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The GWF can be saved
l0th4ri0
Member Posts: 589 Arc User
... but it's gonna take more than a 5 minute tweak. Sorry, Cryptic... but the class design is buggered on this one.
Some hints:
* Remove the target cap of 5 on the fighters' skills. Whoever decided that cap was a good idea was not thinking clearly.
* Give Restoring Strike 3 charges like Griffon's Wrath -- you can re-use the SureStrike art assets for this like you did with the first swing.
* Switch Wicked Strike and Reaping Strike's places in the class ability tree, so we get WS at level 2 instead of 20. Having a skill that exists to build determination (Reaping Strike) is not a good idea to give to characters that won't see the Unstoppable skill for another 8 levels.
* Take another look at how the Paragon feats are working... spend more than ten minutes figuring out what you want the class to be able to do this time. As it is now, there is just a heaped-together pile of stuff that has little to no synergy or purpose. When you figure out what roles the paragon paths should play, go ahead and make the feats do something worthwhile.
* Consider getting the guy who coded the Guardian Fighter to also re-code the GWF. The Guardian Fighter is a class that works.
Some hints:
* Remove the target cap of 5 on the fighters' skills. Whoever decided that cap was a good idea was not thinking clearly.
* Give Restoring Strike 3 charges like Griffon's Wrath -- you can re-use the SureStrike art assets for this like you did with the first swing.
* Switch Wicked Strike and Reaping Strike's places in the class ability tree, so we get WS at level 2 instead of 20. Having a skill that exists to build determination (Reaping Strike) is not a good idea to give to characters that won't see the Unstoppable skill for another 8 levels.
* Take another look at how the Paragon feats are working... spend more than ten minutes figuring out what you want the class to be able to do this time. As it is now, there is just a heaped-together pile of stuff that has little to no synergy or purpose. When you figure out what roles the paragon paths should play, go ahead and make the feats do something worthwhile.
* Consider getting the guy who coded the Guardian Fighter to also re-code the GWF. The Guardian Fighter is a class that works.
Post edited by l0th4ri0 on
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Comments
So you disagree? The GWF class doesn't need any more work? Just leave it as it is, right?
I just ran a pug on my 41 gwf. We were on the last boss in grey wolf den, admittedly a difficult boss, but the gwf feels ... useless. I have a decent spec, and a lvl 40 blue weapon, but this class is pretty craptastic in effectiveness (I've run all of them except rogue through here).
AOE king my foot lol. The only way to deal AOE dmg on this class on the move is with slam I think. Cause running around chasing mobs isn't gonna cut it, and it was very difficult to get mobs interested in me and not the cleric I was guarding. Come and it get...lol they came and ran back to the cleric before my slow *** 2h could harm them. And the AOE damage (at least at this level) is nothing to feel stoked about. I won't even mention the embarrassing reality of non-existent single target dmg.
And unless unstoppable, trying to dps the trash will get you killed mighty quick (as they were hitting for 3.5K a pop when I have a little over 10k hp at this lvl).
With 2 gwf in a group at this lvl for this boss, it's almost a guaranteed fail lol.
At this level then, I'd say buff the gwf A LOT. Give him more defense, and more offense. The class is really at this level.
And judging by what I'm reading from people who are testing the new build on the test server, I don't have a lot of confidence that they've done enough.
On the bright side: the GWF with that huge 2h is darn sexy.
GWF is actually the strongest defensive class in the game, far ahead of guardian for tanking. Not so much there feats (tho there feats are better, defensively).. But there gear.. GWF endgame gear gives like +8000 hp, and they can easily hit the ~4000-5000 def needed to get to there points where its heavy diminishing returns. Whereas GF T1/T2 epic gear doesn't give hitpoints, and too much defense - more then you could want.
only downfall is that the sprint isn't as good as a dodge or block.
Just the problem is tanking in this game is too easy.. So no one cares for pve. (plus no one can get any agro on multiple mobs except cleric atm, tho thats getting somewhat addressed soon).
For pvp, gwf is the number one best class at holding points, especially far ones due to there enhanced speed.
They could just give gwf a weaker version of dodge (maybe can only do 1x per 6s, and still be allowed to sprint), make bosses 2x harder, and thatd be one easy fix.. Theyd function as top tier tanks at least.
-Epic Dread Vault Crushed.
Characters (Dragon): Axer (60 Guardian, Leader of Crush It!), Controller (60 Wizard), Warlocker (60 Warlock)
So what you're saying is that we all got the wrong impression from the giant 2H sword, and we just need to L2P? I can see that...
OH WAIT
You're referring to the very very end of the game -- THEN the class starts to work, and in fact is better at doing something than somebody else.
No offense intended, Axer... just... yeesh. I am sure that you are probably a very good/experienced player, but doesn't your post sound a bit myopic? You basically just stated that the GWF is the best tank in the game as long as you're level 60. LOL
How is this the player's fault again?
The devs better start doing something about this class or nobody is going to be playing it... Well almost nobody...
Rest assured, people will still play this class despite the many shortcomings and design oversights. GWFs look awesome, and if you read the description texts for their abilities and whatnot, it is easy to get lured into the thought that the class would perform admirably or even dominantly in battle. It just sounds so **** sexy on paper.
UNTIL
You reach the Tower District. LOL
It is ALL downhill from there.
My suggestion: get an alt to level up with until it gets 2 GP saved up... any other class will do nicely. Then, buy a cleric disciple companion and mail it to your newbie GWF so you can have access to heals before level 16. It takes some of the sting out.
Edit: to clarify some things, I am not poo-pooing the idea of the GWF, just the implementation of it. I have started several threads here trying to appeal to the devs and the community with what I feel is constructive feedback and suggestions for how it can be improved. I am sure many other folks have even better ideas than I do.
(HINT: If there is a decent CW in the party GWF is useless. Completely, and utterly, useless. Less AoE damage, less control, less effective tanking. Yes, excellent control is superior tanking. Especially when the 'harder' add's can be tanked by a rogue. There is quite literally zero use for a GWF, no matter what spec you play. This doesn't mean you can't play the game, it just means that if you're going for an optimal group GWF has no place.)
Welcome to MMO's, where power gaming is the norm. In that dichotomy GWF doesn't fit. If you like to PvP, GWF is a solid option. If you intend on doing PvE content, roll a CW if you like AoE damage. Nothing in the up and coming patch changes any of these facts.
You can defend GWF until you're blue in the face. I did. Then I saw the 'balance' patch and played some other classes. If you can play video games you can do more for the group with any other class. It is a night and day difference in effectiveness in using any other class. If you don't believe me, roll another character and get it to level 60 and into T2 content. Then tell me I'm wrong that GWF under performs.
The one thing GWF can do is clear trash that doesn't matter. The CW can do that too by their lonesome while bringing far more to the group during boss fights. I'm sorry it's that way, I wanted to love the GWF, but it's just superflous fluff. As soon as they add any other class GWF will be moot. That's just the way it is, and that appears to be the way Cryptic wants it.
Oh, and yeah if you add end game enchants to a GWF it does perform better. If you add end game enchants to any class they perform better than the GWF. So what are you going to waste your money on? A GWF or anything else?
Seze - Rogue - Necropolis -
And you're right, this is not always a player problem. This is just unintended consequences of sloppy/lazy design.
Logic
To the guy saying that we're the best tank in the game because we can stack 8000 health and 5000 defense, I have to ask - why on earth would anyone do that. What are you going to tank? It's a redundant role in neverwinter.
But as long as knocking mobs off ledges is a viable option, CWs will always be more useful than a GWF (at least currently). There are way too many bosses like the last boss in Castle Never and Spellplague that practically requires throwing mobs off the ledge whereas a GWF is limited to killing trash that are either getting thrown off anyway or are rarely ever significant enough that the minor slowdown in clearing trash is a bigger inconvenience than a slow boss kill. So true, even though a CW's damage is inflated from things falling off ledges, they still play a much larger role than a GWF. It's almost unthinkable of doing a dungeon without a CW but far from the case with GWF.
Also, regarding "tanking" bosses, that's also non-existent. How often is the case that the boss does significant damage with auto-attacks? Most of the damage that we sustain from boss fights are either from adds or AoE that are avoidable. Even when the patch hits, I can almost guarantee you that no one is going to be tanking the boss even with a tank spec'ed GF/GWF in the group because it's pointless to try and tank them as they don't do anything significant; they will most likely be tanking the adds. Even in the case of the last boss in Frozen Heart, TRs can fight the boss perfectly fine without Astral Shield because it's not a threat and rarely does any damage unless people don't avoid the avoidable attacks. So even though GWFs have more damage resistance, it's still moot in a boss fight.
Place invisible walls in places and suddenly we need something to clear trash. After that it really becomes up to the players on how they deal with dungeons. If the dungeons become too hard with invisible walls then they need to be re-evaluated. Or maybe invisible walls is a lazy solution. *shrug*, I'm not on this game's dungeon design team.
"Don't underestimate your foe. If you do, you're probably dead." - Kelvar, to Torrence the Strong
-however-
Reality is sucky sometimes.
Here is how a CW is better than us at everything: when a CW casts a spell, he is allowed to hit everything in the target zone. Some of those target zones are REAL big and do crazy shiat like gather up all the mobs into one easy-to-manage pile so they can get nuked. If your party has 2 CWs... well... it's still not as good as having 3.
My point is, as many have already commented, we have no tools to fill our team role. The GWF is for soloists only, which is fine, and good for a real player challenge. But unless some things get reworked with how the class functions, just make peace with the fact. Understand it. GWF = soloist class. The patch is not going to make any difference in that dynamic... by nerfing the other classes they just made us even less relevant than before, because now the other classes don't have the leeway to humor us anymore. That is not a statement made from a bitter and emotional place... it's a simple statement of fact.
But I still think the class can be saved with some changes. Not buffs... changes.
Edit: Here's a couple more I came up with:
Not so Fast: giving more damage was a mistake. Lose the slow and have it do KD instead as well as mark. Speaking of Marks, lose the entire mechanic of "it goes away when you are hit"... that goes for GF as well.
Spinning Strike: Keep the windup animation, but have it root the player after it starts and only lasts for 1 second. Any enemies caught in the AoE circle are KB, KD, and take about 10X weapon damage. This is the first daily we get, so getting mobs off of us at low levels is the whole point. It is meant to be outgrown at later levels, or feated later on to get more usefulness.
Restoring Strike: See my first post in this thread. 3 charges, just like the GFs get with griffon's wrath. Unlike griffons, we won't get stuns/interrupts with these charges, but we get small heals instead. The damage is fine already.
Mighty Leap: Utility skill = lose the damage entirely, but add the improved marks to the AoE and 1 sec stun for interrupts. The idea is to have a surprise attack set-up where you jump into a pack of unsuspecting mobs and then pop your now-effective daily to finish them off.
Wow space before you kept trying to tell me that i just needed to play them better what happened?
All kidding aside it really is a night and day difference with the class vs ANY other. I tried a TR.... dear god mobs melt to fast to really hurt me and ohh wait is that a red circle naa ignore till last second dodge boom back on boss.
Also have a CW ... mobs? really ? BOOM ohh they all dead... ohh wait tons of mobs and the GWF wants to play.... naa BOOM they off the cliff all while doing more damage to the boss since its the only thing around after the adds got kicked.
It still will not matter Agbad, a CW is so far beyond us at dealing with adds and big groups its not even funny. The AOE damage that a CW puts out makes a GWF drool, combined with the Control they can do add in the dodging and the fact they are range and POOF an improved version of GWF.
Yes, it's the PLAYERS who need to just expand their mind. Wait, no, hang on let me look up the official description of a GWF. "The Great Weapon Fighter is an unstoppable force of damage and steel, skilled in using the weight of a greatsword to dispatch those that stand in the way. The epitome of strength, the Great Weapon Fighter is also resilient enough to defend allies in need."
Looks like the GWF is in fact supposed to be a striker first and a defender second, sorry though, good try!
My feedback based on my current experiences? Basically, I want the GWF class to feel strongly like it has impact on a PvE fight, a lot more solidly and visibly than it currently does. Even though my DPS numbers are not technically that bad, especially considering I'm tank-spec'd, I really don't feel engaged by dungeon combat as a GWF yet. What do I mean by that? Well...
In most battles (on the live servers), I feel strangely unreal - as if my character is just a living DoT that only a few of the mobs will ever realize the presence of no matter how hard I try to peel them off of my party's cleric. (My main is a cleric, so I know how much I often want peels as a cleric and try to provide them to the clerics I party with on my GWF.)
Considering that my GWF is offtank spec'd, the above is a very bad feeling to have. I also don't do very much damage at all on a single-mob basis, which is frustrating when my only available solution to a lieutenant-level monster chasing my cleric is to (somehow) kill it in a hurry once my very limited CC has been used up.
Issues of numbers and threat aside, some aspects of the class's overall design do confuse me. The CW seems to have been designed to have distinctive strengths but basically no weaknesses (it deals significant damage while providing the most crowd control of any class while having a highly usable dodge, effectively tanking for itself with the combination of all of its traits and powers despite its squishiness if struck) while the GWF has both distinctive strengths and pronounced weaknesses (strong at rapid movement, ignoring crowd control, and situationally increasing both mitigation and DPS; but is notably weak at knocking enemies around in a game that seems to beg you to knock enemies to their deaths every two seconds, as well as hurting badly in the range department). The TR also has distinct strengths and weaknesses but covers for the weaknesses by having the hands-down best single target DPS in the game, along with a surprising amount of targeted and AoE disablement utility for a top-DPS class.
The thing is game designers will work towards one thing and emergent gameplay from the playerbase throws all of that out of the window and says "**** your design, it sucks. The class plays better this way so we're gonna play the class this way".
Also, let's be honest. This isn't closed beta. That description is dated and was made for a GWF that no longer exist.
The thing is the GWF is fine up until T2. Basically the only T2 I've played where I felt useful is Pirate King. The outliers on useful are Frozen Heart, Spellplague, and Spider Temple. I've done them all, but these dungeons in particular make GWF feel pretty useless. This basically mirrors what plenty of people told me all along, so feel free to say 'I told you so.' It's deserved.
The thing that really changed my mind is I got a TR up to 60 and now have a CW sitting at 44. The TR is in T2 and it performs admirably. I'd question my skill when it comes to GWF, except I've done very well with TR and CW in dungeons. It's scary how much better TR and CW tools are. They give a lot of power for a short period of time, but in skilled hands that's all you really need. GWF just doesn't have any 'wow' abilities and there isn't enough synergy with the class skill. TR's class skill is almost insanely good for a variety of situations, as is the CW class skill.
Unstoppable is fine enough, but for every good thing it does it also does a bad thing and the way it functions doesn't make it very appealing.
Pros:
1) More Resistance
2) Faster Attack Speed
3) CC immunity/break free
Cons:
1) Attacks do less damage
2) Short Duration
3) Resistance is all or nothing
There is no way to change how Unstoppable works. It is always unstoppable. Rogues can extend their stealth, add crit or damage, add damage when exiting stealth, not to mention they can chain their stealth so they are always getting the benefit of stealth. CW's class skill is incredible, it's so versatile it's insane. It's the only class where encounters can actually be switched out and it completely changes the class. The only thing you can ever really change with Unstoppable is how quickly you gain Determination. The biggest thing you can do as a GWF to change Unstoppable is feat into the Destroyer cap that works the way Unstoppable should have worked across every spec. It's like they put the best cap in the worst feat tree possible.
Essentially, the upper plateau of what a player can achieve is capped at a lower level with a GWF along with less overall versatility. Maybe it was designed expressly for combo canceling, that seems to be the only strength of GWF and the only real use for Dash, but why break my fingers to equal or fall below the output of another class that has better utility?
All this being said, Unstoppable is still a better class skill than block. I haven't played a GF, but played as a pure DPS class even it seems better able to produce DPS than a GWF while keeping versatility. I think only the Cleric does consistently worse damage, which it bloody well should as they're a healer.
TL;DR:
Yes, GWF needs a complete overhaul. This will not happen, so you might as well just reroll. It sucks, but with how well the other classes perform you're out maybe 20-40 hours of game play to reach 60 on anything else. You'll also finish T1 and T2 in a heartbeat compared to how long it can take to pug the same instances on GWF. None of the above really counts if you play in a premade with great players, but that's about the only way to make GWF work outside of breaking out the ol' wallet.
Since our main dynamic is getting a 5 second buff that speeds up our at-wills and gives tanky DR and CC immunity, the rest of the class should be designed to either complement this or give customization options for different playstyles besides this. A good place to start from is to decide what our powers should be giving us in terms of what our job is, ie, to kill mobs efficiently.
At-wills: since these are the main buff's "juiced" skills, there needs to be one single-target At-will, and an AoE. We're off to a good start already, as this is currently in place. If you're looking for a single target burn, pop unstoppable and focus down with Sure Strike. If you are needing to burn down a couple of elites or a large pack of trash, pop unstoppable and go WMS or WS. We are in good shape here, with not much or any change required to what we have. The numbers could use a tweak, but the thing is that the class is not broken when it comes to our at-wills.
Encounters: these need some work. Nearly all of our encounters are meh or suck. Slows are the weakest and most worthless kind of CC if they are not paired up with marks/threat generation. We are not guardian fighters, and our main DPS should be coming from our at-wills, not from fast spammable encounters. Good news... we don't have any fast spammable encounters, so that's nice -- but we also don't have any real CC to speak of in our encounter powers. Most of these powers should be adding marks that stick regardless of getting hit. We need more KDs and stun/interrupts. We do not need high damage encounter powers, these are for our bag of tricks to pull mobs or push them back. These are for utility and keeping mobs to where we can tee off with our at-wills to burn them down.
Dailies: This is where the variety in the builds should be found more than anywhere. Right now, we have a couple of good dailies and the rest are meh or suck. They should all do good damage and add mark/slow/stun/KD/whatever seems appropriate.
Regarding the paragon paths: needs better definition, and clear focus with feats that actually do something. Here's some ideas for improvement:
Destroyer: Damage maven, less concerned with CC/Defense than other paths. This means that destroyers should have more uptime with unstoppable, should have buffs to at-wills, and higher single target DPS than the other paths. This is the kind of build that can handle switching offtank to help with the boss if the opportunity ever arises, for example you have enough add control already thru CWs or a good GF that is holding threat and the casters are staying clear.
Instigator: This is the path that buffs CC and excels as off-tank that keeps casters clear. Feats should be geared to increasing the duration of CC, widening the AoE of them, adding damage and extra effects to utility skills that didn't have it before, like the shouts/leap should never do damage unless feated as instigator.
Sentinel: This is the more defensive/tanky path that can switch from offtank for full tank if the need ever arises, ie, your GF goes down or whatever. Feats should revolve around providing damage mitigation and adding threat generation. An idea: sentinels could have feats that add dodge frames to encounters. For example, you pop a not so fast and it counts as a dodge.