Some upcoming Buffs and Fixes for 2.1

[Shieldy]

While we're talking about revamping tanking, does anyone else feel let down by unstable void, the 61 vk ability?

It plays like it should be a 1hr buff that you have to refresh every 15 seconds. Thoughts on adding damage to it and allowing it to build CPs? Either that or just a 1hr passive.

[Bwick]

Nice to see something is being done about some of the issues with the warrior class, but its so little in relation to how far behind we are as a class.

The whole design of the game is for range classes, practically every boss in every dungeon has several abilities that are massively anti-melee either incurring big disconnects or instant death.
The way I see it, any time spent on para or RB or warlord or whatever is just wasted as 99% of the time we will be running deep tempest. This isn't atrius' fault of course, it's the encounter designers and their obviously hollow statement that they ran every encounter with pure melee parties or raids. This hits warriors hardest cause we only have 1 range soul (thank god we have one tbh, or should that be thank atrius?).

Sure, some hardass masochist might just run melee anyway, but I can't count the number of times party leaders have explicitly stated run range or leave the party.

Then theres the fact nobody wants us to queue for dungeons as support as BM isn't welcomed in experts due to the fact it cant supply the secondary heals that are usually needed these days. I wish I was just exaggerating things, but it feels like the warrior class is shoehorned into some very small hole right now and isnt really wanted by the other players of the game. It's the ugly stepchild.

[Greyform]

Thank you for calming the masses.

whose calm?

this class is broken, has been broken really since 1.11 and it's been as unnecessarily painful to get any feedback as to why it is taking so long to fix it. It's not as if the warrior class was not a part of the beta. It's not as if feedback hasn't been streaming in since well before SL went live.

Calm? I'm not calm... I'm an old nerd raging gaming geek who misses playing my warrior!!

[ZeroMGA]

Atrius -

Sorry to reiterate a question from my earlier post, but this one has been asked by a few other people, and it would be great to hear a response on, even if it's as mundane as "I sent them a nastygram on behalf of my warriors." :P

"...have you heard if encounters and pvp are going to be made a bit more melee friendly? The most common complaint, besides the general state of warriors, is melee as a whole is getting pretty beat up; that everything favors ranged. Do you have any insight you can share as to whether that's being looked at?"

Thanks!

[Laanshor]

We have to play as Paragon on a boss, and Champion on a trash, Tempest when we can't melee, and only if our raid leader doesn't care about our min\maxing will we get to play as the Riftblade.

I would like to see some more parity of ST although no one should expect total (or even close) equality between the souls at any one role. We became too dependant on an all-in-one Champion spec imho. None of the other classes could ever perform as well with a single spec as we could.

I observe that the warrior community largely embraced the design concepts in the 1.11 patch notes but with the uber-builds that came in that patch so much time was devoted to cleaning up the OP over measuring and tightening the performance of the other souls. Basically in 2.0 we're behind other classes in 1.11 for flare, variety and balance ... Even if we do perform our dps function well enough it's hard to watch the other class' stability and playstyle variety.

What I want to know from Atrius is whether he sees the possibility of Thunderous Strike becoming a passive talent or an additive combat buff that applies when any finisher successfully hits. Or take away the 15 second CD but I'm pretty sure that's more than 4 buttons ...

[EvanX]

Nice to see something is being done about some of the issues with the warrior class, but its so little in relation to how far behind we are as a class.

The whole design of the game is for range classes, practically every boss in every dungeon has several abilities that are massively anti-melee either incurring big disconnects or instant death.
The way I see it, any time spent on para or RB or warlord or whatever is just wasted as 99% of the time we will be running deep tempest. This isn't atrius' fault of course, it's the encounter designers and their obviously hollow statement that they ran every encounter with pure melee parties or raids. This hits warriors hardest cause we only have 1 range soul (thank god we have one tbh, or should that be thank atrius?).

Sure, some hardass masochist might just run melee anyway, but I can't count the number of times party leaders have explicitly stated run range or leave the party.

Then theres the fact nobody wants us to queue for dungeons as support as BM isn't welcomed in experts due to the fact it cant supply the secondary heals that are usually needed these days. I wish I was just exaggerating things, but it feels like the warrior class is shoehorned into some very small hole right now and isnt really wanted by the other players of the game. It's the ugly stepchild.

We've seen what happens when Trion overreaches - better to move incrementally. I say, see what effect these changes have then tweak further if necessary. Massive swings don't seem to work very well.

[Leif]

Thanks for the communication, Atrius. While you're taking a look at things, a couple bugs and QoL suggestions:

-Haven't seen a hotfix note for it, so last I saw Storm Torrent is still giving 1 AP per second, rather than the 1 AP per 2 seconds the tooltip specifies.

-Tempest's Double Pulse cannot be used after Charged Pulse if you use another ability in between them. This includes interrupts, like how follow up attacks in Paragon used to be, and you can work around it by making an interrupt macro with double pulse followed by the interrupt, but it's still wonky.

-Can the Warlord talent to block without a shield also remove the shield requirement on Paladin's Shield Charge? I don't believe it currently does.

-Please make Quick Burst allow burst to be truly off-gcd. That we have to wait for the new GCD to begin to trigger a burst guarentees that we lose a small fraction of our GCD (unless you make additional macros to use when bursts are ready to be triggered) as we have to prep the Burst and then quickly hit our next builder.

-Please make 2/2 Weapon Master procs happen instantly. I realize the delay may be inherent if you only have 1/2 for one engineering reason or another, but at 2/2, our follow up's should just be pointing to different ability ID's that always give 2 AP.

General engineering issues that affect warriors:

-Non instantaneous movement effects are halted midway if hit by stuns/transmogrifys. ie bull rush, shield charge, thunderous leap.

-Using knockbacks on a player who is under the effect of a root causes the distance of the knockback to be shortened. ie Rift Summon-> Void Propulsion

[intrinsc]

Fixing this and constantly tweaking is in his best interest. If he doesn't, it hurts Trion's bottom line, which is subs and profitability. I doubt that Atrius, in this economy, would just choose to not do the best job he can just "because". My only worried is that whatever he buffs won't be good enough and we will go through several rounds of hotfixes to get it right. And, by then, most hardcore guilds will have stuff on farm and my usefulness in progression will be gone by.

[Atrius]

Atrius -

Sorry to reiterate a question from my earlier post, but this one has been asked by a few other people, and it would be great to hear a response on, even if it's as mundane as "I sent them a nastygram on behalf of my warriors." :P

"...have you heard if encounters and pvp are going to be made a bit more melee friendly? The most common complaint, besides the general state of warriors, is melee as a whole is getting pretty beat up; that everything favors ranged. Do you have any insight you can share as to whether that's being looked at?"

Thanks!

This has been communicated to the Dungeon and Encounter guys.

[Fejj]

Do we know when potential changes will hit the PTS? Also do we know when 2.1 will hit? I'm starting to be come worried about my guilds ability to expert and eventually raid and I need a timeframe to relate to people what will happen, and if alternate plans need to be made.

Thanks for the effort Atrius, its appreciated even if some of the people tracking this thread are so negative.

[Fujitasix]

How hard would it be to get the devs to throw in a boss dummy that hits back? While the math might appear finite on the surface, I'd sure feel better not having to find out what is multiplicative or additive while getting my raid killed.

Something simple that alternates melee blow / elemental blow with melee only range so we could step away from it to leave combat.

I'd send bacon wrapped, beer filled donuts to the crew!

[Solaxys]

Thank you very much Atrius for addressing Paragon and the likes of other souls .

I noticed that Beastmaster wasn't mentioned in your notes or this discussion.
It's the cleanest of all the souls right now but is extremely power hungry (with all the OGCDs) to put up a decent DPS rotation.

I was wondering if this is something you are looking into or something we have to adjust/maneuver around.
(I am fine with either! Just curious)

P.S. I understand that it isn't meant to truly DPS
Also understand that fervor/living energy offers it some solace
Also understand that you have enough points left over to get Surge from RB
(Unless the RNG hamster is on your side, the latter doesn't help much)

[Atrius]

Thank you very much Atrius for addressing Paragon and the likes of other souls .

I noticed that Beastmaster wasn't mentioned in your notes or this discussion.
It's the cleanest of all the souls right now but is extremely power hungry (with all the OGCDs) to put up a decent DPS rotation.

I was wondering if this is something you are looking into or something we have to adjust/maneuver around.
(I am fine with either! Just curious)

P.S. I understand that it isn't meant to truly DPS
Also understand that fervor/living energy offers it some solace
Also understand that you have enough points left over to get Surge from RB
(Unless the RNG hamster is on your side, the latter doesn't help much)

Beastmaster isn't part of the current fixes and changes. Once these go in, I will take a look at him.

[Icw]

Thank you for the update.

If spaceboots hasn't said it already, are we going to get a snare for PvP?

[Primalthirst]

I'd sure feel better not having to find out what is multiplicative or additive while getting my raid killed.

If you look at the Soul Tree section of my spreadsheet there is a column called 'Type' which lists the CD of abilities or the stacking group they are part of.
A = Active Self Buffs like Void or Power From The Masses
P = Passive self buffs like Thick of Battle or Shield of Faith
D = Debuffs like Pacifying Strike
U = Unique Buffs, currently only Rift Guard and Shadow Guard for Rogues

There is another category, Raid and Targeted Buffs which are buffs other players put on you, but I don't have them listed.