Warleader and Blackarrow - Feedback

[SSG_Orion]

Please put feedback on the Warleader and the Blackarrow in this thread.

[UselessSmurf]

Would you consider moving the inductions up to 20%? Power of Fear on fracture is great, but the CD is long. I certainly wouldnt ask for anymore as I think that is a fair adjustment.

[Carved]

Steadfast changes are fine. The new corruption is wholly underwhelming. I propose that the corruption tiers up from (Improved) Vital Target and (Improved) Punctured Target, whilst Centre is changed to a small heal over time. Even if the buff were worth channelling Centre for, this makes for rather clunky gameplay, and greatly disrupts the flow of the class.

This would give permanent uptime for the corruption after a short while in combat, but it's hardly problematic, given that it can be easily removed and you have to start over. Besides, having the buff up makes the class objectively more fun to play, so... why not?

Please also consider changing the debuff on Improved Punctured Target from armour to flat raw mitigation (both types), say around ~4% to match its counterpart on Hunter. Armour debuffs have been outdated against freeps ever since damage was changed to Orc-craft/Fell-wrought over 8 years ago, and especially since the introduction of essences. So little freep mitigation comes from armour, so debuffing it is very ineffective.

[Spilo]

Warleaders need someway to bypass Fear resist with shout- range and AoE is nice, but will make it inconsistent to actually place the debuff where you want it.

Barrage buff is... interesting. The class has half a dozen skills at least that need a buff before it does (Flaming Arrow, Exploding Arrow, Strong Pull, Screaming Shafts, all melee skills).

[Hilawolf]

Please put feedback on the Warleader and the Blackarrow in this thread.

Quitters never win and Quit whining and fight heal for the same amount. There should be a bigger difference between the two, QnW should be raised and QwF should be lowered Cleave needs a large boost, and Black speech needs one as well. We need an increase in Finesse as well.

[Daec]

BA

-Stand Tall - It's been mentioned the buff feels very underwhelming. If the goal is to not make it easily attainable and keep at full tier, perhaps a middle ground of increasing the duration? This way it will still take time a to build/maintain with centre/VT but will provide a robust benefit if the BA is left alone but can still easily be set back by corruption removals.
-Barrage - I feel the skill sits in a decentish place, was hitting 42k range non crit, and 56k crit on a defense stacked champ. This seems okay since its fired every 1 second, would like to see a slight bit more damage since the skill is easily counterable with damage/CC/interrupts which freeps have a plentiful supply of.

[Carved]

If the goal is to not make it easily attainable and keep at full tier

I just don't see why not though, given its conditional presence as a corruption. If it's not obtainable from VT and PT, very little about BA will change from live.

[CHEBURASHKA]

WL:
Main problem with WL: Fear resist problem: ‘Muster Courage’ (+40% fear resist raid wide buff) in combination with other resist buffs make all ‘Fear type’ skills resist all the time.
How to solve it?
- make these skills ignore a big portion of fear resist that freeps have (40% for example)
- change skill resist type from Fear to Disease, for example

Suggestions:
1) make all WL shouts ignore fear resist by like 40%
2) DO NOT REMOVE STANCE SWAPPING OR INCREASE CD OF STANCES: stance swapping is what makes WL hard to play because you need a lot of awareness to know exactly when to do it. Removing Stance swapping is the same as removing positional dmg from warg and hence making it way easier to play it (Note: I know that there is nothing regarding stance swapping in the notes but I just wanted to say this just in case you decide to nerf stance swapping).
3) tact mast debuff on banner is too big, reduce it by half at least
4) add offensive debuff (mitigation/inc dmg/max morale reduction) with short duration to ‘Cleave’ to make it more useful and make WL rotation harder
5) add defensive groupwide buff to ‘Fracture’ with short duration (it will combine well with induction buff that it gives now cause if you need to heal someone you would also benefit from defensive buff at that time)
6) add useful debuffs or buffs to ‘Black Speech’ and ‘Intimidating Shout’ instead of buffing dmg. Reason: WL dmg is not that important for group pvp but offensive buffs/debuffs, on the other hand, are. Also making a healing class do a lot of damage solo is not good.
7) make shouts and melee skills buffs/debuffs different depenging on stance
8) make ‘Snap Out of It’ two separate skills: one skill removes CC and the other gives HOT. Why is that important? Because this skill does two things that are not always needed at the same time. You often need to remove CC from one person (for example healing defiler) but you don’t need to give HOT to it (and vice versa).
9) reduce shouts and melee skills CDs in Commander Stance (make CDs the same as in Brawler). There aren’t that many skills on WL, long CDs are not needed. WL rotation should be more complex so CD reduction is a good thing.
10) reduce healing skills CDs for more dynamic rotation:
- Crack The Whip (from 4s to 3s)
- Quit Whining and Fight (from 10s to 8s)
- Snap out of It (from 15s to 12s)
If this turns out to be too strong – healing values could be reduced a bit.
11) dread on banners seems kinda useless because of hope token. I suggest removing dread from both banners and adding -5% max morale on 1 banner.


BA:
1) make all dps skills better compared to ‘Vital Target’, ‘Tangleshot’ and ‘Revenge’ (and redistribute dmg). Especially ‘Strong Pull’, ‘Explosive Arrow’, ‘Flaming Arrow’, ‘Screaming Shafts’, ‘Headshot’.
2) make ‘Skirmisher’ Stance useful. My suggestion is to make it an aoe based stance. Reason: creep aoe damage is almost non existent.
3) fix ‘Explosive Arrow’ aoe bug.
4) make 2 melee skills (‘Cut’ and ‘In Your Face’) more useful by adding either debuffs or buffs (for your group) to them. Reason: currently there is almost no point in using them, especially in group pvp.
5) make traps (‘Fire Trap’ and ‘Set Trap’) more useful for group pvp.
6) rework ‘I See You’ - make it do some kind of a buff to your group instead of stealth detection (which is useless).
7) make ‘Centre’ some kind of an offensive buff (like Burn Hot on hunter or something). Reason: power HOT is useless.

[LagunaD2]

-Barrage - I feel the skill sits in a decentish place, was hitting 42k range non crit, and 56k crit on a defense stacked champ.

How is this "decent" compared to the damage Hunters do, which is 10x higher?

[Daec]

How is this "decent" compared to the damage Hunters do, which is 10x higher?

If you feel the value needs to be higher, post your feedback. I based my opinion on the obvious issues with the skill, such as shooting through walls and what not which will lead to the problems that caused the skill to be nerfed into the ground previously. I did say the damage should be higher in the end (if i had to choose and this might be a little high, 55-65k normal ticks and 70-90k normal crits/devs range in the same scenario i posted previously) as the skill has its obvious draw backs as well but with the rate at which it ticks moving base damage too high means it will almost assuredly kill anything with 1-2 ticks in a half raid/raid settings if you jam your corruptions into crit and we're back at 130 cap all over where BAs just put barrage on 1 through = on their toolbar and call it a day.

[Melkori]

+ 1 make shouts ignore fear resists.
Its ridiculous if there is a cappy buff on freeps every second shout skill is resisted.

Also please fix Get a Grip and Imposing Presence skills. Really annoying that I cant control this buff when many around. (especially when I get rezzed in the middle of raid I have to walk away to get my IP buff)

[Blotch]

Tha BA class needs to deal more dmg. IVT is poor version of HS both in dmg and bleed dmg. I think that with IVT we should be hitting targets for 300k on a regular shot just because hunters can triplicate that number. If you believe that amount of dmg is really high you could decrease from 5 to 3s the benefit of using IPS to decrease the cd of IVT. I agree with CHEBURASKA in several points but with some extra suggestions:
1)skirmisher stance should remove induction from all skills even traps, we do not build up dmg using that stance so our dps is deeply compromised.
2)set trap should be changed to a knowdown trap. I dont believe traps should give group utility, they already do because you use them to deal dmg
3)Centre should be an offensive skill, either increase our dmg like burning hot or increase our critical chance. Ideally both.
4)we have 3 melee skills we don't use. Delete the trait that improves gash and assign the knockdown to the base skill. That remaining trait slot should be equiped to increase our range 10m.
5)improve flaming arrow to tier up dots
6)improve strong pull to apply a benefit that allows to remove induction from the following skill, just like hunters who get a free induction SB.
7)improve screaming shafts to apply fear effect upon a target hit with all three hits. Increase dmg to 50% to all hits.
8)replace explosive arrow with a new skill called throat shot, applying a moderate amount of dmg plus bleed to silence a target for 10s (to better place a BA against tactical classes)

[Strider3x3]

WARLEADER

Now deals really decent damage, but gets resisted and BPAd a lot.
=> Add +100k finesse to Brawler stance. Add a passive -20% Resistance vs. Tactical Skills or bind it to the Damage Boost trait (like the Lore Master's Resistance vs. Debuffs tracery) to diminish Captain's Muster Courage groupwide +42% fear resist.

Still too much HPS in Brawler stance and no stance.
=> At the minimum, change Harsh Language trait from +25% to +15% Out Heal and Commander's stance from +15% to +25% Out Heal.

While the complexity and decision making of Defiler increased greatly, Warleader still feels stagnant and linear. Add 1-2 more skills and change some skills depending on stance.
=> Examples:
- Add a new skill similar to 'Snap Out of It!' (or add the effect to this skill) that removes up to three Physical or Tactical effects on the target.
- Make the 'no induction on next heal' effect from Fracture exclusive to Commander's stance (not bound to Power of Fear trait anymore).
- Make Fracture a 3 target AoE in Brawler stance.
- In Brawler stance, increase Cleave number of targets from 3 to 5 and make it an immediate skill.

Overall, Warleader feels really better now in healing and DPS (not in active support though).

BLACKARROW

Centre is not worth the channeling due to lost damage you could do instead. It is not going be used like that except as opening of zerg and skrim.
=> Make Centre like Hunter's Focus so you can double tab it for instant effect (so you can use it during the fight to keep the corruption running) or add something like +20% damage on the next shot for every 1.5s channeling as an aim-and-burst option.

With Vital Target alone you can't stack or even keep the corruption. Add +1 tier of Stand Tall to another skill with longer CD, maybe rephrase Explosive Arrow for that purpose instead of fixing it.

+1 to CHEBURASHKA and Blotch, especially the idea to make Skirmisher Stance situational useful again.

Overall, BA feels nearly the same with some minor additions.

[Namesse]

Uruk Blackarrow:
New Corruption buff: Stand Tall:
- Gives +5% Skill Damage, +2 Max Range, and -3% Induction Duration per tier.
- Tiers up to a max of 3 (15% Damage, 6 Range, -10% Inductions).
- 15s Duration.
- This effect is a Corruption, and can thus be dispelled by the free peoples.
'Centre' is once again a channeled skill:
- Tiers up Stand Tall every 1.5s while channeling.
- Fixed negative Power scaling on Centre.
'Vital Target' and 'Improved Vital Target' will add one tier of Stand Tall.
Steadfast Barrage increases range to 40m and deals more damage per tick and channels for 6 seconds. Cooldown now 20s.
Improved Steadfast Barrage gives a chance to crit and increases damage per tick and channels for 8 seconds. Cooldown now 20s.


The more I think about the corruption for additional range, I just don't see it being useful. BAs aren't going to move around simply because the range changes, especially since it needs to be built up +2 at a time, is a short duration and can be dispelled.

The target is the target. If grouped, and the target assist chooses a target that is out of range for the BA, the BA moves as necessary and probably won't move again unless it's to move out of a debuff or a different target or perhaps closer to a healer. The BA isn't going to be moving forward and backward because the range changes in either direction. Just give them a +10 permanent range change like the freeps have with their LIs.

I wasn't on beta, so this is me reflecting on how this might be useful in an actual fight.

[Spilo]

WL:

- Word on the street is that Bleeding Ears has a horrible DoT potency

- This class would also benefit from another DPS and Healing/Buffing skill, especially healing/buffing! Massive gaps in rotation especially with the induction reduction- this could be a good spot for a small single target buff (+%mitigations and a 25% inc heal modifier for 10s for example). I think buff would be the way to go to make WL engagement midfight more dynamic- I'm not a WL main so I'll let folks who play the class suggest the specifics.

---

BA:

Cool changes here, some critiques:

- I don't think Tangleshot is where the Inc Heal debuff should be- I think having it on an induction skill makes sense. Tangleshot already has its purpose with using it in combo with a slow. Instead, put the inc heal debuff on the shiny new Strong Pull- VT still does more direct damage and has the DoT. With this change, BAs would have a better skill spread while making sure the inc heal debuff takes "brains" to apply. This may mean that its CD needs to be increased to 20s.
- Awesome that some of the basic skills got some love- Explosive Arrow desperately requires looking into, and the Flaming Arrow DoT is terrible especially given that it's removable.

[Carved]

Please return Tangleshot to its originial CD, the heal debuff should be on VT. Even at 30% that's fine. Perhaps you could do something about it being resisted so much?



Just gonna be honest, this BA corruption is becoming a mess. It's not a significant enough buff to warrant this awkward application.

I propse that Strong Pull is the ONLY way to tier up the buff, and Strong Pull's CD is decreased to 10s, keeping its increased damage. If you open with Strong Pull, you can get tier 3 corruption 20s in to the fight, and given that it can be removed in 2 skills, I think that's perfectly reasonable.



As it stands, the heal from Centre is COMPLETELY useless. It can be interrupted by just damage (presumably functioning like the knockback of a typical induction, eventually just cancelling the skill outright), so any situation where you actually need to heal (whether in a 1v1 or as the focus target of a raid), you won't be able to.

It's an unholy mess of a skill right now. Please, I implore you, change Centre in to a throughput CD, akin to Burn Hot. I was wrong to suggest turning it in to more healing, we don't need more of that in the game and BA already has a defensive CD. A damage CD is the perfect choice for this skill, it's just what BA needs to really round out its kit.



With these proposed changes, as well as making the DoT from Flaming Arrow un-pottable, pretty much every skill has a purpose, and BA is mostly done. Cheers.

[Melkori]

Hey Orion,

Warleader cannot cure Champions Duel skill slow effect please correct this. Also on live you cant cure brawler slow.
Please update Purge skill for these two.