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Clarifications and Additions to Great Weapon Fighter Updates
dezstravus
Member Posts: 2 Arc User
Hey Everyone,
We wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the valuable comments we’ve received in response to the recent balance change announcements. Many of the comments we received included valid questions and we wanted to take a few moments to clarify things and apologize for a couple important changes that didn’t make it into the original blog we posted yesterday.
One of the primary questions we received was regarding the design goal of the Great Weapon Fighter. From a systems design perspective, the Great Weapon Fighter is designed to be a class that excels at AoE DPS and taking hits while providing a bit of control to the fight. With the recent update, we wanted to focus on making sure all powers were viable and useful in PVP, solo PVE, and group PVE.
The first issue we wanted to address was that Slam was simply too powerful, making Spinning Strike effectively obsolete. To resolve this, we made spinning strike more powerful (details below), and added some Utility to Slam at the cost of a bit of damage. The end result is that you get to select between damage and utility when slotting your daily power, rather than choosing between a damage power and a significantly-better damage power.
One thing of note is that Slow effects against NPC enemies have been made more powerful in Module 1: Fury of the Feywild, so the the Slow effect for the Slam power will provide more value than it did previously.
Below are the changes to Spinning Strike that didn’t make it into the blog post. These changes will be listed when we publish the final patch notes when the update is released as well:
The end impact of these changes is that Great Weapon Fighters will be even more viable in all areas of game content. We are confident that when these changes go live, fans of the class will recognize these improvements and adapt their play style to take advantage of the improvements. If you have any additional feedback or comments, please feel free to let us know. Balance is an ongoing process that evolves as players come up with new strategies, and we are committed to constantly looking at feedback and making game balance a primary focus of our process for continually improving the game.
And don’t forget, you can always try out these changes now on the Preview server!
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?330011-Welcome-to-NeverwinterPreview
We wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the valuable comments we’ve received in response to the recent balance change announcements. Many of the comments we received included valid questions and we wanted to take a few moments to clarify things and apologize for a couple important changes that didn’t make it into the original blog we posted yesterday.
One of the primary questions we received was regarding the design goal of the Great Weapon Fighter. From a systems design perspective, the Great Weapon Fighter is designed to be a class that excels at AoE DPS and taking hits while providing a bit of control to the fight. With the recent update, we wanted to focus on making sure all powers were viable and useful in PVP, solo PVE, and group PVE.
The first issue we wanted to address was that Slam was simply too powerful, making Spinning Strike effectively obsolete. To resolve this, we made spinning strike more powerful (details below), and added some Utility to Slam at the cost of a bit of damage. The end result is that you get to select between damage and utility when slotting your daily power, rather than choosing between a damage power and a significantly-better damage power.
One thing of note is that Slow effects against NPC enemies have been made more powerful in Module 1: Fury of the Feywild, so the the Slow effect for the Slam power will provide more value than it did previously.
Below are the changes to Spinning Strike that didn’t make it into the blog post. These changes will be listed when we publish the final patch notes when the update is released as well:
- The duration of the spin has been halved.
- Damage per hit has been slightly more than doubled to compensate for the duration reduction.
- As a result, this power has significantly greater DPS, and higher damage overall.
- In addition, this power now charges up slightly faster, has 20% more range, and now displays the total estimated damage rather than the per hit damage in the tooltip.
The end impact of these changes is that Great Weapon Fighters will be even more viable in all areas of game content. We are confident that when these changes go live, fans of the class will recognize these improvements and adapt their play style to take advantage of the improvements. If you have any additional feedback or comments, please feel free to let us know. Balance is an ongoing process that evolves as players come up with new strategies, and we are committed to constantly looking at feedback and making game balance a primary focus of our process for continually improving the game.
And don’t forget, you can always try out these changes now on the Preview server!
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?330011-Welcome-to-NeverwinterPreview
Post edited by dezstravus on
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Comments
Just making Spinning Strike more appealing isn't going to make up for the fact that GWF has really low damage, a cap on how many people he can hit, and reduced survivability.
If he wasn't viable, before, then why would you think that nerfing him so hard would make him more viable?
Spinning Strike on the other hand requires you to "STAND STILL" channeling up the skill and then spins around till it ends. Meaning you can't double dip your damage and being vulnerable & losing DPS while channeling up the skill.
Also has the exploit of spinning strike been resolved or does it still exist? If it still exists Cryptic just made using the exploit more profitable.
There are probably other NiNJA updates he is not telling us about sense i don't think any one cared about spinning blade but this seems a lil more enteresting.
A "buff" on one skill while nerfing several doesn't make the class any more viable. I didn't mind the Slam nerf too much but Bravery and Master of Arms were overkill. The class is taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back.
Unstoppable and slam have been effectively gutted, these were basically cornerstones to any dps output we had, tr and gf both tank bosses far better than gwf and an add tank is fifth wheel rolling on loot thanks to the devs poor understanding of what actually happens in a dungeon.
You claim gwf is designed to excel at aoe dps with some utility and off tank ability yet the changes have reduced all of those things in exchange for a slow and dmg reduct on 5 targets....
You are missing the most important part - there are no valiable AoE encounters for GWF!
Roar? Utility skill and no damage.
Not So Fast? Deals 1/3 of damage it should to be valiable!
Come and Get It? Doesnt deal damage at all! (if speced it can deal like 400 damage?)
Indomitable Battle Strike? Its 3' size, you sure you didnt miss a digit in size to make an AoE?
Another troll or inexperienced player and again why Cryptic needs Professional Gamers that know the mechanic's. Spinning is a horrible skill unless you are using the exploit.
Spinning may be a horrible skill in it's current incarnation. However I just did a parse on the live server with slam and did 6.5k DPS on the the 3 dummys with slam at lvl 3. I then copied over to the preview server and did 6.3k DPS with spinning strike at lvl 1 using it instead of slam.
For reference all tests were a 3 minute parse and I did more than 1 test for each case to make sure the numbers were not off. I also did a test with spinning strike on the live servers and ended up at 5k DPS so prior to the changes it was a giant DPS loss.
I was honestly really disappointed with the slam change, but it seems like using the spinning strike that is on the preview shard is not half bad.That being said the nerfs to unstoppable that were not even in the patch notes need to be addressed as they are a big issue.
In all my time playing, I have never even heard of this.
Describe what it does, but not how to do it.
...did you use WMS or Wicked Strike during Slam?
If you look at the rogue and wizard's most used damage dailies, you'll see similarities. Basically, all of these abilities either hit hard and come out quick so you can resume using other abilities(Ice Knife), or are buffs that let you resume using other abilities(Lurker's Assault).
If they're going to turn Spinning Strike into the defacto damage daily, they need to do better than that, especially since Destroyer's gain 25% more power during Slam.
Yes of course I used WMS during slam it would not have been much of a comparison otherwise.
No! Just NO! How can a class excel at AoE dmg with
It is a god **** AOE class. As it stands now in a fully geared group. I simply cannot outdmg a rogue. That is a single target. Let alone a wizard... No matter how much slams I activate, no matter how many wms' animation I cancel.
Just to clarify this is late end game gear we are talking about. All soft caps reached. Perfect enchants, rank8+ Balls to the walls debuffed mobs.
Explain your logic to me. Why are you doing this to us? Kick us while we are down?! WHY?!
Edit: And no, no1 will use spinning strike. It locks us in an animation. So how are we going to do more dmg, without being able to use wms' debuff. And why does your whole game revolve around freaking debuffs? Debuffs force us to use the encounters/at wills/dailies that provide them. Simply because it is not efficient any other way. You get an F
Well the good news is rogue and CW DPS was also nerfed.
TR and GWF
GWF AoEs are incretibly small, i dont even reach the cap target unless below singularity! And absolutely non-damaging. There is not a single AoE -damage- encounter.
All AoE GWF encounters can described only using combination of these:
1) low damage
2) low area
3) low utility
Spinning strike is the only sufficient aoe damage ability we have now, which is a daily...
the only damage benefit from slam was that it dealt damage WHILE you can still act and do damage yourself normally.
All our aoe damage encounter abilities are utility based..
Our best and only methods of damage-mitigation for the monsters and people we fight is being cut down.
But hey our Spinning Strike is just slightly stronger now. Since the duration is cut in half, and the damage is slightly more than double. Our spinning strike is what is it? x1.2 or maybe x1.5 best case scenario? We got that going for us right?
Oh wait, slow effects are more effective now too. So now it will take the monsters an extra 2 steps to get to/away from us. Great..
Yippy...Im over joyed.. [/sarcasm]
In all seriousness. You guys are digging a deeper hole for not just GWF, but every class. Your going in a backwards slope for all the classes in the game now.
I'd much perfer the classes as they are currently, with just more paragon paths to add versatility.
Right now its like you guys are trying to balance a seesaw with two 6 year old fat kids. Sure they may not be the exact same weight, but thier weight is close enough and not that much different.
Whats going on now is like trying to give each of the fat kids more bricks than the other to hold to see which one goes up and goes down. Complicating the whole thing further than it honestly really needs to be..
Spinning Strike just feels so useless compared to every other AoE Daily, though. With AoS, I become completely immune to damage for a few seconds and then knock everything nearby prone in a huge area. Slam slows and damages things in a huge area and lets me keep attacking. With Spinning Strike... we take half damage for a few seconds and deal ho-hum damage in a tiny area. I'll have to see the changes in action before I can really comment on them, but at a glance they don't seem enough to make it worth using. The range really kills it for me.
Opinions to follow. Not commenting on PvP because frankly, I never enjoyed it in any gear based game.
From a solo PvE perspective. ya got it right in my opinion. Once we get some more tools in our arsenal, we can really lay down the hurt on a bunch of minions in a hurry. Aside from falling and /killme, I think the last time I died was... Tower District? That said I was over level by two or three for most of the zones after that, love me some Foundry.
From a group PvE perspective, leveling at least, we could use a bit more love. Removing the target cap, or making it so that we don't deal reduced damage against multiple enemies, would help solidify us in the role of an AoE DPS. At-Will for At-Will, a TR shouldn't be able to kill three minion mobs faster than me but it happens rather often. The hit taking thing, were it not for Unstoppable bugging out every other day I would totally agree with that. Finally, as I specced into Sentinel I just have one quick gripe; our threat boosts are tied to one single target power, two dailies (which as mentioned above, only one is really worth using), and extremely weak Encounters? If Daring Shout and Come and Get It were made hard taunts instead of an extra threatening tickle by that talent and the 25% threat boost to Sure Strike was made At-Will wide, I think that'd go a long way in making us more desirable to groups.
GWF to me plays like a class where the motto is "if you're gonna be stupid, be smart about it". Sure, we can stand in that fire that the rogue has to dodge out of... but how long should we stay there? If we eat that power attack, will it let us use a half Unstoppable or kill us? That to me makes it a fun class from a playstyle standpoint. From a gameplay perspective, we need better aggro management tools in Sentinel and more AoE in general to compete with CW punt teams and TR's damage.
Most AoE skills have a limit, including Singularity. Sing's limit is 15 mobs, granted that's MUCH higher than the 5 that most/all GWF skills seem to be capped at, but it is limited. For CW's Shield knock and Icy Terrain are about it for skills without a target limit.
I've never seen Sing limited as I've had far more that 15 be sucked up into the toilet.
No you haven't, its just that its unusual to have more than 15 mobs in range even in CN. Go run the Graveyard Shift(AOE XP Fest) for lots of spawns of greater size if you want to test it yourself on live (no promises on test). You can also see this in lots of the testing threads:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?401011-AoE-spell-target-limits
I pull all of the mobs from Priate from boss to boss and that's many more than 15 and they all suck up into sing. We are talking about 20-30+ mobs all being sucked up.
Run ACT with the parser and you'll see that Sing never affects more than 15.
Oppressive Force also has no cap. I think the point is to increase the cap of the GWF At-Wills, and definitely remove the damage decrease per target <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
and i would not hate sprint changed into a "charge" or whatever you want to call it with an immunity frame like every other class besides gf but then speed up the wms animation since apparently we are supposed to interrupt cast it to do decent dps anyway
Thanks for the explanation. I'm not to worried about slam and I get the idea of slotting a damage and utility daily. Spinning Strike getting a buff is also what many people asked for. I do think you guys could work out the temp-health loss better though, maybe have some remain based on bonuses?
But as it is now, I don't think the GWF is required in groups, certainly there is little demand. I've been pugging with my cleric far more than with my gwf, and while I love the gwf, I found in most pugs an extra tr or cw makes the run smoother.
Some changes I would like to see:
Either remove the target-cap or rework it, doing MORE damage when there is only one target.
Marks could be more effective and last longer.
Weapon Master Strike could add a defense debuff for all the party members.
Come and Get it could have a bigger range and draw in more mobs.
The 'dodge' on Mighty Leap could last longer than a couple of frames (I don't see TR's getting Entangled while they are dodging, GWF's can be picked right out of the air) and it could mark the mobs.
But mostly it's the target-cap. To me it makes no sense to be an 'AoE expert' which doesn't hit when there are too many mobs around.