GF Suggestion knowing that Devs are currently looking at options for class

jumpingmorks

Just want to tag @kreatyve for this before I begin.

This will be seen as a nerf thread by many and I know they aren't looked kindly on by many. Also, not 100% sure this is the right place to post. I did double check the GF Class Forums and couldn't see a request from Devs regarding ideas on how to 'balance' GFs. If this is the wrong place to post if it could be moved or, if the Devs plan on making an official thread at some point to get an idea of what players who play GF's think before they make any final changes then pls go ahead and close this thread.

If you think the thread will be too combative or if it becomes so, could a mod at least forward this text to the/a dev(s) that are looking at the GF class currently before it is closed?

Thankyou in advance.

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I started in Mod 3 rolled a DC, but by Mod 5 got so sick of spending 5 minutes killing a pack of mobs only for some HAMSTER to steal my objective, I switched to GWF until in Mod 6 I rolled a GF and OP and haven't really looked back since.

Now I realise the problem isn't this simple and likewise neither will the answer be, but it appears to me that the hate regarding GF Damage started when Cryptic upped the GF base Damage by 20% so the likes of Tactitians wouldn't have to spend an hour in WoD alone completing just 3 dailies.

This was a great change, I ran a Prot for a very log time until my gear got to the stage where I could run Conc and still tank everything. But Since loadouts this change is now redundant. We all get 2 Loadouts for free, 1 can easily be used for Conc just for dailies without affecting your main build at all.

All I am suggesting with the Devs looking at the GF class, however long those changes might take, that reverting the 20% change and re-examining the band aid fixes made to the class mostly to appease angry PVP'ers (in my view) to see if any of those can be reverted too.

I would very much like to see GF's get tougher, the amount of Temp Hit Points they can generate is pitiful to say the least and the feats that generate them have long CD's on them.

Also I'd like to point out that we GF's have no Hard Taunt skills like OP's, even companions have Hard Taunt skills now, something that was added to a few mods ago I believe.

I don't think the shield mechanic needs changing, it's a lot more responsive than it was when I started in mod 6 and it requires aiming, which can be tricky when you are in the middle of a large red aoe.

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So to summarise,
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-I think the Loadouts feature negated the need for a prior quality of life change to support classes to increase our base damage.
-I'd also like to see GF's become tougher.
-I'd also like to see some kind of Hard Taunt added to our abilities somehow.

minotaur2857

Please don't downgrade GF damage. I run GF as a DPS class because the shield mechanic takes so long to activate it is not as useful as it should be as a tank, and being knocked down in chult 30 times in a row before I can activate either of my powers that would prevent that (starting mounted) is not fun.

I fully understand that GFs are broken in PvP, but don't break my PvE fun for the sake of something precious few people I know actually do.

grimah

We have 3 hard taunts. The mark which can be spammed. Enforced threat and knight's challenge. There are also plenty of tools that increase threat, but if you decide not to hold any offensive stats then you are just playing the class wrong, you need a good balance.

OPs are better designed for tanking but it should be, we both have our pros and cons

jumpingmorks

grimah said:

We have 3 hard taunts. The mark which can be spammed. Enforced threat and knight's challenge. There are also plenty of tools that increase threat, but if you decide not to hold any offensive stats then you are just playing the class wrong, you need a good balance.



OPs are better designed for tanking but it should be, we both have our pros and cons

They are not Hard Taunts, I wasn't tanking in Mod 4 but I believe in Mod 4 they changed these powers to just put us at the top of the threat table. A hard Taunt forces an enemy to attack you , regardless of threat, aggro, and in the case of content like Demogorgon, Hate. Once 9 players start dps'ing Demo in final phase, no threat increase will break the hate they generate, only a Hard Taunt will and only then if they don;t have pets like Air Archons that also have Hard Taunts.

It's easy to assume some random person on the internet is wrong, even if they are, it's usually wise to assume they have a reason to believe what they believe and be a little more diplomatic.

grimah

They are hard taunts. Mark is for 0.5 secs or less, enforced threat is 2 or 3 secs. Knights challenge is for the duration unless something else hard taunts

jumpingmorks

A hard taunt is something that forces an enemy to ignore hate, aggro and threat and attack you at least once. You can see this in the description of some OP powers where the powers specifically state when used these powers force an enemy to attack you.

Knight's Challenge comes close to this but although it states it locks you into 1 on 1 combat it doesn't specificly say it forces an enemy to attack you.

If you preview The Galeb Duhr in Zen Market you will see that it's Hurl Stones ability specificly states it is also a Hard Taunt. This is just a single example.

rikitaki

I tried to tank Demogorgon as GF once. I marked it, tried Enforced Threat and it did not even look at me and walked past for another guy (dps GF that was killing demons from abyssal tears actually quite far away.) I was invisible no matter what I tried - it did not look at me for a single moment.

So no, I did not see there any effect resembling described hard taunt. And to be honest if I run dungeons as DPS GF and keep my ET slotted, it does not mess our roles at all.
As for Knight Challenge, I am quite confident that attention span of challenged monster is easily terminated by whatever "magic" the pally or companions do. (I think once even CW won over my KC at Orcus, but take that more as a speculation)