lademaster Report Feedback

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I've highlighted the feedback in red. Overall, I'm very positive about the feedback. Feel free to post your thoughts here. 

Overview

Blademasters received a number of changes in 1.62. The most significant change was the shortening of the timer on Triple Wield to 7 minutes. Triple Wield now also grants immunity to melee critical hits. Celtic Dual for Blademasters also received a few changes, including an increase in damage on the Ice Storm -> Tempest -> Supernova side-positional chain, as well as the addition of a 4-second stun on Ice Storm. Bleeds on both Tempest and Twin Star received increases as well. Melee snares were also fixed in this patch, as was the block/parry bug.

Concerns

Role of the Light Tanks – In 1.62, Light Tanks were described as serving the primary function of an assist tank. The intention being that the heavy tank takes the brunt of the damage, while the light tank assists on the target to do extra damage, above that of say, a second heavy tank. Concerns with this relate to this role in PvP combat. In PvE, where mob aggression can be controlled via Taunt and Detaunt styles, this hierarchy functions well. In PvP, however, there is no means to control a player’s aggression. A smart player can choose to attack the light tank, who is less able to handle direct combat, rather than attack the heavy tank.

This is a fundemental issue we've been trying to address. PvE lasts longer while RvR tends to be over much quicker, and mobs in PvE can be taunted while players in RvR cannot.(well, maybe they can, but not via game mechanics. You know what I mean!) We're looking into ways to address RvR issues without drastically changing PvE, but have nothing we're ready to announce yet.

Utility – Blademasters provide nearly the same utility as Heroes. Whether it be Sword/Shield Blademaster vs. Sword/Shield Hero, or CD Blademaster vs. CS/LW Hero, there is little to distinguish the two classes in terms of contribution to, and function in, a group. There should be a greater dichotomy between damage and defense for both classes. The class needs more utility.

We want to see how the recent changes are playing out before making any additional changes here. May want to prepare some suggestions with a solid case to back up proposed changes.

Melee Snares – The usefulness of melee snares is questionable due to the fact that they break on the next hit/damage done to the target. It would seem to make more sense to make all melee snares of a reasonable duration (12 seconds, perhaps), make them unbreakable for that duration, and have them trigger an immunity timer.

We're hoping to avoid this solution if possible, prefering to address things in a different way. We'd hate to have snare become a death sentence for casters while being a brief 12 second annoyance followed by 48 seconds of immunity for melee classes. Would like to hear more about how this is working now with the recent chant. (DAs not breaking snare)

Specline Issues

Celtic Dual – The Hurricane chain is still inferior to many of the anytime chains in base style lines. It has no effects, and Hurricane has a medium defense penalty in addition to high endurance usage. When compared to Squall, the taunt style, there is no reason to use Hurricane at all until 39 spec, when Solar Flare is received. Supernova is one of the poorer Level 50 styles. I would propose that it be changed to a style where the target evades, and it procs a long duration stun. This would still work under our described role, in that most heavy tanks parry rather than evade, so it would provide little advantage in those 1 on 1 situations. The Snow Shower chain should also receive an upgrade in damage (15% increase), similar to the Ice Storm chain, in keeping with our need to use positionals.

Lots of little (and not so little) issues here that need to be addressed. Many of these issues which you brought up before helped to spur on the decision for an entire style review.

Blades – Blades currently has two block reactionary chains. The line currently has neither a parry reactionary or an evade reactionary. Changing one of the block chains to a parry reactionary chain might make more sense.

Noted for style review.

Piercing – Sidewinder appears to have an incorrect growth rate. At low Piercing specs, it does more damage than it’s predecessor, Black Widow. At high Piercing specs, however, it does less damage than Black Widow. This is despite being listed as a “High” damage style. Wyvern’s Bite currently procs a bleed. Since bleeds do not stack, this is a redundant effect because its predecessor, Dragonspider, also procs a bleed.

Noted for style review.

Blunts – Slam, the taunt style, is considered superior to Force of Might, the anytime style. Slam consistently does more damage than Force of Might, at a lower endurance cost. This is a problem seen among other taunt and anytime styles. Blunt also has a 4-part chain off of a block. One suggestion might be to change the level 29 style, Bone Crusher, to chain off of Force of Might.

Yeah, that doesn't seem to make much sense. Noted for style review.

Realm Abilities – Winter Moon, our unique RA, is worthless. It costs far too much, for too little benefit. Flurry provides essentially the same function, but is on a 2 minute timer rather than 10, and is a free ability. Whirling Dervish is also useless – it provides a 5% boost for 60 seconds to dual-wielding chance per level. Given that dual wielding chance is based on the RNG, there is no guarantee that you will see any benefit from this RA during the 60 seconds, since it normally takes hundreds of rounds of attacks to attain the proper percentage of dual-wield attacks. Mastery of Arms currently has no effect. A lot of Blademasters have asked why we do not receive Avoid Pain.

Will look into all these during the RA review. MoA will be fixed if the reported bugs have been reproduced by QA. Everyone wants Avoid Pain, no reason comes to mind why BMs shouldn't have access to it, but let's discuss it to be safe during the RA review. Would like to see a case proving this wouldn't make BMs overly effective in some situations.

Other Issues

- Change Triple Wield from Energy damage to Slash damage Style review.
- Endurance costs not adjusting with haste
Bug /appeal this, although this may be something that needs to be fixed in the haste/quickness review which is at the bottom of a big pile of things for us to get to.
- Charge needs to not switch to sprint Bug /appeal this so we can treat this as a bug to be fixed, rather then a design issue.
- Make Charge faster than sprint speed This was never the intent of charge. Start a TL discussion after the chaos of report feedbnack time has passed and we can re-evaluate the goal and effectiveness of Charge.
- Make shields hotkeyable/swappable with the off-hand weapon Will note for interface changes in TOA. (Which is when we're be "lifting the hood" to address some other interface issues.)
- New/more style animations Noted for art team.

Item Problems

- We need a greater variety of craftable 16.5 dps off-hand weapons. Most off-hand weapons are of median speed, faster/slower ones are also desirable.

Noted for item team but start a forum discussion at somepoint on this. There could be balance issues that don't immediately come to mind that will need to be taken into consideration.