Fixing the Battle state bug

[Zaheer]

I actually wanted to shed some light on this as I had already debunked this once in a very old topic years ago.
This is known as the battle state bug.
I once found that based upon experimentation by swapping, the hardened state would often not be applied with the bonuses by applied legacies.

Kick solution

It recently actually got light shed upon by Captain Mal.
However, during my research on how the bug occurred, I found it unacceptable that I would have to sacrifice my kick to ''fix'' the hardened state legacies bug.
Especially since kick actually offers the capability to skill break any animation, including shadow's lament.

The cost of having to sacrifice kick to ''fix'' a bug was pretty steep.

So I was thinking of a solution to fix this without being forced to sacrifice for my kick.

Legacy solution

So the solution to the hardened-state not being properly applied came from the fact that it took some time for the bonus to be applied onto your Hardened-state, by which time you would already have swapped away.
The solution was quite frankly straightforward, which actually made me completely forget this bug of ever existing because I already had fixed it many years ago.

It had to do with the LI system, the way you would do your rotation as a captain could fit an LI system. I was thinking back then about creating a LI system with max efficiency and the least swapping. Over time, I had to make minor adjustments as some legacies became more obsolete due to scaling, rating, or bugs.
Essentially, what it really comes down to is that you have to create such an LI setup that no matter what rotation you do, the hardened-state should be done by the same sword that executes readied.
This requires a weapon that is solely dedicated to battle states and their dmg output, and this also goes for battle-state opening skills, like shadow's lament, time of need, pot, and ofc battle-shout. However, it had enough room to take care of the entire burst part that chains up into shadow's lament.

My goal was both to fix the bug AND keeping it efficient.




So with the following skills, you'll use your ''stateswap'' sword. Simply max out its dmg potential for those skills and ur good.






The reason I've put inspire in a chain with shadows lament is because of master of war. Of course, the original rotation does change depending on the MoW proc, but I found that with the bonus set, the rotation completely changes not only due to the bonus set, but also due to the fact that Elendil its damage is almost equal to devastating blow, not to mention it has a passive 15% modifier (10%) +5% from redline in crit chance. As mentioned, you want to max out the dmg potential so going for Elendil whilst cutting edge burns is perhaps your best choice unless under an AOE situation.

So the Inspire -> SL is ''always'' true if you want to ensure max efficiency and crit chance for your capstone skill SL, going with for example inspire -> Deva blow is entirely possible but you'll create less crit chance for let's say shadow's lament, thus less dmg potential.

[Arotharrr]

I think battle states getting removed by using specific skills a horribly outdated mechanic, introduced with Evendim, and should be strongly considered for revision in a balance change.

Battle states either didn't give any buff, or a marginal one.
They were introduced because back then their purpose use was to enable certain skils:
* DB/PA when you are battle-readied
* BoE when you are battle-hardened

Nowadays this is something you might as well solve with appropriate cooldowns.

Since the introduction of LI's (started in Moria) the battle states got more and more bloated with important buffs, up to +~40% dmg and +~40% outgoing healing (and others).
This made it a requirement for captains to to reverse their battle state order to be sure you have both battle-hardened and battle-readied up.
This is something that always felt off to me to captain gameplay, and made combat decisions clunky and counter-intuïtive.

If anything they should stop Devastating blow or Pressing attack from removing Battle-readied, and Blade of Elendil from removing battle-hardened.
This can be compensated by slightly higher cooldowns on DB, PA and BoE, to compensate for the personal DPS increase.


Frankly I think this is a fairly simple change that would blow a fresh wind in captain gameplay, while opening new rotation options for open-minded veteran captains.
It would also allow captains to react to fight mechanics without having to screw up their combat flow.

This would also reduce the huge performance gap between less experienced captains/ new captain players (without a full panel of maxed Legendary Items) and experienced captains.


I would certainly NOT want to solve this battle state buff delay with relying on swap weapons.
Whether you put them all on one weapon or not, having to switch emblem and weapon between every 3 skills is horribly clunky (and not just for captains).

The LI weaponswapping is what made this bug apparent in the first place. Without it, we would never had this bug, or the motivating speech one (and more).

For LI's I rather have them move to a system in line with the VXP board, but with less grind (but that's another topic).

[Zaheer]

I think battle states getting removed by using specific skills a horribly outdated mechanic, introduced with Evendim, and should be strongly considered for revision in a balance change.

Battle states either didn't give any buff, or a marginal one.
They were introduced because back then their purpose use was to enable certain skils:
* DB/PA when you are battle-readied
* BoE when you are battle-hardened

Nowadays this is something you might as well solve with appropriate cooldowns.

Since the introduction of LI's (started in Moria) the battle states got more and more bloated with important buffs, up to +~40% dmg and +~40% outgoing healing (and others).
This made it a requirement for captains to to reverse their battle state order to be sure you have both battle-hardened and battle-readied up.
This is something that always felt off to me to captain gameplay, and made combat decisions clunky and counter-intuïtive.

If anything they should stop Devastating blow or Pressing attack from removing Battle-readied, and Blade of Elendil from removing battle-hardened.
This can be compensated by slightly higher cooldowns on DB, PA and BoE, to compensate for the personal DPS increase.


Frankly I think this is a fairly simple change that would blow a fresh wind in captain gameplay, while opening new rotation options for open-minded veteran captains.
It would also allow captains to react to fight mechanics without having to screw up their combat flow.

This would also reduce the huge performance gap between less experienced captains/ new captain players (without a full panel of maxed Legendary Items) and experienced captains.


I would certainly NOT want to solve this battle state buff delay with relying on swap weapons.
Whether you put them all on one weapon or not, having to switch emblem and weapon between every 3 skills is horribly clunky (and not just for captains).

The LI weaponswapping is what made this bug apparent in the first place. Without it, we would never had this bug, or the motivating speech one (and more).

For LI's I rather have them move to a system in line with the VXP board, but with less grind (but that's another topic).

I like the added complexity, I even think it ''might'' be as intended by the redesign pass on 95.

Regarding the bug? It won't happen if you do not weapon swap, but for those who do weapon swap, the best option is creating an as ''efficient'' weapon swap lay-out as possible. This requires quite a bit of thought and thinking through, whilst considering the bugs. Kick is no solution imo, it's a waste and if ur weapon swapping as captain, u might as well do it correctly and as efficiently as possible.

Whilst I do fully agree that the mechanic itself has gotten way too old, I kind of don't want it to change.


This because I do not trust SSG with the responsibility of properly adjusting it, as I've started to lose much faith in them due to their decision-making. With their last major captain ''update'' to all our lines, they created many new ''legacy'' related bugs that were ''somewhat'' still working before. For example; melee skill healing still affected Inspire it's initial heal before that patch around U24, now it does no longer.

They also changed the way our bleeds are working, the imbued emblems no longer do amplify our bleeds in any way and you are better off putting bleed pulses onto your cutting attack now as well, spreading it on 2 targets due to the 20 seconds cooldown. They also changed something within our DoTs. While I was testing some time ago, I noticed that Astute-hands is affecting the critical magnitude of our bleeds, while I know it increases our DPS this way, I wanted to delve a bit deeper into it later to understand why it exactly behaves this way. So I wanted to do some very extensive testing in about 2/3 weeks. Like, I take it it does deliver more DPS and it doesn't change anything for me personally, but I still wanted to figure out to why it does this.

But I already do have so my expectations to when it did happen, which was during the redline changes with Vastin. I noticed something had changed within our bleeds, not just the ''cooldown and duration'' but also the way it works. Normally when we applied Grave Wound onto a target with cutting attack, I noticed the bleeds usually spread immediately by spreading the initial hit of grave wound, to which then the bleeds would start ticking. This is however no-longer the case and only the DoT effect remained.

While it could be entirely possible that the ''physical'' dmg of our DoT could also be counted in as being classified as both ''tactical'' and ''physical''. Being amplified through Pmastery, but also being counted among tactical classification. After discussing some people told me that the warden has this too, but yeah not sure if comparable since I don't play one.


What also really made me lose faith in them is the nerf of yellow captain. While I do fully agree it's completely overpowered, I do not fully agree with their decisions on nerfing particular stats & skills. They could have easily taken the time for another BR patch imo, but they rushed it, unnecessarily crippling the captain in some of its combat capabilities like SoD.


While I've been observing much of what they do at this moment, I am highly skeptical about their future content bias & design. If you've paid attention, the defensive stats have become less important, if not important at all, while morale & overall dmg reduction have become more important rather than actual mitigations, BPE, and other stats like resistance and incoming healing. I feel that they're biasing towards a simplification of the stat system and this will make the captain heavily compensate since its design is intended to be the jack of all trades. While I cannot claim for certainty that they are biasing into this, I do fear they are.

I pointed this towards Severlin after he went over some of the ''possible'' future changes, by which he did not imply any simplification to the stat system.

42:03 :So does this mean that the stat system is gonna be simplified in the future opposed to the old one?

Around 41:05 he starts about the BPE system, I believe a bit earlier in the stream he did so aswell after hephburz passed a question towards him.

Whilst they keep making more changes to the captain, the amount of bugs that are there is immense, I still need to update the bug list to much of the bugs that are related to legacies.
Much of this is to actually blame on poor coding and I think this causes much of the weird issues captain has at this moment. Like much of our light-type damage skills actually being hardcoded.




There are a few more issues that really bother me at this moment and it makes me worried for the future of this class, as I do not the ability to have any input and defend the class where necessary due to someone's personal view on the class.
To be more specific, this individual is currently projecting his own view onto the class through the developers and I think this is really bad as this doesn't allow for other captains to chain into this and state their view and opinion. For me, it's important to keep the class its image, maintain somewhat of an interesting rotation, and ability to create many setups that work.
The last thing I want is to see this class go down the drain due to one person projecting his own view straight to the developers.

This because I've always tried to defend the class when I feel that's necessary and needs to be discussed. Though my personal views might as well be just as warped, I think that through arguing you could get to a point.