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

[Atrius]

Happy Friday everyone, I wanted to drop by and let you all know that we have the first pass of AP changes in for the Warrior calling and you will be getting to play with them in the next PTS patch. The intention of these changes is to get the Warrior AP scaling to a solid baseline foundation so that we can make sure they are scaling properly and in a balanced way to other callings. One side effect of this is that we had to pull out a lot of band aids we were previously using to scale things in a more even fashion and have had to do a lot of rebalancing to get things in order after all of that.

What does all of this mean to you? Well, because of the extent of the changes we wanted all of you to get a chance to play with it and beat on it sooner rather than later. Please be aware that these numbers are only ballpark and nothing is final, there are changes still on the way. If you get upset, we encourage you to communicate that upset in a productive way so we can evaluate it and make some changes. If you find OP builds, let us know so we can look at them, and if you find underpowered builds let us know about those as well. You will notice that the damage of just about every ability has changed to some degree, some up and some down but in the end it should result in a more balanced playing field across the DPS souls in the Warrior. The two biggest areas you will notice changes are in Elemental damage and scaling, and Dual Wield versus Two Handers. I am also providing a list of patch notes so that you know what to expect.

Warrior Changes

Warrior
• All Warriors now get a Passive Buff called Building Fury that shows up in one of their souls that gives them increased Attack Power contribution to Finishers based on Attack Points used.
• Finishers no longer gain an increase to Weapon damage based on Attack Points used.
• All Damaging abilities have been re-balanced to work with using Attack Power in a more consistent manner.

Beastmaster
• Fixed a bug causing Slashing Strike to delay for a couple seconds.

Champion
• Bloodthirst now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Disruptive Strike now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Fixed a bug that caused Deadly Strikes to work with one handed weapons in certain circumstances.
• Reduced the effectiveness of the 4 gear benefit in Rasmolov’s Champion Crystal to 20% from 35%.
• Cornered Beast duration has been reduced to 2.5 seconds, hits every 0.5 seconds. Cooldown has been reduced to 30 seconds.
• Titan's Strike cooldown has been reduced to 30 seconds.
• Destroyer's Bearing has had its damage bonus increased to a maximum of 50% instead of 35% and now always generates an attack point.
• Disruptive Strike has had its cooldown reduced from 15 to 10 seconds.
• Weapon Specialization now grants 0.6% per Talent Point for each Soul Point spent in Champion.

Paladin
• Retaliation now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Disarming Counterblow now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Paladin's Reprisalnow gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.

Paragon
• Way of the Mountain now only enhances the damage of Finishers while Dual Wielding.
• Paired Strike now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Path of the Hurricane now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Path of the Raptor now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Death Touch now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Rising Waterfall now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution when Dual Wielding instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Rising Waterfall now does higher damage when Dual Wielding.
• Flurry duration has been reduced to 2.5 seconds, hits every 0.5 seconds. Cooldown has been reduced to 30 seconds.
• Teaching of the Five Rings now grants 0.6% per Talent Point for each Soul Point spent in Paragon.

Riftblade
• Rift Strike now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Static Shock now deals damage based on Attack Power.
• Riftblade – Storm Blade now deals damage based on Attack Power.
• Rift Fury now affects all attacks just like Teaching of the Five Rings and Weapon Specialization.
• Rift Fury now grants 0.6% per Talent Point for each Soul Point spent in Riftblade.

Void Knight
• Rift Shield: Can no longer be cast on a target currently under the effects of Rite of the Ancestors or Spiritual Conflagration.


Please keep feedback productive, we will be moderating this thread and will remove posts that we deem unproductive or that distract from the topic.

Thank you all for your continued passion and consideration.

[intrinsc]

Thanks, Atrius. Many of us will be providing you with feedback. First question:

Paragon
• Way of the Mountain now only enhances the damage of Finishers while Dual Wielding.

Does that means all warriors are going surfing?

[Carnefice]

• Rift Fury now affects all attacks just like Teaching of the Five Rings and Weapon Specialization.

This opens up a lot of doors at first glance

A lot of great stuff in here Atrius, thanks!

[Carinae]

Warrior
• All Warriors now get a Passive Buff called Building Fury that shows up in one of their souls that gives them increased Attack Power contribution to Finishers based on Attack Points used.


Paladin
• Retaliation now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Disarming Counterblow now gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.
• Paladin's Reprisalnow gains a 200% Attack Power contribution instead of a Weapon Damage Modification.

Are similar changes planned for Reaver's Dire Blow? Will Blinding Fury exist in all souls or just the DPS souls?

Along the same lines, I can't decide if this is a buff or nerf to these paladin abilities when used for tanking. Given that most tanks stack strength, but never take +Attack Power, I'm not sure how it will compare.

[psionicalpha]

Are the formulas by which we gain attack power going to change at all, or can we assume that the attack power we have today in our current gear is the attack power we'll have once 1.8 goes live? I ask because it seems like with having something in place that gives 200% of anything could lead to drastically crazier results as gear improves. Sure it could get balanced for whatever the top end gear is right now, but then when the next set comes out, suddenly we're massively OP due to the way that 200% scaling works.

[Angryweasel]

damn 5 min edit timer.

1. • Way of the Mountain now only enhances the damage of Finishers while Dual Wielding.

This I feel is a bad change. Rift always wanted players to mix their souls together so seems silly that you only can use it when DW. Then champion buffs should only be usable if you use a 2h? Please just adjust the numbers so it wont be OP, but don't remove the option to use it. If the change goes through only the 3% crit buff would be usable from paragon..

There will always be a FOTM spec and I have no problem with it being the RW spec as it actually had a nice rotation (before v1.7. as you also had SB in the rotation and not just 3 fb). I just don't wanna end up in another spec only pressing 2 buttons with no skill what so ever. Which rb/champ specs always seems to be.

An idea to fix 1/2 button specs would be to add some dmg amplifier attacks.

My 2 cents for now

[Atrius]

Are similar changes planned for Reaver's Dire Blow? Will Blinding Fury exist in all souls or just the DPS souls?

Along the same lines, I can't decide if this is a buff or nerf to these paladin abilities when used for tanking. Given that most tanks stack strength, but never take +Attack Power, I'm not sure how it will compare.

All finishers now use AP enhancements instead of Weapon Damage enhancements. That includes Dire Blow. Building Fury exists in all 8 souls.

[Atrius]

Are the formulas by which we gain attack power going to change at all, or can we assume that the attack power we have today in our current gear is the attack power we'll have once 1.8 goes live? I ask because it seems like with having something in place that gives 200% of anything could lead to drastically crazier results as gear improves. Sure it could get balanced for whatever the top end gear is right now, but then when the next set comes out, suddenly we're massively OP due to the way that 200% scaling works.

No, the formulas we use are not changing.

[Kedon]

Good call on making Rising Waterfall get increased damage when dual wielding - but letting it stil be used with two handers.

Will Rising Waterfall also trigger Way of the Wind and benefit from Dual Wield attack damage buffs and effects like Bend Like the Reed?

Also Beastmaster is kind of conspicuous by absence here. I assume this is because they needed a more extensive overhaul?

[Nefaruis]

Is beastmaster going to get something similar to totfr,wep. spec., rift fury?

[Atrius]

Good call on making Rising Waterfall get increased damage when dual wielding - but letting it stil be used with two handers.

Will Rising Waterfall also trigger Way of the Wind and benefit from Dual Wield attack damage buffs and effects like Bend Like the Reed?

Also Beastmaster is kind of conspicuous by absence here. I assume this is because they needed a more extensive overhaul?

Currently Rising Waterfall does not require Dual Wield, so no it does not benefit from those other Dual Wield only effects. That is still under evaluation.

Beastmaster has had some values enhanced, particularly their Bleeds are now far more effective do to proper AP scaling but we have not given them anything like Teaching of the Five Rings. This also is still under evaluation.

[Sebb]

damn 5 min edit timer.

1. • Way of the Mountain now only enhances the damage of Finishers while Dual Wielding.

This I feel is a bad change. Rift always wanted players to mix their souls together so seems silly that you only can use it when DW. Then champion buffs should only be usable if you use a 2h? Please just adjust the numbers so it wont be OP, but don't remove the option to use it. If the change goes through only the 3% crit buff would be usable from paragon..

There will always be a FOTM spec and I have no problem with it being the RW spec as it actually had a nice rotation (before v1.7. as you also had SB in the rotation and not just 3 fb). I just don't wanna end up in another spec only pressing 2 buttons with no skill what so ever. Which rb/champ specs always seems to be.

An idea to fix 1/2 button specs would be to add some dmg amplifier attacks.

My 2 cents for now

I have to echo a lot of this quote here. There's a lot of good changes in here. There are a couple of points I want to say before I go test tonight:

1. There's still no real rotation for rift blade and champion that can't be put into a single macro. The 1/1/1/2 dps world shouldn't exist.

2. If I read this right, we'll still have a 200% damage modification. This makes abilities like enhanced burst and the paragon/champion/riftblade crystal that give +% dmg modifications much less use than they had before (if they had any). It also screws the balancing of encounters like sic and grug that have +dmg% components. I don't care so much about who's top dps, but I can imagine encounters like that in ID where you'd want to bring classes that benefit fully from the buffs during progression times. My suggestion would be to change EB/Synergy Crystals to improve AP scaling on those abilities.

3. The WOTM change combined with the finisher dmg change has the negative effect of encouraging weapon swapping for finishers.

4. There is still an issue of using FB as a finisher because it's off CGD. I'll have to test if it's changed now, but hard to see where it would be changed.

5. SLI will still dominate all builds.

6. Rift Shield Nerf? I sure hope this got buffed to where it's worth using too.

[Pipedreams]

Look forward to playing with these changes, thanks for getting this out to us sooner rather than later Atrius.

[Sebb]

No, the formulas we use are not changing.

My big concern on this is that we are going to have the same itemization problems between rogues and warriors that now exist between mages and clerics.

Everyone is over the crit cap if you're even close to complete with current raid content. Rogue gear has historically had more AP for obvious reasons. Wearing leather will become even more common.

Would it make sense to re-look at some of the previous stat changes?

[intrinsc]

My big concern on this is that we are going to have the same itemization problems between rogues and warriors that now exist between mages and clerics.

Everyone is over the crit cap if you're even close to complete with current raid content. Rogue gear has historically had more AP for obvious reasons. Wearing leather will become even more common.

Would it make sense to re-look at some of the previous stat changes?

I don't think the stat changes matter as much between tiers as it does during tier progression. It's good they are doing these changes now before ID progression because I have a feeling they'll be putting a near equal amount of AP on both plate and leather so we don't go for those leather pieces that are superior.