AP Scaling and other DPS changes to the Warrior going up to PTS

[PFalcon]

Ermmm....you do know that spotter's get overwritten by another spotter's right?

I haven't given a damn about what spotter's does since I heard it was cross-classed. The description looks funky. Sounded like a stackable thing per warrior.

[PFalcon]

No. Honestly we don't have enough souls to be dividing up that way. We've got three non pet souls only. They need to do comparable st dps.

It should be (IMO)

Champ. 100% st, worst for disconnects, best AOE.
RB: 100% st, good for short disconnects only. 70% best AOE
Para : 100% st, best disconnects (remove range penalty and potw cd), bad AOE
BM: 100% st, 80% AOE, good mobility

This is probably a better principle than trying to differentiate STDPS of each spec based on merits in other departments, which in turn aren't equal to each other either.

[Valmina]

He is working to isolate each dps tree. Synergy between trees multiplies the end number of possible builds making his job of balancing each much more complicated. A divide and conquer approach. Easier for him, less fun for us.

I understand his approach, all I fear is that flattening all trees, buffing them accordingly between one another and making sure they (almost) all synergize will take more than 3 weeks. Or we should expect a really big 1.8.1 patch

[batou079]

the problem with 51champ/15 rb was probably not the dps. The dps seemed okay. At least from my testing. The problem with it was the concept. 51champ is a physical brute damaging soul. The concept of having a large chunk of your damage be based on elemental damage was probably the reason they rejected it.

Nope. Trion does not care about soul "concepts" not making sense. Physical vs Elemental dmg sources, or any other conceptual jargon really doesn't matter.
We saw this for 6-8 months of a Dual Wield soul being best as a 2handed build. Physical dmg souls synergizing with elemental dmging souls shouldn't be a limitation. If soul flexibility and choice was being touted as RIFT's features, why would anyone think separating the two makes sense? It does not.

They nerfed made the Destroyers and IB changes because they were desperate to "fix" our reliance on putting low amount of pts into RB off GCD finishers.
For some reason, they constantly insist on tweaking that soul instead of fixing the core problem; finishers from OTHER souls that ARE on-GCD. Give GCD finishers a slight bump to make them worthwhile DPS gains compared to off-GCDs DPS gains and you just solved an issue with every build having a few points in Riftblade. That reliance would no longer be necessary.

And for the people presenting the argument for GCD finishers being "boring" is silly... that is preference on play style. that has NOTHING to do with actual balance issues. Not sure why people are bringing that point up... lol

[Durango]

Anyway, i'm also confused by Atrius latest change. I TOTALLY understand that he wants to keep all DPS builds on an even kilter, but what i don't understand is reducing both the amount of soul synergy we have and reducing our off GCD finisher choices at the same time. This game was supposed to be about soul flexibility and choices... but our flexibility just shrank, losing 600ish DPS on a DPS build isn't a "slight balance" it is a flat nerf, let's not sugar coat that fact.

It *seems* like he want to lower the ST potential of champ does to a more even level with other AoE heavy souls. These changes seem to affect champ much more than the other souls within the warrior calling and they seem to primarily affect the ST damage and leave the AoE damage untouched.

I wouldn't be surprised if he added a scaling component to scald with points in RB to make up for it being on GCD.

I think he is being very methodical and basically saw that the higher AoE damage build was also basically the highest ST build and realized something needed to be done to correct that.

I do not speak for the warrior community, but i guarantee our biggest concern right now is the loss of soul synergy (flexibility) that attracted most of us to this game... Not so much the dps loss, as you say you will be buffing us back up.

It seems like there is still a decent amount of soul synergy, just not as much for 51 champ. Overall it seems like the synergy between RB and para/BM has improved.

[Durango]

Oh does anyone know what the deal with the warlord spotter's order description is about?
Each attacker may trigger it once every 3 seconds, lasts 20 seconds....

?

Does that mean any warrior who uses it stacks a damage boost per hit on the mob for 20 seconds?

If that's the case, synergy over. everyone go 2 warlord.

No. SO, CoJ and Illuminate all work the same way. A debuff is put on the mob that procs a maximum of once every 3s for each player damaging that mob adding a set amount of damage. SO, CoJ, and Illuminate do not stack and due to bards generally having the most free GCDs and a longer duration (60s vs 20s for SO and Ilum, though honestly SO should be probably increased to 60s because it is a finisher like the bards just for consistency sake though in a raid a warlord subspec still wouldn't be using it) with CoJ, bards generally apply it to a mob except in some cases where an archon will apply it for short lived mobs like lashers.

The ICD on the proc is per player and even if 5 mobs in a pull all have one of SO, CoJ or Illum on them, a player can only proc it once every 3s regardless of the number of mobs hit.

[Sebb]

Anyone notice that we put up something like 25 pages in the past 24 hours? Can't say we haven't been involved!

[Kwerd]

this is like the strangest nerf targeted at the 51 champ build, but without any changes to make up for the lost of ~700-900 dps?

[LocoOne]

All i'm curios about is, what's the dps atrius want us to be at on ST parses.
(Obviusly not 3.0-3.2k ST self buffed in full hk gear)
If this was enlightened many of us playing warrior might be able to provide feedback for the final outcome.

New changes not up on PTS yet, but looking forward to test it and compare.

[MiO]

All i'm curios about is, what's the dps atrius want us to be at on ST parses.
(Obviusly not 3.0-3.2k ST self buffed in full hk gear)
If this was enlightened many of us playing warrior might be able to provide feedback for the final outcome.

New changes not up on PTS yet, but looking forward to test it and compare.

Likely 2.8-2.9k in mostly relic armor.


You can test everything but RB specs on the pts without the patch.

[Durango]

No. Honestly we don't have enough souls to be dividing up that way. We've got three non pet souls only. They need to do comparable st dps.

It seems pretty clear that the devs do not want a soul doing top spec AoE and top spec ST. This latest change only makes it more clear. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't his primarily a nerf to champion ST damage, largely leaving the ST damage of the other builds alone?

Realistically, warriors need a 2H spec and a DW spec that do comparable top end ST DPS. Champ is likely not going to be it because of its very very good AoE. BM is likely not going to be it because of the pet and the aversion some people have to pets. Therefore it makes sense to make RB the 2H ST spec that handles DCs via spears and RW with moderate AoE and Para the DW spec that handles longer duration DCs and ranged better. And they both have decent amounts of synergy for some mixing and matching. Leave BM as more of an all arounder, not best but good ST, not best but good AoE, but with decent utility and some nice raid helpers.

That would be 4 viable souls, all of which bring something to a raid, some multitude of specs based around them. That would at least quadruple the viable warrior DPS builds in raids right now.

[batou079]

It *seems* like he want to lower the ST potential of champ does to a more even level with other AoE heavy souls. These changes seem to affect champ much more than the other souls within the warrior calling and they seem to primarily affect the ST damage and leave the AoE damage untouched.

I wouldn't be surprised if he added a scaling component to scald with points in RB to make up for it being on GCD.

I think he is being very methodical and basically saw that the higher AoE damage build was also basically the highest ST build and realized something needed to be done to correct that.

It seems like there is still a decent amount of soul synergy, just not as much for 51 champ. Overall it seems like the synergy between RB and para/BM has improved.

Reasonable thinking. I can only hope that these changes are simply pre-cursors to Atrius' overall plan to keep warriors in line with other callings. He DID indeed say he was doing this in an effort to balance dps souls before globally buffing them to bring them back up.

Synergy still exists indeed. But the worry comes from a pattern of losing synergy options every major patch due to sweeping soul changes.

Btw Durango, i have to applaud your very calm and objective posts. To be honest, you are usually "that rogue" who berates the warrior community. So take this is a compliment, i am very appreciative of you adding constructive comments to this discussion. Thanks man.

[paper]

It seems pretty clear that the devs do not want a soul doing top spec AoE and top spec ST. This latest change only makes it more clear. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't his primarily a nerf to champion ST damage, largely leaving the ST damage of the other builds alone?

Realistically, warriors need a 2H spec and a DW spec that do comparable top end ST DPS. Champ is likely not going to be it because of its very very good AoE. BM is likely not going to be it because of the pet and the aversion some people have to pets. Therefore it makes sense to make RB the 2H ST spec that handles DCs via spears and RW with moderate AoE and Para the DW spec that handles longer duration DCs and ranged better. And they both have decent amounts of synergy for some mixing and matching. Leave BM as more of an all arounder, not best but good ST, not best but good AoE, but with decent utility and some nice raid helpers.

That would be 4 viable souls, all of which bring something to a raid, some multitude of specs based around them. That would at least quadruple the viable warrior DPS builds in raids right now.

Its a fairly large nerf to dual wield as well, as 44/20/2 is pretty reliant on icy burst.

[Sebb]

It seems pretty clear that the devs do not want a soul doing top spec AoE and top spec ST. This latest change only makes it more clear. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't his primarily a nerf to champion ST damage, largely leaving the ST damage of the other builds alone?

Realistically, warriors need a 2H spec and a DW spec that do comparable top end ST DPS. Champ is likely not going to be it because of its very very good AoE. BM is likely not going to be it because of the pet and the aversion some people have to pets. Therefore it makes sense to make RB the 2H ST spec that handles DCs via spears and RW with moderate AoE and Para the DW spec that handles longer duration DCs and ranged better. And they both have decent amounts of synergy for some mixing and matching. Leave BM as more of an all arounder, not best but good ST, not best but good AoE, but with decent utility and some nice raid helpers.

That would be 4 viable souls, all of which bring something to a raid, some multitude of specs based around them. That would at least quadruple the viable warrior DPS builds in raids right now.

It is wrong, because every build except BM had IB in the rotation. It kills paragon builds too. This change had nothing to do with AOE vs ST dps, and everything to do with oGCD vs GCD finishers.

Edit: Also it makes no sense for RB to be it, given that RB attacks get half contribution from weapon dps that every other attack gets (according to new tooltips) - this actually promotes dw synergy.

[Durango]

Synergy still exists indeed. But the worry comes from a pattern of losing synergy options every major patch due to sweeping soul changes.

They have in general been paring down *unintended* soul synergy for a while now. The biggest example for rogues is makes many abilities affect either only melee ability or ranged abilities, which has removed almost all soul synergy for both bards and sabs while basically isolating MM/Ranger into one pod and NB/BD/Sin into another pod.

Btw Durango, i have to applaud your very calm and objective posts. To be honest, you are usually "that rogue" who berates the warrior community. So take this is a compliment, i am very appreciative of you adding constructive comments to this discussion. Thanks man.

The problem is that people generally confuse good things for bad things and change is always scary. The warrior community is acting like a lot of rogues were with the original 1.5 changes to MM when they were removing the gimmick CDs which had fast become a balancing headache.

The removal of the other reliance on oGCD cooldowns will likely be a good thing in the end, esp the over reliance on a small number of points in one soul. And don't get me wrong, rogues have very much the same issue with the over reliance on 8 pts in Sin for Serrated Blades in almost every spec, that really needs to be fixed.