GWF Threatening Rush Feedback

kaylos29

There has been a lot of discussion about GWF and pvp and lot of complaints. Some of the issues are getting addressed in the pvp preview. Frontline Surge damage nerfed 25% since it was originally intended for GF damage ranges is good one. Tenacity double hits GWFs more than any other class since it attacks not just Regen/Lifesteal, but unstoppable recovery and the Temp HP pool GWFs get from Unstoppable. The CC/Prone nerf really hurts the GWF prone chain and could make landing IBS nearly impossible without speccing for reinforced surge.

However, one thing remains a problem that is really the root of a lot of the complaints even if people do not realize it. That is Threatening Rush. While the sprint cancel fix address one abuse problem, it does not cover the host of problems this one ability creates.

There are 3 big issues with Threatening Rush.

1. Makes GWFs nearly unkiteable. A GWF locks in on you and it is nearly impossible to get rid of them. Even a bugged grasping roots is hardly an issue to break. This is without sprint cancelling as many of us feel it is cheap do not do it. Sprint cancelling abuse is not required to stick to people like glue.

2. Threatening rush double hits. What this means is that the mark from threatening rush counts as a separate attack. That means if it crits, the GWF gets 2 stacks of Student of the Sword (5% damage per stack up to 3 stacks), 2 stacks of Weapon Master (2% crit per stack up to 5 stacks and doesn't need to crit), and Deep Gashes in an AoE. This ramps up GWF damage very, very fast.

3. The mark adds 24.2% damage (8% from mark*15% from feat, tested). Since the mark is so spammable, you can pretty much almost guaruntee to have it up when you need it for your prone chain. Add in a 3 stack of student of the sword, and a GWF will quickly be ready to hit you for 42.83% more damage.

4. Threatening Rush hits like a ton of bricks. I have had it hit for over 4K. I have killed people doing nothing but Threatening Rush spam without sprint cancelling. Sure Strike is on my bar, but it is mostly not worth using. Even if a target sits there letting me beat in it with attacking me to remove mark (which threatening rush put up), it barely does more DPS than just spamming threatening rush. People move though and sure strike is stationary and carries 0 utility.

That is a lot for just one ability and fixing this one ability would make GWFs more counterable without neutering them. They might actually require more skill to play to set up burst damage like other classes have to.

1. Even without sprint cancelling, Threatening Rush is quickly spammable. Increase the delay on ptr so that a GWF can use it so they cannot just spam it over and over. This makes people that just spam it easily dodgeable and a GWF would have to use it more strategically for the gap close or timing the mark.

2. Fix the double hit. this wasn't an issue with GFs, because they didn't have proccing damage boosts. Threatening Rush should only hit once. This combined with the previous fix, would make it take longer for GWFs to build crit/damage boost form SotS. A GWF might even be required to use Sure Strike at that point to get them up, making them counterable since sure strike is relatively stationary.

3. I wouldn't nerf the feat that gives 15% more damage to marked targets yet. The previous fixes would make it hard to keep mark up and get SotS up. GWFs should still be dangerous enough that you have to repect them.

4. Nerf Threatening Rush damage by 25% just like frontline surge was. This only makes sense. IV was balanced around GF damage, not a GWF's larger damage ranges. This combined with a larger delay on spammng threaening rush means you couldn't threatening rush spam to death anyone unless they were literally afk.

stoxforum1

You know this makes me wonder, I was doing some testing a few weeks ago and reported some strange behavior with GWF abilities

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?591561-GWF-uncapped-target-limits-and-why-it-is-a-problem

Basically GWF has a lot of uncapped abilities, and even IBS which is target capped can proc deep gash, shadow touched, and steel blitz on all mobs in an area. Now I wonder for items such as weapon master and student of the sword how many stacks you are getting from this. You may be maxing out stacks from just one ability, or it could even be they are stacking beyond intended like HV did. Will be interesting to test this.

nwnghost

Afaik unlike your linked thread, Punishing Charge is not uncapped but it grants AP per target hit (which is a bug).

Shadowtouched procing more than 1x (i.e. on more than 1 target) per minute is also a bug

kaylos29

stoxforum1 wrote: »

You know this makes me wonder, I was doing some testing a few weeks ago and reported some strange behavior with GWF abilities

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?591561-GWF-uncapped-target-limits-and-why-it-is-a-problem

Basically GWF has a lot of uncapped abilities, and even IBS which is target capped can proc deep gash, shadow touched, and steel blitz on all mobs in an area. Now I wonder for items such as weapon master and student of the sword how many stacks you are getting from this. You may be maxing out stacks from just one ability, or it could even be they are stacking beyond intended like HV did. Will be interesting to test this.

I have tested it, it caps properly. The issue is how fast you acquire the stacks now. In Mod 1 getting a full stack of SotS was difficult because you had to rely on Sure Strike to do it. Sure Strike attacks fast, but it makes you stationary so people can move out of it, and it only applies one stack on crit, and only to your target.

Did I mention that? Mark crits from threatening rush also apply SotS to all targets that get marked. AoE Debuffing.

What this all comes down to is that Threatening Rush is your easy button. Just hold it down or if you could abuse it by sprint cancelling. It does everything, hits hard, closes the gap, AoE Marks and Debuffs, Buffs your weapon master faster, add large amount of bonus damage. The prone chain is a killer in PvP, but I think people might be surprised to see just how much damage a GWF is putting out with Threatening Rush not to mention TR is the reason the prone chain does so much damage.

dr132

fwiw i believe there are plans to fix the threatening rush cancel time meaning the attack will have to go through it's entire animation before you can reactivate it. the biggest problem is that they simply copied the GF's IV powers over to the GWF without any changes which was just asking for these problems. the threatening rush cancel has been there since the beginning for GF's but the damage was low enough it was never a major issue, it was more of a way to keep the distance close rather than deal significant damage which is how it should be. IMO the iron vanguard gwf should have never been made in the first place. Both fighter classes should have gotten their own distinct new paragons rather than each other's like everyone else did.

kaylos29

They are fixing it. Yet I can tell you that even without sprint cancellling, which many of us quit using because of how cheesy it is, TR still lets you still to people like glue. The animation is very short for the amount of damage it does like you said for a GWF that has a larger damage range, % damage boosts, and probably about 20% more crit than a GF. Imagine is GWFs had crushing surge instead of sure strike. Could you say 5-6K crits on an at will? It hits way harder than TR does on a GF.

When I first tested IV abilities pre-mod 2 on PTR, I was shocked that my 1800 Power GWF was doing the same base damage with IV abilities as my 6K Power GF. ACtually slightly more, and a lot more on the Dailies which have a poor power to damage conversion rate.

ayroux

Ive been thinking of this ability alot lately and I think this would be a fair balance to the skill:

Take the current threatening rush, and add a REALLY short "daze" to the target being rushed at - this prevents the bad animation "connection" where sometimes you have to spam it 3-4 times to even make t work. The daze would be VERY short, just enough to ensure that when used you will connect most of the time and not have it be something that requires spamming.

Make the at will have a 4-5 second CD on it. This way you must TIME the at will appropriately rather than just spamming it.

Now its a true tradeoff skill that is still very strong but fairly balanced.


The daze may be like 1/2 the duration of the Roar "interrupt". Just enough to ensure it actually connects.

nwnghost

The "connection issue" you are seeing is due to you using the Power at the maximum distance against a target moving away from you combined with latency.
The game basically notices that you click, applies latency, checks enemy position, finds it is now out of range and cancels your Power use.

ayroux

nwnghost wrote: »

The "connection issue" you are seeing is due to you using the Power at the maximum distance against a target moving away from you combined with latency.
The game basically notices that you click, applies latency, checks enemy position, finds it is now out of range and cancels your Power use.

Oh I understand why it happens, and on some encounters like lunge strike on a GF it does the same thing, but since TR is such a short range it happens almost all the time... If you apply a CD to the at will, youll have to make it slightly more reliable to maintain balance.

overddrive

Putting a cd on an at-will makes it, by definition, no longer an at will but an encounter. If threatening rush is going to be an encounter they might as well get rid of it altogether and just make lunging strike part of the iv package for sentinels. Forcing gwfs to take the gap closer as an encounter would be a "nerf" in its self because it would be a slot that (when filled with ls) cannot be used for something else.

nwnghost

That's like claiming Weaponmaster's Strike is an encounter due to the cooldown applied if you animation cancel exploit it

pando83

More than applying a cooldown,

fix animation cancel
reduce range to 15' (middle-close distance)
make the animation like a fast roar-small rooting-stun effect on target-fast rush at them to make the skill connect properly

Right now TR has a 30' range. Decreasing it to 15' would force GWFs to actually sprint/ move more, since ti would be less than the range of teleport/ dodge roll. GFs would not be affected that much since i don't see them using it that much, and they have other gap-closing powers that can be enhanced (range increased).
Basically, it would let you get to the enemy if you manage to get close to them.

Increase a bit the range of CWs teleport and TRs dodge roll

Make SoTS applied only by direct hits and not by marks like TR marks/ IBS marks

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pando83

macjae wrote: »

Making the skill stun or daze, even for a very brief period, just so it can connect more reliably, sounds like a very bad idea to me. There are plenty of other cases where skills fail due to people moving out of range.

I fail to see a good argument for why the skill should be that reliable to begin with, given all the other balance issues related to GWFs. It needs to be non-spammable, it doesn't need to be a reliable gap closer (GWFs can sprint, GFs can use Lunging Strike), it doesn't need to be a must-have on every power load-out (both GWFs and GFs have other at-wills as well). It should be nerfed in a way that affects GWFs but not GFs that much, though.

Reason for the stun is the reduced range. 15' instead of 30' is a hige reduction in range for a gap closer. 15' is short range. Which means you can use it only if the enemy is not very far from you. Which already makes it non-spammable, together with the animation cancel fix. Since the range is that short, it would be also much easier to have the enemy walking out of its range. Almost, i would say, everytime. Which would just make the move unusable. Looks like you completely skipped the reduced range part and just focused on the other parts. But you've to consider it overall.

To me, it's a way better solution than putting a cooldown on a at-will. At-will means you can use it whenever you want. Which means no cooldown.
Since it's an at-will, only way to make it non-spammable is to reduce the range.
But reducing the range, again, you get a power that, with the current animation and latency, would never connect (it already requires spamming it to make it connect with a 30' range). Which means you would basically rush and rubberband back a bit (that is the effect when it does not connect due to the target moving), never hitting anyone unless they stay absolutely still at 15' or less from you. In PvP, that almost NEVER happens.

Also, you skipped the part where i mentioned the little increase in CW-TR teleport/ dodge roll range. Which would actually let them immune dodge at double the distance required for threat rush to activate (15').
A brief stun on a 15' at-will on a melee is not a problem in these conditions. 15' means the GWF needs to get really close to the CW/ TR. Basically, it would be very similar to how it was in module 1.

Now, the point to me is that to be balanced, it must be that CWs-TRs can kite GWFs if they don't make mistakes, but at the same time, if the GWF does not make mistakes he WILL catch up.
This is not a single player game where a CW just needs to do not make mistakes to kill the NPC monster. The enemy must have a way to eventually catch you and have his chance, after you DPSed him from range and repelled/ cced him.

yourtorment

nwnghost wrote: »

The "connection issue" you are seeing is due to you using the Power at the maximum distance against a target moving away from you combined with latency.
The game basically notices that you click, applies latency, checks enemy position, finds it is now out of range and cancels your Power use.

untrue, ive had it stutter and stick and not rush someone well in range.

pando83

More than the enemy out of range, it's probably that the enemy is not in the same position anymore.
If that's the case, a fix could let the enimation end normally (no more stuttering-rubberbanding effect) without marking/ dealing damage. Would still act as a gap closer, but would require a still target or the enemy to be proned/ rooted with roar to connect properly.
This way, would also solve the problem of the power dealing way too much damage on GWFs. Considering the opponent is moving most of the time in PvP, the power would properly connect only under specific conditions, giving all the other classes room to mitigate or nullify it.

Add the halved range of 15' instead of 30', and you have something still usable in PvE, but much less powerful in PvP.

However, i may repeat myself, even with these nerfs, CWs and TRs must learn to make their pattern less predictable.
Even before module 2, with a good combo of bravery/sprint i was already able to wipe CWs fast due to them using teleport in the same way, everytime. I just needed to run at them, wait for them to teleport, count to 3, kill. Few of them even use repel.

overddrive

macjae wrote: »

What is the operative definition of an "at-will" and an "encounter" here? You're clearly basing it on how much delay is associated with using a power, which would fit with the 4e source material, but you might as well adopt the "takes up an at-will slot" standard, because different powers behave in different ways. Even the pen-and-paper version of 4e eventually adapted different resource management standards. So far in Neverwinter, there's an "at-will" that can be discharged (the TR Cloud of Steel), "encounters" that are charged so they can be used more frequently, and HRs get "dailies" that they can use about as often as "encounters."

I don't think putting a cooldown on Threatening Rush is the ideal solution, but I don't think an at-will with a cooldown is necessarily an abomination either, in light of all the other power recharging variants. (What I think they should do is make Threatening Rush cost an amount of stamina identical to how much stamina it costs to sprint the same distance, which will keep it as a complete at-will for GFs while making it deplete for GWFs and more or less reset their mobility to manageable levels.)

At-Will as in literally at will. As things stand right now the at-will could be eliminated altogether and I don't think it would dent the overall potency of gwf in pvp. But given that The GWF Nerf is forthcoming I think it would be reasonable to how far it reduces the power of the gwf overall before cutting into the class with yet another nerf.

warpet

u guys atack wrong skill frontline is main reson for easy kills on gf and gwf it so easy hit and prone ppl with and ty to instant cast almost noone ever dodge after this prone u can easy kill ppl

ladysylvia

My suggestion: Remove mark from TR and give it to Aggraving Strike. This fix many problems. GWF don't have a easy mark, and the GF tree are balanced more in case of threat + dps.

kaylos29

warpet wrote: »

u guys atack wrong skill frontline is main reson for easy kills on gf and gwf it so easy hit and prone ppl with and ty to instant cast almost noone ever dodge after this prone u can easy kill ppl

Frontline surge is nerfed on PTR. It was was hitting for less than my Takedown. Still powerful, but damage is reduced quite a bit.

Threatening Rush is more powerful than people realize. It is the reason a GWf has you fully debuffed for the prone chain. It is the reason that nobody can get kite a GWF. And it does a lot of damage. It is much more important than FLS, but people don't understand the mechanics of what it is doing to realize it.