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For the love of Tempus would you please buff the GWF?
urborgstalker
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 17 Arc User
I know, there are a million balance this and that threads out there but I think everyone can agree that the GWF has received the shaft in this game. It's the badly neglected redheaded stepchild locked in the closet and for the most part ignored.
A few points:
1) GWF's damage is terrible. They almost never top damage in pve. The only class they can regularly outdamage is clerics. At 60, my GF has outdamaged every GWF I've grouped with.
2) GWF's almost never top kills in pvp. I have only ever seen 1 tie for top kills and that guy was amazing. Lousy rogues and CW's easily rack up more kills.
3) GWF's are not strong against any class in endgame pvp (they've never won a 1 on 1 against my GF and my CW only lost to 1 once at lvl 19). I've watched countless rogues end GWF's without a struggle and clerics...well we all know how that goes (might as well pound your head on a brick wall).
4) GWF's with their weak damage have nothing to compensate it. They don't excel at CC, aoe dmg, survivability, etc. The only thing they do better than any other class is running away (even that is debatable with rogues being able to just disappear and flee).
5) Their sprint is pointless compared to the other classes Shift abilities. It's not even good for running down other players because it depletes so quickly. I can play ring around the rosies with GWF's on my CW all day.
6) GWF's are too easy to kill. Determination is nice and all, but when it's down, GWF's are sitting ducks. With all of the resistance mitigation and critical damage flying around, they need something more permanent to keep them alive.
7) Nobody wants a GWF. That's the bottom line. You never see people asking for a GWF for a dungeon run or a pvp group. They might tolerate them, or bring them along to help a friend, but for the tough battles, players want something else in their group.
I mean seriously, have the devs even tried playing that class? Whoever is responsible for balancing the GWF needs to be fired. The class is poorly implemented and needs some serious love. Every ability they have should be re-evaluated.
*Reaping Strike needs to either charge faster or have no slowing effect during charging.
*Sure Strike needs its damage boosted or its cone expanded.
*Not So Fast does horrible damage and the slowing effect duration is too short.
*Spinning Strike is a bad joke...needs its damage boosted significantly, its duration shortened, and/or it should have a significant damage mitigation bonus to compensate for the vulnerability it causes.
*Mighty Leap needs a damage boost and a CC effect akin to either a stun or a pull in effect, bouncing those in range onto the GWF.
*Restoring Strike's cooldown needs to be reduced, or its healing effect increased, or it's damage enhanced, or all 3.
*Avalanche of Steel does too little damage or needs to have it's movement speed increased, making it more difficult to avoid.
*Slam is just a joke. Make it 1 hit, full damage, and buff the slow effect and/or its duration...or give it an entirely new CC effect, like a bouncing pull in effect that stuns during airtime.
*Takedown needs to have it's knockdown duration increased at lvls 2 and 3, probably a dmg boost too. GF's can do the same thing against 3 targets at range, Takedown is a joke by comparison.
*Bravery...+runspeed, lol. It's only worth taking for deflect. Either bump the run speed even more or give it something that's actually useful in combat.
*Wicked Strike needs moar damage.
*Roar should be upgraded to causing stun, not just a piddly interrupt or it needs to do more damage.
The list goes on but I'm out of time and I think I've made my point. Frankly I don't care how the GWF is buffed and the above list is just how I see things (others will see things differently obviously) but GWF's need some serious love. I only wonder why it's taking so long...the devs have to have data miners that show how horribly deficient the GWF is.
Come on devs, balance these poor suckers, they've suffered long enough don't you think?
A few points:
1) GWF's damage is terrible. They almost never top damage in pve. The only class they can regularly outdamage is clerics. At 60, my GF has outdamaged every GWF I've grouped with.
2) GWF's almost never top kills in pvp. I have only ever seen 1 tie for top kills and that guy was amazing. Lousy rogues and CW's easily rack up more kills.
3) GWF's are not strong against any class in endgame pvp (they've never won a 1 on 1 against my GF and my CW only lost to 1 once at lvl 19). I've watched countless rogues end GWF's without a struggle and clerics...well we all know how that goes (might as well pound your head on a brick wall).
4) GWF's with their weak damage have nothing to compensate it. They don't excel at CC, aoe dmg, survivability, etc. The only thing they do better than any other class is running away (even that is debatable with rogues being able to just disappear and flee).
5) Their sprint is pointless compared to the other classes Shift abilities. It's not even good for running down other players because it depletes so quickly. I can play ring around the rosies with GWF's on my CW all day.
6) GWF's are too easy to kill. Determination is nice and all, but when it's down, GWF's are sitting ducks. With all of the resistance mitigation and critical damage flying around, they need something more permanent to keep them alive.
7) Nobody wants a GWF. That's the bottom line. You never see people asking for a GWF for a dungeon run or a pvp group. They might tolerate them, or bring them along to help a friend, but for the tough battles, players want something else in their group.
I mean seriously, have the devs even tried playing that class? Whoever is responsible for balancing the GWF needs to be fired. The class is poorly implemented and needs some serious love. Every ability they have should be re-evaluated.
*Reaping Strike needs to either charge faster or have no slowing effect during charging.
*Sure Strike needs its damage boosted or its cone expanded.
*Not So Fast does horrible damage and the slowing effect duration is too short.
*Spinning Strike is a bad joke...needs its damage boosted significantly, its duration shortened, and/or it should have a significant damage mitigation bonus to compensate for the vulnerability it causes.
*Mighty Leap needs a damage boost and a CC effect akin to either a stun or a pull in effect, bouncing those in range onto the GWF.
*Restoring Strike's cooldown needs to be reduced, or its healing effect increased, or it's damage enhanced, or all 3.
*Avalanche of Steel does too little damage or needs to have it's movement speed increased, making it more difficult to avoid.
*Slam is just a joke. Make it 1 hit, full damage, and buff the slow effect and/or its duration...or give it an entirely new CC effect, like a bouncing pull in effect that stuns during airtime.
*Takedown needs to have it's knockdown duration increased at lvls 2 and 3, probably a dmg boost too. GF's can do the same thing against 3 targets at range, Takedown is a joke by comparison.
*Bravery...+runspeed, lol. It's only worth taking for deflect. Either bump the run speed even more or give it something that's actually useful in combat.
*Wicked Strike needs moar damage.
*Roar should be upgraded to causing stun, not just a piddly interrupt or it needs to do more damage.
The list goes on but I'm out of time and I think I've made my point. Frankly I don't care how the GWF is buffed and the above list is just how I see things (others will see things differently obviously) but GWF's need some serious love. I only wonder why it's taking so long...the devs have to have data miners that show how horribly deficient the GWF is.
Come on devs, balance these poor suckers, they've suffered long enough don't you think?
Post edited by urborgstalker on
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Comments
But admittedly, yeah. Nobody wants a GWF for raw damage output, simply because it isn't there. We can do semi-consistent DPS on piles of mobs in PvE, and our debuffs that stack on some of our cleave abilities do make things a little easier for the group, but in a 1v1 situation we have horrible damage output. As of now I find myself using Weapon Master's Strike more than Sure Strike as an at-will, despite getting a 5% boost to crit with Sure Strike, simply because of WMS' debuffs and the fact that it hits twice.
This can be equally adaptive for PvE as well, you have many arcing and AOE style of attacks from your basic mouse button attacks.
I understand the desire to see their DPS increase a bit, and perhaps it should, I am just pointing out that they do have and offer some great utility and "break free" abilities.
You stated that you saw another GWF top the charts in a PvP match, it sounds like they really know what they are doing! What I have always done is talk to players who show they know the class well, ask them what they are doing, you may learn something different with how to stack DPS the best, or what abilities they combo with to maximize future damage, etc.
GF's can consistently stun lock and kill a GWF without any need outside of having their abilities off cooldown. Unstoppable requires the use of two or three encounters to land and some sort of damage recieved in order to even be able to be activated for its shorter duration. Even then, it only grants a three second window of CC immunity which is not even close to the amount of time it takes for a GWF to catch up in damage to their target. Coupled with a bug that prevents Unstoppable from ever being used in a PvP match that happens frequently (thrice in the past two nights for me), and their general lack of survivability, GWF's are in serious need of some love.
@Cryptic: A start would be allowing Unstoppable to pull you out of prone and remove DoT's on usage or just... something useful. As of right now, I find myself using the ability strictly to rush downed enemies and secure the kill to prevent them from being revived or to delay an inevitable death by two to three seconds. It at no point in PvP feels like an ability that makes the GWF feel "unstoppable".
So I'm already below the heal specced cleric at this point. But after the "hey kick the GWF!" BS, I go and get second place in dps, tops in kills. And that's with an awful alot of mobs pushed off the side. If you are playing with GWF's, you gotta think that you have a party.
Oh, and yes... I've grouped with some pretty bad GWF's too. Currently I have only two major issues with playing a GWF:
1. CW's love to blow things apart. GF's love to blow things apart. Clerics have to blow things apart. Rogues.. we'll they are rogues.
2. When slam is active, We slow down. Our "main" aoe damage system outside of being annoying slows our dps counters for whatever reason. Still working on why. It doesn't seem right that I have to disable anti-virus to help alleviate graphics problems, but it helps.
Minor issues: Feating so that our abilities become better is to a certain extent a waste of feat points. (currently only like 3rd tier destroyer.) Our stat boosts are much more difficult to balance. One of the key elements of having a spiffy rotation is to have a reasonable cast time, yet our cast modifier is Int. (not that it helps much. I really should make a 19int elf sometime.) Capstones are "meh". One is based as an inverted group buff, one is an AP buff and the third is defense, which we can't benefit enough from in most cases. (since we want "balance".) Our grouping abilities are on 50-75% longer cooldowns then our attack abilities.
@tempvirage: We can stunlock GF's as well, though it is more difficult as we tend to run into that shield of yours instead of past it. We also tend to waste too much sprint getting outside of your block radius.
Seze - Rogue - Necropolis -
Every TR I've come across was more than susceptible to damage.
But it's still possible to get that godly but will take legit players a really long time farming AD/Items to duplicate gear.