Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Phase 3 Fighter feedback
Ghostgg
Member, Alpha Two
First I'll admit I've been playing mostly mage since I'm really prepping for summoner. Having said that Fighter will be my main if I end up disliking summoner so I've been playing it on the side as I've been doing since P1. I have another post from my P1 feedback if you're curious.
Overall
Fighter is still amazing to play when you get to do fighter things. The combos are amazingly satisfying and the animations (except wallop...still lol) are fantastic. The only real problem with fighter is it's power is just behind all other classes. Playing a mage means you're doing 2-3x the damage of a fighter, which seems impossible but no really, just look at the damage of skills. So what does fighter need? First it needs more damage, I'll cover where I think that damage should be added. Second I think a few things could be streamlined to add more flexibility, which is a form of power.
A change for all classes
Okay this may be a bit controversial, but I think every class should get their cc break at level 15 for free. It should also be ONLY a cc break. Every class has a different one, I've mostly played bard, mage, and fighter and for both the fighter and mage I've just wished that it was more like the bards -- just a straight CC break no strings attached. The opportunity cost is 0 for breaking CC on a bard, while for both the fighter and the mage you're basically losing an important tool in pvp because the cc break is the most important ability in pvp.
For a fighter specifically, this means in pvp I can use my shout to buff/debuff or gain a burst of momentum, currently it just can't be used that way in pvp.
Stances
Stances are perhaps the most iconic part of playing a fighter. Currently they're not bad... but they aren't spectacular either. This is where that flexibility change mostly comes in. The idea behind this suggestion is to make stance dancing what enables a fighter to do fighter things always, whether that's taking the heat of playing a melee character in large scale, heavily punishing out of position players, or pushing the enemy lines to make a path for your allies like a part of the vanguard.
By making these stance changes now fighters can dance in and out of stances by maximizing damage during trips for example using Ferocity, or mitigating a big root from a range by swapping into Fluidity, now you need to reconnect so over to celerity. This type of rapid fire changing stances and tracking what you're in adds a lot of power locked behind a skill gap.
Needed numbers buffs
Like I said at the start, fighter is just weak compared to other classes. While being the easiest class in the entire game to die on, with the most situational damage, and when actually doing your damage it's the lowest damage in the game. Here is where power should be injected into the kit.
So what does this do? First fighter has more damage across the board which is desperately needs. It also gives fighters more control over their own damage by not relying on mage/rogue/bard for chill/weakened/frozen. It gives overpower a role after you learn brutal cleave, it gives fighter more instant threat when connecting on target which makes sense due to it being the class with the least ability to connect (most easily kited). It retains the momentum fantasy of building up to high pay off skills and the need to peel fighters off your teammates.
I think these changes would make a fighter a much more healthy class which would actually serve a function and just generally be more fun. I recognize these are big buffs and would almost certainly need further tuning, but again...fighter is total dog water right now, ask any serious player.
If you want fighter to be a good class please support, I've put a massive number of hours into this class and I just want it to be both fun and worth playing (see not a liability).
Overall
Fighter is still amazing to play when you get to do fighter things. The combos are amazingly satisfying and the animations (except wallop...still lol) are fantastic. The only real problem with fighter is it's power is just behind all other classes. Playing a mage means you're doing 2-3x the damage of a fighter, which seems impossible but no really, just look at the damage of skills. So what does fighter need? First it needs more damage, I'll cover where I think that damage should be added. Second I think a few things could be streamlined to add more flexibility, which is a form of power.
A change for all classes
Okay this may be a bit controversial, but I think every class should get their cc break at level 15 for free. It should also be ONLY a cc break. Every class has a different one, I've mostly played bard, mage, and fighter and for both the fighter and mage I've just wished that it was more like the bards -- just a straight CC break no strings attached. The opportunity cost is 0 for breaking CC on a bard, while for both the fighter and the mage you're basically losing an important tool in pvp because the cc break is the most important ability in pvp.
For a fighter specifically, this means in pvp I can use my shout to buff/debuff or gain a burst of momentum, currently it just can't be used that way in pvp.
Stances
Stances are perhaps the most iconic part of playing a fighter. Currently they're not bad... but they aren't spectacular either. This is where that flexibility change mostly comes in. The idea behind this suggestion is to make stance dancing what enables a fighter to do fighter things always, whether that's taking the heat of playing a melee character in large scale, heavily punishing out of position players, or pushing the enemy lines to make a path for your allies like a part of the vanguard.
- Most important change: Decouple stance power from momentum. Momentum should be a resource that is spent to create desired effects like berserk, wallop, and whirlwind. Why does this matter? By having the momentum spending abilities be very powerful you're pushing fighters to use those tools, which is great, but it minimizes the value of stances to be just a debuff selection tool. Removing this penalty means I can use my stance to accomplish a job, much like a real life stance: there are offensive, utility, supportive, and defensive stances in real life, let stances serve their role.
- Decouple debuffs from stances: While I actually like this part I think for my vision of the role for stances this would no longer fit. I'd propose have Overpower apply staggered and Brutal Cleave apply bleed. Now the need of my stance is based on the stance effect instead of the debuff effect.
- Form of Ferocity: This is our main offensive form, the only downside to this form is it has no upgrade like the other 2 forms. I'd like to add the HP regen from Form of Fluidity to this form. Why? Fighter is designed to be durable, otherwise they are just a shitty rogue. They have tons of burst durability via blood infusion, but often times mobs do occasional light damage AoEs in melee that a fighter gets hit by which makes a fighter more of a liability than another ranged dps, without the evasion and soothing shadows uptime of a rogue. By giving fighter a light amount of healing in their offensive stance you're alleviating this pressure such that light chip damage isn't a problem for a tough front line fighter. This doesn't upset burst damage from making a mechanical mistake and being hit by a slam since it heals very slowly. It also won't have a large impact on being trained in pvp since 1% per second (plus a bit on finishers) is meaningless when players are focusing you.
- Form of Fluidity: This is our defensive stance. This is the stance when you're buying time or diverting attacks. First, evasion is a weird one on a fighter when rogue exists, change the 15% evasion to 15% DR (it's functionally the same thing don't @me on this) and change the Disable Evasion to Disable Reduction. We still want an addon, and it should be in the theme of defensiveness...but we don't want to replace our tanks, we like our tanks. For an addon passive add a small amount of "Stagger" from wow, damage shifted from immediate to taken over time. A light "10% of damage taken is instead taken over 10s" means we can be even more durable which is mostly a boost to swap during a specific boss ability, or when being trained in pvp (most important since it means we can actually go in a bit). This may be an issue if fighter has all of this for tanks right? I agree, reduce threat by 50% in this stance and cause mobs currently attacking the fighter to have a high chance to change targets.
- Form of Celerity: This is our utility (mobility) form. The passive is great as is, but the addon passive is pointless for a fighter. Change the passive to be either a stamina regeneration buff (60% or so) to keep it different from rogue, or reduced stamina cost of rolling (~20). A fighter being melee should have the tools to keep on target and actually be a threat, currently I don't think anyone is even slightly afraid of a fighter.
By making these stance changes now fighters can dance in and out of stances by maximizing damage during trips for example using Ferocity, or mitigating a big root from a range by swapping into Fluidity, now you need to reconnect so over to celerity. This type of rapid fire changing stances and tracking what you're in adds a lot of power locked behind a skill gap.
Needed numbers buffs
Like I said at the start, fighter is just weak compared to other classes. While being the easiest class in the entire game to die on, with the most situational damage, and when actually doing your damage it's the lowest damage in the game. Here is where power should be injected into the kit.
- Overpower damage buffed from 150% -> 200% and now applies stagger. This is still less damage than the mage basic arcane missiles btw.
- Brutal Cleave now applies bleeding. This gives us a way to apply bleeding for rupture, but not a button which is superior to overpower in every scenario since Overpower would now do more damage. Also means we want to weave Brutal Cleaves for the bleed in ST while retaining it's AoE role.
- Whirlwind CD reduced from 30s -> 20s. Whirlwind should be our main AoE momentum spender via Whirlwind: Overdrive to instead of Wallop. A reduced CD means this is more in line with other spells (Ball Lightning) and allows fighters to be more relevant in AoE. Change the Weakened requirement to bleeding (or staggered but this is much worse and again fighter NEEDS buffs) because fighter can't apply weakened, no other class relies on other classes to do max damage like fighter.edit: this isn't true, can leave as is on weakened (I forgot cry applies weakened).
- Remove trip from Wallop, buff damage from 300%->400% max. Wallop should be our main ST spender, having a cc tied to it is problematic for 2 reasons: First you can't spam it since you don't generally want to randomly cc targets (which should be for interupts/burst windows), secondly you must build a non trivial amount of resource to CC. No one else has to do that. Having the increased damage means you're even further incentivized to peel enemy fighters off your team, a fighter should be a massive threat if they are allowed to stay on target.
- Change Incapacitate to a stun. Rogue is now in the game, it would be a lot better served as a hard stun in the fighter kit and more thematic IMO.
- Add trip back to Crippling Blow. No longer need to worry about combat momentum for trip. If having this and the stun is a concern (I really don't think it is considering how weak fighter is) then leave this as a trip and keep incapacitate as is.
- Reduce Battle Cry cd to 20s. Gives us more options for team support which is something the fighter simply doesn't provide. This is the best tool for that. Consider increasing range on ability to 30 yards (may already be there, haven't tested) to have good coverage and consider changing disable evasion to damage reduction or disable reduction to be more thematic. This obviously relies on having CC break removed from abilities in above section.
- Lunging Assault should "stick" to targeted enemy. It's a gap closer and snare for combat momentum, often times it's not functional because it brings you too far. This gives the fighter another valuable tool.
- Buff cataclysm damage 275%->500% damage. It has a long wind up and 30s cd, it should be more comparable to mages magma field (440% damage or 660% with extra passive and also a 30s cd). Change the chill/frozen requirement to snare for 15%, stun for 30%, no other class relies on other classes to do max damage like fighter.
So what does this do? First fighter has more damage across the board which is desperately needs. It also gives fighters more control over their own damage by not relying on mage/rogue/bard for chill/weakened/frozen. It gives overpower a role after you learn brutal cleave, it gives fighter more instant threat when connecting on target which makes sense due to it being the class with the least ability to connect (most easily kited). It retains the momentum fantasy of building up to high pay off skills and the need to peel fighters off your teammates.
I think these changes would make a fighter a much more healthy class which would actually serve a function and just generally be more fun. I recognize these are big buffs and would almost certainly need further tuning, but again...fighter is total dog water right now, ask any serious player.
If you want fighter to be a good class please support, I've put a massive number of hours into this class and I just want it to be both fun and worth playing (see not a liability).
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