New Soul Feedback - Arbiter

[Kervik]

Hey all,

As you may have heard we’re opening up the new souls for testing on PTS to everyone. The souls are available in the dummy foundry on the Mr. SL Raid 1 merchant. In order to get to this merchant you will need to set your dungeon difficulty to Master and click the bear trap object in Tempest Bay, Sanctum or Meridian.

This thread is primarily for feedback on the Arbiter soul. We’re looking for any sort of feedback you might have and of course any bugs you might find with the soul. One thing to be aware of heading into this is the soul isn’t finalized yet. There are still some tweaks and adjustments being done and parts of the soul could still change prior to it reaching Live. I'll update this thread with any changes to the soul as they happen.

We’re also planning on moderating this thread a bit more than most threads are. As such here are a few reminders:

1. This thread is for the discussion of the Arbiter soul. Discussion about hybrids and how Arbiter works or impacts other souls is great, but please keep discussion focused on other souls to threads outside of this one.
2. Keep feedback constructive. If you don’t like a particular ability or aspect of the soul, that’s fine. Feel free to make those posts, but give us your reasons.

Thanks ahead of time to everyone for your feedback. Hopefully you enjoy the new soul.

[Jelan]

Little heads up to let people know that Magelo has an updated PTS calculator with the new souls in order to help you out testing, sharing and posting builds. Should hopefully prove to be a useful resource.

> Magelo PTS Soultree calculator

[Burninalways]

Change to Earth PA: have Shielding Glyph & Shielding Sigil usable on Totems instead of One Hand.

[ViperTheFirst]

Arbiter seems like it would have amazing synergy with Harbinger at times, except Eldritch Armor (Eld.A.) and Ebb and Flow (E&F) do not work together. At the moment, any ability used while E&F is active procs a 1 second GCD, except if that ability was a cast time ability (such as Life Leech or Vorpal Slash) and is used to consume Eld.A., it procs a 1.5 second GCD, even if E&F is on. Kinda makes using Eld.A. absolutely pointless, but I am assuming that it is just a bug at the moment.

Unrelated bug: Energized Vitality (16 points in root) does not indicate the modified amount of Endurance gained when points are put into Radiant Vitality (Tier 5 in tree), still increases health when re-cast however.

[Malidrag]

Change to Earth PA: have Shielding Glyph & Shielding Sigil usable on Totems instead of One Hand.

Awesome idea.

[evantide]

Problem with Harbiter synergy is that Harb works on the conservation of charge whereas Arbiter works on rapid expend+generation.

Requires massive amounts of charged blade toggling in order to accomplish this due to the Arbiter generators being their slash attacks, if you want to use Icy and Glacial spikes at all.

Easiest change would be to just make the Arbiter's consumers into slashes while their generators are their non-slash attacks., thereby solidifying a base.

To be honest though, the hybrid I was testing basically just swapped out Storm Slash for Galvanic Strike in the spam macro and added Jolting Wave in front of Lucent Slash in a macro. It played like a Harb still but was way bulkier. The charge consumers basically had no use since they were on a 1.5s GCD. and Harb itself is already pretty tight on charge. Ended up using them mainly as range filler when I had extra charge to blow.

This is the build I was working with:

http://rift.magelo.com/en/soultree/p...48/W9aGiy9ac/i

Might consider changing it to Archon 0 for some more bulk as well as more buffers to prevent purging/enemy cleanse.

I've never played Warlord before, but it felt like this would be very similar to a Warlord style combatant. Some taunts and pulls to mess with enemies while being able to do some amount of DPS. damage wasn't stellar though.

[TheGrinnz]

Change to Earth PA: have Shielding Glyph & Shielding Sigil usable on Totems instead of One Hand.

PA buffs will be an interesting conundrum. This is the first time we have had a tanking class which can wield 2 handers but also doesn't need a shield to tank. So buffs are going to have to keep in mind the possibility of 2-handed tanking now for the first time. (Catering to warlord tanking was obviously never a balance priority.)

[Burninalways]

For Scatter Strike & Shattered Reflection shields can you add or increase the Endurance modifier.

As a 91640 health tank, Scatter Strike's 1158 shield and Shattered Reflection's 442 shield will do barely anything for Arbiter or any other non tank players.

Also for Shielding Charge and Frozen Shield can you increase them to 15% of Max health instead of 3%.

[Lexx91]

For Scatter Strike & Shattered Reflection shields can you add or increase the Endurance modifier.

As a 91640 health tank, Scatter Strike's 1158 shield and Shattered Reflection's 442 shield will do barely anything for Arbiter or any other non tank players.

Also for Shielding Charge and Frozen Shield can you increase them to 15% of Max health instead of 3%.

I definitely think the scatter strike and shattered reflection shields are laughable aside from the fact that no other tank spec offers this, would be nice to see something percent based even if its only something like 3% of the tanks health as opposed to whatever the fixed amount is now.

Given how easy it is to keep those shields up, i don't think it should be 15% though cause you could easily keep both shields up nonstop by maxing your charge and instant draining it with soothing waters. Self healing and nonstop 30% shields would be ridiculous mitigation and survivability. Although it may not be most effective aggro it would maintain nonstop mitigation and may maintain aggro, not entirely sure as i haven't had a chance to use that technique in experts or raids

[Kervik]

I'll take a look at the PA weapon enchants and see what I can do.

Arbiter seems like it would have amazing synergy with Harbinger at times, except Eldritch Armor (Eld.A.) and Ebb and Flow (E&F) do not work together. At the moment, any ability used while E&F is active procs a 1 second GCD, except if that ability was a cast time ability (such as Life Leech or Vorpal Slash) and is used to consume Eld.A., it procs a 1.5 second GCD, even if E&F is on. Kinda makes using Eld.A. absolutely pointless, but I am assuming that it is just a bug at the moment.

Unrelated bug: Energized Vitality (16 points in root) does not indicate the modified amount of Endurance gained when points are put into Radiant Vitality (Tier 5 in tree), still increases health when re-cast however.

I'll check into the Eldritch Armor/Ebb and Flow issue. I haven't tried using the two at the same time before.

With Energized Vitality, the ability description isn't going to show the bonus from Radiant Vitality. The reason for this is there are actually two kinds of End bonuses on Energized Vitality. One is the flat amount that is the base bonus from the ability and the other is a percentage bonus from Radiant Vitality. I can only really show the amount from one of the bonuses, so it just ends up showing the flat amount even though you get both when you actually have the buff on you.

Here are a few changes on the way to PTS for Arbiter. These should probably hit the server at the end of the week or the beginning of next week:

• Arcane Ward now increases threat by 300%. Up from 200%.
• Reduced damage of Avalanche.
• Empowered Wards now increases absorbs from Shielding Ward by 2/4%, and increases the damage and healing bonus of Frosted Ward by 3/6%.
• Frosted Ward now Reduces the Mage's threat by 50% and increases damage and healing done by 5%. Causes Storm Front and Arcane Shielding buffs to increase damage done by an additional 5%. Does not stack with Arcane Ward.
• Rejuvenating Charge is now a Tier 4 talent.
• Arcane Protection is now a Tier 5 talent.
• Soothing Waters is now a Tier 6 ability in the soul tree.
• Frosted Ward is now a Tier 5 ability in the soul tree.

Also for Shielding Charge and Frozen Shield can you increase them to 15% of Max health instead of 3%.

The bonus on these used to be a total of 10% with points spent in Empowered Wards. This was dropped to 5% because 10% was too good. The update I mention above bumps it up to 7%, but I still have concerns that this will still be too good and will need to be dropped back down.

[Lexx91]

PA buffs will be an interesting conundrum. This is the first time we have had a tanking class which can wield 2 handers but also doesn't need a shield to tank. So buffs are going to have to keep in mind the possibility of 2-handed tanking now for the first time. (Catering to warlord tanking was obviously never a balance priority.)

Another aspect is there will need to be an endurance rune for 2 handed so there isn't an advantage to having mh/oh vs staff due to RNG of drops and such but that is simple enough to deal with at least.

[lgw]

For Scatter Strike & Shattered Reflection shields can you add or increase the Endurance modifier.

As a 91640 health tank, Scatter Strike's 1158 shield and Shattered Reflection's 442 shield will do barely anything for Arbiter or any other non tank players.

Both are specialised tools for particular situations, and they do work well for that.
Neither of them is meant to help you significantly in mitigating single raid bosses. I wouldn't mind a small buff to either of them, but I strongly want to retain their functionality, over having them overbuffed, subsequently nerfed and thereby their tool kit approach destroyed.

[Burninalways]

Another aspect is there will need to be an endurance rune for 2 handed so there isn't an advantage to having mh/oh vs staff due to RNG of drops and such but that is simple enough to deal with at least.

Totally agree with having a Endurance rune for Two Handers.


Also as the current best spec has 10 lock, which has points that increases the amount of charge you abilities generate by 25 %.
Would It be a good idea to increase max charge.

Like with 10 lock Swirling Winds gives you 140 charge, couldn't it increase you max charge by 50 points for 10s. Applying the max increase before the charge amount.
Then resetting max charge back to its default amount on experation.

[ReveBeck]

Is Arbiter with arresting presence and high aggro generating abilities combined with high survi too strong in pvp? That I dont know cause im not usually doing much pvp but on paper it feels pretty strong. I mean you can have 80-90% uptime on arresting presence.

[Durango]

For Scatter Strike & Shattered Reflection shields can you add or increase the Endurance modifier.

As a 91640 health tank, Scatter Strike's 1158 shield and Shattered Reflection's 442 shield will do barely anything for Arbiter or any other non tank players.

Also for Shielding Charge and Frozen Shield can you increase them to 15% of Max health instead of 3%.

how about no, no, and no. SC and FS were already nerfed down from 10% because at 10% they were too powerful. Shattered reflection is 442 PER shield up to 10.