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Any hope for a GWF fix anytime soon?
jonpen1
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
I can't stand it anymore. I have to quit every mission when I come to the boss. GWF can't do it. tired of going on dungeon quests and being reminded what trash GWF is as I sit outside the fight unable to come back. (That's when I can manage to get into a group once they see its a GWF). This game has yet to earn my money, so I don't want to buy another character slot. Going to roll a CW or TR now, as they do everything I do... just better. I really want to try both.
So should I just delete, or save on the off chance they'll get around to making this a viable class?
So should I just delete, or save on the off chance they'll get around to making this a viable class?
Post edited by jonpen1 on
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Its an underperforming class. Sure, there are top flight players who with lots of experience, hyper-efficient builds can reach the average performance of other classes, like with most other games with less than efficient classes. I'm not interested into pouring extra effort into a build to reach the average performance level of another class. I've done that with other games, and I'm simply not interested in swimming upstream anymore, or spending ridiculous amounts of time and energy fitting the square peg into the round hole.
So, to repeat: is it likely a fix is on the way. Really simple question. Yes, no, or I don't know, with thoughts explaining the time range on yes are the type of responses I'm interested in.
I feel that we will be seeing some improvements to GWF. What that will look like I'm not sure? GWF is adequate at their role they just aren't optimal to the design of content.
Hopefully the devs have a clear idea in mind with the upcoming patch.
Extinction - GWF
So just waiting for ranger to be released and will roll that beast. cause we all know that in mmo archer is dps of a rogue+range of a mage.
Seze - Rogue - Necropolis -
A healer mechanic that is very different from other games.
A tanking mechanic that is twisted, much different from other games.
A "support" wizard class that does more dps when using CCs, again unlike other games.
Among other things that are completely different in this game in comparison to other MMOs.
So please explain to me how you feel so confident that the ranger class will play like in other games? :P
cause it will be a ranged striker, the only class this game is lacking so far.
Seze - Rogue - Necropolis -
The problem is right from the start the GWf's damage level doesn't fit the type of weapon it's supposed to wield. At early levels the GWF does only half the damage the Rogue does with their primary single target attack. In fact exactly half not counting crits.
That combined with the fact the TR uses 2 weapons compared to the GWF's 1 means the TR attacks twice as fast, maybe slightly more. Giving a level 1 TR 4 times the damage against a single enemy than the GWF has. Now remember this is before the GWF picks up his AOE attacks.
Now when they do pick up a second attack TR gets thrown daggers, which coincidentally do the exact same amount of damage that the GWF''s first attack sure strike does. But these increase in damage with each successive one thrown, and can be thrown quite fast, often several per second. That compared to the GWF's first AoE attack. Reaping Strike, and while early damage compared to sure strike on a per hit basis is very nice ~80 per hit vs ~11 per hit for sure strike.
There is one problem first the power can't be tapped, in fact anything less than half a charge results in an interrupted animation and nothing else. The second anything less than a full charge only does the same amount of damage that sure strike does. So it's full charge or nothing, which comes the third problem with this at-will, it takes 3 seconds to charge, leaving you vulnerable, which does work into the determination mechanic, at least in concept but that 3 second charge means this power even at higher levels when damage increases does not make it viable as a DPS power but rather as spike damage.
Now I mentioned problems with Reaping Strike's long charge, in it's primary use, against weak enemies as an aoe against enemies who can't do much damage the determination while charging mechanic works wonderfully. But try holding a charge against a more powerful enemy and you'll end up being knocked down , stunned or worse outright killed before it can reach full charge, and even if you aren't dead knocks and stuns interrupt the charge making that 3 seconds useless.
This is why I and I'm guessing quite a few other players replace Reaping Strike with wicked strike as soon as wicked becomes available. and until then actually rely on Sure strike for 90% of their attacks despite it being weak just because the number of attacks makes up for the slow charge time of Reaping.
Now once you do get Wicked strike fighting multiple enemies get's much better, but it still isn't doing the damage you would expect for a 6 foot long greatsword based on level. It often takes 5 or 6 swings of the sword to take out a small group, 3 or so of enemies with one health bar, this number is multiplied of course by the number of bars a monster has, so fighting against a group of monsters with 5 health bars each can take upwards of 30 or more swings to take out the group.
I feel this is too many.
I know people are going to say, well there always the dailies, and the encounters, and unstoppable, and this is true in fact against a large group of enemies the very first thing I would fire off is Slam, the problem is once a daily is used it takes time to rebuild AP to use again so it can't be relied on all the time. Same with unstoppable, it's only occasionally available. Now we get to encounters, not so fast is a single aoe swing that does ok damage, but has a ~15 second cooldown (just estimating here don't remember exact cooldown), and restoring strike and knockdown are both single target. Which means the majority of Wicked strike's attacks are unbuffed, as are sure strike's against single enemies. Later the majority of options buff AOE damage increasing number of attacks, damage etc. based on hitting 3 or more enemies, very few buff single target damage. and those that do only while they are active with one exception that I'll talk about later. Now these various buffs, passives, feat points etc. give the GWF wonderful aoe performance against weaker enemies, but face any group of creature that can survive the inital 3 or 4 swings of weapon master strike, or a single powerful enemy under the same situation once the temporary buffs wear off you're still feeling like you're hitting the enemy with a wet noodle instead of a greatsword.
Now about the previously mentioned dedicated single target buff, there's one feat that if you put 5 points in it gives up to 25% damage boost against single targets. The problem is it's a feat I personally would never put points into, why you ask? Simple because it only does this increase when using Reaping Strike, now since most use the other AoE's , WMS, or Wicked Strike to take out groups. When left against a single strong enemy. My very last choice for fighting it is going to be reaping strike, I'm sorry but even with a 25% damage buff doesn't make up for that 3 second charge, even with the damage and that's if you're lucky enough to not get knocked down or stunned while charging which means an interrupted charge, resulting in an unreliable attack power against single targets.
That leaves relying on the basics, Sure strike and even at higher levels it only averages 300 point's per hit with green or the occasional blue equipment geared, not all of us pvp or outright buy high quality equipment before the end game. In fact I'm one of those that believes in using the best equipment you can find but the keyword is find, well mission rewards count too but not buying it from vendors. To me this helps with the d&d experience, in the pnp game you can't walk into a shop and buy a +5 vorpal dragonslayer (if such a thing even exists) off the shelf. you rely on what you find in chests, on mobs etc. But that's just me, but I digress.
Back to relying on sure strike at it's roughly 300 damage per hit against boss level solo enemies with upwards of 100,000 health that are also healing either through pots, or it's own healing spells, regen whatever. Of course things like unstoppable help by increasing attack speed with a decrease in damage, but the speed makes up for it, problem is unstoppable is only available occasionally. And the dailies are next to useless against a boss at higher levels Slam which does do wonderful aoe DoT damage against mobs simply does not do enough raw damage against an enemy with 100,000 health, and Crescendo on average with a non-crit at high levels with non-elite gear only does about 5000 damage (7.5 K to 10K on a crit if you're lucky enough to land one) but against an enemy with 100K health that's also capable of healing is negligible especially concidering you can only use it once, maybe twice in a long drawn out battle. The encounters all do 3000 or less damage per hit and have that 15+ second cooldown. Meaning most of the time is spent swing away with sure strike for ~300 damage per swing for over 350 swings or more depending on how much the enemy is healing or how much damage the dailies and encounters did. And this is while using unstoppable as often as you can. So problem is with it's relatively low damage fights against these powerful enemies can take up to 10 minutes plus of hacking away.
Yes I know the GWF is an AoE melee based class, and it does wonderfully against mobs of weak foes. But, that's the key weak foes thing with one or only a few health bars, and even the weak, relatively, ones at higher levels take 5 swings of weapon master's strike or Wicked strike depending on preference to kill a group of them. It's even worse against multiple enemy groups with 5 of more health bars as mentioned earlier.
Which actually takes us right back to the beginning of the game and the whole basis for this post. The GWF does not do the basic amount of damage that it should do based on the type of weapon it's using.
That is reflected by this, right at level one after getting their very first attack the trickster rogue with 2 basic daggers can kill skeletons in 2 hits doing 22 damage per hit on a non crit. Meanwhile the GWF takes 4 hits at 11 damage each to do the same.
This is purely on a per hit basis, not talking dps. In what world, besides Neverwinter does a dagger do twice the damage that a greatsword does per hit? I know people will say, well the extra damage reflects the TR's sneak attack, backstab etc. But I say no, those come in the dalies, and encounters you pick up later in the game. Not at level 1 when you're an adventurer just starting to learn his skills. What's worse about the per hit damage is I haven't mentioned the fact my own early level damage comparisons were between a half-orc with 20+ strength for the GWF and halfling with only 13 strength for the TR meaning the gwf was actually getting a strength damage bonus, and still only did half the damage per hit with a weapon 6 times the size.
And it isn't just sure strike, all damage seems to be lacking scaled, of course to level so whatever determines the GWFs base damage is off and needs to be increased so it does at least 3 times the damage per hit that the TR does at level 1.
Some will say this is too much, but I don't think so. I'm not calling for a speed increase so the TR still attacks twice as fast as the GWF right from the start. even faster later in the game. Meaning at low levels when both are relying on their primary single target attacks the GWF is only doing 3/4 of the overall DPS of the TR. Heck even at 4 times the damage per hit the GWF with sure strike is only doing the same DPS as the TR with Sly Flourish. But this change would add to the survivability against stronger enemies for the GWF.
Agreed. I'm usually the last one to go as a GWF, if the party wipes.
But i agree GWF needs some work, not many groups want them for dungeons as it is now.
Cheers, that's some much appreciated news.
Ohh yeah....wife says I am a glutton for punishment.
Then again I rode out the terrible protection warrior during vanilla wow. Nothing like going from worst to first in one night. (Thumbs up icon)
Sorry for the thread derail... but u wot m8? Prot wars were literally the ONLY viable end-game tank in Vanilla.
Anyways, back on topic - my GWF is geared for t2s and waiting patiently on a shelf - to be dusted off if Cryptic pull a rabbit out of the hat with the next patch.
End game of wow had nothing to do with class and all about stalling. Prot did not shine in vanilla. I should have been clear.
Yeah tank...spam sunder and maybe a taunt and that was it. (pretty much all we had)
Nothing like the tank that evolved into tanking in TBC to WOTLK.
Sideways: Bummer I am in to far in feats to grab a capstone since I need to round back to student of the sword:(
Will worry about that after the class balance comes out.
all of u guys bashing the gwf dmg dont get the point
GWF IS NOT A PURE STRIKER!!!!!!
ok now that that is out of the way, the gwf is a hybrid class consisting of 3 parts right now: defender/striker/support
that split is the vast majority of the reason behind the lacking dps.
now lets break down those parts
defender: if built pure defensive, gwf has the most survival capability of any class in the game. period
support:if built pure support, gwf brings the most benefit to the table than any class in the game.
striker:if built pure striker, then u hacked the game. it cant be done. nearly everything we have factory into either defender or support as well, thus the biggest reason for lowered dps.
when NW 1st went to open beta, the sole reason that gwf were so op was the fact that the base dmg was on par with rogue. but when u take that dmg and factor in best defender and most viable support, it goes over the top.
for all u tr's out there, it would be like current tr except you also get really good aoe dps, can survive through almost anything easily (aka almost unkillable), and when ur grouped with someone they become significantly better.
for all u WoW players out there, this situation is EXACTLY the same situation survival hunters had to deal with in BC. with hard work, their dps was alright, but they rose the dps of every physical based player in the raid, and total dps was higher going with 1 survival vs. 1 bm. dps rose for every warr and druid tank, every hunter, and every dps warrior,feral druid, rogue, enh shamman. also, little known fact, in BC enh shamman was actually the highest dps in the game by a very wide margin. there just wasnt many good ones out there because the exacts behind it were a closely guarded secret. i only know this cuz i was in a guild with 1. the biggest prob they had though was that they produced higher threat than they should, meaning the truely amazing ones had to wait to dps til the boss had 55-60% hp left to start dps. but even waiting that long they had a good shot at toping dmg meters.
anyway, i regress.
my point is gwf is not a pure striker so stop treating it like it is 1. its a hybrid that excells at doing what it was intended for. deal with it.
also the biggest probs gwf's have is they have the most amount of feats that either dont work or dont work the way it is stated in descriptions.
im looking forward to the gaunt patch, which will have alot of fixes.
btw, for the guy that got out dmged by a cleric, you could have done better but the cleric was trying to be a dps. your group would have been better, and u not die as much, if the cleric would have played his intended roles, which are primary-healing secondary-support
as for striking we all know how that path goes.
He prob means the -45% armor debuff lol, we exist only for that skill.
Completed all content waiting for more.
And class balances.... trololollol.
Care to explain what makes GWF more survivable than GF or DC? And how to become best support?
I agree with you that GWF is good enough, but it needs some improvement to earn any kind of respect, because most of community disagrees.
I seem to be able to do quite well in PvP and decent in dungeons, but it is often impossible to prove, as only friends ever pick me in the party. None the less, I'd like to hear how to be best at something, as my experience is that you can only be best at base capping in PvP, everything else is outdone by some other class.
By all accounts the GWF is primarily a striker. The GWF companion (Sellsword) is listed as a striker. The wikis list as a primary damage dealers with a secondary tanking role and our feat trees reflect that in that we have 2 dps trees and 1 tanking tree. You're at least right in that we fail as strikers though.
You are completely wrong about our survivability. If a rogue specced defensively a GWF wouldn't hold a candle to. GWFs may be able to get higher AC, defense, and deflection rating but that pales in comparison to the tools that rogues have to survive. My Rogue has an innate 30% deflection and because it's a rogue it's twice as effective as the GWF's deflection. MY rogue can spend 75% of a fight stealthed and have 5 additional seconds of invincibility and actually has a dodge with invincibility frames. There is nothing the GWF has that can compete with that.
You assert that the GWF is the best support and then you say nothing about how you came about to such an incredulous conclusion. I for one have not seen any evidence that GWFs have anywhere near the utility that wizards and clerics have.
If you're going to say obviously wrong things at least try to back it up with some form of reasoning. You say that GWFs excel at what they do, at least tell us how you think they do that.
Wrong and irrelevant. Which is what happens when you think that you're right and the whole world is wrong.
The whole thread here is not about the GWF having less CC than a CC class, less DEF than a tank class, less DPS than a DPS class or less support than a support class. Which is true, but is ok.
The thread is not either about the GWF having less CC, DEF, support than any of the other classes. Which is true also, but ok we could live with that.
The thread is about the DPS of the GWF, which is lower than the dps of any other class, *including* in the one and only situation where the GWF is supposed to shine, that is wiping out the trash mobs. This, urlag, is the problem.
And btw where, except in the Foundries packed with slow zombies, can you find dungeons where the trash mobs will walk slowly to the GWF and pack around him? Where will a GWF have four or more mobs patiently circling around him? Almost nowhere. Even in the mid-level dungeons of Neverwinter the adds (and not only the adds of the final boss) are fast, they jump all over the place, have AOEs and are ranged.
Well hello there..... oh rly?... it excels at one thing only > sucking Jupiter's <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>... I would better take a freaking hamster into a t2 rather then a gwf.... deal with it ....
Seze - Rogue - Necropolis -