There appears to be a general consensus in this forum that the Defense minor trait Adrenal Health could use a rework. More specifically, the trait promotes building up adrenaline and not using it in order to gain a small buff in sustain, despite the fact that most warrior builds now require the damage or cc that burst skills provide. In some ways, this resembles the old mesmer phantasm-based builds, which disincentivized shattering illusions (their main profession mechanic) in order to maintain damage uptime. Although mesmers have now received a “fix” for their dilemma in the form of Chronophantasma, warriors are still stuck with a trait that conflicts with their profession mechanic. While most people seem to agree that Adrenal Health should be changed to heal while spending adrenaline, I don’t think anyone has really bothered to hammer out what they think the new functionality of the trait should be, which is what I will be attempting here. My general idea is as follows:
Adrenal Health:
Gain health based on adrenaline level when you hit with a burst skill.
Adrenaline level 1 healing: 1000 (0.05)
Adrenaline level 2 healing: 2000 (0.10)
Adrenaline level 3 healing: 3000 (0.15)
Assuming that someone uses a level 3 burst skill roughly every fifteen seconds or so (since they generally aren’t spammed off cooldown), this would average out to about 200 health per second without healing power, which seems reasonable to me given that it’s only a minor trait. This would already surpass the 117 health per second that the skill’s current iteration offers at max adrenaline without using burst skills.
Of course, there one clause in the suggestion that might seem rather iffy to a lot of people, which is the fact that the healing occurs “on hit” (much like Berserker’s Power and Cleansing Ire) rather than upon simply spending the adrenaline. In my opinion, this type of limitation is necessary in order to promote better profession design. As I see it, warrior should be a profession that promotes and rewards strategic gameplay. One of the warrior’s main limitations has always been that its skills are visible and highly telegraphed; it’s “fair” in that an opponent will always be able to see what’s coming. Therefore, skilled warriors can distinguish themselves from inexperienced ones by baiting out defenses and executing cc chains that enable them to finally land their key skills. I don’t think that warrior should be the “noob” profession which is simply carried by hefty numbers and passive skill effects, as the devs implied when they first revealed the Berserker. If the profession is designed in such a way that anyone can just pick it up and use it with equal effectiveness regardless of their skill or experience, it will either be completely unviable (because it simply isn’t rewarding no matter how skilled the player is) or completely faceroll (in which case people will get it nerfed). Warrior’s present inadequate state can be attributed to the fact that it’s too unrewarding even when played well. Sure, maybe you landed that 7k eviscerate or that well-timed pin down, but so what? The new elite specializations can just shrug off that piddling amount of damage (or better yet, evade/invuln/block it entirely) or break that immobilize at the press of a button. If core warrior is going to remain somewhat competitive in the post-HoT environment and the subsequent metas going forward, it needs to shift away from being a profession of ineffectual passive traits (of which the current Adrenal Health is one) to one that distinguishes between its skilled and unskilled players and rewards/punishes them accordingly.
So, with that all in mind, my proposed version of Adrenal Health has the healing take place on hit because I don’t think a player should be rewarded for missing with a burst skill. Besides, let’s be real: if it did heal on adrenaline spent, there would be some kind of cheese build that just relied on blindly spamming burst skills off cooldown for the extra healing (that might be possible regardless with Combustive Shot, but at least a warrior that only camps longbow and self-heals isn’t doing anything useful).
This isn’t to say that there are no problems that might arise with this mechanic. It’s still very easy for other professions to repeatedly prevent key warrior skills from landing (via blind spam, evade spam, whatever) in a manner that allows for little counterplay. Yes, warrior still needs to be given the tools necessary to connect with its offensive skills without sacrificing most or all of its defenses. However, I don’t think that we should rely on a minor trait in the Defense line to solve these issues, nor do I think our traits should be balanced around our skills missing half the time.
Anyways, those are my thought. This post primarily addresses the pvp side of things; I don’t have as much experience in pve, though I will say that I think toning down some of our passive buffs in favor of more active mechanics might also help with the constant powercreep the profession has been undergoing in the latter gamemode. Any feedback or criticism is welcome.
(edited by Torqiseknite.1380)