the player casting. Meant to be used to push a person back and interrupt a cast.
Wallop - Change this out to be a 40% momentum dump but also instant cast. Acts as a momentum explosion dealing frontal cone AOE damage with the same damage properties as before. Maybe a name change here.
Battle Cry - Make this instant, off GBD, can be used while casting/channeling another skill. No reason to waste a GCD here.
Improved Stancing
Form of Fluidity - Grant up to 20% phys mitigation at full momentum. Useful for fights against melee.
Form of Celerity - Grant up to 20% spell damage mitigation at full momentum. Useful for fights against casters.
Form of Ferocity - Keep attack speed as is, cause bleed to deal 25% damage instead of 15%. Fighters got a giant nerf since damage was majorly nerfed, so bleeds can't tick as high as they used to. This would serve as a PvM stance or an all-in PvP stance.
This will cause the stance dance talents to actually be useful/used.
Knock Out
Make it so that direct physical / spell damage breaks this effect. Bleeds and other DOTs should not break it. Fighters always have a bleed on a target. Otherwise, make it so that no matter what there is a 2-3 second guaranteed stun before being able to wake up from dot damage.
Berserk
Whatever was done to "Fix" Berserk being broken essentially made the skill useless besides being a CD reduction skill. As it stands right now, you’re able to get 2 maybe 3 ability casts in during the window of Berserk. However, you’re using it more defensively than you need to because you are just getting smothered in PvP.
It is just not a satisfying damage booster.
You drain so much Momentum so fast, and have no ability to even try to get a little bit more uptime that the entire point of the damage boost just seems to have been overlooked.
It's just not practical at this point. For example: You pop it, and you’re not going to want to Whirlwind after using it because Whirlwind will basically eat up the entire duration.
So you'd probably want to Maim because it has a slightly faster animation time, then Lethal Blow, and that's pretty much all you can do.
So before you activate Berserk, you’re going to want to time a Trip window and already have your target Hemorrhaging.
All for about a 4-5 second window where many animations take around 2 seconds to complete.
A much more fun gameplay would be basically making it drain, let’s start off with, half as slow. Now the fighter is building a rotation around trying to generate more momentum during that window to extend Berserk as much as they can.
Being able to have a full uptime Berserk while using a ranged Shortbow felt kind of nice too. Maybe it doesn't need to be full, but at least being able to maintain a much higher duration for certain scenarios (like attacking from range when you can't go in melee) felt good and rewarding gameplay.
It also incentivized different builds, like going for a max speed build so you can pump as many CDs as possible in a Berserk window. Think things like a 1-hand Tumoc sword and an energy focus to maximize speed and lower animations.
Considerations
Consider putting all the Berserk effects into one talent instead of requiring us to pick up both.
Enveloping Cataclysm - New Talent
Add a secondary talent for Enveloping Cataclysm - Instead of hitting in front of the caster, Cataclysm will now radiate outward from the caster into all targets within 10m (AOE), pulsing 3 times for 75% damage each time. No cast time required.
This will now be off GCD and allow the caster to use it while casting/channeling another spell/skill.
Final Thoughts
Instead of causing the fighter to have to decide between wasting a GCD on a trip or battle cry (or others), we instead allow them to weave these into their attacks already, while giving a few other reworks and stance improvements that give them a choice when deciding what to do against various opponents. Fighter is probably in the worst place of all classes atm in terms of identity.
A higher skill ceiling, a few more instant skills, and a few choices between stances that provide defensive mitigation (much needed), as well as some improvements to our CC.
These changes are made to help increase the fantasy of an explosive melee berserker.
Overall fantasy of leaping into the battlefield, throwing out some AOE, and leaping back out: very hard to do right now. In a raid scenario, we’re basically useless.
Switch to evasion or magic def stance depending on the opposing raid comp. Build some momentum ranged, pop pulsing cata which does AOE damage over 3 seconds, charge in, pop Blood Fusion, and do some AOE, then hop out.
Feel free to post replies to give feedback / suggestions. Welcome the discussion.
Fighter is meant to be a berserker type class, so it feels relatively badly when you have to waste a GCD on a buffing/debuffing/cc spell. Because we are already at a disadvantage, let us weave things in where appropriate.
Crippling Blow
Make this off GCD, can be used while any other spell is being cast (Like Blood Fusion).
Lunging Assault - Lunging assault should act as a pushback, pushing the enemy back to the same ending position as the player casting. Meant to be used to push a person back and interrupt a cast.
Wallop - Change this out to be a 40% momentum dump but also instant cast. Acts as a momentum explosion dealing frontal cone AOE damage with the same damage properties as before. Maybe a name change here.
Battle Cry - Make this instant, off GBD, can be used while casting/channeling another skill. No reason to waste a GCD here.
Improved Stancing
Form of Fluidity - Grant up to 20% phys mitigation at full momentum. Useful for fights against melee.
Form of Celerity - Grant up to 20% spell damage mitigation at full momentum. Useful for fights against casters.
Form of Ferocity - Keep attack speed as is, cause bleed to deal 25% damage instead of 15%. Fighters got a giant nerf since damage was majorly nerfed, so bleeds can't tick as high as they used to. This would serve as a PvM stance or an all-in PvP stance.
This will cause the stance dance talents to actually be useful/used.
Knock Out
Make it so that direct physical / spell damage breaks this effect. Bleeds and other DOTs should not break it. Fighters always have a bleed on a target. Otherwise, make it so that no matter what there is a 2-3 second guaranteed stun before being able to wake up from dot damage.
Berserk
Whatever was done to "Fix" Berserk being broken essentially made the skill useless besides being a CD reduction skill. As it stands right now, you’re able to get 2 maybe 3 ability casts in during the window of Berserk. However, you’re using it more defensively than you need to because you are just getting smothered in PvP.
It is just not a satisfying damage booster.
You drain so much Momentum so fast, and have no ability to even try to get a little bit more uptime that the entire point of the damage boost just seems to have been overlooked.
It's just not practical at this point. For example: You pop it, and you’re not going to want to Whirlwind after using it because Whirlwind will basically eat up the entire duration.
So you'd probably want to Maim because it has a slightly faster animation time, then Lethal Blow, and that's pretty much all you can do.
So before you activate Berserk, you’re going to want to time a Trip window and already have your target Hemorrhaging.
All for about a 4-5 second window where many animations take around 2 seconds to complete.
A much more fun gameplay would be basically making it drain, let’s start off with, half as slow. Now the fighter is building a rotation around trying to generate more momentum during that window to extend Berserk as much as they can.
Being able to have a full uptime Berserk while using a ranged Shortbow felt kind of nice too. Maybe it doesn't need to be full, but at least being able to maintain a much higher duration for certain scenarios (like attacking from range when you can't go in melee) felt good and rewarding gameplay.
It also incentivized different builds, like going for a max speed build so you can pump as many CDs as possible in a Berserk window. Think things like a 1-hand Tumoc sword and an energy focus to maximize speed and lower animations.
Considerations
Consider putting all the Berserk effects into one talent instead of requiring us to pick up both.
Enveloping Cataclysm - New Talent
Add a secondary talent for Enveloping Cataclysm - Instead of hitting in front of the caster, Cataclysm will now radiate outward from the caster into all targets within 10m (AOE), pulsing 3 times for 75% damage each time. No cast time required.
This will now be off GCD and allow the caster to use it while casting/channeling another spell/skill.
Final Thoughts
Instead of causing the fighter to have to decide between wasting a GCD on a trip or battle cry (or others), we instead allow them to weave these into their attacks already, while giving a few other reworks and stance improvements that give them a choice when deciding what to do against various opponents. Fighter is probably in the worst place of all classes atm in terms of identity.
A higher skill ceiling, a few more instant skills, and a few choices between stances that provide defensive mitigation (much needed), as well as some improvements to our CC.
These changes are made to help increase the fantasy of an explosive melee berserker.
Overall fantasy of leaping into the battlefield, throwing out some AOE, and leaping back out: very hard to do right now. In a raid scenario, we’re basically useless.
Switch to evasion or magic def stance depending on the opposing raid comp. Build some momentum ranged, pop pulsing cata which does AOE damage over 3 seconds, charge in, pop Blood Fusion, and do some AOE, then hop out.
Feel free to post replies to give feedback / suggestions. Welcome the discussion.
3
Comments
None of them are equal to a good skill, so three points for them is a waste.
Or give forms for free as the tank gets grit, iron w etc
Feedback On Berserk
Whatever was done to "Fix" Berserk being broken, essentially made the skill useless besides in being a CD reduction skill. As it stands right now, your able to get 2 maybe 3 ability casts in during the window of Berserk. However, your using it more defensively than you need to because you are just getting smothered in PvP.
It is just not a satisfying damage booster.
You drain so much Momentum so fast, and have no ability to try to even get a little bit more uptime that the entire point of the damage boost just seems to have been overlooked.
It's just not practical at this point. For example. You pop it. Your not going to want to whirlwind after using it because whirlwind will basically eat up the entire duration of it.
So you'd probably want to Maim because it has a slightly faster animation time into a Lethal Blow and that's pretty much all you can do.
So before you activate Berserk, your going to want to time a Trip window, already have your target Hemorrhaging.
All for about a 4-5 second window where many animations take around 2 seconds to complete.
A much more fun gameplay would be basically making it drain, lets start off with, half as slow. Now the fighter is building a rotation around trying to generate more momentum during that window to extend Berserk as much as they can.
Being able to have a full uptime Berserk while using ranged Shortbow felt kind of nice too. Maybe it doesn't need to be full, but at least being able to maintain a much higher duration for certain scenarios like attacking from range when you can't go in melee felt good and rewarding gameplay.
It also incentivized different builds, like going for a max speed build so you can pump as many CD's as possible in a berserk window. Thinks like 1 hand Tumoc sword and a energy focus would be a nice different build to go to maximize speed and lower animations.
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Feedback on Reply Posts
The tank gets a number of mitigating skills/abilities while also sitting in full heavy / mitigation gear, and Fighters have to expect their momentum in order for CD resets all the time and will sacrifice damage in order to actually go into a defensive stance like that to mitigate phys or spell.
I think that's a fair trade off.
15% attack speed for 20% phys damage reduce or spell damage reduce (WHILE AT MAX momentum).
I 100% agree with this.
TO be fair, I think there should be additional spec options for some of the forms to make them more useful. But the actual forms themselves should be given for free at various skill levels, not even via talent point.
Right, having to sit in a GCD because of a Roar, or Trip just feels bad.
Additional Feedback from Phase 2
Other classes have so much higher top end damage that it basically eats the Fighters ability to close the gap and deal some damage. Healer heals doesn't matter if wound is on just completely render the fighter useless. Mages one shot Fighters with one orb essentially (prior to this next patch to mages -- not sure how it will change after it).
Fighters still cannot do much in a raid vs raid PvP scenario unless perfectly timed. Unless the grp has the perfect composition and perfect timing and perfect setup/assistance to the fighters, your basically charging in to get deleted right away still, nothing you can do but attack people that jump into your backline. Doesn't give the impression/feel of a berserker. Still need to get form specific damage type mitigation bonuses.
Increase the damage from Energy Focuses (maybe by 25% -- going from like 50 to 63 for ex.) to act as a complimentary offhand for a 1 handed sword fighter. Gives a higher speed, lower damage setup and an alternative to just rocking 2 hand weapon. Because, why is that even in the game if nobody is going to use it.
Fighters still need something that can do short time passive aoe damage when pushing into largescale raids. Something like I mentioned being Enveloping Cataclysm. Something that can generate some passive health while you jump in with Blood Fusion since in 2-3 seconds your dead anyway as an alternative to the big boom stick spec option.
I've also gone through and edited some of my main post as I feel like some things I don't agree with anymore or maybe need more or less.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
The weapon switching feature feels like it's super basic atm...paired up with the toggle auto attack feature that turns off on keypress(this never happens in the previous phase) mid-combat or during enemy target switching upon previous target's death. It's just all so meh which in turn makes gameplay CLUNKY AF.
I don't know exactly why but fighter feels boring AF at level 25 in a party/raid setting, it was fun for solo leveling. Maybe it's partly because of what Punkte mentioned in the above post.....i'm forced to come in and play the trip game and carry the party/raid otherwise they all wipe, scratch their heads cluelessly and complain cluelessly.
Last bit, whirlwind feels lackluster AF. It feels even lackluster AF when not being able to use form of ferocity and not having an attack speed buff coupled with it.
These animations take so long for so small of a reward.
Whirlwind animation needs to be sped up a little bit I think, and also when speccing into it, the actual last hit of whirlwind from the talent, should NOT extend the animation of whirlwind. So many times I just want the animation to end. I only use it when I have procced all my attack speed increases. I would honestly rather just keep weapon cleaving for more procs and reset cleave than use whirlwind.
It feels like a good skill when I have all my attack speed stuff procced, using ferocity form at full momentum, where you speed it up a bit, but outside of that, its not fun.
There's a ton of wierd issues that reset the weapon into ranged.
Casting some skills like Battle Cry switches to my main weapon.
There is another one too, I just forget what it is. Maybe Berserk?
Whirlwind is super sensitive on button press. If you press it too long and let go, it cancels the ability. If you accidently double tap, it cancels the ability. Any accidental button press cancels it.