Recently the update dropped, this meant that there were some changes made to our rotation and without toomuch getting lost into details I'll cut straight to the point.
MoW = Master of War
What has happened to MoW?
MoW has its crit chance set to +25% for 5 seconds. It also only procs from inspire now when crit. This means you'll have about 33+2+5.5% (40.5) crit chance to proc MoW from inspire.
For the duration, you'll have 65.5% crit chance to crit lament as your cashout skill.
Before the change
Before the change, MoW gave our next melee attack a 100% crit chance but only for one count. However, it worked on both inspire and lament, meaning if you did crit inspire, your next crit on lament would give you another MoW proc to use on devastating blow (though deva blow crit chance got significantly up after the LI rework.) Nonetheless, it provided absolute surety that if you had MoW from inspire, lament would crit 100% followed by whatever melee attack after that. This allowed the captain to get burst combo's off reliably, which was part of its rotation.
The chance of you generating such chance was around 60% through a double dice cast. (without counting the banner in at the time). This meant you were allowed to throw OB in between inspire (mow) and lament to have guaranteed burst damage.
The problem with the current MoW
I'm just going to state what its current form is. It is a slot machine, you have no absolute surety to get your burst off. Yes, as a captain we do marginally more damage than we've ever done before and I am thankful for that, but the way you do damage can no longer be trusted as there's RNG involved. The RNG however may resolve itself over a longer period of combat due to damage getting an overall consistency.
Why do you not get your burst off? Because even if you have MoW proc with the slim chance we have, it's still only 65.5% you'll crit skills like Lament, which was one of your most reliable burst skills due the old MoW mechanic combined with your buffs.
The absolute surety the previous MoW gave allowed you to get creative and flexible, especially in circumstances of PvP.
Solution
There's a couple solutions I'd like to bring up. But before I'd like to make clear this is only in regards to MoW directed at the captain himself, meaning you as captain in stand alone.
Buff MoW Crit chance in stand alone by 25%, meaning we get 50% crit chance to combat the amount of RNG and give Stand Alone a slight edge over Blade Brother stance in terms of raw DPS output and reliability of that.
Create a tracery that buffs inspire crit chance by 15-20% to deal with unreliability.
If possible, I'd like to see the old MoW mechanic return with this tracery, meaning next melee-skill = 100% crit
Create a tracery that buffs MoW crit chance by 20-25%
I may edit some stuff later
Suggestions by the community:
Suggestions coming from the community in ghyniverse
Bailey — Yesterday at 11:37 PM
I wouldn't suggest more traceries unless it is very clear they are only Solo stance
And even then, traceries for only solo stance are kinda weird slot bloat
"Oh sorry, I don't do enough damage on my red captain because I gear his LI for raids, not solo stance"
I'd rather just have the cashout be tied to a separate skill that doesn't require any RNG, even if the RNG is still present overall
Give MoW a standalone skill; make inspire proc give you a stack to cash out and use that skill
I'm just going to state what its current form is. It is a slot machine, you have no absolute surety to get your burst off. Yes, as a captain we do marginally more damage than we've ever done before and I am thankful for that, but the way you do damage can no longer be trusted as there's RNG involved. The RNG however may resolve itself over a longer period of combat due to damage getting an overall consistency.
Why do you not get your burst off? Because even if you have MoW proc with the slim chance we have, it's still only 65.5% you'll crit skills like Lament, which was one of your most reliable burst skills due the old MoW mechanic combined with your buffs.
I'm very much behind you on this, I'm an advocate that rCAP DPS and support is in a great spot but right now consistency is certainly a buff I'd be behind (in solo-stance, and to a much lesser degree, brother). I partially agree with your solutions, primarily the 1st essentially since that "other" part of master of war that would normally be going to your blade brother isn't going to them anymore, and to an extent makes sense with group and brother buffs instead being placed on the captain in solo.
The MoW crit tracery idea while fun, seems a little bit too powerful given how MoW was already nerfed down from such numbers in the beta. But again, I'm with you that if lament/devblow crit during MoW isn't addressed to an extent, getting some inspire crit consistency is a good direction also, and getting that baked into the inspire damage tracery seems logical. However, I personally really like the partner effects seen in yellow-line's 'exemplar 'or lore master's 'co-ordination' and feel like that's a great mechanic for inspire to build some crit (especially since the captain lines mirror each other quite closely, and red line has no brother -> captain direction buffs, while yellow has exemplar and blue indirectly supports itself by through rezzes/outgoing healing buffs and what used to be inspiriting:
1. In solo stance, critical hits have a 50% chance to raise inspire crit chance by 5%, stacking 15 times with no cooldown. This would be baked into the "lead the charge" mechanic you get from red-line.
2. In brother stance, when your brother critically hits, your inspire crit chance is raised by 5%, but only up to 10 times and on a 3 second cooldown per proc. Since this is quite strong, I'd say it'd be best to be baked into another less traited talent, such as 'grievous wound'. Give it something like 3 levels and let the first grant the effect, while the next two points raise the cap (1point = 4 stacks (20%), 2 = 7 (35%), and 3 (50%) = 10). I've purposely made the max effect take longer to reach than inspire's cooldown to create a kind of interplay: having this just be a "buff" to inspire in brother line is misplaced, instead with speccing this you'd be allowed to hold onto inspire for a little longer, but greatly increase the chance you get MoW when you use it. Or you could gamble with inspire's 15s cooldown and at max have a 25% increased chance.
Anyways, just my two cents, criticism is heavily welcome.
Blade of Elendil should be buffed in Red and Blue the way it has been in Yellow. A more synergistic effect to reduce the RNG with MoW would be nice, yes.
Blade of Elendil should be buffed in Red and Blue the way it has been in Yellow. A more synergistic effect to reduce the RNG with MoW would be nice, yes.
Not sure if that's a proper solution, because Elendil usually sits in the start of the rotation to pickup on the 20% lament cashout. Unless the buff is long enough to stretch out to the point you do cashout lament