feedback Great Weapon Fighter.

metalldjt

I. Reworking the Damage Bonus Stacks & Number of stacks.

As we all seen so far the difference in DPS between Instigator <-> Destroyer and Sentinel <-> Destroyer , Destroyer is outperforming the other 2 paragons in DPS with the huge amount of damage bonus, the idea of the thread is NOT to nerf or buff the destroyer, but rather to take some amount of damage bonus from destroyer paragon and share it with the other 2 paragons, and by doing that you will have to increase the weapon damage by 50% or increase the base damage of every encounter/atwill by 50% , and take away 50% damage bonus from the paragon Destroyer. It is needed for the other 2 paragons Instigator and Sentinel, for instigator to have a higher DPS and Sentinel to be able to keep the Threat as a TANK. So what does this mean if the weapon damage or base damage of every encounter/atwill is increased by 50%, i've taken some screen shots to be as explicit as possible.

NOTE*: my GWF has 30.000 power

In the image we can observe the difference in the tooltips by using Nightmare Greatsword and a Legendary Weapon damage, and we can also estimate the amount of the tooltip damage that would be if the weapon damage is increased by 50% or the suggestion of increasing the base damage of encounters/atwill . How it will look if we increase 1860-2273 weapon damage from the legendary weapon by 50% it will be 2790-3409

*NOTE: 3 stacks of Destroyer that gives us 46% damage bonus to show how it will look if the weapon damage is increased by 50% , ofc this is an estimation.

With this DONE, takin' away damage bonus and stacks from Destroyer is absolutely needed, let's take a look on the image bellow to show exactly where the rework is needed.

As you can see in the picture, there are 2 feats that needs to be reworked and 1 class feature.
36% damage bonus(Destroyer class feature) + 10.5% damage bonus(Focused destroyer) = 46.5% damage bonus. Destroyer class feature needs a change instead of 4% damage bonus per rank, it should give only 1% per rank, at rank 4 it should be 4% Damage Bonus , 4%x3 stacks = 12% damage bonus. As for Focused Destroyer instead of 3.5% at 5/5 feat points spent , it should be 2.5% damage bonus at 5/5 feat points spent , 2.5% x 3 = 7,5% So this is how it will look like 12% + 7.5% = 19.5%
For Destroyer purpose i would say that lowering the stacks to 5 stacks with 5% damage bonus per stack = 25% , while in unstoppable your encounters will hit by 10% more, down from 20%.
so the weapon damage got increased by 50% and we took 50% damage bonus from the Paragon Destroyer, it's a trade off, and we decreased the huge difference between Destroyer - Instigator and Destroyer - Sentinel with this change.

II. Changes to Unstoppable&Sprint, SENTINEL feats

So i'm a PvEer most of the times and when i make groups to run dungeons/raids i hardly find a TANK that is online or a TANK that wants to join my group to do CN, or epic demo, and without a tank there is no chance to complete any of that, and i wish i could TANK with my GWF ,not necesarly as great as the other 2 classes: Guardian Fighter and Paladin that we share the same role of DEFENDERS. Right now the Sentinel Paragon in terms of offering any sort of tankyness is outdated, in the past i used to be a TANK with my GWF in module 2 in the old Castle Never, i was tankin Dracolich with my Sentinel, and i didn't mind it when i wasn't dealing damage, and i wish for that to be possible again, so i came up with some possible solutions for that, Since the Paragon itself besides Powerful challenge that increases the damage by 15% on the MARKED TARGETs , it doesn't offer any sort of damage buff, so upgrading it's feats it won't make the GWF to have BOTH DPS AND TANKINES AT THE SAME TIME.

1.Reworking Unstoppable and Sprint .

First change that needs to be done is towards Unstoppable It needs to be changed like this: Remove Temporary Hitpoints, and instead of granting 15%-30% Damage Resistance, we will Block the incoming damage by 12%-24% , this idea i came out while i was reading the Guardian Fighter shift ability

Tactical
Fighter 2 Utility Block.png Guard Block 80% of all incoming damage in front of you at the cost of your Stamina. Also negate control effects, like Daze or Stun.

Second Change it will be towards sprint, instead of granting 30% DR, it will block by 10% the incoming damage.

2.Reworking the SENTINEL PARAGON.

-First Change is towards the INTIMIDATION feat, as you read the description you can see that without that feat keepin threat it will be impossible so if you want to tank you are OBLIGED to take that feat, meaning that Come and Get it and Daring shout will be in your tray bar as ur main encounters, now with the weapon damage increased to 2790-3409 , 125% out of that it's 3.487 - 4.261 intimidation hit, so thats how much Intimidation will hit, it's RATHER A SMALL NUMBER, keep in mind that this feat was stripped away from all his amplifiers ex: mark, combat advantage etc. I would suggest that it should be increased from 125% to 300% and it will look like this : 8.370-10.227. this is for the purpose of keepin AGGRO.
-Second change is towards Sentinel Aegis: Unstoppable should block the incoming damage by 30%-60% .
-Third Change is towards Grudge Style, replace Sure Strike with Wicked Strike, that atwill belongs there , also another good change it would be increasing the THREAT to 250%.
Now a small change to this atwill:

It should block the incoming damage by 10% with each rank = 40% block. and it should be bound mostly on Sentinel TREE. The animation of it should be reworked aswell to look a bit like this.

While charged you can only maintain it for 8s , after that it goes in cooldown for 8s, and when i said being bound to sentinel, there needs to be a feat in sentinel paragon that will lower it's cooldown to 2s.

INSTIGATOR coming soon...
These are the few suggestions on how the GWF should be reworked to be a proper class.

vteasy

I'm pretty sure you don't want them to take a long hard look at GWF class and how it is performing right now

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eyceaether

Destroyer definitely needs more nerfs, because the Lostmauth set isn't the only reason GWF does so much damage. Hitting 30-40-50k Sure Strikes is HAMSTER, especially while Unstoppable and attacking way faster than anyone else.

You can take a Destroyer GWF with ONLY all green gear, no augments/bonding companions/sets/boons and compare it to the damage that any other class does in all greens to a Dummy. It's not even close.

Destroyer Class Featured + Focused Destroyer feat + Destroyer capstone + the Sure Strike bonus damage the lower their health gets multiplies far too much with each other to create dumb damage...

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masteroga

Well the Sentinel Tree is about being defensive....it makes sense it doesn't have as good as damage. Now the instigator path on the other hand....that's all sorts of terrible. Instigators Vengeance is strictly worse than the Destroyer's Purpose in every way! It has 2 less abilities and a much harder method to achieve the same 50% damage increase.

Even if they increased Instigator's Vengeance to 200% extra damage, the fact that you can't control getting hit sometimes would still mean it's unusable. It would make more sense for a "take damage to get more powerful" feat to be located in the Sentinel Tree...where you are generating threat and can force enemies to attack you.

isaintify1

We all know the damage for the GWFs is very miminal without those stacks and buffs. Go from hitting 15-40k IBS no buffs to 200-500k with buffs. (These buffs are counting your own, and not others)

jobsalotofwork

Instigator and sentinel paths could use a buff. I can't imagine trying to build determination without the destroyer capstone, but the destroyer capstone needs a change as it makes building determination vastly different then during the leveling process where it's a total pain.

Change destroyer to build determination on using a damage ability successfully rather then on amount of damage.

Sentinel gets extra determination from taking damage. As the tanking tree it makes more sense then instigator.

Instigator could get big buffs to the abilities that grant determination - move the roar and daring shout stuff here have buffs to the class feature which builds determination over time here. Have it add determination gain to other encounters or on daily usage.

Maybe not the best ideas, but I think the other paths need better determination gain, and destroyer would be less tanky and hitting not so hard if it didn't have unstoppable up so much.

fastrean3

OP is Troll, just want to BS nerf gwf to useless. All Others giving good explaination about other two path.

Personal experience about Instigator, this bath lack of determination, destroyer get dete from attack and sentinel get dete from take damge, but Instigator wont get dete faster either attack or take damge. No unstoppable = slow attack =slow dps (actually dps not low ,just other player hit faster than you to get the damage counted on board)

And the final capstone +50% damage buff not bad, especially in PvP and pve solo, but in dungeons, either gf/op already hold the aggro of mods that u won't take damge or you stupid enough leave teammates behind &run into mods/red area to take damage =get your self killed, petty useless.

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grimah

LMAO. I think this just sums up the mass majority of the NW community. Just braindead and can not read.

The OP never mentioned anything about nerfing GWFs, but making GWF's damage more innate rather than feat reliant.

I agree with what the OP suggests but instigator needs it's own role. Perhaps as a debuffer or party buffer like roar increase allies attack speed/bonus weapon damage, daring shout and grant's party with CC immunity/damage resistance etc

cromejohnsen

The core issue with the other trees ist that they do not support any kind of hard hitting encounters. Whilst the instigator tree does support your aoe at wills it totally blocks the capstone. Using instigator capstone means that u need to get hit. (6 s to refresh the 50% dmg boost) The problem is right now with all three capstones that none of them provide any good determination gain. Loosing 50% of your hp for 4 sec of unstoppable is a no go. Aside from destroyer who can generate determination via dealing 300k dmg for 4 sec of unstoppable ( which is also ridicoulous considering that it tends to bug out very often) every other tree can either sacrifice an entire class feat which would provide highly needed dmg boost or get yourself hit and pray that you are still alive. NO other CLASS has such limitations with their TAB power.
The idea of shifting destroyer capstone dmg towards weapon base dmg might be a good idea. It still does not make the other trees viable at all if the current meta wants you to take ridicoulous amount of dmg for 4 sec of being a little bit stronger.
Maybe make the instigator tree a debuff tree and sentinel a real tank tree.

EDIT: maybe what grimah mentioned above .(But make it so that it does not stack more than twice or once)

ghoulz66

The GWF's base damage is so terrible. I don't know why they didn't just increase that instead of give hidden daggers and buff the destroyer feat to insane levels to compensate.

You know the old feeling when you're a GWF caterpillar. Enter blacklake and watch HRs go pew pew and everything start disappearing all the while you're swinging your sword away like a @##$ drunk chipping away at mob HP. Dreaming of becoming a destructive butterfly to vent your rage on those pew pew rangers.

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lwedar

metalldjt said:

@defiantone99 @eyceaether @masteroga @isaintify1 @jobsalotofwork @fastrean3

i apreciate that you guys are posting in here, but i will tell you a thing or two, you people don't know anything about the class GWF, if you have read my post and ur only keywords that have been saved in ur brain draft were nerf and buff , and u did not understood that the entire idea is to take that 50% damage from destroyer class feat and put it in the base damage of the weapon damage to have a higher base damage, and just a slightly nerf on the capstone since you have higher base damage , the reason why this needs to be done is that without the stacks the GWF doesn't deal any damage, in other words sentinel and insitagor are just useless paragons only because of that, what is been said in the 1st post is to adress the core issue.

it doesn't matter how tanky the sentinel is or how useless instigator is, the issue is the base damage, and thats why they are not viable.

remember they changed all three of them last balance patch to make GWF choose to either be high dps or tanky. You are suggesting adding that damage back to the other more tanky trees. After dealing with GWF in pvp during mod 2 and 3, I say no thanks. As is they are pretty tanky in pvp once the gear get high enough in Destroyer path, I can only imagine what they will be like with similar damage in Sentinel while also reducing the need for building stacks. Though animation cancelling helps with that now i guess

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cromejohnsen

Are we back to making changes based on pvp AGAIN? Is there really no way to make all trees viable without making gwf either pvp or pve usable only??

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treesclimber

I agree with everything exept 1 thing: " to gain determination while we get hit/damaged, you might think it's overpowred but the difference from instigator tree and destroyer tree is that destroyer tree has more damage feats than instigator, so it will sort of balance itself." This is unpredictable, very impredictable, specially in pvp, destroyers are currently pure war tanks, imagine a perma unstopable instigator. I had almost these exact ideas, but when i tought of it i went a bit further. There are many things disavantageous, some of the things i remember i have tought:

1. All the trees should gain determination by dealing damage, on it's basis GWF is a dps and so it deserves to get benefit from damage, steadly determination would no longer work as "in combat" but increase the % of determination generated, uninfluentiated by any kind of non gwf buffs. Why this? In a party with extreme buffs a swing from a destroyer fills enough determination to go unstopable wich is around 10% less damage on at wills but far greater speed, there are many times where there is no source of determination gain for instigator/ sentinel.

2. Destroyer nerf, you mention focussed destroyer, but i cant see how a nerf there would not prejudicate beginers, they would hit less, get into unstopable latter and if the chance was low to stack they would stack latter, instead a nerf on destroyer class feature that is unrealistic superior to trample the fallen, steadly determination, weapeon master, wrathfull determination. This would also require a little nerf on battle awareness so it fits then changes, 25% more power translates as 25% more damage for many GWF, so i would say lower to 20% both cool downs and power grant.

3. Allied oportunity gives combat advantage over targets affected by mighty leap and not so fast but combat advantage comes from everywere, including marks, so by chosing sentinel feats and use daring shout people are already get than combat advantage, deal more damage and get more protected and the damage outcome after a few seconds will pass largely the damage dealt using ML or NSF so instead granting combat advantage over the targets it would grant aditional 10% combat advantage of targets afected by those powers.

4. Instigator vengeance lenghtened, i manage to keep stacks very easly up in pvp, if destroyer purpose lasts so long, why does instigator vengeange doesnt? I guess i redime myself and accept vengeance is never the way to solve problems too fast.....

5. Sentinel needs a better destribution of taking damage to enter battles, now a low il sentinel faints before he can even trigger unstopable, so the idea would be, in unstopable mode sentinel resistance raises from +30% to +50% and you gain 20 stacks of "nameofhtething", each stack will reduce incoming damage by 1% and deflection by 0,5%, stacks fall 1 by one after 5 seconds not receiving a hit, and will generate 0,05% of determination per stack when not on unstopable(to make sure the gwf can enter the next group of mobs with determination, or almost, wether on the last fight he finished with a lot or not). Additionaly, as this still seems inferior the the other trees: You are a wall when foes try to damage you in unstopable they get frightned by your endurance and they tremble in fear, taking 10% more damage from all sources for 10 seconds.

cromejohnsen

1: yeah i agree with most of what you wrote. But it still does not make the upper tree or bottom one very likely to be played. Either in pvp or pve because nobody wants a sitting duck without dmg or a tabless guy without dmg. While the core issue about determination gain on both trees should be adressed, they should really think about making a tanking path and a group supporter tree out of the sentinel and instigator tree.

2:how does nerfing the only viable tree right now make the others look more lucrative? you probably said it yourself

3:Combat advantage is not much of a support if you are already running an IV spec or actively using Daring shout. However making the mark much more effective in tier 4 feat could make the sentinel tree much more lucrative. Either dmg reduction and much much increaded threat generation for sentinel or increased dmg and reduced damage resistence in the sentinel tree.

4: This feat is totally out of place and should probably be added in a much less effective version into on of the upper sentinel tree. You definetly dont want to get hit too much as gwf. Lower geared players and even up to 3k just dont have enough survivability at this point, unless they sacrifice all dmg.

5: Right now having temporary hp is the only way to tank as non tank class. Because you can not survive and heal yourself from something that oneshots or twoshots you. It is just not viable for non BIS characters. Everything else sounds quite reasonable.

@treesclimber

regards Crome

treesclimber

cromejohnsen said:

2:how does nerfing the only viable tree right now make the others look more lucrative? you probably said it yourself

I said i agreed with everything exept 1 in the OP post, that included weapon damage increase, no nerf to destroyer.

cromejohnsen said:

3:Combat advantage is not much of a support if you are already running an IV spec or actively using Daring shout. However making the mark much more effective in tier 4 feat could make the sentinel tree much more lucrative. Either dmg reduction and much much increaded threat generation for sentinel or increased dmg and reduced damage resistence in the sentinel tree.

What? A increase in C.A. damage would be a raw increase in all team dps, specially in IV, if you increased the mark capabilities even further you would end up giving even more potential to marks. they have enough already.

cromejohnsen said:

4: This feat is totally out of place and should probably be added in a much less effective version into on of the upper sentinel tree. You definetly dont want to get hit too much as gwf. Lower geared players and even up to 3k just dont have enough survivability at this point, unless they sacrifice all dmg.

I like the sentinel having it idea, but taking it away from instigator seems ruining the concept of it, i dont know, maybe it's a good idea.

cellablock

insider just advise next class changes are going to be for GWF ,which is about damn time they reduce their damage ^^

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ajlir

I want to play my GWF like I play Shogun from Etrian Odyssey 3 which is a support/offensive class with a one skill burst similar Indomitable Battle Strike but minus the support since the only viable build is self-buff Destroyer + CA.

I would suggest Sentinel capstone to scrap Unstoppable and replace with a block mechanic like GFs but with less DR and regaining Determination at ??% out from combat and in combat. Issue with Wrathful Determination? No problem, keep it slotted for the sweet passive bonus damage with full Determination unless you used some of them to block incoming damage. Steadfast? You can slot it for faster recharge of your Determination. Daring Shout, Roar and Reaping Strike no longer builds Determination on Sentinel's capstone. Daring Shout's DR and Come and Get It Now's flat buff damage on one attack should be buffed to give other players in your team, not just yourself (should be one in the Sentinel feats).

instynctive

....and here we go again.

What can a CW bring into a party? A GF? A TR? A SW?

Now let's look at what a GWF brings to a party..

• Control? Nope.
  
• Party buffs? Nope.
  
• Shielding? Nope.
  
• Heals? Nope.
  
• Tanking? Nope.
  
• Damage? YES!
  

A GWF has one job and one job only: to hurt things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU81YUsUZFc

I really wish people would understand that before getting on the "nerf the class I don't play" train.

ajlir

It's not nerf. It needs rework on some of the useless encounter powers, at-wills and feats other than Destroyer. I get that it's a DPS class but can this class self-peel? (It's where Sentinel build comes in) Even worse, it's a melee-ranged DPS unlike HR which can give more than just DPS output. Sprint isn't enough.

And another thing: output expectations

blinxon

Thats not 100% correct @instynctive ...dont forget this "huuuuge" buff from battle fury

kreatyve

Personally, I would like to be able to effectively tank with my GWF. I've kinda done it a few times in like eToS when I have a good DC but no GF or OP, but it's not quite easy.

wildfirede

I agree gwf should get a skill that reduces their damage by 50-80%(on par with paladin tanks) in favour of tanking if they choose to.