Fighter Deep Dive Discussion!

Raybane

Vain It's the current state of the game, but there will be a class rebalance done before EA. If the high level threat generation is fixed for Inquisitor then the class will function fine. There are some other details, but that is the one thing that must be fixed for the class to work.

Metavahn

im glad the devs are catching things like this, unlike EQ devs these devs care about the integrity of their classes, tanks tank not dps, and soon charming classes will be put below pet classes in the pet department where they belong

Mortalgreg

baldcaveman Is the haste from Frenzy a primary or secondary haste effect? What does it stack or not stack with?

Jeembo

Mortalgreg According to Derelicte it is a primary, so it doesn't stack with other primary hastes like buffs from Enchanter or Shaman

baldcaveman

Mortalgreg Xilith has confirmed that its primary haste

Aisthetikos

Wall Xilith

I didn't see a note here or in the current patch addressing the issue of lower level mobs not generating vengeance stacks.

Is this currently being evaluated as a bug? With level 12 and below mobs not generating vengeance stacks for a level 13 fighter that just unlocked a spender, it essentially nerfs/punishes the level 13 fighter, locking out their ability to use the spender.

Given the changes to cleric and now paladin to get Fervor stacks and damage proc at level one, it would make sense to give fighter a spender at level 1.

In my testing of classes (I know balancing is still in order), I went to fight wharf rats (yellow to a level 1) with various characters. Cleric was able to self sustain and kill them will little issue, damage procs and healing. Paladin fared ok, and will likely perform much better after the deep dive. The fighter couldn't take on one rat, hardly moved its health bar, and died rather quickly. I will be running this test again with Paladin, and am curious how the recent changes impacts their damage and survival.

If the current cleric and paladin efficiency is intended, fighter would need either access to vengeance stacks and frenzy or second wind, or perhaps both, at level 1 to feel similarly paced imo.

Xyshina

Aisthetikos that’s a pretty small window to have that issue, I’m sure it’s low on the priority list with all the other deep dives that are still being done

Aisthetikos

Xyshina Being locked out of skills against blue and green mobs for a few levels is a design flaw and a nerf. What it is on the priority list? Can't say, but it has meaningful impact on the already low survivability rate for the fighter, especially compared to the cleric and paladin.

It might seem small, but understand that a fighter is also potentially locked out of mobs level 12 and under for back farming solo for mats etc. While they have said that trade skills will not be viable during leveling, if a fighter wants to back farm light green mobs, not being able to use second wind significantly reduces the ability to do so.

Edit: testing again. at what level should a character be able to adventure successfully against lower level mobs? A level 32 fighter popping into infested crypt, 5-6 of these 8-12 mobs get me to around 30% hp.

Fighting rats in BTB when I was level 28 or so, 4 levels lower, I can take on 5-7 green variations (probably around lvl 14), and they also take me down to about 30% HP before I stabilize.

This means a 12 level difference against vengeance stacking mobs is equal to a 20-24 level difference for non vengeance stacking mobs.

cwall

it does feel weird when you're grinding at a camp, level up, and then you're weaker because those same mobs, which likely still give exp, stop giving you vengeance stacks

even if the mobs stop giving exp, you will be objectively weaker versus mobs that are too low to generate vengeance at a certain point

very strange

aerah

Let us celebrate that they changed the duration of Vanguard and removed Taunt from sharing a CD from the martial abilities. We can continue to hope that Vengeance gets looked at. It's a larger item, though, and I assume they want to ship as many deep dives as possible before addressing larger chunks of the delivered reworks.

Fernia

I am happy about Vanguard having a 30min duration, it is now useable. Taunt being on its own CD is exactly how it should be for every tank.

But after seeing the Paladin rework, I wish ours would have received the same attention to details.

For a "completed class" they got a ton of new abilities and lost very little. I would ask to re-evaluate the fighter's damage modifiers on abilities. Paladins get xp rezes, a bunch of AE effects, healing, buffs, built in procs, and seems after only a little testing will almost match fighters in dps if not outpace in certain situations.

I feel if fighters give up having any utility to bring to a group setting, then fighters should be making up for that in raw damage output. I am happy that Paladins got a lot of nice things that set them apart and seems to increase their class identity, but I'd hope for the same from all classes and right now I feel Fighters are truly missing the mark in that area still.

Mortalgreg

Yeah fighter is in a very bad place for a class that already had its deep-dive. I'm trying to think what actually distinguishes fighter and makes them good?

Can interrupt without a shield
Has DW
Stances are good (offence and defence skill is powerful)

....That's it?

Fighter doesn't really have any abilities that do anything other than kick and taunt. It's basically just a class that's quite good at auto-attacking.

Vanguard is potentially powerful in a raid situation if we have DPS that are threat capped AND bosses that are taunt immune.

Xyshina

Xilith noted in discord that he’s aware of a lot of this but there’s just not enough time and resources before EA to tackle with the other deep dives needed. Hopefully we get another dev or two on classes when money starts coming in. Fighter will have to wait.

The change to knee breaker and disarm timers were good. I don’t like it sharing CD with armor break though since armor break is such a short CD and something we spam. So we will have to be a lot more careful spamming armor break now to not lock ourselves out of disarm for 20s. I guess that’s intended but doesn’t make it fun.

Xyshina

Mortalgreg it’s just frustrating that we had a new mechanic implemented (veng) but it has such little impact and just isn’t fun. It affects only a few abilities and forces watching your buff bar. If they are going to keep veng then they should go all in on it and have it affect more of the class to make it more dynamic and to give it more choices.

Raybane

Mortalgreg The main thing that distinguishes Fighter from the other tanks is the lack of need to sit down and meditate to recover mana.

aerah

Xyshina I don't know how to say this without it coming across petulant, but it would be nice for Xilith to address it here, in the dedicated area to address the topic of the fighter deep dive. Seeing as they shut down the class section of the discord.

Mortalgreg

Raybane

I have a 44 Paladin and they never need to meditate because they have a large passive mana regen buff.

skycitydark

i think fighter really need to increase the chance of vengeance triggering。

Bullmoosin

@Xilith Regardless of all the issues with Vengeance you can not replicate. The stances getting stuck and we either are forced into the stance we are in or completely get bounced out of all stances not getting Vengeance at all does happen (new upgraded servers may fix this). The situations where we are not main tank and can't build vengeance(is still a issue).. We are the one tank class with zero utility and our only abilities are Tanking and DPS, DPS portion is laughable since we can't build vengeance when DPSing. We may have a slight, I mean a slight edge on damage reduction then other tanks and a slight edge on DPS from other tanks over the period of exping and grinding, 30 seconds on our defense every 5 minutes means far less in an exp group then tanking a boss mob for 5 minutes. Mean while other tank classes have tricks and spells and possibly heals. When will this class be clearly defined as a top tier tank or DPS class?
Fighter class has been dismal through Alpha and Beta while I see other tank classes getting huge expansions to there abilities. This class is very lackluster still.. Fighter class is there just to tank the biggest baddest mob in the game but getting to that point is a rough ride. I will be playing Fighter in EA but the time and effort to playing a fighter is huge to making yourself viable to do end game content and still have light blues and blues murder you. I am one of the top geared fighters on Beta PVE and Mage pets and even Enchanter pets do better then I do in exp/grind groups when we lack a dedicated healer. Distracting Taunt being on a 5 minute cool down and AoE fear also being on a 5min cool down makes them situational to the problem you don't bother having them on your bar at all. Lack of vengeance makes Merciless Assault at 20min cool down less effective then before vengeance was implemented. I just wish this class would be scaled appropriately and account for the lack of utility by increasing what we are designed to do well.

I try not promoting this class to the casual player. Fighter is not a casual player class. This class takes time and gear to make it useful. Gear is the only game changer for a fighter since it's abilities do not carry the class. The useful abilities the fighter do have are on long cool downs. All the rest are increased damage or alternative abilities for when you don't have vengeance.

Raskolnikov

I agree that vengeance needs some work, both when it comes to generation as well as useful abilities to spend it on. However, I am not so sure about this dps problem. First, the fighter is not a dps class, but they have the ability to flex into the dps role. That means you should not be expecting S tier dps. Maybe A? The devs have decided a path for the fighter, and its as a strong retaliatory tank. They need tweaking in this department, but that is the vision, so talking about gaining vengeance for attacking stuff is just not what they want the class to be, so I don't know why people keep demanding it.

As for dps, I have not tested it at high lvl, so I could certainly be wrong here, but we get offensive stance, rend/cross cut, which are both strong relative to other class abilities, and you also get feint, which is another ability on top of rend/cc that doesn't even require vengeance. And to top it off, we kept triple attack. Have any high lvl fighters actually confirmed that our dps is horrible now? I can't see how it would be.

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