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M15: Great Weapon Fighter Class Changes
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Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 41Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Hey Great Weapon Fighters,
Great Weapon Fighter is getting a couple of fixes and adjustments this patch. One of the things that we really wanted to address was the imbalance of Feat paths. While the Sentinel tree isn’t getting a revamp, the Instigator tree has had some feats completely overhauled. We wanted Instigator to feel unique from the Destroyer tree while still focusing on granting the Great Weapon Fighter a damage-based tree with some utility. To accomplish this, there is a new feat that increase your damage dealt based on movement speed and a lot of interactions to go with it. In addition to this, there’s an emphasis on Combat Advantage and sticking to your target.
Great Weapon Fighter is getting a couple of fixes and adjustments this patch. One of the things that we really wanted to address was the imbalance of Feat paths. While the Sentinel tree isn’t getting a revamp, the Instigator tree has had some feats completely overhauled. We wanted Instigator to feel unique from the Destroyer tree while still focusing on granting the Great Weapon Fighter a damage-based tree with some utility. To accomplish this, there is a new feat that increase your damage dealt based on movement speed and a lot of interactions to go with it. In addition to this, there’s an emphasis on Combat Advantage and sticking to your target.
Baseline
- Determination: Determination is now gained from dealing damage at all times, at half the normal rate, instead of just when you own the “Destroyer’s Purpose” capstone feat.
- Destroyer's Purpose: Now doubles the rate at which you earn Determination when dealing damage.
Class Features
- Warrior’s Courage (Revamped): Gain 6% (up from 5%) Damage Resistance and 4% Deflection chance when below 50% Hit Points. While under 25% Hit Points, these bonuses are doubled.
- Warrior’s Courage: Damage Resistance per rank reduced to 3% (down from 5%)
- Warrior’s Courage: Deflection Chance per rank reduced to 2% (down from 3%)
- Steel Blitz (Revamped): Chance to proc reduced to 15% (down from 25%)
- Steel Blitz: Damage reduced to 50% weapon damage (from 60%)
- Steel Blitz: Damage no longer increases with each rank-up
- Steel Blitz: Chance to proc now increases by 5% per rank
- Steel Blitz: This power can now critically strike
- Steel Blitz: Fixed an issue where some buffs weren't correctly affecting Steel Blitz
Feats:
- Flanking Maneuvers (Reworked): Striking a foe, while you have Combat Advantage, causes you to deal an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your weapon damage.
- Warrior’s Rush (Reworked): Your Mighty Leap, Punishing Charge, and Savage Advance powers now grant 5/10/15/20/25% increased movement speed, for 4 seconds, when used.
- Allied Opportunity: Combat Advantage time increased to 2/4/6/8/10 seconds.
- Nimble Runner (Reworked): Your damage dealt is increased by 1.65/3.3/4.95/6.6/8.25%. This value increases as your total movement speed increases, up to a maximum of 40%.
- Crippling Strikes (Reworked): Your At-will, Encounter, and Daily powers slow targets hit by 1/2/3/4/5% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 6 times.
- Crippling Strikes: You deal 3/6/9/12/15% more damage to targets who are slowed by Crippling Strikes.
- Group Assault: Now also affects Reaping Strike
- Instigator’s Vengeance: Your damage is increased by 20% (up from 10%) and each time you are struck in combat this value is increased by 5% (down from 10%).
- Instigator’s Vengeance: Expiry time increased to 8 seconds (up from 6 seconds)
- Instigator’s Vengeance: Fixed an issue where this feat only required 20 points spent
Tagged:
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Comments
Instigator is now like a very maneuverable but glassy Destroyer.
Steel Blitz seems to be working awesome now.
Battle Fury (Encounter):@balanced#2849 Make the tooltip more clear. Add buff’s real duration time.
Increase basic duration of 6,5 sec up to 8 sec, it will make BF viable for other paths too.
Relentless Battle Fury (feat):Remove duration time increase here. The increase of basic duration up to 8 seconds won’t affect Destroyer, but 50% cooldown reduction will still be available here.Nimble Runner (Reworked): Your damage dealt is increased by 1.65/3.3/4.95/6.6/8.25%. This value increases as your total movement speed increases, up to a maximum of 40%.Please explain How does it work, exactly?
Any correlation with Sprint? Do I need to stack Dark enchants now? Does Bravery movement stat buff increase this?
Buff Vicious Advantage feat; increase damage up to 7,5-10% and remove critical chance rate.
Check effect icons:
1.1 Student of the sword - icon is showing on target. 1.2 Fleet Footed - works, but icon is not showing in action bar(character). 2.1 Vicious Advantage - works, no icon. 2.2 Reinforced Surge - works, no icon. 2.2 Stunning Flourish - icon is showing on target. 3.1 Warrior's Rush - icon is showing in action bar. 3.2 Flanking Maneuvers - works, no icon. 4.1 Nimble Runner - confused, no icon. 4.2 Allied Opportunity - works, no icon. 5.1 Group Assault - works, no icon. 5.2 Clipping Strike - icon is showing on target. 6.0 Instigator's Vengeance - icon is showing on action bar.And fix it already: https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10936423
Great Weapon Fighter/Scourge Warlock The stamina bar no longer has a chance to become stuck.It's still bugged (Oathbound Paladin has same stamina consumption design but it is not affect by delay).
Dead🔪Dead🔪1) besides PvP Instigator's Vengeance doesn't look as worthwhile as Destroyer's purpose, because there is no way to get consistent stacks of it in a PvE situation where the tanks take all the hits. I'm not saying it should have a permanent uptime, but since the duration is that low I barely see a GWF getting more than 2 stacks a minute, granted he's not running ahead like an idiot to get stacks but instant killed because the tanks don't tank. There should be another mechanics that could grant stacks.
2) any fix on Trample the Fallen ?
3) Sentinel should really be looked at, especially Reaping Strike that will never be good no matter the damage it deals (even a 1000% damage increase would still make me doubt)
4) (from a gwf comrad) Currently the Cripling Strike doesn't work against immune targets, its the same as Trample the fallen, can you please patch these both to work ?
5) Steel Blitz still doesn't benefit over Weapon Master's Strike resistance debuff
6) Steel Blitz doesn't benefit over Combat Advantage damage buff
Plus the game isn't about controls, especially in end game. Plus GWF has enough tools to control the ennemy.
The feat rework is great.
Only other two feats in instigator I'd recommend tweaking a bit are Student of the Sword and Fleet Footed, very eh feats that don't bring much to the table if anything buff Student a bit more in the debuff as for Fleet footed I'd prefer to see it reworked, but that's just me. ^.^
Practically all Steel Blitz bugs were fixed with exceptions to nit picking on how it works cx So good job there.
STR effects it (M14 Patch)
Hidden Daggers Buffs it
Soul Sight Crystal Buffs it
Battle Fury Buffs it
Wrathful Determination Buffs it
Powerful Challenge Buffs it
Mighty Blade Buffs it
Demo Set Buffs it
Endless Assault Buffs it
Great Weapon Focus buffs it
Trans/Unp Fey buff effect it
<font color=red>Though you seemed to have broken Combat Advantage Universally... -w•</font>
Crippling Strikes stuffers the same issue as Trample of the Fallen Both won’t work on a boss unless a tr is present with Coarage Breaker.
Mighty Leap, Punishing Charge and Savage Advance are already a GAP CLOSURE, not to mention what is the point of increased Run speed when you get close to your enemy (if it was Attack Speed it was different) , i would honestly change that with Grand Fissure, Restoring Strike and Spinning Strike/Avalanche/Slam, would make more sense for these powers since the gap closing powers already get you in the fight or out of it.
Also, how does the Nimble Runner feat work? Do you have to have 100% movement speed bonus to get the 40% more damage? Do the stats you get from shepherds and artificers work with this?
Does Flanking maneuver scale with buffs like SB now does too?
The focus on CA is a bit too high since it's basically equivalent to crit severity, which does get kinda redundant once you use pots like ya always do in the endgame.
Overall, instigator tree is definitely better than it was, however the start doesn't seem good enough.
SOTS could be better if it was amped by a bit, and vicious advantage is just 5% CA damage, and for me that's about 1.8% more DPS what's nothing. The next 2 feats are utter trash, as no one uses flourish and extra crit chance and stun are completely irrelevant.
So only after 6 feats do we get to the good ones, and that's not very good. I can guarantee that no one will use Warrior's rush, allied opportunity or group assault.
Crippling strikes and Trample the fallen should work on bosses, however we don't have a way to proc it on them. Those are 2 things no one will ever use in PvE.
Together, these reworks appears that an Instigator is meant to run in to get hit, maintain Instigator's Vengeance stacks, and get out quickly at low health. A discount Destroyer. /s
1 - Reaping strike*: turn similar to "aimed shot*": "automatic casting+faster casting by ranking". In other way, is a dead atwill
2 - encounters like punishing charge*, might leap* and so on, for now, are bad encounters. Is not fun use garbage because some tradeoff. In my opinion, give 3 stacks to that bad aoe encounters and bring some utility to punishing charge.
3 - bravery* stack to Nimble Runner*
4 -improve to 5s fleet flooted*
5 - mark* give more than combat advantage*… and two of the best encounters of gwf cause that. Cripling Strike* maybe can give that 15% of damage bonus to allies too? 2x against imunne targets?
5 - instigator vengeance*: instigator looks more a smart fighter than a revenger. Why don’t give the same damage bonus, for x secs, after avalanch of steel?
By the way:
A - cut in half the air time of avalanch and improve that travel speed; B - spinning strike take too much time spinning too.
1 - replace powerfull challange to grudge style. now powerfull challange give that bonus to allies too.
2 - intimidation: the party now receive defensive and offencive bonus of daring shout and come and get it.
3 - grudge style now works for wicked strike, debuffing enemies for more.
4 - defience: using slam, you receive your hp as temporary hp.
5 - sentinel aegis: ignore restoring strike; improve determination by damage take or give determination by life steal.
to rebalance destroyer:
1 - executioner style work for every single target power, and below 50%
2 - relentless battle fury only buff battle fury, giving 10% more damage+previous bonus,
It already does.
Ereshkigal - 12k Tiefling SW
Aurora Ravensong - 11.6k Drow CW
Dead🔪you know what should be really funny? when you fill your daily bar, for 15 secs, you receive that extra 30% damage increase. using a daily or not, that bonus will expire, BUT, if your daily is used during this time, i dont know, the firsts 5 secs, your daily will do some heavy damage, like 200% more, bang, a atomic bomb.
other possibility is (and that looks more some "street fighter v" thing), certain encounters, (X ENCOUNTERS) during this time, will consume (or not) 1/3 of your ap, but do some heavy damage or some other great bonus.
that will made instigators more daily/encounters centralized,
Ereshkigal - 12k Tiefling SW
Aurora Ravensong - 11.6k Drow CW
I really love the changes done to the Great Weapon Fighter on the Instigator Path, and i could say that it’s viability skyrocketed, even if it won’t become the meta in PvE, it will still be USEFULL at some extent by anyone who wants to play this.
So far as we all know it, and based on the metrics the majority of Great weapon fighters are using Destroyer as their Main Paragon, with the well known rotation in their setup of:
Class features: Wrathful Determination / Destroyer (its a must ofc)
Encounters: Hidden Daggers, Battle fury, Indomitable Battle strike.
Dailies: Slam, Crescendo
With the current fix on the Steel Blitz there will be more of them switching it for the AoE aspect of it, as it has a really good synergy with Weapon Master Strike.
What else i do think it is worth fixing on this specc is to fix Trample the fallen, because this is how i envision Destroyer that it would work.
Destroyer Sword master = AoE DPS
Destroyer Iron Vanguard = Single Target DPS, and this is possible if Trample the Fallen is fixed to work against Damage immune Targets, currently only powers such as Courage Breaker makes Trample the Fallen work.
The things that change between a Destroyer IV and Destroyer SM in their loadout would be
Steel blitz <-> Trample the Fallen
Crescendo <-> Indomitable Strength
Weapon Master Strike <-> Threatening Rush
So this is how i would like to see Great Weapon fighter running as a Destroyer, i also do not think that anything else needs a buff or a nerf atm with this paragon, i know you might think that making a power less valuable, would make the others more appealing, but please NO.
I like that you mentioned unicity, which that is what i want from building a class, i want to have a different playstyle, which truly these changes are bringing a different style to the Great Weapon Fighter, i feel right now that Destroyer is a more Active DPS , and Instigator is more of a Passive DPS, its a good change per see, but is it Unique?
Well so far from testing a bit on Preview, i found out that the Feats are truly amazing, it manages to top with the Destroyer in some situation, for example in PvP, where Great Weapon Fighter is always damage, this change to instigator will truly make them better.
Now going back to how unique the instigator felt, well it didn’t felt that much different yet, and there are few reasons why.
The Feats are different for sure, SM are definitely going to drop Wrathfull Determination for Steel Blitz, and in instigator where you aren’t pressured to press Unstoppable so often, you can benefit over the max potential of the class feature, in Destroyer it was more or less counter productive with the Capstone, cause once you would’ve used Unstoppable, you couldnt benefit over the 25% melee dmg of Wrathfull Determination.
So the current setup would be:
Wrathfull Determination
Trample the Fallen (If fixed)
Bravery
Steel Blitz
But in terms of encounters i can only forsee that is going to use the same powers as Destroyer does:
Which are: Hidden Daggers, BF and IBS
So this doesn’t sound unique to me anymore
Atwill: Sure strike , Threatening rush / Weapon master strike
While the Paragon encourages to use powers like Not So Fast, Mighty Leap and Punishing charge and atwills such as Reaping Strike and Wicked Strike, it doesn’t look too well to me in practive when trying to fight.
So let me refrain this Not so Fast in the beta (4-5 yrs ago) used to be a really good encounter, but now the damage is really low, this definitely requires a huge increase in damage, so it can be a viable Encounter, as for Mighty Leap and Punishing charge, both of them offer u a significant leap/or rush on the map, but i don’t understand “Warrior’s Rush (Reworked): Your Mighty Leap, Punishing Charge, and Savage Advance powers now grant 5/10/15/20/25% increased movement speed, for 4 seconds, when used” Because if the powers already offer u alot of movement, why would u then again get more movement from them. This is how my logic works if i manage to jump from A to B, my next movement would be slower, not Faster.
Anyway the synergy of using those Powers in ur encounter doesn’t feel right at all.
But going back on how i would feel it more right if powers such as Grand Fissure, Restoring Strike , Flourish/Front line would serve the Paragon right.
The point is that these needs to be buffed in a way that the current Destroyer won’t use them to be even stronger, but the powers standalone require a increase, and like Destroyer is increasing the dmg of Idomitable Battle Strike/Sure strike or class feat Destroyer, there should be a way to Buff these powers to be usefull on Instigator, and less/decent on others. It would feel much better than actually using Punishing/Mighty leap.
As for Sentinel it goes the same, that Paragon is unique by itself too, we can use Powers such as Come and Get it, Daring shout (because of Intimidation feat) and also other perks, but its not viable, for more details on that there is a thread on how it can be viable, but same idea, making some changes to it without buffing Destroyer.
More details about it : https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1240762/great-weapon-fighter-viability-tanking-build
It isnt a bad idea to replace Reaping Strike for a Parrying atwill, this also will bring a unique style to the GWF.
Now resuming everything on how i want for the future of GWFs to look like, and we are 1 step closer with the changes you done for module 15.
Destroyer SM = AoE DPS
Destroyer IV = Single Target DPS
Difference between them would be the way they deal damage, it can be best seen on their capstone that one deals damage to built stacks, the other takes damage to build stacks.
Instigator SM = AoE DPs
Instigator IV = Signle Target DPS
Sentinel SM = TANK + decent AoE DPS
Sentinel IV = TANK + decent support (a party wide buff, for that it needs a rework of 1 power that would do it, a power that wouldn’t be used on any other Paragons, only Sentinel)
This would make the Great Weapon Fighter owning 6 loadouts, and not counting PvP loadouts in.
Sure not all of them would be as good as the other, but it would still be good, even if people by some other reason would choose a paragon over the other, basically it will feel a difference in Random queues, as for Sentinel it would also need to recognized as a Tank in the Queue system.
Keep this thread safe https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1240762/great-weapon-fighter-viability-tanking-build
As for Instigator changes this was my honest feedback, it would feel more unique if i wouldn’t have to use the same encounters as Destroyer does, as for the rest from feats, and Unstoppable use it would feel like a different playstyle.
As an ending i will leave here a bug list of some things i tried so far with the little time i had when i was off work:
#1. Combat Advantage Damage doesn't work at all, neither from positioning or other powers that put you in combat advantage.
#2 Crippling strike, apparently your slow doesn't apply on the immune to CC targets, similar to Trample the Fallen, this looks like a counter productive change, i would consider these 2 powers as bugs, we are supposed to have increased damage against immune to CC targets, even if they aren't controlled.
#3. Survivor's Wraps aren't building Instigator Vengence stacks, it should work as it does for the Guardiang fighter's Conquerer's Capstone Reckless Attacker, or other similar feats in which you take 1x hit, you build 1x stack : ex Countless Scars. The synergy between the Wraps and the Capstone should be there
#4. Warrior's Rush is mentioning that is increasing MOVEMENT SPEED, while the buff in the bar says it's Run speed, in the tooltips for Fleet Footed and Unfettered Strike their tooltips are saying RUN SPEED, therefor Nimble Runner is supposed to be what exactly? Movement Speed (Movement Stat) or Run Speed? does increasing the Movement stat will also increase the Run Speed?
How is Nimble Runner or Warrior's Rush supposed to work and the right tooltip?
Next thing to say if Trample the Fallen is fixed, please also look for Battle Trample fix, it doesn’t scale with any buffs.
With regards a fellow Great Weapon Fighter.
I observed you could get critting Steel Blitz on Weapon Master's Strike, but not Sure Strike (IBS/Daggers/Crescendo/IS not worth checking). Jagged Blades on the GF on live currently has a similar "issue", though I do not know which abilities on GF trigger the Crits.
The Steel Blitz offhand bonus on live has historically had a bug that allowed Crits from the procs from the offhand bonus (similar to the Storm Spell offhand bug of the past).
Though, for this test, I was using the Wrathful Determination offhand.
edit : rj9k said it all.
Same issue Sentinel has.
thank you very much for all your hard work.
Dead🔪Suggested changes for IV and Instigator in M15:
Instigator:
1) SoTS up to 10% - it's a power that was never very useful, and 5% debuff is not nearly enough to make people use it. Maybe make it 5 stacks of 2% debuff that's applied by critting at-wills.
2) Fleet footed - extend the buff to 5 seconds perhaps, or increase the buff to 25%. In any case, it's not very attractive.
3) Stunning flourish - remove it. Add something that either increases damage slightly or increases aggro generation since instigator needs to keep getting hit to maintain the capstone stacks.
4) Vicious advantage - 5% damage is ok, however it won't make anyone drop their jaw. At most it would be a filler.
5) Warrior's rush - the powers used for that aren't very desirable - the utility on them is minimal, so it's dead before it even entered the live build
6) Flanking maneuvers - potentially good, however not hitting for 20% - closer to 15.5%
7) Something is off about Nimble runner. I tested it with a GF buddy of mine.
Base hit: 185
w/ ITF: 241
w/ nimble runner: 200
w/ ITF and nimble runner: 270
The increase with just ITF is 30%.
Increase with just nimble runner is 8.1%
Increase with ITF and NR over NR is 35%
Increase (over base) with both ITF and NR: 46%
The increase with ITF and NR over hit with NR is interesting. ITF movement speed buff gives an extra 5% roughly over base NR hit, what means to get the full 40% buff you'd need about the equivalent of 6.35 ITFs (if the feat was actually 8.25% at base, but since it's 8.1%, it's 6.38), to put it into perspective.
What means, the uptime on the max buff in PvE definitely won't be high - only when everyone is popping shepherd's and artificers and stuff.
So overall, good feat but poor execution.
8) Allied opportunity would see much more use if it was applied on other powers that GWFs are more likely to use for AoE. Mighty leap and Not so fast are completely unused due to their lack of utility or damage. If you got more CA damage from those powers (or with Allied Opportunity feat), then it would maybe be used. Still doubt it tho.
9) Group assault seems good, but Reaping strike takes too long to charge, and Wicked strike does the step forward which is annoying af.
10) Crippling strike is good but same issue as Trample the Fallen - doesnt work on bosses, and thats the only place where DPS truly matters.
11) Instigators Vengeance - very hard to keep up 6 stacks even when solo. Make survivors wraps proc it or extend the duration of the buff to at least twice. Maybe give it a slight buff (like 1 more 5% stack) to make it a tad better.
I'll do IV tomorrow, as it's late.
In fact, no... every destroyer use daring shout and Mark give to you not only combat advantage, but 8% of damage bonus to party and 20% to you.… Now, if you do something like "using a encounter power, enemies witthin X' receive a mark+a/b/c/d/e bonus"...
"11) Instigators Vengeance - very hard to keep up 6 stacks even when solo. Make survivors wraps proc it or extend the duration of the buff to at least twice. Maybe give it a slight buff (like 1 more 5% stack) to make it a tad better."
"instigator vengeance" "is wrong in the very concept". Don’t make sense copy/past a defender capstone to a "dps runner" that will be able to slow everthing. be super fast and take damage to do more damage make sense for a pvp scenario (run to an enemy attacking from a distance), for pve, is really hard to see some synergy in that.
In any case, no - GWFs no longer use DS. BF, daggers and IBS is the ideal setup. The bonus debuff you get from DS is completely irrelevant in endgame groups. 12% debuff difference vs GF mark via tab or ET is about 1.5% more DPS.
DS is completely replaced with IBS since its our hardest hitting power, and generates AP pretty nicely if you know how to time it.
As for Instigator's vengeance...
In PvP, if you're getting hit as a GWF often enough times to proc everything here, you're prolly gonna die anyways. Especially since a lot of the harder hitting classes all use DoTs so you'll have high uptime on that, if you can stay alive.
However, I do wonder why Instigator capstone is not procced by Survivor's wraps, and GF conqueror is. They've even got the same icon for HAMSTER sake xD
Look, If your party don’t have a gf, gwf will mark by "who cares" and that mark anyways bring combat advantage. If you have gf in your party, then this gf will mark and cause "combat advantage" too, so… in any case, no reason to have allied oportunity because, by meta or not, if you have a fighter in your party, combat advantage is not a issue…
Conclusion: a feat that bring only combat advantage, by any source, will dont make difference. A feat that give mark using any encounter (bf for example) maybe.
In any case, gaining CA is easy enough, in both PvE and PvP, so it really is a pointless ability, added to unused powers. GWFs get mobility through sprint, so we don't need more from Leap or charge. Savage advance is one power I'd like to see reworked tho, as it's now just a really weak ability overall.
that means, put 3 stacks on that and each use now improve the next attack. In the end, the last hit of that bad encounters will hit like a truck. Now you have a playstyle 100% different to destroyers. Dps vs bursters
about savage advanced, the tooltip only count the second hit i guess. The problem is, the first hit, that "warcry", don’t crit. Fixing that and will be necessary rework crescendo. hahhah
Instigator: Only time will tell what will be viable now. Seems obvious to me that they will do poorly vs mobs, well vs some single targets. Useable in PvE and now not so inferior to destroyers... to make it readily obvious.
Destroyers: No change right?... Not exactly. After the update, it will take twice as much encounter damage to initiate Unstoppable. The lagtime between the first button press in a mob & unstoppable firing is often 'life or death'. This slight nerf to encounter using destroyers who invest points in recovery, will favor At-will buffers, making Destroyer even more vanilla.
Sentinel: No particular change aside from being able to fire unstoppable faster and more often. This should help keep pace the with the other tank class buffs, so that Sentinel is still an unusual niche tank.
Overall, the two skills which should have been adjusted are:
Reaping Strike: This skill should also generate 1% AP per target hit, and give +9,12,15,18% defelction severity increase while charging.
Grand Fissure: This skill needs a synergetic buff. such as .2sec encounter cooldown reduction per target affected.
Also, curious what Steel Blitz class feature will be changed to.