Guild Wars 2

I wish Adrenal Health was effected by healing power or something…

Why would mending be a shout? That does not even make sense.

Maugetarr.6823:

Say they put the equivalent of flashing blades at grandmaster in acro or trickery (maybe gain aegis and retaliation on crit with melee and C&D grants protection instead of stealth) I have a feeling there would be more of an outcry than right now because thieves would be able to keep up constant pressure while mitigating damage against themselves not to mention they could still begin the fight with a huge burst. The gw1 assassin could dictate the fight from start to finish with heavy cc, high damage, and a rapid flurry of attacks. The gw2 thief lost some utility and staying power for stealth. I don’t mind. They play differently. As they said though in their live stream when they were talking about nerfing eles, stealth can be hard for new players to deal with, but it appears to me that they are essentially saying its a learn to play issue. We’ll see what happens after they fix culling, but I have a feeling that we’ll continue to see small buffs to thieves.

(P.S. I use that builder quite frequently already)

Non-Stealth thieves should get protection.

ensoriki.5789:

Quick Pockets. 15 char.

Quick Pockets should be changed to restore all the Initiative, or make weapon swapping recharge 5 seconds faster.

Noun
Things to be repaired by sewing or darning: “a muddle of books and mending”

Why isn’t “Mending” a Physical skill? it would be amazing if the Physical Training grandmaster trait worked with it.

Improving the heal.
1 Increasing Recharge rate by 20%.
2 Increasing the Heal by 100%.

Mending is a big part of Physical Training in most places.

Switching weapons should restore half your initiative, other classes cool-downs from other weapons keep going, but thieves do not have cool-downs.

I feel that the thief class should be redesigned a little around having one weapon, or we should get something for switching weapons.

Acelerion.6820:

When people talk about spammers it doesent necessarily mean opening on targets with a barrage of 2s.

Anet keeps reducing the damage and people keep complaining about it. Its because the skill combines incredibly high damage and fantastic utility. It gives thieves the ability to front load and back load damage all while being very difficult to shake.

In my opinion hs should hit for less than autoattack all the time and apply a cripple or something. The nerf on dancing dagger should be partially reverted and changed to a poison as a ranged dps option.

Heart seeker as it stands is a silly skill and is absolutely a crutch for not being able to track your targets properly

Heartseeker should apply chill for 10 seconds if it does less damage then autoattack.

I wish we could have more stuff like this, Warriors could use more sustain options…

Xodus.7802:

i was just wondering if Omnonberry Pie and Skale Venon share an internal cooldown

I think Omnomberry Pie and Sigil of Blood do, they never seem to work together.

oZii.2864:

I stand corrected in my assessment of heartseeker. I never spammed it before on opponents as I thought it was really lackluster. I definitely think it needs a nerf. I recorded 3 good clips in WvW.

Changed my build up to 25/30/15. 2.3k power 58 crit chance and 85 crit damage. I was suprised at the numbers I was able to achieve and how effective it was in WvW.

It is rendering now I will post it in here for devs to get solid feedback.

Heartseeker is fine, honestly its one of the easiest moves to avoid in the game with a sound that makes it even easier.

oZii.2864:

So is the problem you have with heartseeker while your engaged fighting another person?

I mean if someone is fighting someone else and am going to kill them in not going to blow everything to kill someone that is at half life that’s overkill and wasted cool downs and Dps. At best I will go in stealth and back stab auto attack them.

The problem also is, if we do waste everything downing him and someone else is near, we’re not CD based, his Teammate can just rez him back up.

Larynx.2453:

MMOs are inherently difficult to balance due to the amount of variables required to take into account.

Frankly, if they don’t really do anything meaningful this month, don’t hold your breath until the first expansion comes around and really stirs up the meta.

Don’t expect the game to ever be completely balanced, and don’t expect to be able to make any build you like and play it competitively. Some builds are simply better, and that’s the nature of the game.

Less choice is actually better in the case of balance.

Eventually people leave the game, because Ryu and Ken eventually stomp everyone, because they are better.

Balance is what ruins most MMOs these days.

A lot of the traits we have are too weak and need to be remade to be on-par with others, we really could use a fresh start and new traits and playstyles for every class is the awnser, we need more metas and new builds, i’m tired of doing pvp and seeing the same build for every class, there just isn’t enough customization.

I wanna see all utilities used and fun ways and traits and boons for every class, every class should have access to a boon or something some how as long as it makes sense, we could even add in new sigils and improve runes to make up for that, and offer new choices for players.

(Sorry, i’m just tired of seeing the same builds/players now, and it doesn’t look like there can be anything else done, its been 6 months of the same, and interesting ideas that are found are usually nerfed, so there is so little choice now…)

Balance is fine, but everyone must realize that no game has balanced classes, there is no way you can make all classes balanced, classes should be balanced to there roles and what they are able to do, not exactly perfectly to what people want them to do. New traits bring a fresh eye on things and would add new rock-paper-scissor gameplay, especially if we focus more on conditions as well as other things, people complain about bunkers and just ask them to be nerfed… why not give some classes more condition-type traits to deal with bunkers? or offer new weaponsets? Why always nerf nerf nerf? We want more choice, not less!

evilapprentice.6379:

I like the on-hit abilities with the CD.

The activated heal is probably a bit too powerful – Correct me if I’m wrong (haven’t seen a blood fiend in a while), but can’t they be DPS’d down to deny the necro his heal? (or force him to use it early). Assuming that is still true, SoM seems to be a bit much.

tl;dr – Good ideas, maybe some playtesting around the actual numbers.

Yes, however the Necromancer has many other options to heal himself, also if they are focusing on your minions they arn’t exactly hitting you, and with the upgraded armor and HP they gave to minions they are actually pretty good now, plus the minion stays safely away from the target, kiting or running from it if it gets aggro.

Necromancers also have 8k more base HP then thieves and have a lot more condition removal as well without stealth, as well as access to boons like protection and regeneration.

Necromancers can also wait until its almost dead and use the heal.

Bunmaster.9734:

I don’t have the numbers to back it up, but it still kinda feels OP. Maybe @500 heal every 2 sec.

It would have to be 1 second then. It has to match other healing abilities.

Eduardo.4675:

My God!! If i have 2254 power (as in 25/30/0/0/15), i can heal for 1208 every 2 secs!! And i will hit by 521 added dmg, as well!! Thats 604 HPS and 260 DPS in 1 skill!! And it still works as the normal SoM we know, hit and heal.

Eh… Alright that is a bit rediculous.
Changed :>

RedSpectrum.1975:

that is true, but Blood fiend attacks on timed intervals, which is probably why you added a 2s countere=, but the Blood Fiend doesn’t heal drastically when sacrificed. Necromancers get more heal when all of their minions are out stealing health for them as traited. But back on topic, that minion is an ai, these are players we are talking about. Who deal far more damage by themselves without utilities.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon_Blood_Fiend
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Taste_of_Death

Blood fiend attacks on timed intervals – which is 2 seconds.
Doesn’t heal drastically when sacrificed- Heals for 3,960 + 100% Healing Power.

RedSpectrum.1975:

healing for alot as well as healing on hit and giving damage? I think I’ll be the first person today to legitimately use the term OP correctly

They changed Necromancer minion to do just that, and it has an internal cooldown as well.

Thieves have 10k base HP and almost no DR or toughness traits, when we use SoM we also lose most of our condition removal as well.

I would like to change it to a damaging heal effect.

(Raise the cool-down to 20 seconds.)
Passive: Damage and heal when you attack every 2 seconds.
Active: Gain health.
Damage: 239 (Cooldown: 2s)
Healing: 926. (Cooldown: 2s)
Healing: 3,960

Formula for passive effect’s heal: Not effected by anthing.
Formula for passive effect’s damage: Not effected by anything.
Formula for active heal: 100% Healing Power + 3960

The idea is to turn SoM into a life-tap, by nerfing its activation, but allowing it to heal for a ton as well as do damage.

The internal cool-down is there for balance, otherwise it will just be a weak heal nobody uses.

Malice as description.
“Desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness:”

How about… 5 to all stats per point.

Rfreak.6591:

@Daecollo.9578

I have the chest (rerolled a new char and got it to 30+), want a screenshot?

It is a reward for:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/An_apple_a_day
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mightier_than_the_Sword
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quaestor%27s_Siege

If you want another screenshot (in abyss maybe <3) just ask I already gave it to my main via transmutation.

I know the chestplate is available (the ugliest piece of the entire set, lol.), but the Stalwart Boots/Gloves/legs don’t look like the ones in the PVP vender.

They just share the name.

I don’t think it is, I tried it in orr, and immediately replaced it.

TBH, they should lower the CD to 1 second like the pies.

It says Stalwart is available through story, but I never saw it.

Why not add spears on land? and change some of the underwater skills around and make them work on land?

I can’t stand games that restrict weapons to one thing or another…

The only way to make S/P viable is if they increased SoM’s heal like they did necromancer’s minion heal and added an internal cool-down.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You don’t get it…
Giving adrenaline-filled Warrior offense and adrenaline-starved defense is good design because we’d actually use burst skills when we need to get defensive.

I know, it makes it where you have to choose between offensive or being defensive based around your adrenaline and rewards you for watching and using burst at the right time.

However, since it doesn’t stack there isn’t any way you can reduce it to nothing.

Crossaber.8934:

For constructive discussion, what about make a change Adrenal Sustain to 1 of below:

option 1) gain protection boon for 5 sec upon Maxing adrenaline. (only activate once upon reaching full adrenaline, 30sec internal CD)

option 2) gain aegis boon for 10 sec upon Maxing adrenaline. (only activate once upon reaching full adrenaline, 45sec internal CD)

These will help def warrior a lot while also encourage the use of burst skill, as you only gain the boon by rebuild your adrenaline to max.

Please keep in mind the above suggestion is based on it is a grandmaster trait on def line.

It sounds like a good idea, but boon seems more guardian territory (25% for having no Adren, 10% for having full seems fine, it builds more then one builds and playstyle for the warrior.) and I just realized I screwed up…

I meant it to be 5/15/25, not 5/10/15…

When I made the trees, I wanted to make it where I had Hammer/Mace in Mind moreso then the other weapon sets, since they hit slower, they would stay in “Stage 1” longer then the other weaponsets would, giving them a slight advantage in there own tree, an Axe user would only be in stage one for very little bit, so would a great-sword wielder.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Daecollo.9578:

But your doing 2/6 the damage of a Berserker Warrior…

A full-out zerker has 6610 E.Power, a 30 Def build without Zerker Power has 3382.
That’s 50% of the DPS of a full zerker, while having 576% more damage reduction.

Let alone, what would happen when Warrior reaches 50% health and triggers 12s of protection from his runes?
75% damage reduction +33% damage reduction… yeah, dream up.

Daecollo.9578:

And thats not how damage reduction works.

All damage goes through toughness, and then is reduced by boons and other things after that, so it would be much less then 75% damage reduction.

Damage reduction and Endure pain does not reduce condition damage either.

This is how Adrenal Sustain would work.

I am a warrior in full knight’s gear, I have 42% damage reduction.
I take 20,000 damage, its reduced to 11600.
I have Adrenal Sustain at stage 1, so I then reduce that 11600 by 25%, its reduced to 8700, its actually less.

I’m not sure what to tell you about this theory beside asking if you have any evidence that it works that way else we’re talking about fried air.

Anyways, do you seriously believe Anet is going to give such a major buff to Warriors?
It’s never going to happen, don’t get excited because it’d be a delusion.

You didn’t take in mind critical and losing damage from having less adrenaline, and having less trait points that increase damage overall.

And yes, that is how boons/dr buffs work, it goes through one thing and then another, its not all at once.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You don’t get it…
Giving adrenaline-filled Warrior offense and adrenaline-starved defense is good design because we’d actually use burst skills when we need to get defensive.
But 25% is too much on a heavy class with 18k base health, especially when stacked with other reductions.

A Warrior could go 30 defense with knight’s armor etc and get 50% DR,. waste adren immediately to get 25% DR and you’d have a Warrior with 75% DR while still dealing a lot more damage than other classes.
It’s undeniably OP in PvP, especially when you consider you also have Endure pain and Defy pain.

But your doing 2/6 the damage of a Berserker Warrior…

And thats not how damage reduction works.

All damage goes through toughness, and then is reduced by boons and other things after that, so it would be much less then 75% damage reduction.

Damage reduction and Endure pain does not reduce condition damage either.

This is how Adrenal Sustain would work.

I am a warrior in full knight’s gear, I have 42% damage reduction.
I take 20,000 damage, its reduced to 11600.
I have Adrenal Sustain at stage 1, so I then reduce that 11600 by 25%, its reduced to 8700, its actually less.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You don’t realize how terribly, awfully OP is 25% DR?
A 3/6/9 would make a lot more sense.

25% is OP if it wasn’t a 2-3 second thing, but you play a warrior, tell me…

How many warriors remain in stage 1 adrenaline? Its actually very hard, because well, every time you hit something you gain adrenaline, if you hit multiple times you gain lots very quickly.

Its very hard to stay at stage 1, you literally have to do nothing, and if you arn’t doing anything you die. You say its overpowered, but your really not gaining 25% for that long, you gain adrenaline very quickly, 25% is completely temporary, less you are not doing anything but standing there…

3/6/9 would make sense, accept the fact that it would combine to well with offensive traits and actually punish you for using burst skills, which means nobody will use burst skills, they would just get this trait, the 9% critical chance trait, and 12% damage trait and press ‘1’ and ‘2’ all day like they do now. It goes against everything the developers have been changing lately, they want active playstyles, not sitting there afk with thumb in mouth not using adrenaline skills.

Defensive Traits should be the opposite of offensive traits, if you have 25% DR, you lose the critical chance and damage from the other traits. 9% Critical Chance, damage reduction and 12% extra damage from having full adren? woo!

If its 25%, and I have a burst heal and other adrenaline traits, I have to really think about what I want to do, and that is how it should be. Do I wanna waste my adrenaline, or keep it for my offenses? Do I wanna burn it all at once for a heal?

Its not really the gameplay, its the fact that everyone is mostly the same, there are not many unique builds at all.

Crossaber.8934:

Daecollo.9578:

Defense Tree
So I have thought about it for a long time, and after reading many things and trial and error, I think this is what a warrior needs to have great sustain and survive.

5: Adrenal Health: Gain health every second based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: gain 1 + (0.4625 * Level) + (0.055 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 2: gain 3 + (0.8625 * Level) + (0.085 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 3: gain 5 + (1.5625 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second ]

10: Burst Healing: Burst skills heal you based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: .5 * Healing Power + 875 ]
[ Stage 2: .5 * Healing Power + 1975 ]
[ Stage 3: .5 * Healing Power + 2785 ]

15: Adrenal Sustain: Gain damage reduction based on your adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: Reduces all damage taken by 25% ]
[ Stage 2: Reduces all damage taken by 15% ]
[ Stage 3: Reduces all damage taken by 10% ]

This allows the defensive warrior to choose when to use his burst skills, and makes burst skills a heal, giving warriors the sustain he needs to survive heavy melee combat.

Questions+Awnsers
1. Adrenal Health, why so much?
It allows hybrid warriors to have more survivable options in melee, it also allows more passive warriors to have more sustain.

2. Burst Healing, Why heal on burst? L2P!
This allows warriors to have a reason to use there skills besides just damage, warriors need more sustain options.

3. Adrenal Sustain, isn’t it backwards? Why do I get more DR for having less?
This means the defensive warrior has to watch his adrenaline, the more hes enraged the more damage he is going to take. It also means the Warrior will want to use and “hit” his burst, if he misses his burst skill… he will still be at full adrenaline!

He must constantly be using his burst skill to dump all his adrenaline so he can stay alive. Also he must watch how much he hits as well, if he gains too much adrenaline he will die faster, so this favors Maces+Hammers more-so then not, since they hit slower!

This allows for more active and dynamic combat, it is actually very very hard for a warrior to stay at ‘Stage 1 Adrenaline’, especially since every time they damage a foe they gain it.

Comments+Opinions
I know it sounds very powerful on paper, but in actual practice, the idea is to put more skill in the adrenaline tree from a defensive warrior, there are many “DPS” options that come from having “Full Adrenaline”, so gaining a bunch of damage reduction from having little to no adrenaline makes a lot of sense, especially when your looking at a calmer, more defensive Warrior.

Make sure you read every bit of it in detail before judging, I think you will see that this could really help the warrior.

Yes, i agree this is so ultimate improvements….

I actually like some of your suggestion, which really makes more fun, but in my opinion some amendments should make.

1) Current Adrenal health should not be changed, it is a 15 point minor trait and should work like one.

2) Both Burst Healing and Adrenal Sustain should be in grand master trait, and therefore a player can only choose one of each to avoid being overpowered.

3) Burst Healing effectiveness should be on pal with “shatter heal / shout heal etc”, therefore formula should be like 0.8* healing power + 800 and it should heal on hit therefore no heal when missed or blocked.

4) Adrenal Sustain should be 3/6/9% damage reduction, 9% at lv 3 adrenaline makes a player choose whether to use his burst skill or keep the 9% damage reduction.

Well, that would just make me take the 9% DR trait and lazily just save up my adrenaline and not care about it like I do now.

It has to cost the opportunity cost, its a “self heal.” whilst shout heals are AOEs (and you can have three of them.), so it has to be much better.

Remember developers want “active” not passive play-styles, so managing your adrenaline would really go towards what they want.

Leo G.4501:

You’re just going to make a new thread every time you come up with a new ‘sustain’ idea, huh?

Adrenaline is already used by plenty of traits. The key to helping Warrior is modifying what they gain access to via adrenaline, i.e. their Burst skills. Give them a splash of defensiveness (no, you don’t need HP return to ‘sustain’. Blocks, evades and dodges are -far- more effective) and suddenly you fix their survivability in dungeons while giving them higher skill-cap to compete with the likes of Guardian, Mesmer and Thief.

Warriors don’t really have much in the way of dodges.
The Burst Heal trait only works if you hit your target, you won’t get a heal if you miss.

gameshoes.1530:

I think that your Burst Healing should go under the Tactics Tree. Seriously, if you want lackluster passives, they’re there. But also seeing that the Tactics tree has more healing based traits, though it doesn’t improve healing stat, I think that it makes sense there.
As for the Adrenal Sustain, looks too powerful. I think that 8/5/2 would be more suitable for both PvE and PvP.

Tactics tree is about group support, and does not use healing power at all.

Except Warriors do not have protection or condition removal like other classes do, the “Stage 1” would be very limited unless you weren’t attacking or doing anything, that is why its so powerful.

Adrenaline is a resource unique to the warrior profession. Its primary use is to fuel burst skills, which become more powerful with each full stage of adrenaline.

There are three stages of adrenaline, and each attack made by the warrior in combat grants one “strike” of adrenaline, equal to 3.5% of the completely full adrenaline capacity. Thus it takes approximately 10 strikes of adrenaline to fill each of the 3 stages.

Which is why, each strike the warrior makes gives you adrenaline, so after 3 attacks, you would lose stage 1.

Thus, the “Adrenal Sustain” greatly benefits from low attacking weapons such as hammers and maces.

evilapprentice.6379:

In short, I agree. Trading the ability to stealth for protection seems like a balanced trade in my opinion – combined with the fact that sword is incapable of the burst thieves are known for, it’d be a fun addition to the classes options.

I still insist there needs to be something else to tie the spec together however. Access to regen tops my list, but a “confusion on evade” (it’d have to be more than 1 stack tho, since A sword MH spec will rely on power and crit for damage) seems thematically relevant, fair, fun, and balanced imo.

I’m only afraid Confusion on evade would benefit stealth thieves a lot more then others…

D/P Thieves and D/D LDB thieves would get a huge increase in DPS…

Mikemad.2495:

I like the idea of using adrenaline to gain survivability, but I’m not so sure it should be based entirely on the defense tree.

This change would make 15 in the defense tree a requirement for any build. The emphasis on the F1 burst skill would also make weapons like the greatsword or main hand sword nearly useless due to their weak bursts.

Hammer and Axe/X builds would probably dominate with these changes since both of them use their burst skill often and can spec easily into the defense tree.

I was thinking an alternative would be to add F2 or F3 defensive burst skills that heal/remove conditions based on adrenaline level. The defense tree could have traits that add extra ability to these and make the trait line more useful.

Your quote for the “15” is very sad, it kind of shows that there isn’t much warriors have to survive anything, I’m sure however without ‘15’ Greatsword users will be fine.

Don’t see how that would help much, You should have to invest in trees to get that type of power, and you already get Heals/Condition removal with shouts.

natanfk.1649:

Daecollo.9578:

Adrenal Health doesn’t really regen enough.

Not alone, but combined with Healing Signet it regens quite a lot, I’m not invincible, but I’m able to dodge away and recover a good part of the health in a few seconds. In dungeons sometimes I’m the last one standing (often I see people going down in path 2 when Magg is blowing the door, while I handle it very well, for example)

With regen, it heals for about 280 per second, if you have no vitality, that is about 1/66th your health.

Adrenal Health doesn’t really regen enough.

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

Daecollo.9578:

Confuse your enemy if you evade an attack?

Now this sounds like a game changer. An Acro trait that causes confuse on evade, and a crit strikes trait that gives prot and revealed on crit.

There you go, now S/D has 2 distinct, different playstyles. Your dodgy pirate S/D relies on protection to soak up lesser swings, evades to counter the harder hitting stuff, and the better you place (IE, evading attacks), the more you hurt your opponent via confusions.

Players wont be able to just unload on you towards the end of a flanking strike, knowing that even if a few of their attacks hit the thief is in trouble (thanks to protection taking the edge off their attacks combined with them taking damage via confusion thanks to sloppy play). It also changes the “DPS race” problem I pointed out earlier in the thread – you’re being actively rewarded for good play (evading attacks) outside the evade itself – your level of skillful play is the most important part of how well this hypothetical setup works, and that’s a hallmark of good design.

I agree, though i’m still not 100% convinced in terms of protection on a thief trait (and I still feel like some sort of greater ability to blind would serve a similar mitigation role while not over-stacking with existing capabilities) Maybe not on crit, but perhaps “every fourth attack” or something.

Still, Confusion on evade as a minor is an extremely thematic and mechanically sound trait idea that’s actually worthy of being apart from the sword trait because of its utility on all sorts of builds. Confusion at its core is already well understood and well balanced so I think it’d be a fun alternative minor trait. You can cleanse it, wait it off, or power through, and putting it on evades rather than crits means you’re not going to have the opportunity to mega-stack it. In addition it synergizes with teammates much better than direct damage, and that’s always a good thing.

Though I think renaming it from riposte to “Insufferable” would be more appropriate with that functionality. Fits better with confuse and it makes me lol.

Also, I’d like to note that this has been possible the most constructive and engaging threads on the thief forum in a while. No offense Daecollo, but you’re much better company when you’re being more thinky and less caustic.

My opinion on protection is you’ll never have a decent “sustained” DPS build without it (in the lower 2 base HP tiers anyway, from a PvP perspective). You can’t dodge everything, and sitting in the lowest HP bracket with poor access to regen means we generally have to burst our targets down before they kill us. Anything besides an Ele or Guard has at minimum 4k more base HP to eat confusion ticks while they DPS us down.

This means you have to give a thief something to compensate. You can go the route of weakness/blind/harder hits (harder hits in comparison to say a S/D ranger, not a D/D or D/P thief), but then you’re just making a different flavor of burst thief. It would still mean more spec diversity, which is good, but we’ll still be fulfilling the same role – use your tricks to burn your target down before they burn you down.

The protection/regen route would offer an entirely different playstyle and role fulfillment to a thief – Sure, we’ll still hit slightly harder and be slightly squishier than say a S/D Ranger (base HP differences ensure that), but it won’t be so all or nothing – there will be time on both sides to try to compensate and read your opponents moves for an actually engaging, fun fight.

Thief is the only 10k health class without protection, but I believe its proper for our non-stealth weapon sets to have something…

Defense Tree
So I have thought about it for a long time, and after reading many things and trial and error, I think this is what a warrior needs to have great sustain and survive.

5: Adrenal Health: Gain health every second based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: gain 1 + (0.4625 * Level) + (0.055 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 2: gain 3 + (0.8625 * Level) + (0.085 * Healing Power) per second ]
[ Stage 3: gain 5 + (1.5625 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second ]

15: Burst Healing: Burst skills heal you based on adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: .5 * Healing Power + 875 ]
[ Stage 2: .5 * Healing Power + 1975 ]
[ Stage 3: .5 * Healing Power + 2785 ]

25: Adrenal Sustain: Gain damage reduction based on your adrenaline.
[ Stage 1: Reduces all damage taken by 25% ]
[ Stage 2: Reduces all damage taken by 15% ]
[ Stage 3: Reduces all damage taken by 10% ]

This allows the defensive warrior to choose when to use his burst skills, and makes burst skills a heal, giving warriors the sustain he needs to survive heavy melee combat.

Questions+Awnsers
1. Adrenal Health, why so much?
It allows hybrid warriors to have more survivable options in melee, it also allows more passive warriors to have more sustain.

2. Burst Healing, Why heal on burst? L2P!
This allows warriors to have a reason to use there skills besides just damage, warriors need more sustain options.

3. Adrenal Sustain, isn’t it backwards? Why do I get more DR for having less?
This means the defensive warrior has to watch his adrenaline, the more hes enraged the more damage he is going to take. It also means the Warrior will want to use and “hit” his burst, if he misses his burst skill… he will still be at full adrenaline!

He must constantly be using his burst skill to dump all his adrenaline so he can stay alive. Also he must watch how much he hits as well, if he gains too much adrenaline he will die faster, so this favors Maces+Hammers more-so then not, since they hit slower!

This allows for more active and dynamic combat, it is actually very very hard for a warrior to stay at ‘Stage 1 Adrenaline’, especially since every time they damage a foe they gain it.

Comments+Opinions
I know it sounds very powerful on paper, but in actual practice, the idea is to put more skill in the adrenaline tree from a defensive warrior, there are many “DPS” options that come from having “Full Adrenaline”, so gaining a bunch of damage reduction from having little to no adrenaline makes a lot of sense, especially when your looking at a calmer, more defensive Warrior.

Make sure you read every bit of it in detail before judging, I think you will see that this could really help the warrior.

Without protection or reliable healing we are pretty much forced into support and other cookie cutter builds.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Vigor +

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Deal damage each time you evade your foe.

Lol, that’s evil. I would take it on nearly every thief build imaginable. How about a little counterplay.

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Gain 2 seconds of retaliation each time you evade an attack. Internal cooldown 2 seconds.

This way they’re not just plain taking the damage.

Well, it actually makes a lot of sense, but Retaliation would go much better with the first idea of protection, since you have to get hit, and actually make thieves who evade worse, the counter play to the riposte thing is simple. Don’t attack the thief unless you know his evades are down, or CC him.

It wouldn’t really be good, because you gained retaliation (on evade.) when you evaded his attack, and so you didn’t do anything to him?

" Retaliation is a boon that damages anyone who hits them. Damage will not be dealt if the attack is prevented or avoided. Duration can be stacked up to 5 times."

That’s true, but at the same time you’ve got a nearly impossible to track number of evades on a acro/sword thief. Take similar traits, like the warrior blocking = projectile reflection one. It’s very obvious when the warrior has the capacity to block. He’s either got aegis from another source, or he’s holding up a shield or mace.

Evasion isn’t something you can really quantify that way because there are so many unknown factors. You’ve got X number of possible heal/utility evades, endurance based dodges, and this is a sword trait, so you’ve got sword evades which are relative to initiative, and there’s no way for an outside observer to have a really good handle on your initiative.

All that together plus the fact that evades usually happen after you’re already started an attack make a straight damage return just a little too good to be true.

I’ll admit, though, that retaliation might not be appropriate, and I’m guessing this kind of theme is where the dodge>might trait came from as a similar discussion probably happenned during development.

Still think it’s best to roll the appropriate compensation for the “loss of stealth” trait in to that trait itself.

Also, I think the game needs a whole lot more sidegrade style traits with powerful buffs paid for in powerful drawbacks.

It would be fun to see a Bull’s Rush 100b Warrior kill himself due to your evades though. Even a P/D thief trying to quickshot you repeatedly, killing himself when you evade his shots.

Oh it for sure sounds awesome, just a little too awesome, especially for a minor.

It does have a hard counter, CC (knock down, knock back.)/Immobilize.

And its not like “Mug” damage, it probably does very little damage.

The problem is, basically, that all of those are in turn countered by the all-class-avaliable god of hard counters: evade itself.

Sure, once you’re locked down you’re locked down (well, Roll for initiative says hi) but getting you there and making it reliable becomes actively harder and more punishing for the guy trying to do it.

It’s hard enough to try and lock down a good thief. Doubly so for a sword thief, actively punishing your opponent for trying in a way he can’t mitigate or reliably predict seems a little over the top to me. The reward for landing a CC is already there, it shouldn’t be the only way to mitigate otherwise unmitigated damage.

Basically, I’m saying that instant non-dodgable damage is a bad thing balance wise, which is why there’s so very little of it in the game. If evades has a leadup it would be fair, but then again it would also completely break the core function of evades as reactionary invulnerability.

Confuse your enemy if you evade an attack?

Either way, it seems like a good way to make evasion fun.

They should add another helmet/shoulders and give you both options.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Vigor +

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Deal damage each time you evade your foe.

Lol, that’s evil. I would take it on nearly every thief build imaginable. How about a little counterplay.

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Gain 2 seconds of retaliation each time you evade an attack. Internal cooldown 2 seconds.

This way they’re not just plain taking the damage.

Well, it actually makes a lot of sense, but Retaliation would go much better with the first idea of protection, since you have to get hit, and actually make thieves who evade worse, the counter play to the riposte thing is simple. Don’t attack the thief unless you know his evades are down, or CC him.

It wouldn’t really be good, because you gained retaliation (on evade.) when you evaded his attack, and so you didn’t do anything to him?

" Retaliation is a boon that damages anyone who hits them. Damage will not be dealt if the attack is prevented or avoided. Duration can be stacked up to 5 times."

That’s true, but at the same time you’ve got a nearly impossible to track number of evades on a acro/sword thief. Take similar traits, like the warrior blocking = projectile reflection one. It’s very obvious when the warrior has the capacity to block. He’s either got aegis from another source, or he’s holding up a shield or mace.

Evasion isn’t something you can really quantify that way because there are so many unknown factors. You’ve got X number of possible heal/utility evades, endurance based dodges, and this is a sword trait, so you’ve got sword evades which are relative to initiative, and there’s no way for an outside observer to have a really good handle on your initiative.

All that together plus the fact that evades usually happen after you’re already started an attack make a straight damage return just a little too good to be true.

I’ll admit, though, that retaliation might not be appropriate, and I’m guessing this kind of theme is where the dodge>might trait came from as a similar discussion probably happenned during development.

Still think it’s best to roll the appropriate compensation for the “loss of stealth” trait in to that trait itself.

Also, I think the game needs a whole lot more sidegrade style traits with powerful buffs paid for in powerful drawbacks.

It would be fun to see a Bull’s Rush 100b Warrior kill himself due to your evades though. Even a P/D thief trying to quickshot you repeatedly, killing himself when you evade his shots.

Oh it for sure sounds awesome, just a little too awesome, especially for a minor.

It does have a hard counter, CC (knock down, knock back.)/Immobilize.

And its not like “Mug” damage, it probably does very little damage.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Vigor +

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Deal damage each time you evade your foe.

Lol, that’s evil. I would take it on nearly every thief build imaginable. How about a little counterplay.

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Gain 2 seconds of retaliation each time you evade an attack. Internal cooldown 2 seconds.

This way they’re not just plain taking the damage.

Well, it actually makes a lot of sense, but Retaliation would go much better with the first idea of protection, since you have to get hit, and actually make thieves who evade worse, the counter play to the riposte thing is simple. Don’t attack the thief unless you know his evades are down, or CC him.

It wouldn’t really be good, because you gained retaliation (on evade.) when you evaded his attack, and so you didn’t do anything to him?

" Retaliation is a boon that damages anyone who hits them. Damage will not be dealt if the attack is prevented or avoided. Duration can be stacked up to 5 times."

That’s true, but at the same time you’ve got a nearly impossible to track number of evades on a acro/sword thief. Take similar traits, like the warrior blocking = projectile reflection one. It’s very obvious when the warrior has the capacity to block. He’s either got aegis from another source, or he’s holding up a shield or mace.

Evasion isn’t something you can really quantify that way because there are so many unknown factors. You’ve got X number of possible heal/utility evades, endurance based dodges, and this is a sword trait, so you’ve got sword evades which are relative to initiative, and there’s no way for an outside observer to have a really good handle on your initiative.

All that together plus the fact that evades usually happen after you’re already started an attack make a straight damage return just a little too good to be true.

I’ll admit, though, that retaliation might not be appropriate, and I’m guessing this kind of theme is where the dodge>might trait came from as a similar discussion probably happenned during development.

Still think it’s best to roll the appropriate compensation for the “loss of stealth” trait in to that trait itself.

Also, I think the game needs a whole lot more sidegrade style traits with powerful buffs paid for in powerful drawbacks.

It would be fun to see a Bull’s Rush 100b Warrior kill himself due to your evades though. Even a P/D thief trying to quickshot you repeatedly, killing himself when you evade his shots.

The nightmare heavy armor is broken and weird, it looks like its plastic…

They really need to add something to Nightmare armor to make it look more realistic and less plastic.

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Edit: 3s of confusion might be a bit much unless it’s a proc chance on crit. Remember you’re talking about a critical strikes trait on a weapon with some very good multi-hit ability,

Sounds fun in theory, but wont work in the long run – the current design of sword and this suggestion are too far split. Sword MH doesn’t offer any other damaging conditions – if you’re going to build a spec around a trait that puts confusion on crit in the spotlight, you’re going to run into 1 of 3 problems

- High power/crit builds are constantly stacking confusions that do terrible damage, the trait doesn’t do enough to warrant a complete change in playstyle (trading stealth for your on crit vigor/confusion)
- High condi/low power/high crit builds are constantly stacking high damage confusions, but every other attack does pitiful damage (Sword is all direct damage, which is now abysmall because you have 0 power) – you’re going to be trying to kill players via confusion alone, which doesn’t sound fun.
- You’re wearing a Carrion ammy to hybrid Power/condi as best you can, and have subpar crit. You’re wearing a rampagers ammy maximize crit and still have some power, but your total lack of toughness makes the spec extremely fragile to run.

I liked the original Protection on crit idea, tbh, with just a few other minor tweaks to the class to give Sword thieves a sustainable, dodgy setup that completely eschews stealth in favor or being hard to pin down AND hard to actually kill.

What about Precision/Condition Damage/Toughness gear?

@others
I changed it to 5s with the cool-down so it would favor less spammy attacks.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Vigor +

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Deal damage each time you evade your foe.

Lol, that’s evil. I would take it on nearly every thief build imaginable. How about a little counterplay.

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Gain 2 seconds of retaliation each time you evade an attack. Internal cooldown 2 seconds.

This way they’re not just plain taking the damage.

Well, it actually makes a lot of sense, but Retaliation would go much better with the first idea of protection, since you have to get hit, and actually make thieves who evade worse, the counter play to the riposte thing is simple. Don’t attack the thief unless you know his evades are down, or CC him.

It wouldn’t really be good, because you gained retaliation (on evade.) when you evaded his attack, and so you didn’t do anything to him?

" Retaliation is a boon that damages anyone who hits them. Damage will not be dealt if the attack is prevented or avoided. Duration can be stacked up to 5 times."

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Vigor +

Acrobatics
Riposte – Minor Trait.
Deal damage each time you evade your foe.

In fencing, the riposte (French for “retort”) is an offensive action with the intent of hitting one’s opponent, made by the fencer who has just parried an attack.¹

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

Actually! That is a very good idea! and it would go well with another trait I had in mind!