The State of the Captain

[OnnMacMahal]

Hello Captains! I'd like to start a discussion about the current state of the captain class. Whether you've been playing captain for years, or only recently took up banners to support and inspire your allies, how do you feel about your abilities right now? Do you wear the heaviest armour and stand directly in the face of evil, or do you anchor your allies, supporting them with words of inspiration when lights grow dim? Do you wish it were easier to encourage one specific ally in times of great need? Do you feel the strength of Elendil in your veins when striking servants of the enemy? What would you improve about this iconic class?

[auximenes]

Welcome OnnMacMahal.

Quickly since I have to head out for work the Red Captain needs some DPS love. Solo play with them is not where it should be. They don't need a lot but a bit extra would make playing them more entertaining.

[Edlenn]

Hi, first a small but constant annoyance - the recent change requiring captains to reapply improved motivating speech every five minutes when we would never want it off. It's like trying to take a nap with an alarm clock that goes off every five minutes. Aside from that the red line does need some help to make levelling less of a chore. Used to really enjoy healing/off healing on blue cappy, some love there wouldn't hurt.

[Arabani]

Welcome!

So let's start:

I've been playing a captain for years and I've always played a healer. Or I've tried to be. I've always liked the concept of a frontline heavy armored healer, a cleric, if you wish. Initially Captain was designed as a support class, Jack-of-all-trades, you know, not a real healer, but great to help a minstrel in his job. Somewhere around Moria-Mirwood, Hands of Healing received some boost and for many years Captain was able to soloheal 3-6 Man, even some raids with the well geared people in it. I've never really rised my hope high, but had been pushing the limits to be a real healer.

That had been changed with Helm's Deep update when the initial concept of holistic classes were demolished into three lines and the support role itself had been obliterated. Captain lost most of his base kit abilities-they were placed into different lines and for many years the class did not really worked in every line. Yes, people still wanted Red Captain for buffs, but honestly noone ever cared about the captain and his activity in the raid as long as he buffed. At some point the tank line had been buffed and Captain finaly got at least one some-what interresting line to play (with a lot of issues still, but it least it was not a buff-stick job anymore).

To make it short, Blue Captain in a bad state now. It can heal easy group content with an overgeared group and it can be used in a raid, if there is a real trouble with helaing, but in general the spec is bad and noone really plays it (except me, it seems ) or wants a blue captain in the group. My wish is that Blue Captain was a real healer, a competitive healer in every type of content, that he coudl do the same job as Minstrel does.

There are three main issues with the spec, besides the numbers that obviously need tuning:

1) There are a lot of group hots, but no burst heals at all. Neither single, nor group target. Hots are not enough to keep the tank or other alive under heavy preasure. Real heals are needed. Direct heals, Wards (Baubles), reactive heals (heals that have some chanrges and trigger on damage received) and most importantly heals that do not require to hit the target, just normal castable heals;

2) The class has no saves: when something goes wrong we struggle. We need saves, both single target and group ones. Sheild of The Dunedain should be accessible to Blue Captain (or something similar). A group save is also needed. Reform the line is hardly a save;

3)Since we are melee we need the tools to survie there. Please return Last stand to the base kit of any captain. And since we are melee we also need to do reletively good dps, not as much as a real dps, of coruse, but somewhere up to 40% of them. I'd say it should be true for every healer, not only Captain.

I do not want to go in details of every heal and skill for now and I do not really play other lines, so wont' comment on them either.

To sum it up-please make Blue Captain a real competitive healer.

[Kaeneth]

Here are some things that personally bother me about the captain at the moment.

-Slow and clunky: I don't expect a captain to be as fast as a champion or anything, but over time I feel like the captains damage has just gotten lower and lower. It feels like a drag to play compared to so many other classes now as a result. Especially when you combine the lower damage with the tighter rotation and very little aoe for a heavy armor class.

-Heralds/blade brother: Heralds are more of a hinderance than a help these days. Sure the heal on the defender herald is nice, and occasionally maybe the archer herald is used for pulls, but aside from that they don't really offer much benefit. In the lower levels the archer pet in particular does a good amount of damage and is a lot of fun, but as you level it gets weaker and weaker to the point of uselessness. Not only this, but herald pathing often isn't great and in indoor spaces they tend to get lost or left behind. This is a problem because it removes the brother skill which then locks us out of using "To Arms" and "Inspire" for our own benefit. Blade brother also tends to randomly reset sometimes when zoning, and so it constantly has to be reactivated. I'd like to see "To Arms" and "Inspire" be able to be used for our own benefit even when we don't have blade brother active, and I'd like to see the damage of the archer herald substantially increased in the higher levels. Also maybe more customization options in the future besides the old SoA NPC models?

Motivating Speech: This being on a 5 minute timer is particularly annoying. It shouldn't need to be so micromanaged.

Yellow Captain: It's effective, but it has so few skills and perhaps the most boring rotation in the entire game, if you even want to call it that. Red captain has Shadow's Lament, and blue captain has valiant strike to ensure they're constantly able to keep all their states up and have a more full feeling rotation. Yellow captain gets no such extra skill that puts them in a battle-readied state. I'd like to see it get some new skill at least to activate battle-readied state so that it feels just a bit more involved and like I'm actually doing something. Additionally the yellow tree's mark, noble mark, is completely useless. It's basically always better to use the blue tree's revealing mark. At the very least noble mark should be the highest healing mark for the captain himself, and ideally its light damage dot should feel like it actually contributes some helpful damage.

The races: I know this is minor in the grand scheme of things, and could possible confuse people to change now, but with high elves now as captains and soon to be dwarves it feels odd that there's skills with uniquely man named abilities, and the oathbreaker's shame animation feels particularly unfitting on high elves who tend to avoid the dead. Not to mention the class quests and titles. I don't have any expectation of change here, but I just wanted to throw it out there since I do think it's somewhat immersion breaking at times.

[Tharalion]

I find the mechanics behind battle readied and hardened very clunky and unintuitive. Obviously these buffs are essential to the class and we want to maintain them all the time but have to lose them to use some of our key skills with blade of elendil and devastating/pressing attack. This leads to having to do what the obviously intended combo was in reverse starting with blade of elendil > devastating > battle shout after already having built the buffs. And while this will keep up both battle hardened and readied it does force you to between either using blade of elendil or using devastating/pressing attack without battle hardened crit buff. The timings on these combos can also be very tight so you can easily lose the combo if fight mechanics prevent you from hitting stuff for a few seconds. Maybe try some sort of change that makes devastating blow/pressing attack and blade of elendil no longer consume the battle readied and hardened buffs but if you want to maintain the combo idea make Devastating blow/pressing attack just require battle shout/shadows lament/valiant strike to have been previously used. Same with blade of enendil following on from devastating/pressing.

Red line does pathetic damage and has no survivability skills. Solo with it is horrible and I feel impotent in a raid. If I did nothing but applied telling mark, cast oathbreakers every 3 minutes and to arms, banner, and relentless attack every minute the raid really wouldn't be missing much.

Blue line has decent group healing ability but is incapable of maintaining the tank in any even slightly challenging content. In raids their ability to heal people in the second group is also next to nonexistent. This means that blue captain just doesn't have a place in groups or raids. As the only cooldown heal reform the lines definitely has too long a cooldown for how strong it is.

For yellow line In harms way is definitely now in an awkward spot since last stand's duration was reduced ending the ability to combine these skills that we enjoyed since Shadows of Angmar. Now using in harms way to protect the group against a lot of incoming damage will likely just get you killed or you're using the skill out of range of all the group for a relatively minor 20% damage reduction. I think removing the ability to use shield of dunedain on ourselves was also too much of a nerf leaving us with just one defensive cooldown.

[gcpate]

Hi, first a small but constant annoyance - the recent change requiring captains to reapply improved motivating speech every five minutes when we would never want it off. It's like trying to take a nap with an alarm clock that goes off every five minutes.

There must have been thought and apparent logic to this change, but it seems to have been just obnoxious.

[SniperCT]

I literally want to quote everyone in this thread, but I'll add my two cents. I do agree on the 'clunky' statements especially.

I've been a slow player, etc etc, but captain has always been one of the classes I've played the most.

I've been leveling one red-line (currently 109) and I very frequently feel a) like wet noodles and b) like I'm made of paper. I grabbed some talents out of the blue line for extra self healing and it helps but not much.

I'm not asking for champion level dps, but it would be nice to feel stronger. I think this is not quite the weakest I've ever felt.

[Daniyel]

Hi, first a small but constant annoyance - the recent change requiring captains to reapply improved motivating speech every five minutes when we would never want it off.

i actually have grown to love this change because now the speech buffs persist through captain defeat/disconnect

[WeirdJedi]

I adored the last revamp when the time to use captain's abilities were cut in half, but it seems that since then changes have been made to the captain made it less enjoyable to play: Shield of the Dunedain cannot be cast on yourself anymore, Telling Mark was nerfed from 10% to 5%, the interesting abilities of Revealing Mark that would return a proportion of damage as a heal, Noble Mark has a range of 12meters, and Motivating Speech now has to be recast every 5 minutes, etc. I feel like some of these changes were only made to help performance, prevent exploits, or balanced a raid.

Because of this, the solo experience has been hindered greatly. I actually had trouble completing quests on-level in Gundabad (the ones with elites) before they allowed us to have the level 136 reforge. The amount of damage we deal is way lower than it was after the revamp. Compared to our lore-master friends, our pet just isn't effective enough (to the point where it's taunts, heals, and damage can be compared to a skirmish soldier). It seems the only real benefit the archer has over the herald is that it can shoot from a distance (which isn't really a lot).

Not being able to do enough damage might not bother me as much in a raid setting when my abilities are benefiting the group, but I would prefer to be more a force to be reckoned with. The annoyance comes from watching all the current limiters that are in place for half of our skills.

[Belechael]

First of all I applaud this initiative. Well done, and I hope something good comes out of it.

I have been playing captain for 14 years, and the only time that I felt it worth it was when we could trait as we wanted, that is before the the trait trees. Having 3 distinct trees about tanking, healing and dps is not my thing. I want to do a little of everything with my captain. If I want to main heal I use my minstrel, if I want to tank I use my guardian, if I want to dps I use my hunter. The original appeal of the captain was that he was supporting the fellowship in every possible way, a little healing, off tanking, dps support, everything. Sort of having that back I just have a few points that need to be addressed.

1. A little more dps for solo play.

2. If you want to maintain the healing tree then I suggest you make a LOT of changes in order for a cap to be able to main heal a fellowship. Personally I don't like healing with my cap, but others do, so either change it or improve it.

3. Heralds are a problem with a lot of content. I was extremely happy when we had the opportunity to use standards instead of heralds, and I would love to see changes in the trees to support this again. When I want to play with pets I play my LM to be honest.

Tank line is good, I don't find it boring personally, but I prefer tanking with my guard.

I eagerly await your responses!

Thank you.

[Arabani]

3. Heralds are a problem with a lot of content. I was extremely happy when we had the opportunity to use standards instead of heralds, and I would love to see changes in the trees to support this again. When I want to play with pets I play my LM to be honest.

Right, I can't express how much I dislilke pets and wish we could play without them.

[fealegwe2]

Right, I can't express how much I dislilke pets and wish we could play without them.

you can play without them..just don't summon them.

To the OP : pets die too easily in raids and end game instances.Please make them very more Hardy ( dwarf NPC moral pool maybe? ) or give them them 50% more mits.

thinking out the box here. For yello-Strength in Numbers could be a Moral leech that ramps up with each additional mob affected.

i would love to see a Yello Captain having passive moral and mit buffs from using 2-Hander as a tree bonus. In blue it could be an outgoing healing buff each time it crits.

a problem i have with Yello cappy is the limited AoE taunt. perhaps Cutting edge could Taunt all the affected mobs ( not sure how affective that would be - need the consensus from more experianced players )

[Arabani]

you can play without them..just don't summon them.

Sure, and lose a dozen of skills, abilities and passives.

[Joedangod]

In all seriousness I would be totally in favour of giving Red Captain a substantial damage increase so that in Solo / Landscape it did feel like an actual DPS class and wasn't as sluggish as it is now - and then reducing their overrall DPS output when in a fellowship and/or raid instance in line with what they bring to the table in that role.

I don't even know if that's something that would even be feasible to implement.

Can't say I really see the point, hypothetically if a red Captain were able to pull ~70-80% of the DPS that an actual DPS spec could produce in a raid setting that would be more than enough DPS to manage on landscape or even in PvP. Might need to ensure it remains a bit tankier than normal DPS options to offset the reduced DPS but it would generally be fine.

They'd also have to navigate around some degenerate gameplay here. Like if it were tied to a stance do we really want stance-dancing captains? If the stance swap was blocked in-combat you could still have scenarios where people game it by pre-buffing, throwing out oathies, and then swapping before going in on some fights (mostly small group stuff). If it's a debuff tied to players in your group you could wind up with Captains swapping to group 3 in a raid to avoid that penalty. If the debuff just takes the raid as a whole you might find Captains having to do wildly different builds between small/large group content.

It gets messy, and again...don't really see the point to it.

you can play without them..just don't summon them.

I can get behind this approach. Just make it so pets reduce your group mits instead of buffing them. And make the herald heal harm the cappy instead of healing them. I mean, you would still be able to play with a pet right? Don't see why anyone would complain about this scenario.

[Oddessia]

HERALD PET AI - my god, its deplorable. I'm not sure if that's something you can fix but it is really awful. The herald often just will not take the same path on the landscape that the captain does. It goes far around things (like posts/barricades) around small rocks on the ground instead of over or the same way around as the captain, and stands far enough offset from the captain that it aggros things you are trying to avoid. Going through an orc camp with that awful window-licker makes me want to strangle it, lol.

I ended up giving up and just dismissing it and running landscape without my pet - which is detrimental because you require it summoned to be able to activate certain skills. The herald gathering up unwanted mobs would be fine...if it didnt mean the captain would stand in place fighting mobs until the sun sets because the damage is so low. Painful + painful.

My other request, which is very minor...halberds. The only class that can wield a halberd and no-one does because the animation on halberd is so much slower than sword, so we all just sword. I know this is not a 'class balance' thing, and more of a weapon design thing but I straight-up rolled a captain just to use a halberd xD. Id love to use one and not be disadvantaged over a sword-cappy.

Thanks!

[savetheroadtodoriath]

My main complaint is so many skills are unresponsive and have psychotically large animations. I am talking about Banner, Oathbreakers, To Arms, Telling Mark, etc. By the time you've set all this up and are ready to finally start hitting the mob 10 seconds have passed and you've thought twice about rerolling. I've played every class in the game now in T2+ raids and I can safely say Captain is the slowest and clunkiest class in the entire game, and it isn't even close.

And there's no reason for it, so many elegant solutions are possible. For example you could make it so using Oathbreakers automatically applies Telling Mark or the way Sure Strike applies buffs to the fellowship while Battle Readied it could apply a burst of To Arms or extend its duration while Battle Hardened or something like that. Personally I would remove the concept of permanent marks entirely and have them be temporary debuffs applied by other skills.

Also please add another way to get into Battle Ready on Yellow Captain other than just Battle Shout. Maybe increase the duration on Battle Hardened too, maintaining that 15s buff is tedious and unfun. Consider this, I literally use my Tonic while tanking before a pull so I can use Pressing Attack on NOTHING just so I can enter Battle Hardened for the -incoming damage buff. Does that sound like a fulfilling or functional experience?

Also I guess Blue Captain is the worst healer in the game atm, so I guess that's something. I've encountered 0 players even attempting to play it for months.

[Gilean-EU]

I only solo nowadays, and have all classes, and captain is the worst (I mean, slowest) of them all. Comparing champion who just shing-shing and keep going, it takes A LOT more time for captain to clear some orc camp. Nowadays even burglar is faster, thanks to AoE DPS skills.

So red captain needs a lot of love, also one or two more AoE DPS skills, as we rarely fight only one enemy but 2-3 (or more) at time.

[Mavelic]

First of all I applaud this initiative. Well done, and I hope something good comes out of it.

I have been playing captain for 14 years, and the only time that I felt it worth it was when we could trait as we wanted, that is before the the trait trees. Having 3 distinct trees about tanking, healing and dps is not my thing. I want to do a little of everything with my captain. If I want to main heal I use my minstrel, if I want to tank I use my guardian, if I want to dps I use my hunter. The original appeal of the captain was that he was supporting the fellowship in every possible way, a little healing, off tanking, dps support, everything. Sort of having that back I just have a few points that need to be addressed.

1. A little more dps for solo play.

2. If you want to maintain the healing tree then I suggest you make a LOT of changes in order for a cap to be able to main heal a fellowship. Personally I don't like healing with my cap, but others do, so either change it or improve it.

3. Heralds are a problem with a lot of content. I was extremely happy when we had the opportunity to use standards instead of heralds, and I would love to see changes in the trees to support this again. When I want to play with pets I play my LM to be honest.

Tank line is good, I don't find it boring personally, but I prefer tanking with my guard.

I eagerly await your responses!

Thank you.

Hi,
You expressed *exactly* what I think since many years (I started with my capt 15 years ago but don't play it anymore since obligation to play with herald !!).
I'll just add something :

1b) bring back these strong criticals attack made with 2-h weapons, like it was at the start of the game (Angmar), it was the capt hallmark, AFAIR.

3b) let us choose between herald OR flags (maybe add one or two more flags ?) ! I f a want pets, I should play LM (which I don't like...). A capt has no pet, she has men at arm (i.e. other players in instances).

Thank you in advance.

[darrranakh]

Hello Captains! I'd like to start a discussion about the current state of the captain class. Whether you've been playing captain for years, or only recently took up banners to support and inspire your allies, how do you feel about your abilities right now? Do you wear the heaviest armour and stand directly in the face of evil, or do you anchor your allies, supporting them with words of inspiration when lights grow dim? Do you wish it were easier to encourage one specific ally in times of great need? Do you feel the strength of Elendil in your veins when striking servants of the enemy? What would you improve about this iconic class?

Hi! Overall i personally love the captain class, and it's a lot of fun in groups. In terms of issues i see with the class, here they are:

1. Solo play - brutal. feels very slow to quest in general.
2. Blue line - has no place in raids BUT (opinion ) i think making it viable is probably not needed. a captain being a backline healer feels weird, and the balance with current healers in the game is good, I'm afraid of potential upsets with overall game balance. If you still want something to address, then sure.
3. Yellow - Strength in numbers has been left in the dirt. needs to be scaled properly.
4. Overall feel: Class feels clunky because of long animations and delays after skills have fired.

Suggestions:
1. Either an animation touch up, or some kind of speed across the board. If this is technically too difficult to pull off, some kind of increased attack duration buff for self is probably good enough. Speeding up the captain overall should also help bump the dps some.
2. Shadow's lament cooldown - reduce to 15, sync with inspire better, perhaps a damage bump.
3. Solo play - bleed duration bump perhaps, or potency. Could help captains solo content easier without making them compete with champ/hunter. Just need the ability to finish off a mob with a few skills, even if the mob has to then bleed out to get there.
4. Captain pets: The mits pet is probably the go to default for raiding. Melee pets can sometimes be useful, but other times be very annoying. Giving us two mits pet: one melee, one ranged, could provide a good fix to maintain "Elite Companions" debuff without having to deal with the annoyance of a melee pet always. do NOT waste time trying to bring their pet up to snuff, pets usually are just an annoyance. Just give us ranged mits pet that can apply elite companions.
5. Strength in numbers: fix it's heal component, or add some kind of damage reduction aspect to it. do NOT go overboard, captain tank doesn't "need" another last stand, just a minor cooldown (either a heal that can heal them maybe back upto 60% health, or a dmg reduction around the ballpark of 30%). Some good nerfs brought their tank capability in line with other tanks, they're generally in a decent spot right now, and not too godmode. I'd like to preserve this aspect when we bring strength in numbers in line.
6. If you do decide to fix blue line - i'm not sure what a good way to bring this up is, but some kind of 10 second cooldown single target big heal perhaps. Give them the ability to bring a single person like a tank up to full.
7. Minor - Quality of life - movitaving speech is a bit annoying to re-apply, any potential improvements here?

Potential nerf candidates:
1. Perhaps the double rez should only be a feature of a blue line cappy. Captain rez is *really* good, perhaps too good. But since no one likes nerfs, i will not push on this point further.

Overall, captain is one of the most fun classes to play in groups, and I really enjoy it.
tl;dr
For red: some damage bump that helps solo play and potentially let's us carve out a raid spot for a "dps-y" red captain could be really nice.
Yellow is in a desirable place overall, though it's primarily because of the utility they bring.
Blue line is not raid viable primarily because the game's damage profile has changed: general healing is so high that the way raids kill players is by doing large spike damages, and captain cannot respond well to this kind of damage. Blue could be brought in line or entirely abandoned, since the general healer balance with rk mini and beorn is very nice.

[Zaheer]

Hi! Overall i personally love the captain class, and it's a lot of fun in groups. In terms of issues i see with the class, here they are:

1. Solo play - brutal. feels very slow to quest in general.
2. Blue line - has no place in raids BUT (opinion ) i think making it viable is probably not needed. a captain being a backline healer feels weird, and the balance with current healers in the game is good, I'm afraid of potential upsets with overall game balance. If you still want something to address, then sure.
3. Yellow - Strength in numbers has been left in the dirt. needs to be scaled properly.
4. Overall feel: Class feels clunky because of long animations and delays after skills have fired.

Suggestions:
1. Either an animation touch up, or some kind of speed across the board. If this is technically too difficult to pull off, some kind of increased attack duration buff for self is probably good enough. Speeding up the captain overall should also help bump the dps some.
2. Shadow's lament cooldown - reduce to 15, sync with inspire better, perhaps a damage bump.
3. Solo play - bleed duration bump perhaps, or potency. Could help captains solo content easier without making them compete with champ/hunter. Just need the ability to finish off a mob with a few skills, even if the mob has to then bleed out to get there.
4. Captain pets: The mits pet is probably the go to default for raiding. Melee pets can sometimes be useful, but other times be very annoying. Giving us two mits pet: one melee, one ranged, could provide a good fix to maintain "Elite Companions" debuff without having to deal with the annoyance of a melee pet always. do NOT waste time trying to bring their pet up to snuff, pets usually are just an annoyance. Just give us ranged mits pet that can apply elite companions.
5. Strength in numbers: fix it's heal component, or add some kind of damage reduction aspect to it. do NOT go overboard, captain tank doesn't "need" another last stand, just a minor cooldown (either a heal that can heal them maybe back upto 60% health, or a dmg reduction around the ballpark of 30%). Some good nerfs brought their tank capability in line with other tanks, they're generally in a decent spot right now, and not too godmode. I'd like to preserve this aspect when we bring strength in numbers in line.
6. If you do decide to fix blue line - i'm not sure what a good way to bring this up is, but some kind of 10 second cooldown single target big heal perhaps. Give them the ability to bring a single person like a tank up to full.
7. Minor - Quality of life - movitaving speech is a bit annoying to re-apply, any potential improvements here?

Potential nerf candidates:
1. Perhaps the double rez should only be a feature of a blue line cappy. Captain rez is *really* good, perhaps too good. But since no one likes nerfs, i will not push on this point further.

Overall, captain is one of the most fun classes to play in groups, and I really enjoy it.
tl;dr
For red: some damage bump that helps solo play and potentially let's us carve out a raid spot for a "dps-y" red captain could be really nice.
Yellow is in a desirable place overall, though it's primarily because of the utility they bring.
Blue line is not raid viable primarily because the game's damage profile has changed: general healing is so high that the way raids kill players is by doing large spike damages, and captain cannot respond well to this kind of damage. Blue could be brought in line or entirely abandoned, since the general healer balance with rk mini and beorn is very nice.

the captain is meant to be slow and bursty, just to let you know. If you don't like this, then you shouldn't play captain. The slowness and burst is what has always been part of the captain, its part of its image (even now I think it's toomuch attack speed already)

[Joedangod]

Yellow Captain as a spec is something that people are only really fond of because it's so strong. The actual gameplay of that spec is irredeemably bad. Where Blue/Red flow nicely through their readied/hardened states the Yellow Captain just forever sits in hardened which heavily hinders their ability to use the core rotational abilities like PA/Dev Blow. The spec has to live off filler skills but none of that filler really does anything for either aggro or defence, so most of the buttons you're pressing have absolutely no tie in to the role you're trying to fulfil. You're some kind of off-healer hybrid that just so happens to be moderately durable and able to hold aggro via forced taunts. There's one neat interaction in this spec, throwing shield on an ally to let them gather aggro for your taunt, but that's really it.


Now we have the obligatory Yellow Captain rant out of the way let's focus on some other random gripes:

• The brother skills in yellow/blue are mismatched. Ideally blue would prefer to have a brother skill that goes on the tank allowing them to empower the tank, whilst yellow would prefer to have a brother skill that empowers the healer. The current setup only really works in a raid scenario where yellow has another tank it can mark. Might be nice if we could pick our bro skill via traits.
  
• Also Song-bro is weird in that it's primarily beneficial for a tactical DPS and not a healer. Blade-bro should really be equally valuable for both physical/tactical DPS, dunno why blue got the tactical DPS bonus.
• Gallant Display could really do with being baseline. The skill has a fun animation and all 3 specs pick it up anyway, would prefer to give each line traits to modify it rather than having it bestowed in blue.
  
• I.e. Red Gallant display traits increase the damage, blue increases the healing, yellow gives it more targets (the animation already looks like it should be hitting as a frontal and cappy could use the low CD AoE hitter).
• Damage is way too low on this class. All 3 lines really do need to be hitting harder than they currently do.
• Blue Captain is way too AoE-heal oriented, it needs a lot more focus on ST spot healing (and probably reduced AoE). Dunno how you could implement that nicely though, constant target swapping on this spec is awful considering how much melee uptime it needs to have. Ideally we'd want mouseover targeting for such heals.

[savetheroadtodoriath]

the captain is meant to be slow and bursty, just to let you know. If you don't like this, then you shouldn't play captain. The slowness and burst is what has always been part of the captain, its part of its image (even now I think it's toomuch attack speed already)

Captain has the worst burst damage in the game, so. You're going to do far more damage and hit far more targets and faster just with Warden's Surety of Death/Deso/Brink than a comparable rotation on Captain.

Captains have 2 AoEs, they both do low damage and have low numbers of targets. Sure it's slow...but there's no burst here lol.

[Zaheer]

Captain has the worst burst damage in the game, so. You're going to do far more damage and hit far more targets and faster just with Warden's Surety of Death/Deso/Brink than a comparable rotation on Captain.

Captains have 2 AoEs, they both do low damage and have low numbers of targets. Sure it's slow...but there's no burst here lol.

I'm talking image of what it once was, you don't seem to know what its identity was. Allowing a ST dmg class to go AOE only blurs the identity more and this should not happen.

[savetheroadtodoriath]

I'm talking image of what it once was, you don't seem to know what its identity was. Allowing a ST dmg class to go AOE only blurs the identity more and this should not happen.

There is no such thing as a single target class anymore and if Captain was the only one then it'd be fundamentally gimped compared to every other class, which is obviously undesirable.
And even in the past Captain was not the single target class, we always had AoE, Burg was 99% ST though and it compensated for it by having massive DPS, which Captain never ever had.