New Warrior Elite Spec – Nemesis - The Nemesis is a warrior whose focus is on turning their opponent against themselves while maintaining an unpredictable combat prowess
Intro – I’ve been watching Wooden Potatoes’ and Boots’ series called Elite Spec-ulation which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. So I thought I’d get in on the fun and write down my thoughts on a new elite spec that I would find really fun in an upcoming expansion.
Purpose – With Elite Specs adding new weapons for all classes, other classes have encroached on the feeling of warrior’s weapon mastery, this elite specialization attempts to ensure the warrior’s position as such by making them an expert in the weapons available to them. The Nemesis purpose is to punish the warrior’s opponent and make the warrior unpredictable by providing more in-combat capability. It capitalizes on the theme of the Warrior as a weapons master by providing them with 2 attunements for each weapon: Plight Attunement and Power Attunement. Please review the notes section at the bottom for possible solutions to potential concerns.
New Adrenaline Skill – Attunements – Attunements bring a change to weapons, no longer are they only condition or power based, but can be either or depending on which attunement you have active. In addition, attunements effect your gear to appropriately support what you are attuned to. Attunements can only be swapped when adrenaline is full, this consumes all adrenaline. There is no visual change to swapping attunements for the enemy to see, all visual changes will be for the warrior only in order to maintain the element of surprise. Pressing the attunements associated F key will activate a burst skill assuming there is enough adrenaline to use it. Bursts are powerful, but not as powerful as the primal bursts of the Berserker.
F1 – Power Attunement
Transform condition damage to power and expertise to concentration while this attunement is active.
Reduce the effectiveness of condition damage and expertise by 100%
Gain power based on a percentage of condition damage: 100%
Gain concentration based on a percentage of expertise: 100%
Swap out condition based weapon skills for power based weapon skills.
When swapping to this attunement grant retaliation to the warrior and allies via a trait.
Pressing F1 with this attunement active will activate the F1 burst skill assuming there is enough adrenaline to use it. The F1 burst skill is power based.
Pressing F2 with this attunement active will deactivate it and activate the plight attunement. This requires full adrenaline and will consume all of it.
F2 – Plight Attunement
Transform power to condition damage and concentration to expertise while this attunement is active.
Reduce the effectiveness of power and concentration by 100%
Gain condition damage based on a percentage of power: 100%
Gain expertise based on a percentage of concentration: 100%
Swap out power based weapon skills for condition based weapon skills.
When swapping to this attunement apply confusion and torment to opponents via a trait.
Pressing F2 with this attunement active will activate the F2 burst skill assuming there is enough adrenaline to use it. The F2 burst skill is condition based.
Pressing F1 with this attunement active will deactivate it and activate the power attunement. This requires full adrenaline and will consume all of it.
The purpose of this weapon for warrior is not to be the best damage dealer, but reliable support weapon for team play when attuned to power & a punishing condition weapon when attuned to plight. It’s also strongest as a melee weapon, but has range to maintain that bow feel.
Attuned to Power
Moderate direct damage weapon skills.
Apply retaliation and resistance to allies
Increase damage the closer you are to your target with a trait (Swift Shortbow).
Burst skill – Backbiter – Fire dozens of forceful needles into your foe at melee distance.
Attuned to Plight.
Moderate condition damage weapon skills.
Apply torment and confusion to enemies.
Increase condition damage the closer you are to your target with a trait (Swift Shortbow).
Burst skill – Back Bender – Torment your enemy with dozens of painful needles at melee distance.
New weapon skills for old weapons – Old power weapons will maintain their old skills when attuned to power and receive a new set of condition skills when attuned to plight. Likewise, old condition weapons will maintain their old skills when attuned to plight and receive a new set of power skills when attuned to power. I picture the different skill sets for weapons staying similar, but not identical, between attunements with either a direct damage or condition damage flavor depending on which attunement is active. As examples see the following burst attack suggestions. In addition to their current burst attacks, which would be associated with the proper attunement, the following weapons could receive the following burst attacks for their respective attunement.
Longbow Power Attunement – Explosive Shot – Implant an explosive arrow into your foe which detonates for massive damage.
Sword Power Attunement – Fury – Immobilize your foes with a flurry of heavy hits.
Axe Plight Attunement – Nightmare Leap – Leap at your foe cutting with poisonous strikes.
Greatsword Plight Attunement – Vital Slice – Deliver a circular attack to foes around you bleeding all enemies you hit and gain fury.
Hammer Plight Attunement – Bone Breaker – Jump to the targeted location and slam your hammer down, crippling and burning foes.
Mace Plight Attunement – Skull Bash – Confuse your foe with a skull bash.
Rifle Plight Attunement – Tactical Shot – Fire a well-aimed shot, bleeding and chilling your foe.
Spear Plight Attunement – Whirling Death – Poison all foes around you.
Harpoon Gun Plight Attunement – Draining Shot – Fire a powerful shot that bleeds foes.
Slot Skills – Buff Rage Skills via traits for the purpose of the Nemesis to control the fight and add a new rage skill called Parry.
Parry – Cause your opponents next attack to be a glancing blow, your next attack hits with your weapon’s damage + a percentage of the enemies incoming damage up to a cap.
Traits – Focus on attunement usage, rage skills, Shortbows, and punishing your foe.
Minor Traits
Minor Adept – Nemesis’ kitten nal (this forum is changing the first part of this 2nd word, it’s a synonym of stockpile) – Gain access to shortbows, attunements, and new bursts.
Minor Master – Chaotic Rage – Grant chaos armor when a rage skill is used, this trait has a cooldown.
Minor Grandmaster – Attunement Master – Apply retaliation to self and 9 allies when attuning to power and apply confusion and torment to up to 10 enemies when attuning to plight.
Major Traits
Major Adept
Swift Shortbow – Reduce the cooldowns of shortbow skills and increase the direct/condition damage of shortbow the closer you are to your target.
Inner Peace – Outrage now also clears conditions. Rage skills and have reduced cooldowns.
Master of Arms – Apply vulnerability to target and protection to self when weapon swapping.
Major Master
Surefooted – Break stuns and gain stability when swapping attunements.
Concentration – Slowly increase effectiveness of an attunement the longer you have it active up to a cap.
Unpredictable – Increase damage for a short time after swapping attunements.
Major Grandmaster
Weak and Vulnerable – Inflict vulnerability and weakness when you strike a foe that is below the health threshold. Increase damage done to foes that are both weak and vulnerable.
Punishing Parry – Periodically use parry automatically and decrease its cooldown. When parrying, any conditions your enemy was going to apply to you is instead returned back to your enemy and any buffs that your enemy was going to gain with their attack is instead applied to you.
Blowout – Increase the effectiveness of burst skills at every level (1-3).
Notes
This is a draft only. The ideas presented are simply to create a good idea of how this elite specialization would work. All elements are subject to change.
I’ve intentionally left out numbers for the most part so they can be balanced appropriately.
Nemesis would be balanced to be more powerful than base Warrior but not as powerful as Berserker. The intent of Nemesis is to be versatile in combat, provide additional support to allies beyond Phalanx Strength, and punish enemies.
This will not make condition or power armor pointless as there are plenty of other classes/elite specs where it will matter what stats you use. Berserker, having a higher damage output than Nemesis, will continue to be a widely used warrior elite spec where choosing between power and condition gear matters.
In its current form there are obvious concerns.
Sinister and Carrion stats have the ability to give the warrior both major and minor power stats under the power attunement and major and minor condition damage stats under the plight attunement.
Viper stats have the ability to give 2 major power stats under the power attunement and 2 major condition damage stats under the plight attunement.
Special balancing may be required for issues such as these. One solution is to simply make these stat sets exceptions to the stat swapping of attunements. So Sinister, Carrion, and Viper set’s stats remain unchanged when swapping attunements.
Otherwise allowing for a major and minor power or condition damage or 2 major power or condition damage stats may be an interesting and ok side effect of the stat transformations.
Balancing may be needed between PvE, WvW, and PvP.
F2 could be the dedicated attunement swapping button with F1 as the dedicated burst skill button.
The way stat transformation, listed in the attunement section, works is one possible way I could see this working. It takes cues from traits like warrior’s Great Fortitude which grants vitality as a percentage of power. I use the word ‘effectiveness’ when talking about reducing stats because it doesn’t reduce the associated stats to literally 0 but rather nulls its effectiveness as power. If you have 100 power with the plight attunement active you still have 100 power it just doesn’t do anything other than give a number for condition damage to buff itself on.
Shouldn’t you just use F2 as the attunment key to flip between power and plight? Also, modifying stat won’t do any good to the game. Just make power attunment grant a stackable buff that improve your direct damage by x% each time you should have hit a foe with a condition and plight attunment reduce power damage by a %age and improve condition duration.
No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.
Shouldn’t you just use F2 as the attunment key to flip between power and plight? Also, modifying stat won’t do any good to the game. Just make power attunment grant a stackable buff that improve your direct damage by x% each time you should have hit a foe with a condition and plight attunment reduce power damage by a %age and improve condition duration.
I thought of using F2 just to swap attunements and F1 as the burst skill but I thought this would be more…intuitive I guess? Also it makes it more like Elementalist’s attunements, which might keep the mechanic familiar and standardized. Either way would work though, yeah. I’ll add this to the notes.
As to modifying stats, why wouldn’t that work? And how would the system you suggest work better? To me it sounds like just another way of modifying stats. Perhaps I just don’t understand the inner workings here.
Attunement is the wrong word for this. We already have attunements in the game and attuning yourself to to something means swapping skills out for other skills. See: Elementalist and Revenent.
Attunement is the wrong word for this. We already have attunements in the game and attuning yourself to to something means swapping skills out for other skills. See: Elementalist and Revenent.
Yes that’s exactly what I mean here. Swapping attunements for Nemesis would be swapping weapon skills out for other weapon skills, namely swapping out power skills for condition skills when attuning to plight and vice versa when attuning to power.
Edit: I can see how that may not have been clear. I’ve edited the OP for clarity.
Made an edit to the OP which details 1 possible way of transforming stats via attunements and added notes in the notes section about the justification this mechanic.