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Current State of GWF - Post first class balance.
silknight
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 199
So, giving the latest buff to GWF a chance, it's become apparent what 2 of the 3 main trees are good for, and hopefully the vision going forward.
Instigator - AOE Dps. It does it's job well in PvE. Ultimately the scaling between DPS and Survivability is poor. If you try to lean towards DPS your survivability will suffer. This should be addressed and hopefully balanced so that Instigator stays near the top of DPS charts when geared for DPS. As for PvP, the build could do better.
Destoyer - Weakest Tree. Still has no direction, as it does not excel in PvP or PvE. The feats seem nice, but they don't serve a purpose. It want's to be a DPS tree so bad, yet the scaling is still not where it should be. Aside from that it adds no utility. I think they should either add some group buffing to the Tree or some more mobility, or remove certain abilities hit cap, cough weapon master strike cough. Players should definitely not use this tree, as it's deceptively a poor performer at end game. Also when you try to maximize it's dps, you become the worst kind of glass cannon, under performing dps and squishy in both PvE and PvP.
Sentinel - Off-Tank survivablity. Currently over powered. Top spec for both PvE and PvP in group play. I like the direction the tree has, and I'm happy with it's roll as an off tank. It does the job well, but too well in PvP and it will be brought down, mark my words. It's FOTM spec. I hate when classes do this, but ya know it happens, then they nerf it, then you buy a respec token, and you line Perfect worlds coffer just a little bit more due to bad design :rolleyes:..... but I digress. The tree has tons of survivablity, too much for PvP, and the damage is amazing with it. 1v3, very doable. 1v5? I've seen it happen.
Destroyer still needs plenty of work, Sentinel is over powered, and Instigator is approaching where it should be.
A couple of other things that should be address.
Daring Shout and Come and Get it and Battle Fury should naturally have a damage component to the abilities, and feats should buff the damage, range, or even effect. Moves like these without damage hurt the class. Personally I'd like to see a short range prone effect added to Battle Fury.
Sprint is the worst dodge mechanic in game. It's also a terrible gap closer. It wouldn't matter so much if the class was powerful enough to where the negatives from it made sense to the positives this class had in other areas. The class still performs poorly compared to the nerfed classes. If they're going to keep sprint as it is, then the stamina needs to either drain less or regen faster.
Damage - Were getting better, Nerf classes are still topping charts with ease. I say most trees are almost where we should be at, so kudos to them.
TDLR -
Nerf Sentinel
Buff Destoryer
Buff Sprint and Shouts
Instigator - AOE Dps. It does it's job well in PvE. Ultimately the scaling between DPS and Survivability is poor. If you try to lean towards DPS your survivability will suffer. This should be addressed and hopefully balanced so that Instigator stays near the top of DPS charts when geared for DPS. As for PvP, the build could do better.
Destoyer - Weakest Tree. Still has no direction, as it does not excel in PvP or PvE. The feats seem nice, but they don't serve a purpose. It want's to be a DPS tree so bad, yet the scaling is still not where it should be. Aside from that it adds no utility. I think they should either add some group buffing to the Tree or some more mobility, or remove certain abilities hit cap, cough weapon master strike cough. Players should definitely not use this tree, as it's deceptively a poor performer at end game. Also when you try to maximize it's dps, you become the worst kind of glass cannon, under performing dps and squishy in both PvE and PvP.
Sentinel - Off-Tank survivablity. Currently over powered. Top spec for both PvE and PvP in group play. I like the direction the tree has, and I'm happy with it's roll as an off tank. It does the job well, but too well in PvP and it will be brought down, mark my words. It's FOTM spec. I hate when classes do this, but ya know it happens, then they nerf it, then you buy a respec token, and you line Perfect worlds coffer just a little bit more due to bad design :rolleyes:..... but I digress. The tree has tons of survivablity, too much for PvP, and the damage is amazing with it. 1v3, very doable. 1v5? I've seen it happen.
Destroyer still needs plenty of work, Sentinel is over powered, and Instigator is approaching where it should be.
A couple of other things that should be address.
Daring Shout and Come and Get it and Battle Fury should naturally have a damage component to the abilities, and feats should buff the damage, range, or even effect. Moves like these without damage hurt the class. Personally I'd like to see a short range prone effect added to Battle Fury.
Sprint is the worst dodge mechanic in game. It's also a terrible gap closer. It wouldn't matter so much if the class was powerful enough to where the negatives from it made sense to the positives this class had in other areas. The class still performs poorly compared to the nerfed classes. If they're going to keep sprint as it is, then the stamina needs to either drain less or regen faster.
Damage - Were getting better, Nerf classes are still topping charts with ease. I say most trees are almost where we should be at, so kudos to them.
TDLR -
Nerf Sentinel
Buff Destoryer
Buff Sprint and Shouts
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
After the patch, my Destroyer build's damage increased so much, that at the end of the dungeon I'm by far the first one that did more damage when compared with others with similar gear score.
The AoE damage is MASSIVE now, specially if you have a CW in the group spamming singularity to control mobs.
The only problem about Destroyer is if you have to DPS Boss only while Tank kites mobs, you can do some skill changes but your damage will be poor.
Sentinel GWF's have too much natural parry chance that becomes problematic when paired with Unstoppable. I am not quite sure how to balance this, since that parry chance is what lets them off-tank in PVE. I think a Tenebrous Enchant nerf would remove some of GWF's (and all classes) burst a bit, which might bring the Sentinel's offensive damage down enough to warrant the higher survivability that the spec has.
But when it comes to the sentinel tree we still need a further boost to agro generation as its simply not enough to keep agro off the healer we should at least be able to out agro a CW.
And as for sentinel pvp, it would be enough to nerf tenebreus tbh, its not doing anything good for gameplay that you can just build for max health and be unkillable + do insane dps.
I'd be happy with, nerfing our damage (sentinel) and increasing our threat a bunch. Personally, I don't know why they reduced the CD on takedown, that doesn't help much. Or just give wizards and clerics better kiting abilities.
NOONE can get away from us NOONE. With Bravery and a few + movement speed stats we cant be kited. Oh and yes we are VERY survivable and if you are not you are not playing right.
Plus I enjoy being able to make rogues cry. Oh their tears, delicious. Payback is a *****!
Multiple Personas, only 'One' me
"Why should one devolve themselves to try and entertain those of a lesser mindset around them?"
If just reaping-strike and executioner's style got minor adjustments to make them more viable, destroyer tree would be 100% exactly where it should be.
Sentinel is the bane of Control Wizards, as most GWFs should be, in PvP as it should be as if not CWs (outside of the Tenebrous Cloud of Steal TRs) would be flat out dominant... I love it when CWs try to 1v1 me, it makes me laugh.
I'm trying to decided between a GWF or a TR for a melee class. I'm not really interested in PvP, though if there's some major incentive for getting involved in it, I may dabble.
I've browsed various forums a bit and saw that this class was generally considered trash prior to the recent patch. I'd like some feedback on how you feel the class stacks up against the TR now. To simplify, I'd appreciate your opinion on how the class is doing in the areas of survivability, utility, and dps.
I like to solo, so survivability is important. When grouping, I prefer to play a class that has a lot of utility so that I can cover various roles and contingencies. Lastly, I have no desire or need to "top" charts, but having good DPS would be nice so that stuff will die fast and I'm not just passed over when trying to find a group.
Shouldn't it be the TR's duty to neutralize clothies? Since when an off-tanks duty is to neutralize Mages and clerics? Historically it was a rogues business to stick a blade into a wizards guts while unaware. Now it's the business of a facestomping brute? What will come next, Rhix owning all of us? C'mon....
As far as I can tell, TR is still the most *****ed about class for CW. GWF seems to just be the new "OP" class because they used to not be considered a threat at all.
Sentinel tree - Off-tank, but for the love of God, fix our Aggro Generation issues. In PVP they are pretty much unstoppable with all their health, mitigation and tenebrous damage (I think the enchant needs to be changed, to something like 5/10/15% chance to proc 1/2/3% damage of max health, with 15 seconds internal CD)
Instigator tree - Best AOE damage. Good party buff, and so-so in pvp.
Destroyer tree - I think the "flavor" the devs were trying to make for the Destroyer tree is that it is HIGH single target damage.
Yes, you can say we're built for AOE damage, hence most of our at-wills are AOE, and a lot of our encounters. But from the look of our skills and what goes well with Destroyer tree, it seems geared for Single Target massive damage. The one-hit blow all your cooldowns tree for massive damage.
I think this guy's build has it down: http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?316031-Akfortyseven-PvE-Build
He uses all of the encounter slots for solo target damage.
Anyway, the GWF still needs fixes, but so far we're being trudged along in an ok direction
Thanks for any info.
I think the majority of complaints are that they are OP in PvP, because they're very difficult to kill now. I doubt they are OP in PvE, as CW and RT forums still have people plainly stating that they are topping charts.
GWF have improved survivability now, but do not overshadow CW and TR in damage output, nor can they compete with GF in terms of aggro management.
So, in a nut shell, where does that Instigator AoE build (in PvE) stand post-patch? I haven't found a concise summary on the forums yet since everything is so spread around in the posts.
Last patch before the update, people complained the GF scaled up too much in defensive ability with offensive ability, but now the GWF out-shadows that with even better defensive scaling + damage. The root cause of that issue is Tenebrous scaling off max health when also combined with GWF's Unstoppable mitigation (essentially 100% deflection + CC immunity when active) and their passive 30%+ deflection scores even when Unstoppable is inactive.
Tenebrous needs to be nerfed to prevent 7 of them all proccing at once. The damage needs to be smoothed out so it is more of a flat curve over a longer period of time, instead of what we have currently where 7 of them proc at once and then nothing for the next 20 seconds. If only one procced every 3 seconds with a 20 second cooldown on each enchant, you'd have a steady stream of procs every 3 seconds over that 20 second interval. Less burst in PVP, more consistent damage in PVE/longer PVP battles.
What if the game went the way of GuildWars 2 and just standardized equipment in PvP? Would the class still be viable in PvP or PvE?