Captain Changes and Feedback

[Hephburz-2]

So, aside from bug fixes, I'm seeing no alterations on anything that has been brought up in this thread in BR2? Lovely.

[StormsFury85]

So, aside from bug fixes, I'm seeing no alterations on anything that has been brought up in this thread in BR2? Lovely.

Yeh, I'm a bit confused why the warden feedback is getting lots of blue name feedback yet captain hasn't had any feedback in approaching a week. Most people's concerns over the sheer lack of healing for a main healer revamp have also gone under the radar.
I'm reckoning we need to provide more detailed feedback with screenshots in an effort to help the Devs understand just how weak blue captain is at present as well as 1 or 2 design flaws with the revamp, looking at you Valiant strike.

It's all we can do. That, and hope for blue cappy love before the changes go live and it's in a worse state than live.

But regardless, some of the changes look fine. Red cappy looks good in concept
blue captain is just where all the absolute major flaws lay at present in my personal opinion.

[Hephburz-2]

Yeh, I'm a bit confused why the warden feedback is getting lots of blue name feedback yet captain hasn't had any feedback in approaching a week. Most people's concerns over the sheer lack of healing for a main healer revamp have also gone under the radar.
I'm reckoning we need to provide more detailed feedback with screenshots in an effort to help the Devs understand just how weak blue captain is at present as well as 1 or 2 design flaws with the revamp, looking at you Valiant strike.

It's all we can do. That, and hope for blue cappy love before the changes go live and it's in a worse state than live.

But regardless, some of the changes look fine. Red cappy looks outstanding for the most part.
Blue cappy is where all the issues lay atm.

Blue? No. There are issues with all 3 lines, and none will be viable if this update goes live like this. Captain will be no more than a motivation buff bot that you bring in to buff your group and/or raid and then replace.

[Aeviternus]

No changes to blue captain going from BR1 to BR2. No acknowledgement of the numerous concerns. Nothing.

The bugfix for Valiant Strike apparently did not work; if I use Valiant Strike without a Shield-brother, nobody is healed at all. I guess that's about as much feedback as can be given this round of Bullroarer. Until the next one.

Important bug reports:

• Lend Courage (Herald ability) can now only be toggled on/off, and the player cannot direct the Herald to use this ability. This is (I pray unintentionally) another huge nerf to captain survivability.
• Defensive Strike does not apply Battle-readied if the skill is BPE'd by the opponent.
• Standard of Honour (blue banner) does not pulse for the advertised 15 seconds. It only pulses for 10 seconds, even though the banner lingers a little longer.

[Hephburz-2]

Only thing I can comment on this round is the bleed fixes/changes and now that we have Shadows Lament in red we can parse properly, DPS was up about 100k over BR1, a great improvement - BUT, personal DPS does not make up for a lack of group support.

[Aeviternus]

The Abysmal Survivability of Blue Captains

Before I show my examples, a few notes to make.

• Unfortunately, it appears I was hovering my mouse over some specific abilities in some screenshots. This does not actually matter as the overall HPS is not relevant - what matters is the time until death, and the distribution of healing between the various sources, which is still visible.
• On Bullroarer, I had a Tome of Defence, Mitigation Tomes, and Scroll of Max. Morale and Power rolling. This skews survivability in favour of the Bullroarer scenario.
• Lend Courage on Bullroarer is not working correctly.
• My PvE gear is quite terrible, but this does not actually matter for the result.

Method: Simply try to survive the first mob pack in Silent Street T2. You can survive indefinitely with the right gear - let's not digress into that.

Conclusion: Actual self-healing has increased. This does not mean survivability has increased. I made many more attempts than the ones I've posted below. It was very difficult to survive longer than 1 minute on Bullroarer. It was easy to survive more than a minute on the live servers without a Tome of Defence and other store buffs. Muster Courage was nerfed greatly. Inspire (for some reason) does not heal the captain. Essentially, we have no self-healing except for Gift of Spirit, which requires us to be engaged in melee combat. I cannot stress enough how poorly designed this is, given the Blue captain's playstyle.

On a side note: Rallying Cry healing seems rather pathetic these days.

Suggestions:

• Make Inspire heal the captain.
• Make Valiant Strike heal the captain.
• Revert the Muster Courage nerfs.
• Make Defensive Strike actually do something "defensive".
• Let Reform the Lines heal the captain.
• Give Blue captain a personal survivability cooldown. It desperately needs one.

Live results:





Bullroarer results:

[Kevpain]

I don't know about anyone else, but my improved standard of honour is only up for 10 seconds instead of 15 seconds and only pulses 4 timess. Anyone else seeing this? I don't understand why valiant strike has to change from a single big heal on a SB to a HOT on fellowship and having to toggle between the two. Just make the skill one, Big heal on the SB and a HOT for the fellowship. Inspire should heal the captain too and not just have a POT. Reform the lines needs a huge decrease in cd and heal the captain too. Its not that big of a heal to begin with. Muster courage heal needs some love and should be switched over to defensive strike for the heal. That way a Captain doesnt have to choose between heal itself or remove a effect when the time comes. Interesting thought maybe make the Herald of Hopes lend courage heal the fellowship?

[theultimatekyle]

With the dps changes this build I can get can 250k dps with my normal raid build in redline, with blade bro on my herald.
If I go for a pure dps build and use stand alone I can hit up to 400k dps, but thats a super glassy build, but I see on ghyns that some cappies are hitting up to 500k.
At least now with the power alterations from b1 I can actually do a parse though.

Defensive strike still isnt giving the reduced incoming damage or the 5% parry from the defensive blade trait.

Valiant strike is still pretty awful to use, and needs to be reverted. I havent had a chance to test blue cappy yet in this bullroarer, but I may try to group for one of the new instances later to take a look, but just looking at it, its still lacking self healing and self cooldowns.

But judging from both ghyn's captain channel and here, all suggestions for the captain have been ignored except for complaints about redline power consumption. Whats the threshold of unhappy players that needs to be met before concerns or suggestions are taken seriously? If the changes are just going to be bull dozed through without regards for the players, whats the point in us testing anything on bullroarer?

I'd like to know i'm not just wasting my time here.

[Aeviternus]

I don't know about anyone else, but my improved standard of honour is only up for 10 seconds instead of 15 seconds and only pulses 4 timess. Anyone else seeing this?

Astute observation. Seeing the same thing.

[Hephburz-2]

But judging from both ghyn's captain channel and here, all suggestions for the captain have been ignored except for complaints about redline power consumption. Whats the threshold of unhappy players that needs to be met before concerns or suggestions are taken seriously? If the changes are just going to be bull dozed through without regards for the players, whats the point in us testing anything on bullroarer?

I'd like to know i'm not just wasting my time here.

This.

[Geremir]

The Abysmal Survivability of Blue Captains

Suggestions:

• Make Inspire heal the captain.
• Make Valiant Strike heal the captain.
• Revert the Muster Courage nerfs.
• Make Defensive Strike actually do something "defensive".
• Let Reform the Lines heal the captain.
• Give Blue captain a personal survivability cooldown. It desperately needs one.

Agreed on the above!

If they intend to keep SoD in blue line, might as well make it self-applicable it's not like it is game breaking when being a healer. Really helps you to survive yourself for that matter.

Is it just me or can't you use Valiant Strike atm? Says general error when I try in blue! (General Error 0x100001DE)

--------------
Just figured that you can drag it from skill panel, but no heal, NADA!

[Hephburz-2]

Is it just me or can't you use Valiant Strike atm? Says general error when I try in blue! (General Error 0x100001DE)

Think it's because it is still bugged, you still have it (or at least I did) in red.

[Geremir]

Think it's because it is still bugged, you still have it (or at least I did) in red.

Yeah you can redrag it from skill panel, but it heals 0! Just does not apply the heal effect at all, just thin air!

[theultimatekyle]

Yeah you can redrag it from skill panel, but it heals 0! Just does not apply the heal effect at all, just thin air!

You have to go into blue, drag the old one off your skill bar, and then go to your skills panel, there is actually two valiant strikes in there. The old version that doesnt work, and a new version that does. Still doesnt heal the captain at all, or anyone else in the fellow, but it will heal your shield brother.

[Elmagor]

What do you think about idea with QoL change? During fight with big amount of mobs (mission, skirmish, raid, instance...) we have situation where captain need keep his mark on some target. Like boss, or some dangerous mob. But with most of fights captain just need keep mark on target what he attacking. What if captain, depending on his spec, can activate his mark on his target without clicking on skill? Like we fighting with 10 orcs and boss, and you when you attack first mob, your mark automatically lands on him. After you kill first orc, you start attacking second orc, and mark appears on him. But if you need land it on boss, you can do it manualy and mark stay on boss when you attacking other targets, as it happens right now. It save a lot of time. Same thing can happen with beoring mark of beorn. Because unlike other melee classes, this two support melee classes spend some time with micro managing their support skills.

[1Asy1]

What do you think about idea with QoL change? During fight with big amount of mobs (mission, skirmish, raid, instance...) we have situation where captain need keep his mark on some target. Like boss, or some dangerous mob. But with most of fights captain just need keep mark on target what he attacking. What if captain, depending on his spec, can activate his mark on his target without clicking on skill? Like we fighting with 10 orcs and boss, and you when you attack first mob, your mark automatically lands on him. After you kill first orc, you start attacking second orc, and mark appears on him. But if you need land it on boss, you can do it manualy and mark stay on boss when you attacking other targets, as it happens right now. It save a lot of time. Same thing can happen with beoring mark of beorn. Because unlike other melee classes, this two support melee classes spend some time with micro managing their support skills.

Good idea to assume you could toggle when it self-applies and when you want it to remain on a target regardless of what the Captain/Bear is attacking.

[Hephburz-2]

Pretty sad that's it now been over a week, and a whole BR preview since the last time this thread was interacted with by the dev behind the changes.

[fealegwe2]

Pretty sad that's it now been over a week, and a whole BR preview since the last time this thread was interacted with by the dev behind the changes.

i get the feeling that someone higher up the food chain to the devs has a Veto Card on the changes. That can stay that has to be changed etc.
this would demotivate me to develop something new if that was me

i hope i am wrong and that they really are so focussed they forgot to give feedback

[Arabani]

It is our reaction to the changes, we do not praise them, we do not debate about particular aspects, numeric values and bugs. We question the concept on the whole.

Onn communicates in discrod, answering questions and so on. Mostly about rCaptain, to be honest. The crowd there is excited about the changes -from my understanding most of them are pvp players -and happy to do dummy parcers.

We also got our answers-bCaptain is melee, no other heals are needed, Gift is a great ability. yCpatain has too much support. And since we have not provided any valuable feedback except "it won't work", no more comments are needed.

At least it is how I see the situation.

[Kaeneth]

A minor note- but can Stout-axe Captains get their battle shout ability fixed? Right now using battle shout makes Stout-axe dwarves shout with the standard dwarf voice, which shouldn't ever occur, it never uses the correct Stout-axe variant shouts.

[KillAllFrep]

But judging from both ghyn's captain channel and here, all suggestions for the captain have been ignored except for complaints about redline power consumption. Whats the threshold of unhappy players that needs to be met before concerns or suggestions are taken seriously? If the changes are just going to be bull dozed through without regards for the players, whats the point in us testing anything on bullroarer?

This has happened with absolutely every single BR thread ever. Literally, I have never once seen a bombshell "kill-a-class" patch note response thread that hasn't been packed with "Oh my god you haven't thought this through" and a bunch of concerns, that isn't just totally ignored and the notes go live exactly as is. This isn't a test forum, this is an advance warning forum.

Regarding the changes, I've not played for a year because honestly they just watered Captain down so hard. What was once the utility tank that brought a rez, group defensives and good self-healing capability to offset a lack of raw mitigations and self-defences, or significant offensive buffs, appears to now just be a weaker Guardian without the offensive capabilities or threat management, and a complete joke compared to Brawler which just does everything an order of magnitude better.

Most of yCaptain group healing was over-heal, all of the self-healing was a tasty bonus in helping keep you yourself alive through big hits to make up for a lack of mits, now replaced with one new very long CD skill, at the expense of taunts, a ton of (most of, all of??) our group support, 95% of our group healing, and 50-80% of our self healing (depends on SiN vs Muster Courage numbers, not seen them yet). Just.. Why? No Tier 4 raid was taking 1 less healer because a yCaptain could over-heal 11/12 of the group.

bCaptain I really don't know, back in Remm days I could get 400k sustained HPS for 4-5 minutes straight on bosses, the only issues were that 300k of that was AoE overhealing while one big hit to the bCaptain or the tank was game over, because the only single target heal was negligibly small.

All bCaptain needed was:

- Muster Courage no longer heals
- Muster Courage heal moved to Words of Courage as an initial heal. HOT component massively massively increased but only lasts 12 seconds. MC initial heal applies to both "brothers".
- Words of Courage can be used on self (yeah sounds dumb, but what other healers can't heal themselves?) Just call it.. Thoughts of courage if it's used on yourself.
- Reform the Lines CD 40 seconds.
- Shield of the Dunedain remains in yCaptain tree but is also a capstone reachable in bCaptain tree only by bCaptain. rCaptain should not be able to get bubble.
- SotD only in bCaptain tree can be used on self.
- One big non-HOT AoE heal on a 40-60 second cooldown, to help recover from massive group damage spikes.

That's it.

yCaptain needed:

- Motivating Speech to not last 5 minutes, why can't it be 30 mins like it used to be? Heavens forbid someone should group with a Captain, get the buff and then leave and be free to wreak havoc across the lands with a whopping 10% extra morale!

- Strength in Numbers scaled to be a percentage heal. 1% per second for each group member nearby up to six. 10 second duration, 60 second CD. Maxed out that's a 60% heal once a minute, as a HOT (i.e. less strong).

- Exemplar just totally reworked, as it stands it's garbo; what used to be the single most overpowered trait in the entire game, allowing me and a Lore-Master to fight literally 2 vs 60 in the Ettenmoors and be 100% unkillable for an hour at a time became a trait that was barely even worth the point spent.

- In Harms Way and Last Stand durations synchronised. I don't even care if you don't buff LS duration again, just make it so that the synergy of using both skills as a last-ditch effort to save the group isn't a guaranteed wipe if you did manage to save the group, the second LS ends you've still got 5-10 straight seconds of 1mil incoming DPS on you.

- A massive damage increase, which would still make it by far the lowest DPS tank of any of the tanks, but at least we might be able to generate some semblance of threat with a few AoE skills for when taunts are down or on CD and a bunch of mobs appear.

I think that's it. All I ever really struggled with was taking more direct damage than other tanks, and the annoying way the taunts work and complete lack of any meaningful damage output. yCaptain could not use a single damaging skill in most fights and nobody would even notice.

Sad to see that we're going to lose our "guaranteed spot" as a raid tank, since literally nobody wants a Blue Captain vs any of the other healers, and rCaptain appears as though it's just going to be a worse, non-AoE Champ that deals 30% less ST damage and feels clunky and slow to play (as it always has).

I'm not too invested anymore these days, but I would consider coming back if bCaptain (as the single most fun class in the game to play, for me) became a truly viable healer to compete with the others, and yCaptain didn't get constantly and repeatedly nerfed to make room for Brawler to literally get given whatever just got removed from Captain in whatever latest patch rolled out.

[1Asy1]

Tumbleweed?

[Hephburz-2]

Tumbleweed?

This is really quite embarrassing now ngl.

[auximenes]

Yeah, not sure what the deal is here. The communication just ended without warning.

[Neinda]

Yeah, not sure what the deal is here. The communication just ended without warning.

You may try checking the discord. Maybe the conversation moved over there.