Developer's Diary – Captain Updates by OnnMacMahal

[OnnMacMahal]

1. Can you uncouple the single target self heal from muster courage and just make it its own skill? Its not a good gameplay as a healer to have to choose between healing ourself or saving to remove debuffs from the group.

Possibly, though we're always loathe to add new skills if we don't really have to. I actually explored making Muster a targeted heal, though ultimately it felt a little unnecessary given how small the heal is and the fact that your 'default' target is almost always going to be an enemy (healing your tank if you have STF on or healing yourself anyway if not).

2. Can you make it so captains can heal themselves with words of courage? No other healer has that issue of not being able to target themselves with heals freely, and any rational for limiting captains self healing because of heavy armour/defense went out the window with beorning.

I like the flavor of WoC being an ally-targeted-only skill. As others have noted, it's not unprecedented. That said, captains ought to be able to keep themselves healed too (you're no use as a healer if you're dead) so we want you to have ways of keeping yourself topped up, even if WoC isn't one of those ways.

3. Could we have a specialisation bonus in blue captain to make rallying cry always heal for full, regardless of defeat event?

For full fellowship burst healing, or single-target burst healing? In other words, what issue are you experiencing that this would solve?

4. Lastly, are there any plans to do anything about pressing attack? Would be nice if it were to become just a normal attack, not reliant on being part of the standard combo. I don't think captain really needs to get a lot of aoe, but it'd be nice to have one aoe attack that doesnt rely on some state.

Pressing Attack is going to stay part of the battle-state skill sequence, but it will have a slightly larger AoE radius (5.2m to be consistent with most melee AoE skills) and more importantly, you'll have Gallant Display as a default skill now. Gallant display only has a 5s cooldown, and will now be a frontal AoE skill, so it should be able to fulfill the role you're describing.

[theultimatekyle]

While we're not planning to rework Revealing Mark right now, it will be getting its potency halved for Red/Yellow captains, so it doesn't have so much value relative to the other mark skills. We don't want to encourage morale stacking, but we'll have to disincentivize morale stacking in a more systemic way than changing just this skill.

That's actually a significant and I'd argue important nerf to tank cappies, and oddly not in the initial notes back on page 1 of this thread. Are we missing any other significant information on the changes? Or are you waiting for beta #1 to surprise us with full notes? Halved potency on revealing mark alone could represent a 25% reduction in tank captain healing in a group.

[OnnMacMahal]

1. Motivating Speech and IDOME - Unlike other commenters, I like the skill but would prefer that it was returned to a toggle skill or have a duration longer than 5 mins. I find myself unexpectedly losing max morale mid-battle because I've not reapplied it and that gets annoying. In terms of a fellowship, instead of it being a cappy exclusive buff, could it give different effects to each class rather than +10% morale? Eg. as nice as more morale is to a burglar, if I want to motivate them; it'll be with increased crit magnitude!

Unfortunately, class-specific bonuses can get out of hand very fast, but the duration of Motivate is going to be increased. Even without consideration for average fight duration, the need to click a skill (which essentially has no effect if you're just refreshing the buff) periodically every few minutes is a little too onerous.

2. Battle-readied + Battle Hardened - I know you want to look at improving DPS and the rotation of skills and so to fix that, why not keep the +5% Damage buff from Battle-readied when I go into Battle Hardened and keep the BH buffs when I use Blade of Elendil? Shadows Lament -> Devastating Blow -> BoE would make for a great combo of skills that would do lots of burst damage to hold aggro and then I can rotate my skills around keeping those buffs in effect and use Sure Strike for battle-readied buffs based on the trait tree spec.
I might have spent too long playing as a Guardian but it's like getting a block response and having to use other moves before Sheild swipe and then longer still before using Bash. It's a little counter-intuitive to unlock 2 high damage skills with short cooldowns but have to use other skills instead to capitalise on the Battle-readied buff for 15 seconds and then use Devastating Blow to unlock BH.

The passive effects attached to Battle-readied and Battle-hardened do make captain states fundamantally different in function when compared to a Guardian's response-chain skills. Captains have to be a bit more thoughtful about waiting to use their Battle-state skills, where Guardians are mostly considering which response skill to use, without necessarily delaying the use of any given skill for as long as possible. I would just call this a difference in skill execution between the two classes. One approach is not better or worse, they're just a little different from one another. And fortunately for you, captains have more than one way to enter a Battle-readied state, and you can often maintain both states simultaneously with high uptime. So you don't need to wait as long as possible before using Devastating Blow, but you should probably wait until either Battle-shout or Defensive Strike is about to be off cooldown.

3. Lend Will - The red/yellow line cappy doesn't have any burst heals for solo play but the pet can sacrifice its health to send to the cappy. Like the Champion's 'Exalted Combatant' set bonus, could the pet skill be activated when the captain's morale goes below a 35% threshold rather than whenever I take a little bit of damage? It would make the pet a little more helpful than as a blade brother and mean that when I'm trying to fight my way out of a losing battle, I don't have to manually click on the skill.

Unfortunately, your herald doesn't know much about your character's health, but expect this skill to change soon.

[OnnMacMahal]

I can't help but notice there's no mention of Halberds.

Any chance for a buff to Halberds to help promote Captain identity? Keep in mind, it should come with some kind of refund/transference mechanism because lots of people (like myself) already invested into 2H swords because they are mathematically better, but would rather use Halberds.

While I personally love my halberds, an increase to captain's halberd damage passive would make halberds categorically better for dealing damage, which would be equally frustrating for anyone who prefers other two-handed weapons (especially if they've already got weapons upgraded and built out).

[OnnMacMahal]

Onn,

EVERY RAID has two tanks and multiple healers. Don't switch song and shield bro.

There's no immutable rule stating that X-brother buffs have to be the same effect applied to both your ally and you. The actual skill name here is somewhat beside the point. The more salient detail is the fact your x-brother skills will benefit a complimentary role, rather than the role you're already fulfilling. That could potentially be considered a nerf if viewed only through the context of a tanking-captain's ability to support a second tank in the same fellowship, but should hopefully be a benefit to tanking captains in many more contexts.

[thymos]

While I personally love my halberds, an increase to captain's halberd damage passive would make halberds categorically better for dealing damage, which would be equally frustrating for anyone who prefers other two-handed weapons (especially if they've already got weapons upgraded and built out).

Shouldn't Halberds be good for something though? They are currently categorically useless because the DPS contribution is negligible and comes at the cost of meaningful bonuses on other weapons. It used to be all Captains used Halberds, now nobody does (who is serious about doing content anyway). Surely this is deeply wrong when Halberds are THE class exclusive weapon for Captains?

At minimum if you want parity between Halberds and 2H swords you could give Captains a passive that grants Halberds 2% Parry and 2H swords 2% auto attack crit. Surely no one could complain about that. That's a cheap and easy fix here.

EDIT: Actually I just thought of something a lot simpler and more effective.

OnnMacMahal, please please adjust the cosmetic system instead! Currently we cannot have a 2H Sword equipped with a Halberd cosmetic. The limitation exists for no reason. If you changed this then Captains could in effect use a 2H sword that is a Halberd, or vice versa, all without touching stats.

I desperately want to use the ultra iconic Captain's Arm from SoA again.

[OnnMacMahal]

Do I get it right, that besides increasing of Galant Display performance (and probably of the other existing heals) and moving SoD back to Blue, there are no other changes? No additional heals? No real heals? No castable heals? No group saves or emergency heals?

No, this list of changes is not entirely comprehensive. I'm working on getting a full list complete and formatted as quickly as possible.

How is it different from the current state of a captain healer? Our biggest issue is we do not have real, castable, spammable to some degree heals (both single target and group ones). We barely have any heal outside melee abilities (even worse, our only spamable heal was turned into hot some time ago, not that it was great in the first place, but now it is useless). Melee heals are too unreliable and too dependant on the fight (what are we supposed to do on fights that do not favor melee? or fights were we simply must stay range?). Melee skills should be an addition to the main kit, abilities that let you change your playstyle slightly dependng on the situation (adding personal dps and buffs to the group, while still healing them to some degree, for instance). That is why I suggested reactive heals: you cast them, then you can add melee abilities/combat arts/debuffs/buffs, stop to recast reactives when the charges need to be refreshed, react with propper spammable, after a fashion, heals if things get tough or if you need to stay ranged.

While I understand your concern, captains are a fundamentally melee-oriented class. If a fight is so melee-unfriendly that you can't be in melee range at all for long periods, I would argue that's an issue with the encounter rather than the class.

[auximenes]

If everyone has 10% less health, that doesn't really solve any issues facing either players or designers, so for the time being we don't plan on upending that precedent. The fact that all 10% of that value are locked up in captains, and only captains, has the potential to be an issue, however. And while that issue would be solved by removing Motivate, it could also be solved by allowing one or more other classes to provide a (mutually exclusive) motivate-ish buff.

If you give other classes a similar buff then Captains should get an additional self-only bonus added to compensate.

While I personally love my halberds, an increase to captain's halberd damage passive would make halberds categorically better for dealing damage, which would be equally frustrating for anyone who prefers other two-handed weapons (especially if they've already got weapons upgraded and built out).

A weapon type that is exclusively available to one class should be at worst a tie with other generic weapon types.

At minimum if you want parity between Halberds and 2H swords you could give Captains a passive that grants Halberds 2% Parry and 2H swords 2% auto attack crit. Surely no one could complain about that. That's a cheap and easy fix here.

/signed

[Atonu]

Possibly, though we're always loathe to add new skills if we don't really have to. I actually explored making Muster a targeted heal, though ultimately it felt a little unnecessary given how small the heal is and the fact that your 'default' target is almost always going to be an enemy (healing your tank if you have STF on or healing yourself anyway if not).

I would agree that making it a targeted heal is bad. While I think Blue Captain needs an expanded toolkit, I agree with another post you wrote that captain is a melee healer. It is and that should be kept at the forefront, though we both agree that more tools are needed to fulfil a main healer role!

I like the flavor of WoC being an ally-targeted-only skill. As others have noted, it's not unprecedented. That said, captains ought to be able to keep themselves healed too (you're no use as a healer if you're dead) so we want you to have ways of keeping yourself topped up, even if WoC isn't one of those ways.

Yea, I understand your point here, as I wrote below I think a lot of my thoughts on WoC as a blue captain will largely come from what changes you have planned to skills and stuff, so I'll refrain from hammering the point more until I have a more complete understanding of what position blue captain will be in It could be that my concerns are for naught, since if captain is fully capable of healing themselves in the same way other healers can, then whether or not they can heal themselves with WoC specifically is a moot point.

For full fellowship burst healing, or single-target burst healing? In other words, what issue are you experiencing that this would solve?

Well, kinda both but mostly single-target burst. Obviously I don't know what changes you have planned for healing skills in general, but currently its our only real non-HoT heal. (Well and GD but its not really positioned as a burst heal, I see it more akin to other healers aoe heals such as inspire fellows.

Pressing Attack is going to stay part of the battle-state skill sequence, but it will have a slightly larger AoE radius (5.2m to be consistent with most melee AoE skills) and more importantly, you'll have Gallant Display as a default skill now. Gallant display only has a 5s cooldown, and will now be a frontal AoE skill, so it should be able to fulfill the role you're describing.

I agree, with the posted changes to gallant display, I think pressing attack fills a nice roll as a stronger aoe now with the added limitation, with gallant display being the more spammable aoe skill akin to guardian, beorning ect.

Some new thoughts:

1. Can you change Blade of Elendil to just apply a DoT on the skill rather than the Light of Elendil thing, I'm not sure anyone will miss the 70 damage (at least on my level 100 captain). You could buff the Light as well but I don't think its really worth it, very few people outside of captain and minstrel have access to any sort of light damage enhancement anyway and so even buffed I'm not sure it would really boost the party in any noticeable way.

2. Can the archer be looked at? Its kinda weird that he doesn't really do much more damage than the herald of war, given that he is the dedicated dps pet. I don't think he should contribute a super amount of damage since ultimately captain is a class with a pet, and not a pet class, but at least a medium amount to make it worth using over a herald would be nice even if you're just running around doing deeds in landscape.

[Arabani]

Inspiriting Presence
The current effect from this trait would be replaced by a new effect:
Critical hits with melee skills will give you one stack of ‘Inspiriting.’ Each stack will give you 2% Outgoing Healing, up to 5 stacks. At 5 stacks, you gain ‘Gift of Spirit’ a skill which consumes all stacks to significantly heal a targeted ally.

Speaking of this ability. What is the purpose of it? What's your goal? Because in the current state it has no use, really. Let's look at the similar skill of a minstrel-Snowball: an instant semi-emergency heal that ativates on the 6th cast of ANY heal, even an instant, no cd, spamable Soliloquy or Healing ballad. So, basically while doing his main job, actively healing, Minstrel gains an access to another realtively big heal at least every 10-15 seconds, faster if healing is more intensive, which no doubt helps him to keep people alive.

What do we have? An unreliable RNG based heal. What should we do when it is finaly available (how many times per minute do you suppose it to happen?). Sit on our hands waiting for the moment of truth, when it is needed? Or use it just for the sake of using and wait for another proc? In my book the skill is pretty much worhless.

I'm not sure of what your experience with healers is, but you can not make a healer work based on total rng (which includes relying mostly on melee skills, btw. Melee heals ARE rng based to some degree, one can no guarantee them to work when he wants) . It is fine as an addition, a chance to proc something, the buff part of your spell is fine, but not the heal component itself. As someone has said already-you are trying to substitute one rng ability with another, equally unreliable and meaningless to some degree.

I do not know, but the more I see your expanations of the "changes" for Blue line, the more sceptical I become.

To clarify it, I'm not against the concept of Melee healer, I love it, and I always play this way if I could (even as a minstrel I try using Herald strike as much as possible), but the reality of healing is that it should be reliable in its core kit, in its core function. A healer needs to counter the incoming damage (through wards, hots, reactives, damage reduction, damage redirect, direct heals and so on), but he can not say " oh, guys, wait, let me catch the boss that the tank is kiting so I could hit it and actually heal you while those archers and mages in different sides of the room are trying to kill you, while waves of orc reavers are doing the same, but they die too fast so I barely have time to use any of my melee heals on them. Oh and do not forget that I actualy need to maintain hots on you, on the tank, myself and cure detriments as well." I am exaggerating of course, but once again, there should be stability in healing.

[Atonu]

Speaking of this ability. What is the purpose of it? What's your goal? Because in the current state it has no use, really. Let's look at the similar skill of a minstrel-Snowball: an instant semi-emergency heal that ativates on the 6th cast of ANY heal, even an instant, no cd, spamable Soliloquy or Healing ballad. So, basically while doing his main job, actively healing, Minstrel gains an access to another realtively big heal at least every 10-15 seconds, faster if healing is more intensive, which no doubt helps him to keep people alive.

What do we have? An unreliable RNG based heal. What should we do when it is finaly available (how many times per minute do you suppose it to happen?). Sit on our hands waiting for the moment of truth, when it is needed? Or use it just for the sake of using and wait for another proc? In my book the skill is pretty much worhless.

I'm not sure of what your experience with healers is, but you can not make a healer work based on total rng (which includes relying mostly on melee skills, btw. Melee heals ARE rng based to some degree, one can no guarantee them to work when he wants) . It is fine as an addition, a chance to proc something, the buff part of your spell is fine, but not the heal component itself. As someone has said already-you are trying to substitute one rng ability with another, equally unreliable and meaningless to some degree.

I do not know, but the more I see your expanations of the "changes" for Blue line, the more sceptical I become.

To clarify it, I'm not against the concept of Melee healer, I love it, and I always play this way if I could (even as a minstrel I try using Herald strike as much as possible), but the reality of healing is that it should be reliable in its core kit, in its core function. A healer needs to counter the incoming damage (through wards, hots, reactives, damage reduction, damage redirect, direct heals and so on), but he can not say " oh, guys, wait, let me catch the boss that the tank is kiting so I could hit it and actually heal you while those archers and mages in different sides of the room are trying to kill you, while waves of orc reavers are doing the same, but they die too fast so I barely have time to use any of my melee heals on them. Oh and do not forget that I actualy need to maintain hots on you, on the tank, myself and cure detriments as well." I am exaggerating of course, but once again, there should be stability in healing.

This is the crux of the issue of the blue changes in my mind. One of two things can be true: Either you can make captain a better healer than now, but keep it in the "raid healer" role and ignore the fact that the melee healing skills DO have flaws, or you can actually give it the tools it needs to be a healer first and a flavourful melee captain second. You simply cannot do both otherwise its all just a waste of time. I think its ok to have some abilities locked behind states, requiring it to be fulfilled by hitting a certain criteria but it simply cannot be that the main tools needed to heal are that way, otherwise you're just asking for a situation where you have "Sorry, the tank died but I didn't crit 5 times." "Sorry the group wiped but I didn't crit and get a defeat event." Its fine to have rng in the main toolkit of a dps because it averages out overtime (in theory), you cannot do that to a healer otherwise you're expecting magical situations where both the rng and the situation line up. I can imagine that skill always being up but never when you need it. The problem is that captain (currently) lacks the tools to be a sole healer in harder instances. It isn't a case of buffing or nerfing, they physically lack the abilities. Captain needs a targeted direct heal, there is no way around that and it can be claimed that they are a melee until we all die from a lack of healing, but ultimately it should be a good healer first, and a good captain second but both are perfectly within reach.

[Arabani]

One more thing to add, which healer do you think people prefer in thier groups and raids?-The one who gives the best buffs to DPS and can do his main job regardless of circumstances. Noone really cares if a healer buffs another healer or a tank (once again this is the concept you are trying to push; no wonder people asking about Blade Brother being available to every Captain, this is the only brother buff they want). Hence Minstrel and Beorning are so pupular in raids. And they will continue being so until Capatain gains both-reliable healing and good buffs to DPS classes.

[Atonu]

One more thing to add, which healer do you think people prefer in thier groups and raids?-The one who gives the best buffs to DPS and can do his main job regardless of circumstances. Noone really cares if a healer buffs another healer or a tank (once again this is the concept you are trying to push; no wonder people asking about Blade Brother being available to every Captain, this is the only brother buff they want). Hence Minstrel and Beorning are so pupular in raids. And they will continue being so until Capatain gains both-reliable healing and good buffs to DPS classes.

Also the problem is that it wont take many miraculous instances of the rng being bad for the captain for people to just abandon captains as a healer out of hand. Ultimately players dont want random success in an instance anymore than captains want random healing. It seems the devs are dead-set on adding all these additional criteria on captain heals and I genuinely do not understand why. If they're worried about abilities being used too often, that is why we have cds. If they are worried a non-blue captain will have access to too much self healing, that is why we have trait specs. Captain always has been and shout remain a combat medic, healing in the thick of it but I don't understand the complete unwillingness to consider that even as a 90% melee healer, giving a captain one ability with a cast time and direct healing isn't going to make people abandon the rest of the melee heals. The reality is that unless they add a melee strike that heals the lowest health person in the party, some form of direct heal is going to be required in some way shape or form. The only options cannot just be shield-brother or the group, there has to be some reliable way to heal other single targets aside from WOC. Unless they're planning on buffing the instant heal from WoC but I imagine it would have been mentioned if any existing heals were getting big overhauls.

[Aeviternus]

Possibly, though we're always loathe to add new skills if we don't really have to. I actually explored making Muster a targeted heal, though ultimately it felt a little unnecessary given how small the heal is and the fact that your 'default' target is almost always going to be an enemy (healing your tank if you have STF on or healing yourself anyway if not).

I don't know what you've been doing with the numbers, perhaps you've rebalanced it all. However, on the live servers, Muster Courage is the single largest heal that a captain has available. It heals for more than Rallying Cry, even (on a single target). So I would much prefer to have the ability to use this heal on other people. Having to swap between enemy targets and friendly targets is what makes the blue captain playstyle unique, and enjoyable. This should not be a counter argument.

[auximenes]

words

Thanks for the great communication.

[Allantor]

Unfortunately, class-specific bonuses can get out of hand very fast, but the duration of Motivate is going to be increased. Even without consideration for average fight duration, the need to click a skill (which essentially has no effect if you're just refreshing the buff) periodically every few minutes is a little too onerous.

The passive effects attached to Battle-readied and Battle-hardened do make captain states fundamentally different in function when compared to a Guardian's response-chain skills. Captains have to be a bit more thoughtful about waiting to use their Battle-state skills, where Guardians are mostly considering which response skill to use, without necessarily delaying the use of any given skill for as long as possible. I would just call this a difference in skill execution between the two classes. One approach is not better or worse, they're just a little different from one another. And fortunately for you, captains have more than one way to enter a Battle-readied state, and you can often maintain both states simultaneously with high uptime. So you don't need to wait as long as possible before using Devastating Blow, but you should probably wait until either Battle-shout or Defensive Strike is about to be off cooldown.

Unfortunately, your herald doesn't know much about your character's health, but expect this skill to change soon.

Thanks for your response. I thought class specific bonuses might be a stretch but I wanted to offer an alternative option if players are complaining about the morale increase. As for the increased duration - Thank you! I look forward to finding out what the improved duration will be.
As for the BR -> BH states suggested change, I understand that playing as a cappy is more tactical than a guardian and that's why I like it. I was suggesting it as an easy fix to improve DPS and skill rotation but since Defensive Strike and Gallant Display are being added to the standard skills, that issue is solved. Is there a way of adding a 15secs timer to the Devastating Blow, Pressing Attack and BoE icons so I can see how long the buffs are active for / how long I have to use the skills? That would be a QoL improvement for me see how long I have to use the skills or reapply the state.
I figured the herald didn't know how much health I had when it was randomly sacrificing it's health when my cappy was scratched! Thank you for looking into changing it.

Regarding the Friday update; I like the majority of it. Thank you.
A few questions: could the Defensive Strike cooldown be reduced to 10 seconds? It would be more readily included into a skill rotation and keep being in Battle-Readied state easier.
Inspiriting Presence - As other commenters have outlined; critical hits are hard to come by so to need 5 in order to gain a significant but single target heal is a tall order and it'll just become an unreliable heal that hardly ever gets used. Instead, could it be linked to Gallant Display so each time it's used, the cappy gets a 1% Outgoing Healing 'Inspiriting' buff and after 5 uses, gains the Gift of Spirit skill? It would also make the increased Power cost of Gallant Display worth it
Stand Alone - I like the concept - it sounds similar to the Dissonance Stance for Minstrels. Could you give more details about the skills please? I hope Self-motivation gives the same heal as Inspire but only to the cappy, especially as a solo Red-line cappy would rely on it for an in-battle heal and wait to use the more potent Rallying Cry heal. I presume Masterful Strike will have a 1 Min cooldown and Cry of Fury will have a 5 min cooldown, would that be right?.

[thymos]

OnnMacMahal, please please adjust the cosmetic system instead to make Halberds a thing again!
Currently we cannot have a 2H Sword equipped with a Halberd cosmetic. The limitation exists for no reason. If you changed this then Captains could in effect use a 2H sword that is a Halberd, or vice versa, all without touching stats.

I desperately want to use the ultra iconic Captain's Arm from SoA again.

This has become the only change I care about.

[Zaheer]

I would personally love to see Captain be more of a Bard class like other games (specifically like EQ2). Yes, he has some health regen, etc...for group, but the buffs he provides greatly offsets its lack of healing. If you look at EQ2's bard, they had sooo many different kind of very unique buffs and made a huge difference to groups who had one.

Buffs like reducing damage, chance on damage on spell cast/melee hit, resists to certain kinds of damage, threat generation for tank, mana/health regen, etc...

The buffs could be tied to the specific spec of the captain
....blue would increase heals of other healers in group, mana regen of group, less threat for party members except tank, quick instant rezz for players...cant get very creative here
...red would add DPS buffs (kinda like it does now)....maybe burst DPS buffs on a cooldown, but mainly focused around DPS buffing
---yellow would have more buffs relating to defense of group.

No matter what the buffs were, make the buffs significant enough that each spec would be desirable.

classic example, I've still got to catch up with this thread. But these kind of comments need to stop. You cannot change class just because you don't like it for what it represents. Some core elements need to stay in place to keep its identity intact.


Same goes for suggestions that allow a player to be serviced and have to think less critically about his decisions. E.g. suggesting the pet heal to automatically go off at a threshold of 35%, basically, you're asking a free ticket to compensate for your lack of critical thinking and awareness which you should learn to manage. Not ask to make it easier for you.

Such mechanic, with this one as example which I've seen in this topic creates:

1. The possibility to fail much like the warden Never Surrender not going off if the hit is greater than X%
2. Doesn't allow the player to manage or control it to his own liking. Maybe he needs the heal above 50% health?
3. Allows for more mistakes to be made, basically lowering the skill ceiling. This not only makes a player lazy but also banishes critical thought, it ruins class depth.

While I think we should welcome newer players to a class, it doesn't mean we should dumb down the class for the newer player, rather try to learn them to play the class instead.

[theultimatekyle]

Shouldn't Halberds be good for something though? They are currently categorically useless because the DPS contribution is negligible and comes at the cost of meaningful bonuses on other weapons. It used to be all Captains used Halberds, now nobody does (who is serious about doing content anyway). Surely this is deeply wrong when Halberds are THE class exclusive weapon for Captains?

At minimum if you want parity between Halberds and 2H swords you could give Captains a passive that grants Halberds 2% Parry and 2H swords 2% auto attack crit. Surely no one could complain about that. That's a cheap and easy fix here.

EDIT: Actually I just thought of something a lot simpler and more effective.

OnnMacMahal, please please adjust the cosmetic system instead! Currently we cannot have a 2H Sword equipped with a Halberd cosmetic. The limitation exists for no reason. If you changed this then Captains could in effect use a 2H sword that is a Halberd, or vice versa, all without touching stats.

I desperately want to use the ultra iconic Captain's Arm from SoA again.

One more time for those that refuse to read the rest of the thread. Halberds have a +5? damage bonus on captain. The devs won't adjust halberds to be stronger because they already are as strong as a 2 hander sword. 2 hander swords are better because they have a faster animation. Even if you could cosmetically equip a halberd over a 2 hander sword, you'd be giving up literally the only advantage a sword has over the halberd. If anything, ask the devs to alter the animation speed of attacks using halberds, cause a change to the cosmetics system would do you zero good.

[Elmagor]

This has become the only change I care about.

Well, this is pretty rude not only to players who want to see other changes too, but also to developers who doing their job with changing captain.

If game mechanic don't allow you use cosmetic halberd over 2 handed sword, what they can do about that? And if they somehow make that happen, many players want to see same thing for other weapons too

[Aurayael]

Not exclusively a matter for the captain. But with the blue line finally getting a makeover and the captain living up to his healer role:

After so many years, are there any thoughts of finally getting an indicator in the character menu for the Stat Outgoing Healrating as well?

(three current main healers and many new captain healers would certainly be grateful).

[gildhur]

Well, this is pretty rude not only to players who want to see other changes too, but also to developers who doing their job with changing captain.

If game mechanic don't allow you use cosmetic halberd over 2 handed sword, what they can do about that? And if they somehow make that happen, many players want to see same thing for other weapons too

It's rude to want something? They didn't say it's the only change they hope happens.

[thymos]

One more time for those that refuse to read the rest of the thread. Halberds have a +5? damage bonus on captain. The devs won't adjust halberds to be stronger because they already are as strong as a 2 hander sword. 2 hander swords are better because they have a faster animation. Even if you could cosmetically equip a halberd over a 2 hander sword, you'd be giving up literally the only advantage a sword has over the halberd. If anything, ask the devs to alter the animation speed of attacks using halberds, cause a change to the cosmetics system would do you zero good.

Why not? Halberds and Swords aren't equal even if both give 5% dmg because Swords give 2% parry and Halberds give a worthless auto attack crit stat instead. There's no need to buff Halberds or upset people's LI if you can just change the cosmetic system to be less arbitrarily restrictive. And it's probably such an easy change too, likely involves changing a single 0 to a 1 somewhere.

And as for attack speeds, so much of it seems like pure superstition, can't say I've noticed a significant difference. Now changing attack speeds to align with racial animations...that would be a freaking ordeal. Unless they just changed every skill to be 'Fast' or something, but that's homogenizing and problematic in its own way.

[Arabani]

A question about Shiled of the Dunedain, will it be possible to use the skill on ourselves? If not-why? Someitimes the healer is the one who needs saving. The initial class kit was well thought, it worked fine in the level 50-70 content, when its usefulness began to diminish and totaly disappeared after Helm's Deep.

I strongly believe that SoD should be useful on the caster, or Last Stand being back to the general class kit. I would prefer the latter.

[Elmagor]

It's rude to want something? They didn't say it's the only change they hope happens.

They say this is only one change what they care.