Regarding Red Brawler - Suggestion-Thread

[Nicname]

Hey there,

i wanted to make a small analysis on whats (obviously) wrong with Brawler. Current state is that, when playing Red Brawler one gets rejected for any meaningful content (begins with remm t2), and thats for good. rn Red Brawler does like 1/4th of Class A DPS classes like Hunter and Champion on dummy and far less in a Raid. That is because Brawler has such insane possibility to self-buff that many Raid Buffs just don't matter (You can easily Buff Melee dmg from 140-200% (whats actually 70-100%, since 200% is our Base-Dmg) so Captains Banner for Example is not really huge impact anymore).
Highest parse i had on dummy were 116k DPS (Hunters can get up to 400k!!!)




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I want to outline - I don't think fixing these things will fix the class entirely. Brawler in it's current state lacks of an idea on how to play the class (by design).

Cooldowns feel wrong, Mettle System doesn't work fluently, Animations way too slow, overall dmg too low, Buffing is just bad implemented (for different reasons i wanna elaborate). I want to do this, because you gotta start at least somewhere.


I see many problems with the class, i'll try to focus on the biggest ones, so small adjustments might have a big impact.

Mettle-System and Setup Skills:
Brawler needs Mettle to spend for meaningful hits. Brawler generates it with Setup skills. 1Mettle/Setup and a small chance for one extra. That means in general you need to do 2-3 Setup Skills to have a Spender (since every(!) Spender needs at least 3 Mettle). You can improve that when you use Quick Feint and Get Serious to gain Mettle when you need it. No problem here, thats what champs do all the time when using Battlefrenzy. But Champ is able to keep it 100% uptime, which gives them a constant source of Fervour. Plus Champs gain Fervour for Crits, same for hunters (why don't Brawlers, since we are already crazy dependend on crits to maintain dmg?).
What adds to this is that (to really max out every hit) we always want to use Dextrous Hook before using a Spender. A Cooldown of 1.8s (with blue tracery) leaves us in the situation to use Filler Skills. The only ones we have are First strike (just viable in a dummy parse, since any other fight mobs will quickly drop below 80% HP), Helms Hammer (what is somehow okay, since it helps us to keep up Innate Strength: Raw Power, but otherwise it's our only Corruption Removal -> Utility Skills should never be a necessary part of a dmg rotation), Hurl Object (can't be serious, right?) and the other Setup skills (that are just too weak)
So either give us some more Filler Skills (that don't consume Mettle) or drastically shorten the CDs to at least 1s for Setups.
Also give Brawler a constant source of Mettle (like Battlefrenzy and/or Crit gain) without braindead-smashing Setup Skills.

Animations:
Generally speaking - Animations look great, problem is: only joy from playing Brawler comes from its animations, and not from playstyle. Currently Brawler is by far the slowest "DPS"-class there is. I'm able to maintain an APS (Attacks per Second) rate of ~1.9 (from which 0.8 comes from auto attacks). So maxing Brawler DPS means to hit 1Skill/second, and that's the "fastest" it could be. I Already use FoKD t3 Set to speed it up, but it mostly benefits auto attacks (since we have fixed cooldowns), even speeding Brawler up (Captain Buffs, Anvil Set) will have just a slight impact, since we're bound to Cooldowns. So we need both, drastic cooldown reduction AND faster Animations. Also reducing the cooldown on Fulgurant Strike by 50% (that it could fall in Line with Skills like Strike towards the Sky) could give a big improvement on faster Combat.
Second Point regarding Animations - while getting buffs up you can watch a whole Series of Game of Thrones, in a group setup mobs are dead before you're even done. Suggestions in the next one.

Buffs
I like the idea of gaining buffs dependent on which Skill type you use. Also linking it to Setup Skills. I think that is pretty unique in lotro. But there are a couple of problems.
First - Regarding Innate Strength Buffs, the only one you definitely want to keep up is Raw Power, since it provides you with a good chunk of melee bonus dmg. Critical rating is okay-ish but in any decent scenario any class joins a raid with capped Crit Rating. so the only thing it contributes is Crit Mag, but just too less to even bother keeping it up, it's okay when you have but you wouldn't care if you don't. Worse for Finesse Rating. Anybody that joins a t3+ Raid would get laughed at, if even hitting a mob relies on a certain procc or worse ONE SINGLE GROUPMATE. Imagine Lore Master missing Fire/Frostlore, Tank get's one shotted and LM be Like "BrAWler DidN't hAVe FiNeSse BuFF uP!!1!". That's just nonsense. Suggestion: Convert Crit Rating buff into a +% Crit Magnitude buff (Probably 2.5% each Tier) and change Finesse into smth like a minor personal Healing Mark? Since Brawler is really slow i wouldn't mind if it would be like 10%, Cashout via Share Innate Strength might give 5% for your Group. It would provide Brawler some utility and versatility in playstyle.
Second - As mentioned, our Self Buffs take too much time. Also they're too many. We have a sh**load of buffs that are all like "+20%/+35%/+27,5%/+35%/+15%/[and so on] Melee dmg. That leads us to a situation where it is a) absolutely necessary to use these skills (since Base Damage is so low) but otherwise contributes so little (each for itself). You can have like 400% Melee dmg when fully buffed, when losing 20% due to Quick feint that is a total loss of 5% dmg. Plus, when Gaining +10% Melee dmg from 3-Set Bonus off Remm Raid Gear, that is a total Gain of 2,5% which is like nothing. We spend too much time buffing to maintain high Melee dmg rating. Cut every Buff to 1/4th of it's original value, drastically increase base damage, so that a Captains Banner has more impact than keeping up Raw Power and eating buffood. Also shorten the Animation to smth like Wardens Masteries.
Third - As for Quick Feint/Get Serious. Adjust the Cooldown of Get Serious. The way I see it it should work like Battlefrenzy. Having Quick Feint as an "####, Lag spike ate my mettle Source"-Backup is okay. But right now you got to rotate between these two to even have some source of Mettle, and still you will have huge gaps where you just smash Setup after Setup to get Mettle.
Fourth - I like Efficient Strikes, but please (!!!) reduce cooldown to at least 2 Minutes without any Set Bonus.
Fifth - Please cut Physical Mitigation reduction from Agressive Posture at least in half, rn is just way too much.
Sixth - Vulnerable Effect is WAY too low to even consider in any Group Content. Any Class offers more.

General
Pummel - I like the idea of Pummel, doing more dmg everytime. Some problems here: Pummel does WAY too less dmg. When doing Pummel you can watch your DPS hit Rock Bottom. It needs a major dmg increase. Also - Channeling Skills work like DoTs do - they will never Devastate. We have good Devastate Multipliers, but Pummel won't benefit from that. That skill needs a major buff. What would also be nice, if we had some way to definitely crit every channeling impulse, like red Bear or Burg can. Also, please don't make it being affected by incoming dmg, it sucks, when you spend 3 Mettle and after first pulse it breaks bc you got hit by one single mobs AoE.
Shattering Fist - please, you already made champions Rend a %-based reduction, please also do with this one. Or make it a +XY% incoming dmg/Melee dmg debuff.
DoTs - We desperately need DoTs to maintain dmg, especially while buffing, DPS ALWAYS drops when we do.
Overall DMG - As said a dozen times, increase Base dmg, Auto Attacks almost have the biggest impact to our DPS (as shown in the Video)
Skill Type: Heal - Currently we don't have one single Skill to trigger Threshold Jewelry Bubble. Probably change Ignore Pain from "Buff" to "Heal".
Strike Towards the Sky - Please increase increase Radius to at least 5-7m to be in Line with our other AoE Skills, it's just devastating when you're fully buffed and hope for a big crit and nothing happens because you're not in the Hitbox of your Target...

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Please feel free to share your thoughts! I'd really enjoy raiding with a dps brawler in the future!