I'm wanting to know how combat tree is looking in PvP. Has anyone tested?
Combat won't be viable until piercing blades is actually doing piercing damage. Also the capstone is still fairly useless due to low at will damage. @amenar - when will the piercing blade change be on preview server?
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
@rayrdan : this is not what I understood. If what you say would be true then Ancient Roots would be almost useless. My understanding is that @amenar ensured that roots are ticking for their full duration (2 to 7 seconds depending on points in Ancient Roots) on control resistent targets and that Master Trapper 60% bonus gets directly applied to said duration, resulting in 3.2 to 11.2 seconds of duration.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
If you are going to rake away ourdaze then it needs to be done across the board TR and Cw have this also so an adjustment to cc on tenacity would be better for all vs just crippling HR . I would gladly in pvp see cc across the board reduction
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
I'm wanting to know how combat tree is looking in PvP. Has anyone tested?
Combat won't be viable until piercing blades is actually doing piercing damage. Also the capstone is still fairly useless due to low at will damage. @amenar - when will the piercing blade change be on preview server?
Clear the Ground and the Capstone are working together more than adequately. Rapid Strike, not the best, but Combat probably needs some kind of drawback. Heavy AoE burst, lower single target. Keep that for Archery.
Combat will remain underpowered in pvp anyway when almost all of the melee encounters have low damage.
in pvp i dont mind either, but as long as my cc in pve is not changed to the point its useless. as of right now crushing roots in live servers is barely viable. not even counting bosses fyi; just the normally 15-20 mobs i fight at once. daze is the only reason why i don't die in 2 seconds when i pull my mobs, and i can only hit 5 targets and that's sad, that should really be removed so we have no target limit or increase it. i am not trying to break pvp as you rarely fight any more then 1-5 players in pvp but in pve you fight normally 5-20 mobs at once. so the 5 target limit is hurtful in survival, dps, and cc.
EDIT: forgot to quote @amenar when he mentioned his opinion on crushing roots.
The Trapper can perma-daze with Crushing Roots and perma-root opponents. Both dazing and rooting should be addressed. CC in general needs to be addressed. Some CWs can chain dailies (Oppressive Force) and daze entire nodes of opponents.
Trans Elven battle enchantments are NOT an issue. I have one. I have PvPd with it on numerous characters. Certain Trappers can nearly perma root+daze me even with a Trans Elven due to animation times on dodges and attacks. Bring 2 Trappers into the fold and it becomes a really wonky system.
Basically, you should only be able to CC an opponent for so long in a specified time frame. (Dont worry HRs, this applies to repel CWs, too.) If certain players have a higher tolerance to CC, there is less CC mitigation awarded to them. If other players have a lower tolerance to CC, more CC mitigation is awarded to them at the expense of suffering the initial CC effects before CC mitigation procs.
This will have to be figured out in combat rather than in theory. My summary for thr future is the root CC and the daze CC diminish if used X amount of times OR effect an opponent for Y duration (varies by opponent CC resist) every Z seconds.
After further digging, as well as your feedback on the topic here, we've decided not to move forward with a Crushing Roots specific band-aid at this time. We need to look into a real fix for the wider problem, and layering on potential weirdness with a psuedo-fix for Crushing Roots isn't going to fix the situation.
After further digging, as well as your feedback on the topic here, we've decided not to move forward with a Crushing Roots specific band-aid at this time. We need to look into a real fix for the wider problem, and layering on potential weirdness with a psuedo-fix for Crushing Roots isn't going to fix the situation.
The wider issue can still be fixed later on, though, and a band-aid could be administered now to sort out the issue temporarily at least so that one problem is sorted for now. But I can understand the sentiment of fixing a problem globally.
Another thing I'd like to mention, is it possible at all to increase the damage bonus from Archery's Stillness of the Forest at this stage, or reduce the range requirement? It's extremely irksome for a T5 feat especially, both in PvP and PvE because 25ft is quite a distance especially on a node on PvP, or when you need to be in close proximity to teammates to receive buffs in PvE.
Also, is it possible to increase the duration of Longstrider's Shot buff? Trappers can just reapply the bonus over and over so that it's not lost, but for Archery and/or Combat, the duration means it's not a very worthwhile buff the majority of the time, especially solo.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
So, looking at what I could realistically do for preventing the perma-daze build without affecting PvE, one possible solution would be something to the effects of:
In PvP, you may only be affected by Crushing Roots once every 3 seconds.
Both the amount of times, and the duration, could change to whatever makes sense. 3 times in 10 seconds, once every 5 seconds, etc. We still need a better "real" solution to CC in PvP - which won't happen in the immediate future - but at that point, maybe this limiter could come off.
Note that this is not a patch note yet, just asking for your feelings about something like this as a means to prevent more brokeness in PvP.
Trapper did and still does low damage in pvp, taking away control is taking away the only 2 thinks a trapper can do: 1. kill by exaustion; 2. Hold bases by perma stuning enemies.
If controls are to be reduced then it would be justified that some 1vs 1 damage to be increased.
Post edited by treesclimber on
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
After further digging, as well as your feedback on the topic here, we've decided not to move forward with a Crushing Roots specific band-aid at this time. We need to look into a real fix for the wider problem, and layering on potential weirdness with a psuedo-fix for Crushing Roots isn't going to fix the situation.
Thanks for all the quick feedback, all.
Thanks for leaving it alone. Perma-daze is not an issue for equally-geared players. It is basically a myth. As an HR you can constantly pelt a CW or DC or TR or GWF or paladin with roots/dazes and you will see almost no control effects at all. Meanwhile Crescendo and the prones available to GF and GWF are killers. Smoke Bomb is in need of a serious lengthening of its cooldown. Courage Breaker is the most obnoxious, overpowered control ability in the game. HR control abilities are gnat bites by comparison - less effective even than the paladin's by-the-light build.
Just know that perma-daze HRs will be able to really rip people up in PvP without a Trans Elven or other CC immunity, especially at lower levels. This is coupled with the thorned roots change to ignore CC resistance and proc its full ticks.
I could not even play PvP with my high-end SW or lower geared alts without a *Trans* Elven to combat perma-daze HRs. Literally nothing you can do...
I wasnt sure about changes would be enough and still have some doubts, yet I liked overall changes, and gratz on that big step.
Bug : The flurry timer start with the animation of encounter, this makes some skills like Gushing Wound to let us hit only for 1ish second with flurry buff. It should either start with encounter's damage or the buff time should be extended to 3 seconds.
Bug: I dont have exactly the test results in the hand, yet for some reason I also felt that Thorned Roots giving less damage occasionaly. I am guessing that it affects a second time from damage resistances ( just guessing).
Feedback: Congratulations on Aimed Shot. It is now a very useful skill and is fun to use for both Trapper and Archer. I cant wait to test with main hand bug fix on next preview build.
Feedback: SotF working pretty nice, yet especially CoA charge time and PG cooldown time are really far too much. We get out of CoA charges in no time, I feel like it can even be a skill without charges now. Well I cant see why not.
Feedback: Congratulations on throw caution and the feat that affects it. It really is fun to use and really functional, yet it could get a bit more damage if possible. Like %15.
Feedback: I hope that we will still see the %50 more damage on CtG, and I also hope that you can bring Rapid Strike to the same level with it. That way single target damage would not be too much decreased.
Feedback: Since no HR is playing from the most possible far away position from the encounters, a %1 more damage per rank to Aspect of the Falcon would be nice. It would be overpowered aswell, not really sure about it, yet just getting a range increase from a rank seems kind of insufficient.
Feedback: Animation speed increase is nice on Electric Shot, yet it still needs a %30 ish damage buff.
Feedback : Thinking Archer as a single target damager is OK, and the results show that it really is designed for that purpose, yet I still feel like Predator should get a secondary effect like " the targets that are hit by an encounter power after first target are affected by minor Prey, taking %20 more damage from all resources. If the main target dies one of the secondary targets become the main target, this secondary effect is half effective in PvP". So that archers could also deal a better aoe damage.
Feddback: Aspect of the pack should give HR and allies %10 Combat advantage damage, %5 more per rank. So that this power becomes logical to be used in all the abundant Combat Advantage Damage applier.
Feedback : AotS damage per rank could be increased to %5.
Bug: Extra Action point gain from feats seems not to be working. It could aldo be replaced with Crit Severity feat since AP gain is not a problem for HR.
Feedback: A Damage Resistance debuff would be so good on CtG. Even a fixed %5 would do it (like WMS of GWF).
Overall : Room for improvements, yet pretty positive, so cudoos.
There are things that are worse and still aren't touched, yet people have this illusion that insignias were at fault for players not dying, as they've said about Stronghold BOONS etc. in the past cases.
Priority issues in terms of selfhealing:
1.Lifesteal + Endless consumtion and Lifesteal severity is kinda worse, even without endless consumtion the Lifesteal severity doesn't make sense, if you think about it you heal 100% based on ur hit, so in PvE you hit over 100k+ damage all the time, and your max HP is between 110k-150k , so you see how ridiculous is with and without endless consumtion.
to fix this in PvP there needs to be a new stat for it: Tenacity Lifesteal which cuts atleast 90% of the lifesteal severity, also Endless consumtion rquires a rework.. ( the same goes for CC resistance from tenacity, switch the coding with the one from the t.elven)
2. Drowned Weapons are making the other weapons obsolete, just for the fact it has such a low downtime, it needs to be increased to make the other weapons more appealing, it's like Lostmauth, but for weapons, instead of neck/belt/artifact.
to fix this in PvP there needs to be a ICD of atleast 90seconds.
3. Wheel of Elements : Water buff which provides 100% of ur max HP as healing.
to fix this in PvP it needs to be tonned down to 50% , so that healing depression will make it 25%.
please deal with these 3 things above in this module.
this would boost drastically the performance of the Range classes against melee.
+++ Agree with that! So much healing in PvP makes it feel real stupid (I remember 1-3 mods, when ppl couldnt heal so much even with Devoted Clerics in team, and 50+ summary kills in 10 min of pvp was absolutly normal and so much fun). BTW There is not enough to really enjoy mod 10 PvP... just because 1-2 Devoted Cleric makes impossible kill someone (for example). There are a lot of healing sources in this game and 90+% of those should be nerfed in high geared PvP. So I think its better to just INCREASE healing depression to 70-80% from 50%.
It seems logical, because mod 10 very different to mod 3-4(5?) where healing depression appeared and never changed.
After this it will be much easier to nerf/up some healing mechanics or skills for better balance.
P.S. Do you know another problem in balancing archery/combat/trapper ways (for PvP)? Its the same reason, what makes melee classes so much better in Domination - yes! capturing the points by standing on them. 5 ppl needs to capture 3 points... its hard to ranged classes be usefull here (we are not talking about broken unkillble Clerics lol), because when u're trying to use your range to gain an advantage - you are loosing caprure->points->game. But its ok - just features of this competitive mod.
Soo.... please, give us other SIMPLE PvP mods (2v2-5v5 whatever u want!) - we can make some maps in foundary for you! Just open competition - and u will get a lot of good maps! We will not angry, if new mods will be "not good enough" or "too much unbalanced" - its better than nothing! Simple arena / capture the flag will be really new and interesting for us! And it will make easier to help ranged classes / Archers to find their unique place in this rough PvP world!
Sry for my Eng, and Thanks alot for your patience!
Post edited by van1k on
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
OK then, how about an at-will damage band-aid tailored to combat tree?
Split Strike, Aimed Strike, and Careful Attack, if even possible. Clear the Ground is fine now with the buff it got.
Agreed. Just tested out CtG with Combat spec and it performed well. Very well, actually. Throw caution + CtG spam took out everything in any Dread Ring lair within seconds. Bosses maybe a few more seconds And that's with a Dread enchantment. I'd imagine if I switched back to Vorpal it'd be even more impressive.
Aimed Strike could certainly use a buff to compete with Aimed Shot's boost. Careful Attack needs a quick lookover. Split Strike.... never really found a great use for it. Was always situational with that dash-forward mechanism (and when I wanted it, I was in melee range already). But I suppose a buff wouldn't hurt it, either. I'm all for equal opportunity
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
OK then, how about an at-will damage band-aid tailored to combat tree?
Split Strike, Aimed Strike, and Careful Attack, if even possible. Clear the Ground is fine now with the buff it got.
Agreed. Just tested out CtG with Combat spec and it performed well. Very well, actually. Throw caution + CtG spam took out everything in any Dread Ring lair within seconds. Bosses maybe a few more seconds And that's with a Dread enchantment. I'd imagine if I switched back to Vorpal it'd be even more impressive.
Aimed Strike could certainly use a buff to compete with Aimed Shot's boost. Careful Attack needs a quick lookover. Split Strike.... never really found a great use for it. Was always situational with that dash-forward mechanism (and when I wanted it, I was in melee range already). But I suppose a buff wouldn't hurt it, either. I'm all for equal opportunity
Call me nuts after all of this. I think CtG needs adjusted. Scything Blades + that large reach is insane with large groups.
After further digging, as well as your feedback on the topic here, we've decided not to move forward with a Crushing Roots specific band-aid at this time. We need to look into a real fix for the wider problem, and layering on potential weirdness with a psuedo-fix for Crushing Roots isn't going to fix the situation.
Thanks for all the quick feedback, all.
Thanks for leaving it alone. Perma-daze is not an issue for equally-geared players. It is basically a myth. As an HR you can constantly pelt a CW or DC or TR or GWF or paladin with roots/dazes and you will see almost no control effects at all. Meanwhile Crescendo and the prones available to GF and GWF are killers. Smoke Bomb is in need of a serious lengthening of its cooldown. Courage Breaker is the most obnoxious, overpowered control ability in the game. HR control abilities are gnat bites by comparison - less effective even than the paladin's by-the-light build.
After further digging, as well as your feedback on the topic here, we've decided not to move forward with a Crushing Roots specific band-aid at this time. We need to look into a real fix for the wider problem, and layering on potential weirdness with a psuedo-fix for Crushing Roots isn't going to fix the situation.
Thanks for all the quick feedback, all.
Thank you for this
after returning to preview I made some adjustments to my encounters and powers. I did not have to give up any stats to do it either. I was very vocal about SWOTF being nerfed but I have to amitt I was wrong. Amenars changes actually seem to work realy well. using rapid shot and disruptive I can make trapper run smoothly now. Master Trapper does seem to bug out roots damage for some reason though
the changes to Ca really did drop dps a lot in a Dragon battle with 10 players so Storm warden may become the new path to travel for Trapper
Cordon I think due to 5 target cap has an bug it shows up in logs in an extended battle a cordon gives 0 damage to target for rest of battle . please consider removing the capp it really does nothing to over power us.
I really have tested dodge and see no noticeable change
lag does have some problems and I think its causing some things not to be reliable Forest med earlier was not working correctly but now seems to be ok/
trapper wont be able to make use of any of the new powers in pvp like aimed shot please consider a buff to rapid shot
overt all I'm pretty happy with changes if we can get cordon and roots working correctry I think no one should be unhappy that plays trapper
I've been talking to Amenar about some of the H/R changes, and I mentioned to him that I found the tooltip on the Combat capstone unclear. We're in text lock right now, so we can't fix it just yet, but I thought I'd tell people about our discussion, since people are saying the combat capstone seems weak.
What the tooltip text says now: "Melee At-Will attacks strike two additional times for 65% more damage"
Could be read as: I hit for 100, and then get two more strikes that do a total of 65. My total is 165.
How it really works: I hit for 100, and then I get two more hits, *each* of which does 165 (100 + 65). My total is 430.
I know people are saying that the at-wills are so low it doesn't matter. I haven't personally tested Combat, but I will say two things: * Four times the damage is a LOT. * Amenar tells me the base at-will dps is pretty much on par with other classes. Of course, buffs and bonuses can change that a lot. And fast attack speeds can make good dps look small. But I'm inclined to believe Amenar about the base dps. Whether the total buffs available to a combat H/R are enough to make the at-wills viable I think we don't know yet. But between Blade Hurricane and Piercing Blade, I think combat's got much better tools than it had.
I've been talking to Amenar about some of the H/R changes, and I mentioned to him that I found the tooltip on the Combat capstone unclear. We're in text lock right now, so we can't fix it just yet, but I thought I'd tell people about our discussion, since people are saying the combat capstone seems weak.
What the tooltip text says now: "Melee At-Will attacks strike two additional times for 65% more damage"
Could be read as: I hit for 100, and then get two more strikes that do a total of 65. My total is 165.
How it really works: I hit for 100, and then I get two more hits, *each* of which does 165 (100 + 65). My total is 430.
I know people are saying that the at-wills are so low it doesn't matter. I haven't personally tested Combat, but I will say two things: * Four times the damage is a LOT. * Amenar tells me the base at-will dps is pretty much on par with other classes. Of course, buffs and bonuses can change that a lot. And fast attack speeds can make good dps look small. But I'm inclined to believe Amenar about the base dps. Whether the total buffs available to a combat H/R are enough to make the at-wills viable I think we don't know yet. But between Blade Hurricane and Piercing Blade, I think combat's got much better tools than it had.
Actually, from testing on preview combat damage isn't that bad in PvP, although I didn't test it for PvE so I can't really say. The capstone actually gives a lot of damage as you indicated, it's more the uptime that I think is the issue. The extra hits, which are also affected by crits, damage buffs (I think) and piercing blade, actually increases it a lot more than it looks, and even more so in party because of buff scaling. Whereas you'd do 430 damage on an at-will that did 100 base, in party that'd actually be increased tenfold in some cases because the buffs affect it multiple times.
Combat is in a much better position than it was. I don't know enough to say whether it's enough, but I'll say it's still not on par with Trapper because of how many tools Trapper has. As for Combat PvP, the next patch where Piercing Blades becomes pre-mitigation based piercing damage, we'll see how strong it is. Damage right now isn't too bad but it doesn't cut through certain boons, in particular Cold Shoulder, which is a large part of why several HR trees are weak in PvP.
BUG: Cold Shoulder boon from Icewind Dale Campaign lasts 10 (maybe 20?) seconds and mitigates all attacks in the period by 2000 damage instead of just one hit. This causes classes like HRs to deal much lower damage during this period, even 0s since their base damage is fairly low.
Comments
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Clear the Ground and the Capstone are working together more than adequately. Rapid Strike, not the best, but Combat probably needs some kind of drawback. Heavy AoE burst, lower single target. Keep that for Archery.
Combat will remain underpowered in pvp anyway when almost all of the melee encounters have low damage.
EDIT: forgot to quote @amenar when he mentioned his opinion on crushing roots.
The Trapper can perma-daze with Crushing Roots and perma-root opponents. Both dazing and rooting should be addressed. CC in general needs to be addressed. Some CWs can chain dailies (Oppressive Force) and daze entire nodes of opponents.
Trans Elven battle enchantments are NOT an issue. I have one. I have PvPd with it on numerous characters. Certain Trappers can nearly perma root+daze me even with a Trans Elven due to animation times on dodges and attacks. Bring 2 Trappers into the fold and it becomes a really wonky system.
Basically, you should only be able to CC an opponent for so long in a specified time frame. (Dont worry HRs, this applies to repel CWs, too.) If certain players have a higher tolerance to CC, there is less CC mitigation awarded to them. If other players have a lower tolerance to CC, more CC mitigation is awarded to them at the expense of suffering the initial CC effects before CC mitigation procs.
This will have to be figured out in combat rather than in theory. My summary for thr future is the root CC and the daze CC diminish if used X amount of times OR effect an opponent for Y duration (varies by opponent CC resist) every Z seconds.
Thanks for all the quick feedback, all.
The wider issue can still be fixed later on, though, and a band-aid could be administered now to sort out the issue temporarily at least so that one problem is sorted for now. But I can understand the sentiment of fixing a problem globally.
Another thing I'd like to mention, is it possible at all to increase the damage bonus from Archery's Stillness of the Forest at this stage, or reduce the range requirement? It's extremely irksome for a T5 feat especially, both in PvP and PvE because 25ft is quite a distance especially on a node on PvP, or when you need to be in close proximity to teammates to receive buffs in PvE.
Also, is it possible to increase the duration of Longstrider's Shot buff? Trappers can just reapply the bonus over and over so that it's not lost, but for Archery and/or Combat, the duration means it's not a very worthwhile buff the majority of the time, especially solo.
1. kill by exaustion;
2. Hold bases by perma stuning enemies.
If controls are to be reduced then it would be justified that some 1vs 1 damage to be increased.
Just know that perma-daze HRs will be able to really rip people up in PvP without a Trans Elven or other CC immunity, especially at lower levels. This is coupled with the thorned roots change to ignore CC resistance and proc its full ticks.
I could not even play PvP with my high-end SW or lower geared alts without a *Trans* Elven to combat perma-daze HRs. Literally nothing you can do...
Bug : The flurry timer start with the animation of encounter, this makes some skills like Gushing Wound to let us hit only for 1ish second with flurry buff. It should either start with encounter's damage or the buff time should be extended to 3 seconds.
Bug: I dont have exactly the test results in the hand, yet for some reason I also felt that Thorned Roots giving less damage occasionaly. I am guessing that it affects a second time from damage resistances ( just guessing).
Feedback: Congratulations on Aimed Shot. It is now a very useful skill and is fun to use for both Trapper and Archer. I cant wait to test with main hand bug fix on next preview build.
Feedback: SotF working pretty nice, yet especially CoA charge time and PG cooldown time are really far too much. We get out of CoA charges in no time, I feel like it can even be a skill without charges now. Well I cant see why not.
Feedback: Congratulations on throw caution and the feat that affects it. It really is fun to use and really functional, yet it could get a bit more damage if possible. Like %15.
Feedback: I hope that we will still see the %50 more damage on CtG, and I also hope that you can bring Rapid Strike to the same level with it. That way single target damage would not be too much decreased.
Feedback: Since no HR is playing from the most possible far away position from the encounters, a %1 more damage per rank to Aspect of the Falcon would be nice. It would be overpowered aswell, not really sure about it, yet just getting a range increase from a rank seems kind of insufficient.
Feedback: Animation speed increase is nice on Electric Shot, yet it still needs a %30 ish damage buff.
Feedback : Thinking Archer as a single target damager is OK, and the results show that it really is designed for that purpose, yet I still feel like Predator should get a secondary effect like " the targets that are hit by an encounter power after first target are affected by minor Prey, taking %20 more damage from all resources. If the main target dies one of the secondary targets become the main target, this secondary effect is half effective in PvP". So that archers could also deal a better aoe damage.
Feddback: Aspect of the pack should give HR and allies %10 Combat advantage damage, %5 more per rank. So that this power becomes logical to be used in all the abundant Combat Advantage Damage applier.
Feedback : AotS damage per rank could be increased to %5.
Bug: Extra Action point gain from feats seems not to be working. It could aldo be replaced with Crit Severity feat since AP gain is not a problem for HR.
Feedback: A Damage Resistance debuff would be so good on CtG. Even a fixed %5 would do it (like WMS of GWF).
Overall : Room for improvements, yet pretty positive, so cudoos.
So much healing in PvP makes it feel real stupid (I remember 1-3 mods, when ppl couldnt heal so much even with Devoted Clerics in team, and 50+ summary kills in 10 min of pvp was absolutly normal and so much fun).
BTW There is not enough to really enjoy mod 10 PvP... just because 1-2 Devoted Cleric makes impossible kill someone (for example).
There are a lot of healing sources in this game and 90+% of those should be nerfed in high geared PvP.
So I think its better to just INCREASE healing depression to 70-80% from 50%.
It seems logical, because mod 10 very different to mod 3-4(5?) where healing depression appeared and never changed.
After this it will be much easier to nerf/up some healing mechanics or skills for better balance.
P.S. Do you know another problem in balancing archery/combat/trapper ways (for PvP)? Its the same reason, what makes melee classes so much better in Domination - yes! capturing the points by standing on them. 5 ppl needs to capture 3 points... its hard to ranged classes be usefull here (we are not talking about broken unkillble Clerics lol), because when u're trying to use your range to gain an advantage - you are loosing caprure->points->game. But its ok - just features of this competitive mod.
Soo.... please, give us other SIMPLE PvP mods (2v2-5v5 whatever u want!) - we can make some maps in foundary for you! Just open competition - and u will get a lot of good maps! We will not angry, if new mods will be "not good enough" or "too much unbalanced" - its better than nothing! Simple arena / capture the flag will be really new and interesting for us! And it will make easier to help ranged classes / Archers to find their unique place in this rough PvP world!
Sry for my Eng, and Thanks alot for your patience!
Just tested out CtG with Combat spec and it performed well. Very well, actually. Throw caution + CtG spam took out everything in any Dread Ring lair within seconds. Bosses maybe a few more seconds
And that's with a Dread enchantment. I'd imagine if I switched back to Vorpal it'd be even more impressive.
Aimed Strike could certainly use a buff to compete with Aimed Shot's boost.
Careful Attack needs a quick lookover.
Split Strike.... never really found a great use for it. Was always situational with that dash-forward mechanism (and when I wanted it, I was in melee range already). But I suppose a buff wouldn't hurt it, either. I'm all for equal opportunity
Probably that Scything Blades needs a cap on it.
But Blade Hurricane does indeed crit if the at-will was a crit. 50%+ crit and 100% crit severity hits really hard.
after returning to preview I made some adjustments to my encounters and powers. I did not have to give up any stats to do it either. I was very vocal about SWOTF being nerfed but I have to amitt I was wrong. Amenars changes actually seem to work realy well. using rapid shot and disruptive I can make trapper run smoothly now. Master Trapper does seem to bug out roots damage for some reason though
the changes to Ca really did drop dps a lot in a Dragon battle with 10 players so Storm warden may become the new path to travel for Trapper
Cordon I think due to 5 target cap has an bug it shows up in logs in an extended battle a cordon gives 0 damage to target for rest of battle . please consider removing the capp it really does nothing to over power us.
I really have tested dodge and see no noticeable change
lag does have some problems and I think its causing some things not to be reliable Forest med earlier was not working correctly but now seems to be ok/
trapper wont be able to make use of any of the new powers in pvp like aimed shot please consider a buff to rapid shot
overt all I'm pretty happy with changes if we can get cordon and roots working correctry I think no one should be unhappy that plays trapper
I've been talking to Amenar about some of the H/R changes, and I mentioned to him that I found the tooltip on the Combat capstone unclear. We're in text lock right now, so we can't fix it just yet, but I thought I'd tell people about our discussion, since people are saying the combat capstone seems weak.
What the tooltip text says now:
"Melee At-Will attacks strike two additional times for 65% more damage"
Could be read as:
I hit for 100, and then get two more strikes that do a total of 65. My total is 165.
How it really works:
I hit for 100, and then I get two more hits, *each* of which does 165 (100 + 65). My total is 430.
I know people are saying that the at-wills are so low it doesn't matter. I haven't personally tested Combat, but I will say two things:
* Four times the damage is a LOT.
* Amenar tells me the base at-will dps is pretty much on par with other classes. Of course, buffs and bonuses can change that a lot. And fast attack speeds can make good dps look small. But I'm inclined to believe Amenar about the base dps. Whether the total buffs available to a combat H/R are enough to make the at-wills viable I think we don't know yet. But between Blade Hurricane and Piercing Blade, I think combat's got much better tools than it had.
Actually, from testing on preview combat damage isn't that bad in PvP, although I didn't test it for PvE so I can't really say. The capstone actually gives a lot of damage as you indicated, it's more the uptime that I think is the issue. The extra hits, which are also affected by crits, damage buffs (I think) and piercing blade, actually increases it a lot more than it looks, and even more so in party because of buff scaling. Whereas you'd do 430 damage on an at-will that did 100 base, in party that'd actually be increased tenfold in some cases because the buffs affect it multiple times.
Combat is in a much better position than it was. I don't know enough to say whether it's enough, but I'll say it's still not on par with Trapper because of how many tools Trapper has. As for Combat PvP, the next patch where Piercing Blades becomes pre-mitigation based piercing damage, we'll see how strong it is. Damage right now isn't too bad but it doesn't cut through certain boons, in particular Cold Shoulder, which is a large part of why several HR trees are weak in PvP.
Oh, slightly off-topic but semi-related. @amenar
BUG: Cold Shoulder boon from Icewind Dale Campaign lasts 10 (maybe 20?) seconds and mitigates all attacks in the period by 2000 damage instead of just one hit. This causes classes like HRs to deal much lower damage during this period, even 0s since their base damage is fairly low.