Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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 in Phase 2: Where It Falls Apart and Why
Demostrathe
Member, Alpha Two
After leveling up and experiencing varied PvP as a Fighter for the first time in Phase 2, many issues with the class became glaringly obvious and apparent on why its a dying breed. At the heart of it all is a fundamentally flawed Combat Momentum economy that undermines the Fighter’s core fantasy of being an aggressive, high-pressure battlefield controller.
Somehow, the system simultaneously manages to suffer from both insufficient Momentum generation and excessive, conflicting demands. Basic attacks provide negligible returns, weapon combo finishers—especially melee—are awkward and unreliable in actual combat, and ranged finishers, while way more consistent, still generate too little and is basically just a slow death with the noose tightening around your neck when you're forced to trade at range.
Key generators like Overpower and Brutal Cleave—arguably the class’s best tools for building Momentum—are inexplicably tied to the same cooldown. Battle Cry, another Momentum generator, also doubles as our only crowd control break, making it a highly situational tool that you often can't afford to use proactively.
The shared cooldown between Overpower and Brutal Cleave is especially baffling. These two abilities serve entirely different roles—one is single-target, the other AoE—yet you're forced to choose between them. This restriction completely stifles the adaptive, fluid playstyle that the class is clearly designed to support, especially with upgrades like Art of War that encourages form switching as response/adaption to situations in combat engagements.
While not necessarily the most optimal combo but purely as an example, be able to shift into Form of Celerity, land a Brutal Cleave to stagger multiple enemies, then transition into Form of Fluidity to Overpower a priority target, applying Shaken, and follow up with Cataclysm or Leap Strike to convert those effects into Trips/Snares. Instead, this potential combo flow is broken entirely by a cooldown structure that feels artificially limiting and out of step with the class's intended rhythm.
This is further compounded by the sheer cost of core abilities. Berserk, Lunging Assault, and form switching (when not enhanced by Art of War) all consume large chunks of Momentum, creating a paradox where the Fighter's supposed “ramp-up” style actually slows down combat. Rather than applying relentless pressure, I often find myself Momentum-starved, unable to act meaningfully unless I ration my resources like a starved Victorian orphan hoarding crusts of bread. Of course at a higher skill level and mastery of their classes players should learn to manage their resources wisely—but not to the point where the class loses all sense of tempo and agency.
The lack of sustain and defensive options makes this even worse. Fighters are said to be resilient against disables and magic, but in practice, they’re left with little in the way of meaningful mitigation or healing. Outside of niche tools like Blood Fusion or specific upgrades like Rejuvenating Wallop, which is also essentially a useless upgrade since again not enough spenders, there's simply no reliable way to endure prolonged skirmishes and uptime when trying to chase down people. Same thing for the more defensive oriented form Form of Fluidity again not enough momentum to make its disable evasion/evasion buff significant.
While yes there are other upgrades like the one for lethal blow, which returns a portion of health if you secure a kill with it—but that’s the key word: IF. In PvP, especially large-scale encounters, securing a final blow is highly inconsistent. Even when you do manage to land one, the frequency simply isn’t high enough to meaningfully offset incoming damage. This problem is further compounded on a UI side problem by how enemy health bars are segmented into four sections, making it difficult to accurately judge when a target is low enough for Lethal Blow to finish them off. As a result, the sustain it offers feels unreliable and more like a bonus than a dependable part of your toolkit that again all in all not worth to waste a skill point on just like rejuvenating wallop.
There’s also the upgrade to Form of Celerity that, if I remember correctly, grants increased passive HP regeneration. However, this feels fundamentally at odds with how the class is meant to be played. The strength of the Fighter lies in switching forms to apply key status effects, and staying in a single form long enough to benefit from this regen is undermined by the importance of those key status effects of other forms.
Hell, even if you did commit to staying in Form of Celerity, the regeneration just isn’t impactful enough to justify the trade-off—unless you’re specifically building into a defensive setup with lifesteal (which isn’t all that effective either), or stacking max HP, mitigation, evasion, and other tanky stats. But that approach ultimately backfires. While Fighters do need a solid baseline of durability as a frontline class, their primary role is still DPS. Leaning too far into defensive stats just turns you into a discount tank—one that can’t actually fulfill either role effectively.
To bring the class into alignment with its intended identity, Fighters could use things like a slow but measured passive gain in momentum while engaged in combat or reactive methods of generating Momentum or simply just a base increase in how much momentum is gained in things like weapon finishers. This could be through minor gains when taking damage or even passive income triggered by being crowd controlled (Maybe when in Form of Fluidity?).
Additionally the introduction of a parry or counterattack mechanic would also thematically suit the Fighter, allowing for damage mitigation without compromising the aggressive playstyle and could even build upon the already active block skill ingame.
Fluidity Form could even have a upgrade to grant brief damage reduction to projectiles or AoE, reinforcing the notion that Fighters flow through combat rather than getting bogged down in it. On-demand sustain or mitigation—possibly scaling with current Momentum or the number of nearby enemies—would further help the Fighter survive longer engagements and hold the front line.
In short, the Fighter class is overflowing with potential but is currently shackled by a contradictory resource system, restrictive cooldown pairing, and a lack of defensive depth. It’s a class built around escalation and momentum, yet in practice, it feels like it’s constantly playing catch-up with basically everyone else. With some targeted adjustments to how Momentum is generated, spent, and rewarded, the Fighter could finally live up to its promise as the relentless, pressure-heavy force it was meant to be.
Somehow, the system simultaneously manages to suffer from both insufficient Momentum generation and excessive, conflicting demands. Basic attacks provide negligible returns, weapon combo finishers—especially melee—are awkward and unreliable in actual combat, and ranged finishers, while way more consistent, still generate too little and is basically just a slow death with the noose tightening around your neck when you're forced to trade at range.
Key generators like Overpower and Brutal Cleave—arguably the class’s best tools for building Momentum—are inexplicably tied to the same cooldown. Battle Cry, another Momentum generator, also doubles as our only crowd control break, making it a highly situational tool that you often can't afford to use proactively.
The shared cooldown between Overpower and Brutal Cleave is especially baffling. These two abilities serve entirely different roles—one is single-target, the other AoE—yet you're forced to choose between them. This restriction completely stifles the adaptive, fluid playstyle that the class is clearly designed to support, especially with upgrades like Art of War that encourages form switching as response/adaption to situations in combat engagements.
While not necessarily the most optimal combo but purely as an example, be able to shift into Form of Celerity, land a Brutal Cleave to stagger multiple enemies, then transition into Form of Fluidity to Overpower a priority target, applying Shaken, and follow up with Cataclysm or Leap Strike to convert those effects into Trips/Snares. Instead, this potential combo flow is broken entirely by a cooldown structure that feels artificially limiting and out of step with the class's intended rhythm.
This is further compounded by the sheer cost of core abilities. Berserk, Lunging Assault, and form switching (when not enhanced by Art of War) all consume large chunks of Momentum, creating a paradox where the Fighter's supposed “ramp-up” style actually slows down combat. Rather than applying relentless pressure, I often find myself Momentum-starved, unable to act meaningfully unless I ration my resources like a starved Victorian orphan hoarding crusts of bread. Of course at a higher skill level and mastery of their classes players should learn to manage their resources wisely—but not to the point where the class loses all sense of tempo and agency.
The lack of sustain and defensive options makes this even worse. Fighters are said to be resilient against disables and magic, but in practice, they’re left with little in the way of meaningful mitigation or healing. Outside of niche tools like Blood Fusion or specific upgrades like Rejuvenating Wallop, which is also essentially a useless upgrade since again not enough spenders, there's simply no reliable way to endure prolonged skirmishes and uptime when trying to chase down people. Same thing for the more defensive oriented form Form of Fluidity again not enough momentum to make its disable evasion/evasion buff significant.
While yes there are other upgrades like the one for lethal blow, which returns a portion of health if you secure a kill with it—but that’s the key word: IF. In PvP, especially large-scale encounters, securing a final blow is highly inconsistent. Even when you do manage to land one, the frequency simply isn’t high enough to meaningfully offset incoming damage. This problem is further compounded on a UI side problem by how enemy health bars are segmented into four sections, making it difficult to accurately judge when a target is low enough for Lethal Blow to finish them off. As a result, the sustain it offers feels unreliable and more like a bonus than a dependable part of your toolkit that again all in all not worth to waste a skill point on just like rejuvenating wallop.
There’s also the upgrade to Form of Celerity that, if I remember correctly, grants increased passive HP regeneration. However, this feels fundamentally at odds with how the class is meant to be played. The strength of the Fighter lies in switching forms to apply key status effects, and staying in a single form long enough to benefit from this regen is undermined by the importance of those key status effects of other forms.
Hell, even if you did commit to staying in Form of Celerity, the regeneration just isn’t impactful enough to justify the trade-off—unless you’re specifically building into a defensive setup with lifesteal (which isn’t all that effective either), or stacking max HP, mitigation, evasion, and other tanky stats. But that approach ultimately backfires. While Fighters do need a solid baseline of durability as a frontline class, their primary role is still DPS. Leaning too far into defensive stats just turns you into a discount tank—one that can’t actually fulfill either role effectively.
To bring the class into alignment with its intended identity, Fighters could use things like a slow but measured passive gain in momentum while engaged in combat or reactive methods of generating Momentum or simply just a base increase in how much momentum is gained in things like weapon finishers. This could be through minor gains when taking damage or even passive income triggered by being crowd controlled (Maybe when in Form of Fluidity?).
Additionally the introduction of a parry or counterattack mechanic would also thematically suit the Fighter, allowing for damage mitigation without compromising the aggressive playstyle and could even build upon the already active block skill ingame.
Fluidity Form could even have a upgrade to grant brief damage reduction to projectiles or AoE, reinforcing the notion that Fighters flow through combat rather than getting bogged down in it. On-demand sustain or mitigation—possibly scaling with current Momentum or the number of nearby enemies—would further help the Fighter survive longer engagements and hold the front line.
In short, the Fighter class is overflowing with potential but is currently shackled by a contradictory resource system, restrictive cooldown pairing, and a lack of defensive depth. It’s a class built around escalation and momentum, yet in practice, it feels like it’s constantly playing catch-up with basically everyone else. With some targeted adjustments to how Momentum is generated, spent, and rewarded, the Fighter could finally live up to its promise as the relentless, pressure-heavy force it was meant to be.
Referral Code : 8GTVW547SYDTHE6Nashesofcreation.com/r/8GTVW547SYDTHE6N
1
Comments
- I dont see how these are entirely different roles. You point out Single vs AOE but offer no other examples of how they are different. To me its same use with tradeoffs. OP offers slightly less dmg to a single target with less mana cost vs Cleave for higher dmg to multiple targets but at a higher mana cost. Thats basically the difference so you get choices based on your situation. The design isnt to give you two attacks.
Shifting stances.
Personally I rarely shift stance in PVP since Celebrity is so strong. PVE I may swap but its not frequent and purely situational. You seem to want to switch before each ability to maximize that ability. Im not sure if that is how they intended stances to be used. Ive always thought it was pick a lane. Not saying your playstyle is wrong, its just not how the fighter community I play with engage. But if the overall design by Intrepid is to switch stances to maximize the abilities, I agree the current system is bad and needs a rework.
Momentum
Yup, agree its awful. Builds too slowly and depletes instantly. Ive never been a fan of "start with no resource and build to maximize your class" isnt a great system. its never rewards like it should.
Lunging Assault
Needs rework, its bad. it never lands and its just wonky to use. The invulnerability part sounds good but isnt worth the ability atm. improving this to be a stronger gap closer would be awesome.
Large Scale
I think fighter needs skills to make it valuable in these encounters because we arent compared to all the other classes. We excel in single target but lack tools to really make a big difference in large scale. Getting a shield, say tied to something like battle cry, and the shield health based on number of enemies in an area, would help us dive into piles and cause havoc without being instant deleted would allow us to influence the fight.
At the end of the day, my belief is fighters should be devastating when they catch their target. There is no justifiable argument for why range dps can quickly delete their target from afar and at little to no risk while Fighters struggle to kill their targets once they have been caught. Fighters have to constantly position themselves for success which almost always means throwing themselves into harms way. We have to balance survivability and dps far more than ranged classes so we should be rewarded with strong dmg when we do manage to hit our target. And no, I dont want more stuns, people are quick to complain about that and i really dont care to win that way.
How i see it is that:
The Art of War upgrade explicitly removes ALL costs and cooldowns from form switching, which strongly suggests the designers intended frequent switching as a high-level play style.
The various status effects from different forms (Staggered from Celerity, Bleeding from Ferocity, Shaken from Fluidity) feed into different follow-up abilities. Some abilities like Cataclysm convert Staggered to Tripped, while Leap Strike converts Shaken to Snared. This interaction design implies tactical switching.
Now of course you dont have to take the art of war upgrade path (which would just be a bad chocie overall and make resource management even harder) but considering it and core class fantasy point toward stance flexibility, but the actual mechanics discourage it by putting key abilities on shared cooldowns, that's a contradiction in design.
You're right that the current community meta might favor sticking with Celerity, but that's precisely because the form-switching playstyle is too clunky and restricted by many factors to be viable - which suggests a fundamental design problem, not that it was intended to being static to one form.
If the developers truly meant for fighters to primarily stay in one form, why create an upgrade that specifically removes all penalties from switching?
Regarding Overpower and Brutal Cleave, the issue goes beyond simple single-target vs AoE tradeoffs. These aren't just damage abilities - they're primary Combat Momentum generators and status effect applicators that are essential to the Fighter's core gameplay loop.
Separating their cooldowns wouldn't make Fighters overpowered for several reasons:
The individual damage values aren't particularly high (150% for Overpower, 175% for Brutal Cleave)
Other classes have access to both single-target and AoE abilities without shared cooldowns
The Momentum generation (+10 flat vs +10-20 based on targets) is balanced by situation
and most of all the real value is in combat flow, not raw damage output
What it would do is allow Fighters to build Momentum more consistently and apply status effects more dynamically, which aligns with the class's intended identity as an adaptable combatant who maintains pressure through momentum.
The current restriction creates an artificial bottleneck that makes the class feel less responsive than it should. When your class identity is built around maintaining pressure and momentum, having your two primary momentum-generating abilities sharing a cooldown directly undermines that identity without adding meaningful tactical depth.
I agree with the rest though especially about lunging assault and large scale importance. It feels extremely nice pulling off gap closing with lunging assault or using its cc immunity to dodge something like vine field but it is so unfairly hard to hit
Just briefly chiming in to say that this design direction is a negative for my Fighter (in case she doesn't get around to this thread).
That may not be the correct way to convey it, but it's definitely along the lines of 'realizing that this is somewhat designed to be more flexible and that's someone's idea of what would be good/fun, but it's restricted'.
Not a balance complaint, not a request for it to stay flexible like this.