U32 Brawler Tweaks

[Joedangod]

General:

• Brawler Belt Buckle icons should now be consistent across crafting tiers.
• Achieving a critical success when crafting Dwarrowgleam Belt Buckles now adds 2 ilevels to the resulting item.
• Achieving a critical success when crafting Dwarrowgleam Stickpins now adds 2 ilevels to the resulting item.

Consistency is nice but the itemisation for the buckles probably needs a bit of a rework. These buckles give very little in the way of stats and the stats they do give aren't particularly good. For comparison let's compare the tank buckle to the stuff a Guardian is able to equip in its additional slots:

Where Brawler gets ~72k phys mits and ~2.2k max power (power not being a stat people want to see on gear) a Guardian gets ~205k phys mits, ~92k Crit defence, ~19k vitality, ~145k Block, ~11k Might, ~6.6k Fate, and ~117k tact mits. Bear in mind that LI Heraldries give the same amount of stats regardless of whether the LI is 1h or 2h, so there's a pretty large stat difference between Brawlers and Guards.

I will admit, Guardian gets a bit more in the way of stats than most classes but Brawler still lags behind stuff like Bear who gets offhand + bow, or Champ (who can choose to offhand+bow or just stick with 2h+bow, either way bows have notably better stats than these buckles).

On the DPS side we have something like the following:

A smaller difference but still a pretty notable one, Brawler is really lagging behind in stats. Feels like you've given Brawlers similar stat totals on their belts as LM stickpins when LM is a class that also gets to benefit from an offhand weapons stats, as a 2h only class Brawlers can't do that.

Classes:

• Brawler - Come at Me has been buffed. Taunt radius increased (7->12) and base targets increased (3->5).
• Brawler - Weather Blows can now be used in motion.

Weather Blows being useable on the move is a pretty solid QoL improvement, definitely feels better now.

The Come at Me change is solid, brings the class much closer to parity with other tanks in terms of range, the target improvement is also welcome. Another good improvement here would be having the yellow line AoE target trait apply to the taunt, I'm not really sure why it doesn't and I'm not fond of the AoE target count tracery being pretty much required for Blue here.

I'd also like to suggest considering changing Come at Me from a Point Blank Area of Effect ability to instead function as a targeted ability. Brawler currently is very melee focused with its ability to aggro things, yes it has Hurl Object to tag a ranged target or two but for the most part you have to run around a lot to tag mobs which isn't too great on a class without a runspeed buff. Classes like Guard/Warden get around this a little bit by having melee abilities with large range (and solid aggro mods) such as Brink of Victory or War Chant but I don't think such range would fit the flavour of the damaging Brawler melee skills. Making Come at Me function as a ranged AoE taunt might help get around this a little bit.

• Brawler - Changed the builder attacks to all have an animation time of 0.75s. Previously varied from 1.0 to 1.5 depending on the builder.

This is definitely the change I was most interested to see and honestly it makes a massive difference, the class feels much snappier now. A slight side effect of this change is that it's a lot easier to maintain stacks of Innate Strength since you can easily generate enough Mettle to use most spenders off cooldown (and thus don't really need to think about maintaining the stacks).

I'm still not fond of the quick/heavy/balanced breakdown of skills, definitely still of the opinion that tying the buffs to Setups is the way to go here as it would require a little bit more thought to ensure you maintain all 3 Innate Strength buffs. I also still kinda believe that Setups should do a bit more damage by themselves, they make up a lot of the key presses on the class and right now their damage is really negligible.

Overall this is a positive step forward for Brawler, it's by no means "fixed" or even a particularly good choice yet but it definitely feels nicer to play.

[mizkid]

Brawler traceries have been mentioned before but I’m just putting it here as well. All other classes have impactful skills’ damage increased by traceries whereas brawlers are all over the place. We need way better secondary stats for each spec’s traceries and many more percentage damage increase traceries for red.

Also second your point that builders should do actual damage. They don’t need to be hard hitters but they should be more noticeable than dot ticks from other classes. Feels super weak that your main skills are like poking enemies with a toothpick.

The animation change is definitely a nice qol change but in the long run if builders feel bad to cast, because their damage is so low, the class is just going to get even more disheartening to play.

Also please. PLEASE. Change devastate chance to crit chance. It is one of the saddest traits in the game.

[Winzhi]

Latent light take an High elf for the 5% light damage, 11 trait points and one spec bonus before it does the same amount of damage as Helm-crusher in a 3 minute fight. Its obvious completely nonsense we invest so much into a passive proc that does so little damage. Its also our only option because nothing else in the tree is even remotely useful for PvE content. This either needs a buff or changed to something else as it doesn't really fit into the brawler package at all.

I will also point out that its better sooner rather than later that Innate Strength: Clever Technique and Innate Strenght: Precious is changed from Finesse and Critical rating. These are supposed to be two corners stones of a red brawler and in every single upcoming expansion you will face the same issues, they wont do a thing because of stat caps. My suggestion is giving attack speed and lowering global cooldowns instead.

I also still dont understand why we get devastate damage increases instead of a lower Critical Damage AND devastate increase. Devastate, if we are lucky, can get up to around 9% at the end of an expansion. This also takes up one spec bonus and 5 trait points. IMO change Light and Devastation to +10% Critical Damage/+10% Devastate Damage/+35% Light Damage(If Latent light wont be changed to something else) and change the trait called Devastate Damage to +15/15%.

Brawler traceries needs a serious rework too. There is nothing there really compared to other classes.

[mizkid]

If the crit was changed to percentage instead of a flat number it would feel way better. But IMO the problem with the innate strength buffs is that they are awkward to build and are downright clunky or broken when it comes to sharing them.

Also PLEASE do not optimize brawlers around light damage procs. Buff their other traits and damage. If light damage becomes an important part of brawler dps the only viable race would be high-elf and that would be a bummer.

[Joedangod]

Also second your point that builders should do actual damage. They don’t need to be hard hitters but they should be more noticeable than dot ticks from other classes. Feels super weak that your main skills are like poking enemies with a toothpick.

If setups continue to deal little to no damage then Brawler's gonna need the spenders to deal a ridiculous amount of damage as compensation. I mean if we're spend half the dummy parse hitting setups which do ~60k DPS by themselves we're going to need the spenders to be pulling ~250k-300k+ DPS which would require some silly tooltip values on said Spenders.

Bump setups to ~120k DPS over a parse and we'd be looking at a much more reasonable ~200k+ requirement for the spenders. With that in place they could potentially switch one of the +mastery % DPS cooldowns (Like Battle-Frenzy) into a skill that makes Setups hit AoE for the duration. Much prefer that kind of interaction to these generic damage boosts.

[Nicname]

If setups continue to deal little to no damage then Brawler's gonna need the spenders to deal a ridiculous amount of damage as compensation. I mean if we're spend half the dummy parse hitting setups which do ~60k DPS by themselves we're going to need the spenders to be pulling ~250k-300k+ DPS which would require some silly tooltip values on said Spenders.

Bump setups to ~120k DPS over a parse and we'd be looking at a much more reasonable ~200k+ requirement for the spenders.

This.

If we further rely on spenders as DPS Gateway, that can potentially end up parsing okayish and comparable numbers in group encounters, but at the time where Adds might appear, Brawler might just one shot these and make certain mechanics meaningless (Thossulun t3+ beetles or larva for example, if fist of Valar crits for like 2mil). I think tweaking around overall combat speed on brawler was an absolutely necessary buff in the right direction. Next to go are Setup-Skills.