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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
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    Brawler Feedback Thread

    Brawler Feedback



    Let's get this up and running. Feel free to comment with any thoughts you have on Brawler after trying it out. If you have no thoughts of your own, feel free to quote someone else's thoughts in solidarity.

    I would just like to say:

    Brawler so far seems like a really cool class for an MMO. Whilst I certainly have some personal issues with how it handles I have to admit the core idea/mechanics present are really cool. I love the idea of rapidly knocking out a couple of minor setup punches that you follow up with a hefty blow, the mettle system right now absolutely pulls that off. Moreover, the Innate Strength buff management gameplay is utterly fascinating to me. Right now we have a lot of classes that require you to focus on managing target-based effects in order to perform your role (just about any DoT spec as an example) but very few classes in this game focus on maintaining self buffs to this degree. Brawler has a lot of depth here and I love the buff management gameplay loop you've created. Seriously, a friendly hats off to you here, you've done a fantastic job of building the foundations of this class.

    ~ Bugs ~



    • The trait "Dextrous Hook Training" in "The Maelstrom" line does not modify Dextrous Hook in any way, instead it is a damage boost for Mettle Spender skills.
    • "Innate Strength" traceries still mention "Set-up Buff"s in their green text descriptions.
    • Low Strike contains the tooltip text "Certain skills may take advantage of a vulnerability for added effect", no skills are modified by Vulnerable.
    • You can't hide the Battle-Gauntlets cosmetically, if you toggle them on/off they will be hidden but only until you logout.



    ~ Gameplay ~



    Overall the gameplay of Brawler feels just that little bit off to me. We have a whole bunch of mechanics that are excellent in isolation but don't quite mesh together. Each of the mechanics also seems to be lopsided in some way i.e. you're given a bunch of options but one of the options is just blatantly better than the rest.


    Set-ups



    We have three different set-ups; Low Strike, Dextrous Hook and Sinister Cross. Each set-up applies a modifier to the next Mettle spender, only the last used set-up's modifier will be applied so you can't combine the 3 set-ups to "supercharge" an attack or what have you. The modifiers applied by these set-ups are as follows:

    • Low Strike: Gives the next Mettle-Spender a chance to apply a debuff to the enemy that increases incoming damage by 1% for up to 30s (modified by traits).
    • Sinister Cross: Makes the next Mettle-Spender tier its related buff by 2, instead of the default 1.
    • Dextrous Hook: Increases the damage of the next Mettle-Spender by 35%.


    Looking at the above you run into one glaring issue; Dextrous Hook is vastly superior to every other set-up. It's not really that close either. The Vulnerable debuff does very little (and only needs applying once every 30s) and the only reason you want to maintain the tiered buffs is to boost your damage...in which case you get more damage by using Dextrous Hook as the set-up. I don't really get the point in having 3 different set-ups if one is the best choice in just about every single situation.

    Dextrous Hook is also awkward in practice, you pretty much want every spender to be empowered by it but in the (admittedly rare) periods where you're starting overflow on Mettle it has too long a cooldown to weave between each spender (honestly sometimes you don't have any room at all to weave in any Set-up) and so it feels like you're missing out a bit if you have to chain Spenders.

    It's also somewhat worth noting that the icons for set-ups are really hard to distinguish at a glance, they're all black silhouettes on an orange/red background, t'would be nice if these could have different background colours (Brawler in general goes a bit overkill with practically every skill having an orange/red background, would be nice if they could have the colours based on type of skill i.e. reddish orange for damage, green for defensive buffs, blue for offensive buffs...).

    Finally we should observe that set-ups have very low damage values (less than half most spenders), this really isn't helping the class as we generally need to hit 2+ Set-ups to fuel a single spender. Most of the attacks we do are set-ups and they just don't deal damage.

    I'd also say that Set-ups feel a bit sluggish to me right now, this might just be due to the lack of damage but I often feel like I'm waiting around for a Set-up to finish so I can finally knock out a big spender.


    Innate Strength



    The next thing I'd like to mention is the Innate Strength buffs you can build.

    For those who aren't yet familiar; Brawler Mettle-Spenders fall into 3 categories: Quick, Heavy, and Balanced. Each category applies a different stacking buff. Quick attacks increase your melee damage, Heavy attacks increase crit rating, and Balanced attacks increase your finesse. The skill breakdown is as follows:

    • Quick:
    • Backhand Clout
    • Helm-crusher
    • Helm's Hammer (Not a Mettle-Spender, unclear why it is in this category).
    • Knee Strike
    • Fulgurant Strike (Not a Mettle-Spender, unclear why it is in this category).
    • Heavy:
    • Strike Towards the Sky
    • Mighty Upheaval
    • Fist of the Valar
    • Balanced:
    • Overhand Smash
    • Shattering Fist
    • Pummel
    • First Strike (Not a Mettle-Spender, unclear why it is in this category).


    The skill categories here are not at all intuitive, only reason I even know the category for each skill is because they're listed in the skill panel under those categories, if that wasn't the case I would have to purely go off of trial and error to figure it out. It's also somewhat annoying having to be concerned about the categories, when I'm spending Mettle I'd really prefer to focus on using the spender that is most suited to the situation i.e. Do I use an AoE spender or do I go with ST, do I need to reapply armour debuff or am I overcapping Mettle so much that I should fist of the valar myself back to 0.

    These buffs suffer from pretty much the same thing as the set-ups; one of the buffs is notably stronger than the other two (in this case the % melee damage boost). On the tank end of things the threat modifier is notably less valuable than the parry/mits.

    I know you haven't gotten around to putting in the effect icons for these buffs yet but could you please ensure that each buff has a different background colour to help users distinguish them more easily.

    I also don't really understand why Fulgurant Strike (an interrupt) or Helm's Hammer (corruption removal) are included in these attack categories, you're effectively incentivising using the interrupt to maintain the buff when really interrupts should be something we hold onto for...well...interrupting casts, similar deal with corruption removals. That being said...I've always gotten somewhat used to chaining these skills together early on in the fight to build stacks faster so...I mean, I'd be happy to unlearn the behaviour.

    Next we have Pummel, this becomes a very problematic skill in regards to these buffs. The 3 buffs have a 15-18s duration. You really don't have time to pull off a 5 second channel whilst trying to maintain those buffs due to how slow Mettle generation is. If you want this skill to be useable it's pretty much going to need to continually refresh any active Innate Strength buffs on the player or do a frankly ridiculous amount of damage to outweigh the dps loss from letting the buffs drop off. Right now, it doesn't deal anywhere near enough damage to warrant using. Right now I just ignore it entirely which is a bit sad because that animation is so cool. Oh, and self-rooting for 5s on a melee spec without a sprint is rough.

    Finally we have the Share Innate Strength buffs. You pick these up from yellow line, they require you to tier the personal buff to rank 4, at which point you can share that buff to your fellowship. The 3 buffs for red-line are as follows:

    • 16.65% melee damage boost
    • 34020 Finesse
    • 32130 Crit Rating


    Again, same problem as ever. Only one is really a meaningful boost to share. I also find the fact that these skills don't share a cooldown a bit strange although I suppose I'd only ever care about sharing the Quickness buff anyway.


    Buffs



    For a class that is billed as damage/tank, Brawler really does have an excessive number of self/group buffs. What's worse is that several of these buffs do basically the same thing and have basically the same cooldown.

    • Feint: Restores 3-6 Mettle, gives a damage boost, 30s cooldown (with tracery).
    • Get Serious: Restores 6 Mettle over 6 seconds, gives a damage boost, 30s cooldown.


    Is just one example, we also have Strike As One/Follow Me! as two 30s goupwide damage buffs with 1m cooldown, we're basically always going to be popping these things together so having as many buffs as we do just leads to stilted gameplay where we can wind up spending 3+ seconds just applying buffs.

    I’d also like to suggest that short-ish cooldown buffs like Get Serious or Quick Feint shouldn’t have player animations. I don’t mind it so much on a 3 minute cooldown buff but having a small pause like that every 30s feels unwieldy. Better off if these were treated more like Wardens masteries, i.e. pretty much instantly resolve themselves and just play a little animation overhead.

    Another issue is that we really do have a lot of % mastery boosts. There's mastery from the stance, mastery from the mettle count, mastery from innate strength, mastery from Get Serious/Quick Feint/Joy of Battle/Battle Fury/Strike as One!....it's just a bit too much mastery overall and it puts Brawler notably further up the diminishing returns curve. Some of these buffs really need to split into alternative DPS boosting effects or just merged together.

    It's also worth noting that Brawler does not have access to a runspeed buff, as a melee spec that's kinda important. Not everything can be slowed and we really should have ways of closing a gap in those situations.

    Finally I’d like to talk stances. Right now we have two stances on Brawler, I’m mostly going to focus on Aggressive Posture here:
    Aggressive Posture doesn’t really work out as things currently stand. The design clearly seems to be going for some kind of “Gain DPS but become more vulnerable to damage” thing but in reality the DPS boost is minor (again, mastery) and the mitigation debuff can be pretty easily ignored. If this stance was a multiplicative +15% outgoing damage buff and +10% incoming damage debuff placed on self you’d have a reason to consider toggling it on/off, right now, it’s an always on button that’s only off if I didn’t notice some CC toggle it without my input. Defensive Posture somewhat suffers from much the same issue and could probably rectified by just making it the inverse (-10% inc damage, -15% multiplicative outgoing damage).


    Traceries



    Brawler traceries are also fairly awkward. We generally fall behind in terms of damage scaling compared to other classes here as most of our skills do not benefit from any kind of % damage boost tracery. As much as I hate those kinds of traceries, if everyone else has them, Brawler needs them or it's not going to scale properly post 50. So far the only things getting boosted are Backhand Clout and Hurl Object (does Hurl Object really need increased damage? I don't think it's something that should be rotational...)


    ~ Suggestions ~


    I'm going to try keep this short and sweet:

    Quality of Life


    • Give the Innate Strength buffs different coloured icons to improve readability.
    • Generally tweak background colours to distinguish skill types more, everything is a bit too orange, could do with green backgrounds for defensive abilities, maybe blue backgrounds for utility and so on.
    • Increase Strike Towards the Sky range to 5m to keep it a bit more in-line with other AoE skills.
    • Let pummel channel whilst moving. (Self rooting as a melee feels a bit rough)
    • Have pummel refresh all active tiers of Innate Strength buffs, a 5s channel is hard to fit into a rotation when we're trying to maintain those buffs.
    • Let Weather Blows cast whilst moving.
    • Add a combat runspeed buff skill.
    • Potentially reduce the damage of utility skills such as Hurl Object, Helms Hammer, and Fulgurant Strike to ensure they don't become rotational and are in fact used primarily for their given utility.


    Balance/Gameplay Changes



    This section has been pulled out and placed in its own post:


    ~ Conclusion ~



    I really, really would like to see Brawler become a well-rounded class with engaging gameplay but right now it's just falling short. There are some really fun animations, and cool mechanics, but it just doesn't work out that well in practice. Fine for blasting landscape, but too unwieldy and undertuned to take into group content.
    Last edited by Joedangod; Nov 05 2021 at 11:36 AM.
    ~ Take the player, not the class ~

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
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    68
    Force taunts HAVE to be fixed, you simply cannot tank without threat copy.
    Blue line is promising, very strong (maybe too strong?) defensive abilities, good offensive support, but not that great threat management even if the force taunts were fixed.

    Red line looks completely unfinished, I really don't know where to start how to improve it...

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    Dorfs can equip 1h axes, so I think it would be nice if we could cosmetically equip them, like in the ranged slot or something (same for RK dorfs).

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
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    The only one that's annoying me is the issue with hiding the gauntlets. They don't always work with the outfits I like to use. I do understand what you mean about the ability choices and how some of them seem so useless though, but of course I'm strictly a casual solo player (I mean I started in Beta, but I play 2-3 months a year at the most), so I'm not quite as affected as much. Obviously it's too late for any such changes now, and this is just one of my musings, but I wonder how the Brawler would have done under a system similar to what Wardens have.

    Edit: Now that I think about it, I really think some of the icons don't make any sense from a visual standpoint for certain abilities. Or maybe I'm just being nitpicky about the ignore pain icon. First world problems, I know.
    Last edited by Kalonthar; Oct 14 2021 at 12:18 PM.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalonthar View Post
    Edit: Now that I think about it, I really think some of the icons don't make any sense from a visual standpoint for certain abilities. Or maybe I'm just being nitpicky about the ignore pain icon. First world problems, I know.
    No, I'm with you, that some of the icons seem very strange for some of the skills.

    I often use icons as a visualization of what a skill does ... and some of them just don't fit at all.


    Also, on cosmetic outfits that hide your gloves (I was using the waders from a forochel quest), it hid my gauntlets as well. I had bare hands with the thunder weapon aura, which was pretty interesting.
    ---
    "the only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."

  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Agree with everything in this thread. Brawler feels off. I think they had a semi-good idea, but just didn't have time to complete it and rushed it out the door for the sake of $. Some notable things from my time playing through elderslade/war of the three peaks on brawler/suggestions:

    NOTE: I do not tank, this is only red line feedback.

    Skills

    1. Tooltips are atrocious, incorrect, or confusing. Please fix most of them. I understand unique icons will probably be coming before Gundabad.

    2. Class feels really slow, the global cooldown on brawler needs to be cut in half for it to feel like you're actually "Brawling" and not playing in slow-mo.

    3. Too many buffs to reapply, no intuitive way to use them. Most of them do the same thing.

    4. Quick feint should make your next spender refund 3 mettle (if merged into Get Serious, also make it generate 6 mettle over 6 seconds and encourage me to quickly use a spender), instead of generating it. I wanna use the buff before I fist of the valar, but end up being punished and wasting 3 mettle. Or using a spender to not waste the mettle and losing the damage from quick feint on that spender to not overcap mettle for fist of the valar.

    5. First Strike does good damage, but thats it. Make this generate 3+ mettle, and maybe add a tracery that allows it to be used on 60%+ morale mobs, giving brawlers a "reverse execute phase" of some degree.

    6. Weather blows needs to be useable while moving.

    7. Joy of Battle - Heal, the healing is way too low for how slow/clunky brawler is. Maybe make this heal you as you get hit? Would make sense to me. Might need an internal cooldown or something to prevent it being OP. Unsure.

    8. Reiterating what was said, brawler needs a speed buff.

    9. Something needs to be done about pummel, the damage is horrible, it does nothing, its not currently worth pressing ever. Animation is cool though.

    10. One for All is pretty useless solo, maybe add a buff similar to Strike As One, where if Im alone its maxed out?

    11. Battle Fury feels like it should be reworked, maybe all mettle spenders are free during its duration? I use it, hit Fists of the Valar, then waste 3-5 seconds of the buff building mettle back up. Doesn't feel good to press outside of 1 big hit.

    12. Latent Light, for how many trait points went into this passive, its awful. Rework it, give one of our buffs 100% chance to proc it, something. Increase the damage. Its horrendous.

    Traceries

    Most of these feel useless or bad. All traceries need another pass, and completely redone in my opinion. Some noteable good ones/bad ones:

    1. Backhand clout targets/damage. Pretty boring but good.

    2. Fist of the Valar Cooldown. Underwhelming. Prefer % damage, and guaranteed chance to proc Latent Light or something.

    3. Get serious Duration & Damage Buff. Ok, not super great. Better than our other options.

    4. Brawler Melee Range: Needs increased. You have to be standing right on top of mobs to AoE them. I understand you cant punch out of arms length, but it needs increased. Maybe give this tracery a flat melee skills % buff.

    5. Quick Feint Cooldown, work this in with Get Serious Tracery and make them 1 button please.

    6. Set up Skills Cooldown: -0.2 seconds? Really? Awful. Still better than others though.

    7. Latent Light Proc Chance & Damage: Passive is underwhelming therefore this tracery is underwhelming. Needs a huge damage buff, higher proc chance.

    8. Innate Strength: Damage/threat. Meh.

    9. Battle-Wise Mettle Chance: Boring, underwhelming. Rework.

    10. Hurl Object Cooldown/Damage. This shouldn't be a tracery. Remove this. Give us a real tracery.

    11. Helm-crusher Cooldown. Bad. Rework entirely. Stop encouraging us to use interrupts/corruption removals in our rotation.

    Traits

    1. Baseline Red needs something more. +6k might at 130, and 5% melee damage? Give us Fist of the Valar baseline here, and add a new more interesting capstone.

    2. Already went over First Strike but mentioning it again, skill needs to do something other than mediocre damage. Let it generate 3+ mettle.

    3. Dextrous Hook Training, as stated in the first post, needs fixed.

    4. Fulgrant Strike Cooldown, replace. Boring.

    5. Entire Latent Light passive line needs a massive damage increase, and more interactions with different skills.

    6. Devastate Damage increase probably needs reworked. This is kinda lame, devastates are such a small portion of my damage. Feels good when I get a big Fist of the Valar devastate but thats so rare.

    7. Light Damage Increase, why is this even here, Latent Light is horrible, this should be baked into Latent Light Proc Chance Increase trait.

    8. Fist of the Valar should be baseline for red, and give us a new, better passive capstone.
    - Suggestion being some interaction with not using the same 2 skills twice in a row giving a stacking damage buff, that stays as long as you don't press any two of the same skill right in a row.

    9. Battle-Wise, decent, I rarely feel this is valuable.

    10. Vulnerability, awful. This goes back to the core problem addressed above where Dextrous hook is almost always better than the other 2 set ups.

    11. Evade chance, kinda boring, seems like an afterthought. But whatever.

    12. Tactical Mitigation, also boring, but whatever. Its useful at least.

    13. Max AoE targets seems ok. I feel like it should affect all skills, give brawlers more to do in AoE situations than just spam Backhound clout and Strike to the Sky.

    14. The food buff traits are cool and unique, maybe add a duration buff to food as well? Make them a little more enticing to put points into.

    15. Strike as One and Follow Me! need to be 1 button.

    16. Share Strength issues were addressed above in the first post.

    17. Effecient Strikes, horrible. I haven't even took this because it seems so bad, and a damage decrease on fist of the valar Im assuming. Rework this to be a passive on every spender except Fist of the Valar or something.

    18. Other yellow Capstone seems pretty good.

    Summary

    Brawler needs a huge damage buff across the board. All traceries need to be revisited. Something needs to be done about how clunky/awkward the class is. A lot of the trait lines need to be revisited/buffed/reworked. My thought when reading initially was that the brawler had some ramp time with buffs, and once its ramped up does insane damage as longas you can maintain that momentum while keeping up your buffs. Right now it doesnt feel like that. Feels like I am piloting an NPC in a quest with 5 buttons that are really slow and don't hit hard. The skeleton for a good class is there, its just not even close to a completed product.

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    Echoing comments about tanking.

    No threat copy component to the taunts, cant hold aggro.

    Could they be an old school tank by building aggro naturally without copies? No. It would be cool but they didn't provide the tools to do it. Negligible dps (assuming the standard ×8 threat multiplier is even hooked in), no +threat added to any particular skills, and the Share Innate Strength: Quickness to decease merely fellowship member threat has a 5m range. Also a non-copy tank would only ever be viable for solo tank fights, or double tank fights with absolutely no tank-swapping.
    Argendauss, Captain
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    Gunnart, Guardian

  8. #8
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    1) Can't tank because Brawler can't hold aggro.
    2) Needs a fast run skill.
    3) Needs a small heal/hot on low CD.
    4) Needs a dps increase.

    5) One of the three Set-up skills could be increased to add 2 Mettle,
    or maybe make 1 of them a 3-target AOE that grant 1 Mettle per target hit.
    6) Hasten Powerful Techniques should be a 2 second reduction per Set-up attack, not 1.
    7) Joy of Battle Heal should be 2% per strike not 1%.
    Last edited by JLotro; Oct 16 2021 at 08:57 PM.

  9. #9
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by ramenxo View Post
    Summary

    Brawler needs a huge damage buff across the board. All traceries need to be revisited. Something needs to be done about how clunky/awkward the class is. A lot of the trait lines need to be revisited/buffed/reworked. My thought when reading initially was that the brawler had some ramp time with buffs, and once its ramped up does insane damage as longas you can maintain that momentum while keeping up your buffs. Right now it doesnt feel like that. Feels like I am piloting an NPC in a quest with 5 buttons that are really slow and don't hit hard. The skeleton for a good class is there, its just not even close to a completed product.
    I totally agree. From my experience, I'll add that it looks like this class is for an RP-player who just wants to try a new class and for fun. I pumped him 130. I made him a physical mastery of 189.5%, critical rating above 30%(32.1% devastating). And the maximum value for a skill that deals maximum damage does not exceed even 100k. even if all the stars add up and devastating blows arrive, I have not even seen 400k. ( and then, in fact, this damage comes from the finishing skill. which I can squeeze once every 15 seconds. but taking into account my buffs. which hang for 9 seconds. and these buffs can be lived once every 30 seconds. in fact, finishing damage works once every 30 seconds, for full damage. and it's not a fact that devastating damage will arrive. ) Just going to do quests on the location is very pleasant for them. Mobs 200-300k fall with 2-3 hits. But I tested the total damage on the scarecrow, I noticed that in 3 minutes I could not rise above 60k. and this is a minute 4-5 times less than a champion or a hunter! Even with my minstrel, I deal 2-2.5 times more damage. I understand that I haven't learned how to play it yet, I don't understand the mechanics well, but it's still a very low indicator for a class from which everyone expected a big return
    Last edited by ???????; Oct 16 2021 at 02:45 AM.

  10. #10
    Something definitely is off. Here I have an example of some screenshots currently on the Treebeard Legendary server.

    Skills with Weapon Unequipped and then Weapon AND Armor Unequipped


    Skills with No Weapon/Armor/Jewelry equipped


    So with everything equipped there's literally only a ~34% difference? Is Physical Mastery not working correctly on the class? I'd definitely love if SSG could confirm if something is broken and hopefully we can get a fix relatively soon. Class is very fun and I'd love to see it succeed but in it's current state, its just worth playing another class entirely if you want to raid.
    Last edited by Hisdryt; Oct 19 2021 at 01:23 PM.

  11. #11
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    at the moment it turns out that in order to strike 2-3 blows, you need 30-40 seconds to adjust yourself, make buffs of 4 levels, then squeeze out all the bursts and beat 2-3 times. if you're lucky, you'll get 800-900k with 1 hit) and then again you need to buff yourself for 30-40 seconds. the mechanics are strange to say the least. it needs to be redone somehow. this is about the damage branch. and if we talk about the tank. there, the mechanics are also quite strange and it also gets that you need to buff your partners, it turns out that you hang a buff on your partner and the more damage he does to the enemy, the more threats you collect on yourself. but while you're baffling an ally, his enemies are beating him. and you need your allies to be no more than 5 meters away from you. this is very difficult to achieve. you need to increase the buff radius. otherwise, the ally starts to teach damage, and he may die before you can secure the threat from the enemy.

  12. #12
    Join Date
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    Brawler

    • Share Skills; One for all, Follow me!, Strike as One!, Share Innate Strenght: Heavy, Share Innathe Strenght: Balance and Share Innate Strenght: Quickness; need to be extended from it's 5 meter range to certainly a maximum of 15-20 meters range.
    • Weather Blows; is a ''Fast'' Skill but ''You cannot do that while moving.
    • Aggresive Posture/Defensive Posture; is a very well-intentioned skill..., but if you now use for example Aggresive Posture and maybe you are an Etten player, you have 0% physical damage reduction by Orc-craft Mitigation and 0% by Fell-wrought Mitigation without using Aggresive Posture you have there some %
      When you get stunned you have to activate this toggle skill Aggresive/Defensive Posture again and again.
    • Buff Skills Duration must be Increased! 30s is a bit little if you consider that these buff skills currently only work at 5meters and then these buff 30s offer..., minimum should hold these 1m or 1m 30s duration, otherwise the Brawler in an instance is only the whole time at buffen and the people jumping behind or rather vice versa, because of these 5m range of the buff skills must all always run to the Brawler and then again to the enemies...
    • In Instances/landscape sometimes the Brawler could use among other things a DMG Boost..., since it is partly very difficult if one has 2x elite enemies at the neck..., also not elite enemies are difficult to get dead if one has times several at the neck.
    Last edited by Nanganark; Oct 17 2021 at 06:03 PM.

  13. #13
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    Unhappy Very low Fashion Per Second

    The Brawler gauntlets look like splints on his/her arms to heal a break or something. They're ugly, they clip and you can't put on cosmetic gloves to hide them. Really really awful. They ruin any outfit I try to use.
    Kazren Altaholic Extrodinaire
    8 Level 140 Characters, mostly Arkenstone with Colonies on Elendilmir, Landroval, Crickhollow and Brandywine

  14. #14
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    For some positive feedback, I absolutely love how the Brawler plays from an entertainment factor. Whether it's defeating the enemy with one well placed punch to the face, or laying waste to a group of enemies and then defeating the last one with a thrown object as they try to flee, I'm always having a good chuckle at how things are playing out.

  15. #15
    Frisco is offline Hero Of the Small Folk 2013
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    Quote Originally Posted by zachhope View Post
    No, I'm with you, that some of the icons seem very strange for some of the skills.

    I often use icons as a visualization of what a skill does ... and some of them just don't fit at all.
    The problem for me is that at least 10 Brawler skills have their icon stolen from another class. And they don't usually have similar effects. As someone who plays other classes, it gets pretty confusing.
    Work like no one is watching, dance like you don't need the money...

  16. #16
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    Feedback

    My feedback on the brawler:
    So the idea and potential of this class is amazing! Currently it falls short in a few areas:

    ATTACK SPEED
    So what I recommend is looking at the burglar and taking some ideas from that class, because brawler should be close in speed and flow to what burglars does.
    Hitting with hands is just faster than knives but, but as its heavy gloves equal AS or slightly slower should be fine. Another thing is how burglars can wield in small auto attacks between
    hits to maximize dps, this is good because its adds small mechanics and depths to the class. Brawler should do the same .The easiest way to do this and make it smooth is upping the attackspeed of the hits and refining a few animations of the setup/mettle builders. Look at burglar subtle stab for example, this is how quick I envision a jab from the brawler should look like.
    Example rotation that would flow nice is a aa - quick jab - quick jab - aa - heavy punch - stun/slow/kite - rebuff - repeat or go for a new combo. This class really need that boxer in the zone feeling of youre not giving your opponent any room to breathe that you steadily reduce your opponents defenses more and more as you move around your target unleashing swift and heavy punches.

    THE FEELING OF IMPACT FROM THE HITS (SOME ANIMATIONS + SOUNDS)
    Pretty self explanatory, but quicker animations on the setup skills especially with a little more whiff and snappier sounds would do wonders for the feeling of impact
    Again look to burglar how snappy and quick the sounds are on subtle stab + the crit chain, it just has that very satisfying sound that pleases the ear, if you can achieve this on the brawler too we I will be so happy.

    MOVEMENT SPEED
    Another element to the brawler should be movement speed. Its a short range class and it needs some sticking power, a few snares are easily cleansable, give the brawler a passive that lets it build movement speed as you are hitting your enemy. Example from the earlier rotation I mentioned. Aa- quick jab (+5% ms)- quick jab (+5% ms) -aa - heavy strike (+10% ms) - stun/slow. Then you can cap the ms at a nice balance point like 20 or 30%. Basically continuous punches increases the the movement speed and flow of combat, I can see this being pretty cool. Mid fight you are zooming around the battlefield knocking people left and right!

    CONCLUSION
    I think if you up the attack speed, movement speed and improve a few builders to make them snappier animation and sound wise and give a little more oomf to the finisher then you wont need to up the raw damage as much. Attack speed and animation speed will increase the dps and the general smoothness should improve a lot! Anyway hope to see some of this implemented, either way cant wait to see how this class will come together
    Last edited by Chig0; Oct 18 2021 at 11:43 AM.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Jun 2021
    Posts
    5

    More Feedback

    Replying to this thread with some more feedback.

    EXTENDED FEEDBACK - BRAWLER

    I'm gonna go out on a limb and say everyone that used a Valar on a Brawler and is testing this class and providing feedback should be given a free valar, or have it refunded, because we are literally alpha testing this disaster of a class.

    - Innate Strength Buffs are horrible and feel bad. I assume optimally you would want to keep all 3 at tier 4, however it's impossible to do that without doing the weirdest rotation on Earth, sacrificing too much dps. Innate Strength: Raw Power is the only one really worth keeping up, for the 27% damage buff, and its semi-easy to keep up because Helm's Hammer and Fulgurant Strike can tier the buff up. This entire system needs fixed.
    - Suggestion: Make the innate strength buffs tier up based on what set up skill you used last.
    - Dextrous Hook tiers up Innate Strength: Raw Power by 1 tier when used.
    - Sinister Cross tiers up Innate Strength: Precision.

    Rework Clever technique to give crit damage +% magnitude increase. Get rid of Get rid of Finesse Innate Strength buff, we dont need to keep up all three of these.

    - Rework Sinister cross to cause your next spender to refund mettle or something similar.
    - Low strike reworked to cause your next spender to generate extra mettle, based on your current tier of Innate Strength: Raw Power/Precision, whichever is higher.
    - Fix the vulnerable debuff, its horrible and never worth using this setup skill, ever. Either rework it, or significantly increase the debuff, with 100% chance to proc to encourage a diverse rotation. Or just get rid of it.

    - Sometimes Share Innate Strength skills cannot be used, even when on T4 of a buff. The ability to use this will also fall off before the T4 buff expires.

    - Furthering my last post that a lot of the buffs need to be consolidated into fewer buttons. On Tier 1 content by the time I press all of the following buffs:
    - Follow Me!
    - Joy of Battle - Damage
    - Strike as One
    - Build T4 raw power to quickly use Share Innate Strength: Quickness
    - My own personal buffs (Quick Feint, Get Serious, Battle Fury)

    The boss is either dead, and I've done 3k dps, or I managed to get a few hits in and I've done a max of 60k dps if I get lucky crits on Fist of the Valar. This feels horrible. It's not fun. I feel like a wish.com Red Captain.

    Aggressive Posture
    - Brings my Orc-Craft and Fell-Wrought mitigations to 0%, which is not fun in the moors. I died to a warg in about 10 seconds. Rework this from flat value to a percent loss, maybe 5% max. Gaining 15% damage and losing 20% mits is extremely punishing.
    - Potentially also just make this 3 trait points, with the 2nd two trait points reducing the amount of mitigations lost, encouraging people to spend more points in this.
    - This stance also drops off anytime you get stunned/dazed/knocked. Its kinda annoying, please fix.

    Latent Light needs an animation, and a massive damage increase/proc rate.
    - I can see maybe making one of the setups guaranteed to proc latent light, and giving a trait line that increases latent light damage by X% if it procs within 10 seconds~ of the last use, capping up to a certain %, to encourage use of different setups other than dextrous hook.

    Confirmed by playing blue line that Brawler force taunts do not threat copy, making it impossible for brawlers to tank fights that last longer than the duration of their force taunt. Nice.

    First Strike
    - Adding that this needs to generate 3 mettle, and add a trait point, or tracery, that allows it to be used to targets over 60% HP. Give brawlers a reverse execute phase where they build up insane damage with their combos, and then do big damage with pummels once all their buffs are rolling. This skill could be a catalyst to the fun brawler playstyle I think you are going for. Right now its just a waste of a button.

    Revel In Victory
    - Add a small % based heal or something to this as well to make brawler less of a nightmare on landscape. Its one of the cooler/better traits for brawlers, just not good enough compared to other classes.

    Pummel
    - So much needs done with this skill, the animation is so cool I want to press it but its horrible. It needs to do more than just damage, and be affecting by the 30% buff from the red line t2 buff.
    - Make this skill refresh the duration of all Innate Strength buffs currently on you, encourage using it on cooldown.
    - Give this skill an increased chance to proc Latent Light, with a talent or baseline
    - Make this skill useable while moving, and AoE
    - Make all hits of this skill do consistent damage
    - Make pummel refund 1 or 2 mettle if you complete a full channel

    Give brawlers a RK/Warden style of art that lets us keep track of Mettle a little easier.

    Gauntlets cannot be hidden/cosmetically overriden

    Class items for Brawler do not exist or are just coming with Gundabad?

    Brawlers are losing so much stats not being able to equip an offhand or ranged slot, give Brawlers a class specific item that can go in one of those slots so that we aren't just losing stats not being able to equip one of them. Kinda silly.

    Would like to see Throw Object be race specific, or customizeable to throw different things, just a little flavor to encourage people to buy the damn class, because there's 0 incentive atm outside of animations and "flavor."

    Fix Brawler sets that were awkwardly cloned from Beorning and have similar names/Beorning class required.

    Reiterating my last post that every single Tracery needs reworked/revisited. They are horrible. Please fix them and give all Brawlers at 130 the ability to refund all traceries we had to buy.
    Last edited by ramenxo; Oct 18 2021 at 05:19 PM.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Posts
    30
    there are also advantages. in the red branch talents Latent Light+Latent Light chance increase + light damage increase + talent in the legendary weapon Latent light proc chance damage works well) probably the only thing that scandalously works perfectly. and if you put a trigger on light damage. then he works constantly in battle, according to the radius of his action. if I tested it on other classes and looked at it in the battle logs once every 3-4 seconds, then the brawler actually ticks every second. 3 times more often. At least something nice) However, I can't say that there is a lot of damage there. it would be possible to increase it 2-3 times too for a brawler.

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Posts
    30
    if you think about it, and I will express my thoughts about how it is necessary to change the brawler. To begin with, we need to raise the time of all buffs, at least to 45-60 seconds. instead of those that hang for 9-10 seconds, so as not to focus only on them and it was also possible to help with damage. buffs that appear from combinations of skills also need to be fixed somehow. a lot of time passes while you gain level 4. and if, for example, it's not critical in a raid on the boss, but for example on ordinary mobs it's very critical, your allies are already killing them, and you're only gaining 1 level, just like in the pvmp, they just don't let you dial them. It's funny for creeps to look at it, they either quickly kill the brawler or just run away and don't give time to score buffs. the second is to make the percentage of damage on skills higher than it is at the moment. The third is to make a hint in the game how to open certain buffs, as it is done by the example of a warden and his gambits and a description of how to dial them. Fourth, it is necessary for a brawler, as a melee class, to add talent to increase speed, for example, like a guardian. and most importantly, the radius of buffs should be increased to at least 15-20 meters! to raise the damag, you can make them a skill to reflect 50-100% damage during a certain time
    Last edited by ???????; Oct 19 2021 at 07:58 AM.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    174

    I just hate the idea of the class ...

    Of all the canon-breaking things in this game... I actually find this one the most offensive... Not because people didn't brawl in middle earth.... but If brawling were possible, why forge swords or maces? The way this game is, I'm sure brawler will be able to solo his way up to level 100... its silly that a guy with armed "fists" is going to take on a group of ...anything.

    *sigh* rant over.

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by jhaerlyn View Post
    Of all the canon-breaking things in this game... I actually find this one the most offensive... Not because people didn't brawl in middle earth.... but If brawling were possible, why forge swords or maces? The way this game is, I'm sure brawler will be able to solo his way up to level 100... its silly that a guy with armed "fists" is going to take on a group of ...anything.

    *sigh* rant over.
    That's like...your opinion man. If you're willing to look past Lore-master, Runekeeper, and the fact there are hundreds of beornings running around then I'm sure you can let brawler slide. Everyone will in due time.

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
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    0
    I agree with everything the OP posted.

    I've been going about on a training dummy and where other classes can easily get up to or over 200k parses, I'm struggling getting to 50k.
    Sure I'm lacking some gear but not that much to clarify the difference.

    The buffs we can give ourselfs are nice, on paper, but it's very hard to keep them active and even with having them active the base dps is just to low to have the buffs give any impact.
    Comparing a big hitter like Fist of the Valar which gives maybe a 300k hit if you're lucky, against a hunter heart seeker now going well over 1 million damage.. something is not right.

    I think a base increase of at least 200% (maybe even 300) is required to get us somewhere close to a decent spot.
    And with that the maintaining of buffs need to be addressed as well as the OP mentioned too. Maybe for the Innate Strength buffs having them tier down when they expire instead of disappear would already help a bit..

    Also I think that the attack duration of most skills, but especially the set-up skills need to cut in half.. at the moment it feels really clunky, I was able to get 1.6 attacks per second, which is far to low to have a smooth fighting experience.

    Maybe cutting the attack duration AND increasing the base dps might over do it.. but there needs to be done something to make this class fun at end game.

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  23. #23
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    4,308
    So, it’s been a week. Had a bit of time to really delve into the Brawler class and see how my feedback holds up. I might still revise a few sections but overall I’d say it remains pretty accurate in regards to the issues I’m having with the class. I’ll also post the revised feedback here so people can kinda have an idea of what’s changed without having to read through the entire original post. So here goes:


    Set-ups


    Set-ups feel a bit too sluggish in practice. I think these would greatly benefit from having slightly shorter animations/durations, they don’t do a lot by themselves and Brawler could really use slightly faster default mettle generation. They could probably also do with reduced cooldowns, 2s base is really just too long and ends up feeling a bit awkward. I think ~1.2s baseline cooldown would be a solid improvement here.

    Set-ups also really do need a damage buff, they shouldn’t be doing “major” damage but they 100% need to be a lot closer to the damage output of spenders than they currently are. A large chunk of our hits are setups, they have to deal at least some damage.

    The main thing I’ve picked up on over the last week is that the Dextrous Hook modifier is awkward to play with. For starters it’s outright the best setup for damage, the other two don’t really compare (at least in solo, you would technically want to maintain vulnerable in groups). This leads to a slight problem as you want to empower all of your spenders with Dextrous…but if you start overflowing on Mettle you can’t do that, you need to dump Mettle faster than Dextrous Hook’s cooldown allows. It honestly feels like you’re losing out on damage in such situations.


    Buffs


    Mostly want to reiterate that we have far too many buff buttons as is. Most of these have identical cooldowns/durations and thus you’d pretty much always want to overlap them, please consolidate a few of these effects.

    Beyond that: You give us way too many mastery boosts. We get % mastery from our stance, we get % mastery from our mettle totals, we get % mastery from innate strength, we get % mastery from Get Serious/Quick Feint, we get increased % mastery from Battle Fury, we get % mastery from Strike as One!… it’s too much. This kinda just results in mastery being subject to more diminishing returns on Brawler than other classes who are at a lower base mastery %. Please give us some greater variation in buffs. Buffs that increase crit/dev chance or magnitude for a short while, perhaps some buffs that increase the rate at which innate strength tiers. We really just need a bit of variety here.

    I’d also like to suggest that short-ish cooldown buffs like Get Serious or Quick Feint shouldn’t have player animations. I don’t mind it so much on a 3 minute cooldown buff but having a small pause like that every 30s feels unwieldy. Better off if these were treated more like Wardens masteries, i.e. pretty much instantly resolve themselves and just play a little animation overhead.

    One buff I’d like to single out as needing a notable change is Battle Fury, it’s our DPS capstone, it needs to be more than a 0-12% mastery increase, this thing has a 3m cooldown, it needs to legitimately empower the character when pressed.

    Finally I’d like to talk stances. Right now we have two stances on Brawler, I’m mostly going to focus on Aggressive Posture here:
    Aggressive Posture doesn’t really work out as things currently stand. The design clearly seems to be going for some kind of “Gain DPS but become more vulnerable to damage” thing but in reality the DPS boost is minor (again, mastery) and the mitigation debuff can be pretty easily ignored. If this stance was a multiplicative +15% outgoing damage buff and +10% incoming damage debuff placed on self you’d have a reason to consider toggling it on/off, right now, it’s an always on button that’s only off if I didn’t notice some CC toggle it without my input. Defensive Posture suffers from much the same issue.


    Spenders


    I still don’t like the Quick/Balanced/Heavy breakdown of spenders (that isn’t even restricted to spenders). Right now it isn’t too bad because I really don’t care at all for the Innate Strength buffs outside of Quickness and Backhand is a core part of the rotation but if you do make the other buffs valuable I feel like I’m just going to run straight into the issue of being forced to use spenders that I don’t really want to use in the particular situation just because it tiers/refreshes innate strength.

    Please, please, please….please remove the Quick/Balanced/Heavy breakdown and give us some other way of deciding which buff each spender (and it really should just be the spenders) tiers. I vote for making the setups determine this but I’m open to alternatives.
    ~ Take the player, not the class ~

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Posts
    0
    I agree with pretty much every word here, but I want to tack on a few extra things:

    The "Share" skills are pretty garbage in implementation, at best getting around a 1m:40s cooldown with only a 15s duration is a pretty poor uptime, not to mention it requires other players to be VERY close to the brawler to get the effect. I think something around a 1min cooldown and 20-30s duration to put it on par with Captain's To Arms as well as mesh well with other big cooldowns like To Arms and Banners, increase the radius of the effect to 15m, and make the animation to use the skill a pretty quick one.
    • Not sure if its a bug but Sharing an innate strength tier 4 only applies tier 3 to your fellow members, seeing as how I dont think you cant refresh tier 4 Innate Strengths either I dont see the reason for this. If the design goal is to make it so that tier 3 is maintainable and tier 4 is meant to be a larger buff but at the cost of having to rebuild the tiers back up then let the Brawler share its tier 4 buff for the larger return. If the design goal is to just let us maintain tier 4 at all times then A) its bugged currently, and B) sharing one tier lower kinda makes sense but I dont recall any documentation explaining such.


    The Innate Strength buffs themselves make absolutely zero sense. I'm sure this has been covered already but I want to add my voice to the horde:
    Red Line

    • Critical Rating is already through the roof with the new LI's. Change to critical chance percentage, devastate chance percentage, or critical magnitudes.
    • Finesse..... really? If I am relying on keeping a buff with 15s duration active 100% of the time just to land my skills then I'm already screwed. How about attack duration to make the class feel less sluggish although I think all Brawler skills are Fast skills so maybe that doesnt do anything either.
    • Damage is fine, but I agree with Joe that Brawler gets too many mastery increases from far too many sources.

    Blue Line
    • Threat is.... interesting. While I am all for a threat revamp that makes tanking no longer a Taunt-N-Forget game play, this just isnt enough. Since Brawler taunts are not threat copies then this is the only means of the Brawler maintain aggro which means that they need to be doing a heck of alot of damage in order to fitful that role. For this to work Brawler needs around triple the damage it can currently do in order to be an option (though not ideal) for 3-6 player content.
    • Parry is good, thank you for adding a tank stat
    • Mitigations are good, but there's also the ground based mitigation buff that covers mitigations so this just feels like going to the well twice. Incoming Healing would be a viable alternative.


    Vulnerability is a GREAT mechanic, dont get me wrong there, but its 100% squandered. Brawlers have a secondary effect tied to one of their core set up skills, and then multiple traits tied to this effect, and at the end of the day its a +1% incoming damage debuff on the target. Captains do this 10x better with a single toggle. Champions doing this 10x better with a single skill, though admittedly the uptime isnt 100% its still a net gain over the Brawler's effect.
    Keep the application tied to using Low Strike + spender, though make it Low Strike + Quick Spender for a quick combo

    Keep the traits that increase the application chance and duration, though ideally when both are maxed then it should be feasible to maintain this debuff with a steady rotation. No idea if this is possible now or not, just making note.

    Then make all Balanced Spenders when used on a target that has Vulnerability give a chance to spread Vulnerability to nearby targets.

    Then make all Heavy Spenders when used on a target that has Vulnerability apply a debuff to incoming critical chance by 3-5%, or debuffs critical defense by -10-15%. Either debuff would be strong enough to be a utility option.

    Lastly, when using either Gut Punch or Fist of the Valar on a target with Vulnerability the debuff is increased by 1%, up to a maximum of 3%. This higher magnitude debuff is able to be spread like before, replacing the lower magnitude version.

    This would make each type of Spender unique and have a role in the rotation; application, amplification, and distribution, while at the same time making the Capstones unique as well.

    Stances, or Postures, whatever are woefully underwhelming. Is it really a trait choice if there is only 1 choice and the downside is easily overcome? I agree changing the Aggressive Posture negative from mitigation to just a flat incoming damage effect, but for Defensive Posture there isnt really a down side as mastery is a wasted stat on a tank. Maybe give it a minus to run speed? These traits almost feel like they should be in the Fundament tree since they are options rather than features. In addition a third Posture for a more 'middle' road could be an option, that reduces damages but increases the effects of Innate Strength? Also the turning off of Postures when stunned is annoying and should not be a thing.

    I also think that since these are in effect "Stances" that other classes like minstrels have then some skills should gain additional effects based on which Posture is active, but I am not well versed enough in all of the different spenders to know exactly what that might be.

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Posts
    8

    Plain and simple

    Even in aggressive stance wearing the gold jacket the DPS is terrible.
    Kazren Altaholic Extrodinaire
    8 Level 140 Characters, mostly Arkenstone with Colonies on Elendilmir, Landroval, Crickhollow and Brandywine

 

 
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