Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Aug 2005
Profession: N/E
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Please Reevaluate These Strength Skills:
Strength no longer is as overpowered as it once was, and so there's no reason for the holdovers from days past when the attribute affected all attacks (and before, even all skills). Strength is a good attribute, yes, but it needs some changes.
The following are suggestions, not resolutions. They're ideas.
"You Will Die!"
5 Energy
15 Recharge
Shout. If target foe is below 50% Health, you gain 1...3 strike(s) of adrenaline.
This skill is far too weak and conditional to be useful in most builds. Raise the condition to 75% and lower the recharge to 10 seconds. Additionally, the adrenaline should be compensated as a result. Alternatively, it can be made a skill that triggers whenever you land a successful melee attack on a target below 50% health.
Disarm
5 Energy
1/2 Cast
12 Recharge
Sword Attack. If this attack hits an attacking foe, that foe is interrupted and all of that foe's attack Skills are disabled for 0...4 seconds.
While I'm sure many appreciate this skill, especially the Warriors in RA that spam riposte skills, this skill is both bugged and inefficient. It currently interrupts any action. If this was its intended design, keep it, and change the description. If it is not, lower the attack skill disable time and lower the skill recharge time to make this a viable attack skill to bring against a mix of casters and attackers. In addition, adrenaline would have to be allowed to be retained during this disable. There are far too many skills in the game like this, that have a purpose that cannot be fulfilled unless in a niche situation.
Lion's Comfort
5 Adrenaline
1 Cast
Skill. All of your Signets are disabled for 12 seconds. You are healed for 30...70 Health, and you gain 5 Health for each rank in Tactics.
Lion's Comfort is a ridiculous skill in many way. It's actually the skill for which I made this thread most. For one, it actually benefits more from high Tactics. It would have a more obvious home in the Tactics attribute, because it essentially IS a Tactics skill. You could point out that the skill is intended to be a Strength skill that merely benefits from having additional points in Tactics; however, in this case, it could easily be placed in the Tactics attribute, so that one could say, "It's a Tactics skill you can use with Strength, as Strength has no active healing skills." It's a confused skill without a real home. The signet disable baffles me and many others as to its purpose.
Strength and Tactics are attribute lines that are not always mixed. From the design of this skill it feels as though the designers intended people to be forced to split their attributes just to use it. I appreciate that the designers may have wished for people not to simply dump all of their points into Strength and use Lion's Comfort freely, but this is a poor way to design a skill. Strength is not that potent anymore, and Tactics is a very good attribute line. Including a pure heal in Strength will NOT unbalance the game, and it will not keep people from using Tactics.
One of many options are available to fix (and it does need fixing) this skill. The tactics gain could easily be removed, with the base strength heal boosted accordingly. In this case, the adrenaline requisite would need to be raised to about 7 or 8. The signet disable is very problematic for people that use resurrection signets. (Was this intended?) Once a healer is down, it is impossible to heal yourself first and then raise your dead. The signet disable needs to be removed entirely, or adjusted so that it only affects signets in attribute lines other than Strength. It is also possible to make Lion's Comfort apply Cracked Armor to you once you use it for a specified length of time. There are so many options here that I couldn't possibly list them all, but most would certainly be better than its current, confusing design. Please, fix this skill, if nothing else.
Signet of Stamina
1/4 Cast
20 Recharge
Signet. You have +50...250 maximum Health. This Signet ends if you successfully hit with an attack.
I can understand this skill to a point. If Lion's Comfort is problematic for raising the dead with signets, you can use this skill and then use your resurrection signet. It's also a good skill for runners. However, beyond this PvE use, and as a cover for resurrecting, this skill has almost no purpose. An alternative would be to cause this skill to disable for 20 seconds each time you land an attack, so that it cannot be abused. Or, cause the signet to disable for an additional 40 seconds if you land a successful attack. In both cases it would be advisable to shorten the recharge time and tack on a attribute-requisite length to the skill, like most skills have (for example, 2 seconds for each attribute level, maximum 20, marking 9 Strength as the time maximum).
Warrior's Cunning
10 Energy
60 Recharge
Skill. For 5...10 seconds, your melee attacks cannot be "blocked".
This skill has the same problem most Ranger stances have: a fairly decent result with a massive recharge time. With so very many skills across all classes that can blind and block attacks, not to mention those that have very low recharges, this skill doesn't stack up against simpler methods of circumventing blocks. Even Expose Defenses is a better skill, although it serves the same function. I appreciate it being a skill rather than a hex, of course. However, the recharge is simply too much. It needs to be lowered to 45, or more appropriately, 30 seconds (and possibly given a cast time.) It is also possible to keep the 60 second recharge and cause Warrior's Cunning to work on the next x...x number of attacks that would be blocked. Example: For 60 seconds, your next 1...10 melee attacks that would be blocked cannot be blocked. This is a useful skill, but also problematic in several ways.
ELITES:
Dwarven Battle Stance
10 Energy
20 Recharge
Stance. For 5...10 seconds, you attack 33% faster, and if your hammer attacks hit, your target is interrupted. Dwarven Battle Stance ends if you use a skill.
I can appreciate this skill in many ways, and I appreciate the buffs it has received in the past. This used to be a woefully bad elite. I can also appreciate assigning the need for a hammer, yet there's no reason to have a hammer elite in Strength. Yet, I can also understand why it has to be in Strength. This is a fairly decent elite, yet it has its failings. For one, this stance is worthless to a warrior not using an axe or a sword: of course, you won't receive the interrupting benefits, but you cannot even active the skill without a hammer. You can switch to a hammer, active the skill and then switch back, receiving the attack bonus. That's just ridiculous. If this is truly a hammer elite, it needs to be moved to Hammer Mastery and given an adrenaline requisite, with a disable that is lowered with a higher Strength rating. Or something to that affect. But this is only part of the problem. This skill is essentially worthless against anyone that is kiting. Unless you use a secondary profession's enchantment or shout/echo, it is impossible to actually productively interrupt a target, unless that target is an Elementalist or perhaps a Paragon, or a Ranger or that is not using some means to block or blind you. In essence, this elite does little more than force an enemy to move slightly. As it is designed, this skill is inherently broken in its function. Increasing the attack speed to even 100% faster will not resolve this. This elite is currently only majorly useful against PvE enemies.
This skill needs one of several things done to it. One: remove the end-on-skill-use tag. This will allow users to at least cripple a fleeing enemy, or knock the enemy down. Two: make the elite a skill, not a stance. This will allow users to use a stance to catch up to enemies. Three: Make Dwarven Battle Stance increase and movement speed by a small amount, about 11%.
Many changes to Dwarven Battle Stance could easily overpower it, understandably, but as of right now, this is an unworthy elite. There are better alternatives.
Flourish
5 Energy
1 Cast
8 Recharge
Skill. All of your attack skills become recharged. You gain 2...6 Energy for each skill recharged by Flourish.
This elite is not broken so much as it fails to stack up against Warrior's Endurance. Its only advantage is that it is a skill, not a stance. Yet, the cast time needed after every attack chain nullifies that advantage. Flourish can be difficult to use at times due to the recharge rates on many attack skills. If you fail to use a few select attacks in a proper chain, Flourish can quickly create energy problems. It is also prone to being interrupted and disabled, whereas Warrior's Endurance cannot be removed unless by means of a stance-removal skill.
This skill needs to have its recharge raised, somewhere around 20 seconds, but the requisite changed so that for each attack skill you possess, you gain 2...6 Energy. Its activation time should also be changed accordingly, to a 2 second time frame. It is also possible to make this skill grant you energy innately, but give additional energy if you have recharging attack skills. This cannot be abused easily since Strength is a primary attribute, and hence, other professions could not use it as an e-management skill. As this skill is, it is beaten down very easily by Warrior's Endurance.
Primal Rage
5 Energy
15 Recharge
Stance. For 10 seconds, all of your attacks have an additional 10...46% chance of being critical hits and have 20% armor penetration. Primal Rage disables all skills for 10 seconds.
This is a potentially very decent elite, but fails in many ways. For one, the disable clears adrenaline on your attack skills, essentially meaning that the most useful adrenaline-based attack skills cannot even be used with this elite. Another problem is that enemies can easily kite through the damage, as this skill is a stance, and hence, it is impossible to catch a target to make this elite effective without a snare, which you will have to use ahead of time since Primal Rag disables ALL skills. Another problem is that even with a sundering weapon, a very high weapon attribute rating and a high strength rating, the damage done by Primal Rage cannot mete out the amount that other elites, such as Warrior's Endurance (and even Flourish) can. Warrior's Endurance is also a stance and can also be used to quickly restore energy for other skills (which will not be disabled). This skill is essentially best used with secondary buffs like ritualist weapons or enchants against higher AL targets that either cannot or will not bother to move. There are not enough preparations, however, to actually fill an entire bar. As Primal Rage disables all of your skills, this makes it incredibly difficult to make a build centered around it. Often, Primal Rage must be used sparingly in between other attack patterns, defeating its purpose as an elite.
This skill needs to disable only attack skills, become a skill instead of a stance, or also grant a higher attack speed or a boost to adrenaline gain. In its current form, it is far too limited and conditional.
That is all. I imagine others may use these skills, as I once tried, but I have found more productive and threatening alternatives, whereas they may have not.
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