U48.4 Preview 2: Balance Changes: Combat Styles

[Ballrus]

Any chance we could get "Main hand double strike applies to shield bashes" somewhere on one of the shield feats? Even if it is just as a stopgap until the animation issues can be resolved?

Or is that also not technically feasible?

Please don't allow that for bards.For paladins ok because the vanguard is really bad right now but bards with swashbuckling are too strong already.

Add it to Vanguard core 6, so if want it, no multiclass.

[Stravix]

Add it to Vanguard core 6, so if want it, no multiclass.

This was proposed as more of a stopgap measure, until they could get around to a shield bash animation rework

While Vanguard's benefit most from it, a fighting styles basic functionality should not be locked behind a capstone.

I think improved shield bash would be a great place to put it, as it is a feat designed to support smacking people with your shield, and yet is mostly useless with the animation cap in place.

[Nibor]

Question #1: So if your fighting with one-handed weapon and a shield in bear form you only get +5% AC? Isn't that a little stingy?

Exactly this. The Ursa's Protector enhancements encourage bear + shield use, and this feat really doesn't support that. 5% AC isn't enough to make me want to spend a feat on Perfect Natural Fighting.

[hit_fido]

For offhand versatility; there's no way a melee or ranged artificer is going to use the empty offhand option for +25% stat damage when it means they give up any/all of the enhancements they've taken that require a rune arm to work:

- up to +40 universal spell power (Battle Engineer cores)
- 10% doublestrike/shot (BE tier 4)
- 20 MP/RP (BE tier 5)
- 10% run speed (BE tier 5)
- Mighty Slam (RM tier 2 stunning blow replacement)
- Battlefist (RM tier 3 knockdown attack)

That leaves the option that grants a single autocrit spell cast at a rate on once every ~20 seconds, which seems really underwhelming at the cost of one feat slot. What am I missing? If you're relying on vorpals to proc the autocrit trigger then you're probably not a build that relies on spells for damage - does this boil down to just being able to rely on a critical repair/cure at about 1/20s? But on a build with a critical chance that could be 30, 40, 50% to begin with... I don't see the value. Does anyone else?

[o2t4f]

Did anyone else notice that Dire Charge damage is lower than a regular hit?

Tested on various helpless and non-helpless mobs with various 2h weapons. Damage is visibly smaller than regular hits, regardless of having extra dice. Not sure why yet. Maybe not calculating the melee power properly on use.

Just remembered to test it on live to see if it already happens there but servers are down.

[o2t4f]

I agree'd with you at the start, but you lost me there at the end.

The point of this seems to be buffing the off-hand when SWF, which for runearms would mean buffing the runeshot.

That said, I haven't played an Arti, so maybe someone who has could think of something that could buff runearm use for this feat, but that is the direction I would like to see it go, not loop back to weapon effects.

I would make it: "vorpal strikes charge your runearm to max charge."

[Kebtid]

With the introduction of the handaxe, you are just trading 2 handed paladins with swf swashbuckling bard splits and will have the same kind of thread in a couple months /maybe a year where you will try to balance singe weapon fighting. Tone it down, it is to strong

[Ordinary]

• Lamannia only Bugfix: Two weapon blocking feat is now hidden on the buffbar and doesn't fall off on death.
• Lamannia only Bugfix: Two weapon blocking feat now works with Handwraps.[/COLOR]

Shouldn't that be "Two Weapon Defense" as "Two Weapon Blocking" has been removed?

[Stravix]

With the introduction of the handaxe, you are just trading 2 handed paladins with swf swashbuckling bard splits and will have the same kind of thread in a couple months /maybe a year where you will try to balance singe weapon fighting. Tone it down, it is to strong

I doubt SWF will be meta after this, cause everyone knows AoE is meta, and SWF, to my knowledge, suffers on that front.

Now, they will be good on the raiding scene, but I'm not convinced that they will be better than optimized 2WF builds there.

[Kebtid]

I doubt SWF will be meta after this, cause everyone knows AoE is meta, and SWF, to my knowledge, suffers on that front.

Now, they will be good on the raiding scene, but I'm not convinced that they will be better than optimized 2WF builds there.

Trust me, it will be meta if this goes trough.
With the scaling of sneak having 15-20 x5 on a raid weapon with x2 stat and highest attack rate... It will be hard to beat that for years.
They wont do aoe but melt mobs single handely while having best cc of all melees at disposal.

I just hope they understand what they plan to unleash, idc il play whatever is next meta, but this one could be very very dumb.

[Arkat]

Shouldn't that be "Two Weapon Defense" as "Two Weapon Blocking" has been removed?

Yes, it should.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

I would make it: "vorpal strikes charge your runearm to max charge."

Perhaps, but let me reveal my motive: The Necronomicannon and other runearms with a proc effect that enemies can save against need a buff!

I got really excited for the Necronomicannon but it does not proc enough outside of inside of the Lamannia test dojo's test kobolds. When fighting those kobolds, it procs as often as it should but against actual enemies in the game at level cap even on casual...... nope, you are lucky to see it proc once in a 12 hour gaming session!

[Ganak]

Shield Mastery
New Feat: Greater Shield Mastery

• Req: BaB 13, Improved Shield Mastery
• You are exceptionally skilled with the use of a shield, and your physical resistance is increased by 10 when using a buckler or small shield, 15 when using a large shield, or 20 when using a tower shield. Your doublestrike chance while using a shield is increased by 2% to 10%. Your Combat Style bonus to Melee Power is increased by 4 to 10.
• (These bonuses do not stack with previous feats, so this is a net gain of 5 PRR with each type of shield (5 -> 10 for buckler/small shield, 10 -> 15 for large shield, 15 -> 20 for tower), 2% doublestrike, and 4 Melee Power.).
• Fighters may select this feat as one of their Fighter Bonus Feats.

Wait...what?

So Shield Mastery doesn't stack with Improved Shield Mastery?


If they were to stack, would be a good way to increase S&B viability...

[Nandos]

The shield and weapon style is getting some much needed improvements this patch, but I think it's still going to be considered the worst of the 4 combat styles except for Vanguards.

It might be too late to improve things further for this patch, but for the future:

Consider buffing:

-Improved Shield Bash (since the one second shield bash limit isn't going away)
-Shield Deflection (can this also help against missiles?)
-Perfect Shield Mastery (take another look at this and see if it is still ok)

[askrj1]

Trust me, it will be meta if this goes trough.
With the scaling of sneak having 15-20 x5 on a raid weapon with x2 stat and highest attack rate... It will be hard to beat that for years.
They wont do aoe but melt mobs single handely while having best cc of all melees at disposal.

I just hope they understand what they plan to unleash, idc il play whatever is next meta, but this one could be very very dumb.

16-20/x5, if you use it on a swash+FB. I have no idea how you got to 15-20/x5. Still bad, but not nearly as bad.

Wait...what?

So Shield Mastery doesn't stack with Improved Shield Mastery?

If they were to stack, would be a good way to increase S&B viability...

They never did. You only took ISM for access to tier3 of Legendary Shield Mastery if you wanted to go the full mile on shields, and in most cases meaning a tank. The actual difference is marginal since if you stacked enough I've never noticed DS over 100% doing anything, and you'd be in the same effective range for PRR anyway.

[Bjond]

I would make it: "vorpal strikes charge your runearm to max charge."

I don't play melee artificer, but I like the sound of this one. It synergies with and enhances the fundamental unique aspect of a melee artificer (the runearm) and strongly differentiates it from other styles. 'Course if RA blasts count as a "spell" already for the sake of the planned "next spell crits", the planned would be nicer -- covers both RA & Caster-style Artificers.

New Feat: Offhand Versatility
Runearms and Orbs now grant: when you vorpal strike, your next spell automatically crits. This has an internal cooldown of 20 seconds (lasts for 20 seconds).

This is pointless for orbs. If it already uses weapon+orb and casts spells for DPS, it has 100% critical chance (or nearly) already and so doesn't care about the feat. If it melees, it doesn't cast spells for DPS and so doesn't care about the feat.

If trying to balance out swf+orb v swf+shield, it's severely lacking. I currently have a EK/swf that uses shields and this doesn't come even close to enticing me to use an orb. It has to be worth giving up Double+15 AC+35 PRR+23 & Temp HP @ 6s. Or, Double+17 PRR+33 with the new Greater Shield Mastery.

Suspect you'd need to add on DS+25 MP+25 to beat shield's offensive gains by enough to entice a skip on it's defensive. Can keep the spell crit on vorpal or not -- it's very nicely orb-flavored -- but feat slots are too dear to waste on flavor alone.

If you intend parity between swf+orb and swf+shield, suggest also doing it via two feats rather than one; swf+shield is already spending two feats on mastery. Swapping to better offense even at the expense of defense AND gaining a feat slot might be too much of an automatic win.

[Kielbasa]

Devs while you're monkeying around with combat styles now would be a great time to introduce a new epic ranged feat "Perfect Combat Archery". You could use this as a band-aid to shore up some of the weaker ranged weapon styles until a more comprehensive pass. It could be like perfect natural fighting where it changes what it does but based on the ranged weapon in your main hand. Just to toss out some ideas bows could get +50% stat mod to damage and some ranged power, repeaters could get +W and ranged power, dual xbows some law dice, shurikens some sa dice and ranged power, etc.

Even if it doesn't go live with 48.4 introducing something on Lamannia and getting player feedback could be useful. I am sure there are some helpful players that could give you a mathematical breakdown of what each ranged weapon style is lacking.

[Malusny]

Did anyone else notice that Dire Charge damage is lower than a regular hit?

Tested on various helpless and non-helpless mobs with various 2h weapons. Damage is visibly smaller than regular hits, regardless of having extra dice. Not sure why yet. Maybe not calculating the melee power properly on use.

Just remembered to test it on live to see if it already happens there but servers are down.

Yes, also things like Eldrich Tempest is now not giving the X3 crit multiplier but a little less. I know it was nerfed but it feels that is is nerfed a lot more than the description says.
I really think someone just doesn't want melee builds to be strong.
I am just surprised that when you play the game, you see very few melee players and tons of blasters casters or ranged...

That is so unfair.
Right now probably only tank builds work well.

Reaper teams usually look like that :
A bunch of casters and ranged or a tank + casters + ranged.

Really not many melee DPS builds because they still cannot survive the hits.
And other builds simply run away while nuking...

Devs, please reconsider your balancing ....

[tapster]

If you intend parity between swf+orb and swf+shield, suggest also doing it via two feats rather than one; swf+shield is already spending two feats on mastery. Swapping to better offense even at the expense of defense AND gaining a feat slot might be too much of an automatic win.

Back when SWF was introduced you could use the shield mastery feats and LSM with orbs. But that was too much fun and it was nerfed toot suite.

[kanordog]

Perhaps, but let me reveal my motive: The Necronomicannon and other runearms with a proc effect that enemies can save against need a buff!

I got really excited for the Necronomicannon but it does not proc enough outside of inside of the Lamannia test dojo's test kobolds. When fighting those kobolds, it procs as often as it should but against actual enemies in the game at level cap even on casual...... nope, you are lucky to see it proc once in a 12 hour gaming session!

Spell crit helps ALL rune arm damage. 20s is enough to charge to tier 5 and get a really big runearm damage while there are not many runearms with procs.