The four point plan

[kragrock]

A discussion has been going on over on my servers web board that discusses class balance that I have been adding my thoughts to. It has gotten me to thinking about what would be needed to bring warriors into balance and have come up with a 4 point plan for this.

Tradeskills

some new types of arrow has been brought into the game

Lesser Hatred Arrow
MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
Range: 50 Atk Delay: 0
DMG: 1
EFFECT: Hatred I (plus 100 hate)
Recommended Level: 25
Class: WAR
Race: ALL


Hatred Arrow
MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
RANGE: 50 Atk Delay: 0
DMG: 1
EFFECT: Hatred II (plus 200 hate)
Recommended Level: 40
Class: WAR
Race: ALL


Superior Hatred Arrow
MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
RANGE: 50 Atk Delay: 0
DMG: 1
EFFECT: Hatred III (plus 300 hate)
Recommended Level: 60
Class: WAR
Race: ALL


Blessed Hatred Arrow
MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
RANGE: 50 Atk Delay: 0
DMG: 1
EFFECT: Hatred IV (plus 400 hate)
Recommended Level: 65
Class: WAR
Race: ALL

Components for the first 3 types of arrows are all vendor bought. Components for the final arrow are dropped in high level zones throughout Norrath/Luclin/PoP and are semi-rare.

(The idea here is to give us a form of agro that will work at range but not close up to compensate for paladins casting stun on pull whilst maintaining the ideals of a warrior.)

Duel Wield

From now on offhand weapons will have a damage bonus equal to 50% of the damage bonus on the mainhand weapon

A gentle way of increasing DPS

HP/MANA Conversion

At level 40 warriors get a new skill that converts HP to mana. Capping out at 80, for every point you have in this skill your efficiency in converting mana to HP increases. ie if you had 100 mana on your items combined and 20 points in the skill you would convert 20% of that mana into hp. If your skill was at 80 points you would convert 80% of mana into HP. Skill naturally increases as you progress through the levels.

Finally a revision to disciplines.

Disciplines will be seperated into 2 groups. Group 1 would be
Resistant
Fearless
Evasive
Defensive
Fortitude

and Group 2
Charge
Mighty Strike
Furious
Precision
Fell Strike
Aggresive

The 2 groups will be unhooked from each others timers, thus allowing you access to the offensive disciplines whilst keeping the defensive disciplines available. If you activate a discipline whilst you have a discipline from the other group is being used. The discipline activated second will overwrite the first one.

Finally a new Discipline is added at level 65 and added to group 2

Reposte Immunity
Class: Warrior
Level obtained: 65
Duration: 3 minutes.
Re-Use Delay: 60 minutes.

Whilst activated you will be immune from any Reposte damage landing on you

This is purposely placed in group 2 so it can be used after or before a defensive discipline

I dont know if this will unbalance things in any way and would like some feedback on it.

[kragrock]

Hmmm forget the reposte immunity bit, I forgot this would have the side effect of negating Enrage LOL :)

[Baadan]

Sup Krag..

Sounds good except some people may be pissed about having to get their Fletching skill up.

Also, it's "riposte" :)

And why put Furious and Fortitude in different groups? Seems kinda unfair to me (16 sec of frontal melee immunity, 8 sec of total melee immunity)

[landrain]

negating ENRAGE?

LOL, didnt SoE take ENRAGE off of most POP exp mobs because Paladins didnt know how to 'deal' with it?
:D

[Terrorus]

Originally posted by kragrock
Hmmm forget the reposte immunity bit, I forgot this would have the side effect of negating Enrage LOL :)

Not really, with your stated 60min reuse time I'd say it wouldnt get abused nor does it seem overpowered. Though I think they should make modifications to tactical mastery to do something like this.

[Krowbar]

I don't like the arrow plan. I already hated having to carry 3 bags of arrow components + collapsible fletching kit to avoid visiting the vendor every 2 days to avoid running out of arrows mid-raid.

Now its even worse since a lot of warriors have non-bow range slots and would hate to have to switch to no-stat bows each time there was an incoming mob. I even swap between 250 range shurikens and my main range orb but at least the supply is unlimited.

Besides, the balance-by-itemization concept has received very inconsistent support from Sony in the past so why would you want to rely on their itemization team for the future?

[Hyardgune]

No, if anything, SoE took enrage off the PoP mobs because the pet classes complained. Apparently getting your pet eaten every other mob frustrated them. Hell, having almost every mob I fought enrage frustrated me. I hated it. It wasn't hard to avoid, it never has been, whether it is a moktor or a militas. When it enrages, turn the attack off. It does get really, really, really annoying to have to do that every damn mob. Every time I go in to a PoP zone, I am thankful they removed enrage.

[Gyrfalcon]

Instead of making the arrows tradeskilled (because, trust me, there are players out there who absolutely hate doing them) why not make them summoned items like the Bloody Ancilles Pouch. Use a component that can be vender bought, and the highest arrow with components that drop. That way, at the most, a warrior only has to carry around the summoning pouch and the component(s) for the arrows. No click fest making arrows, etc.

Make the pouch earned through a ground spawn quest that takes a while to complete, or give it a fixed number of charges (100 or so) before it has to be replaced.

Just a refinement.

[landrain]

again, sarcasm lost in the winds of Marr...

[kragrock]

Refinements is what this needs so dont worry on that. I like the idea on the pouch but instead of components how about making it rechargeable? or even taking charges off all together and having 4 different pouches producing progressively better arrows but have all the pouches quested. The first quest would be relatively easy and the final quest something akin to the ring wars.

I know itemisation is a bad idea, but I am damned if i can come up with a better idea, whilst staying true to the spirit of a warrior. A skill that does the same job as some of the hybrid spells and imbues your weapon with some sort of extra agro generation, I just dont like. All it really needs is something to give you a kickstart on the agro at the start of the fight and if the mob does a runner.

Arrows just seem like the perfect answer to me. They give you a agro kickstart at the beginning of a fight, but cant be used close in. If a mob agros a caster and runs off whilst you have some sort of movement inhibitor spell on you. you no longer have the problem of waiting for this to go, you can now just plaster them with arrows.

I take the point of some people not having a bow in there range slot, however 2 solutions to this seem apparent. The first is people will have to learn a skill akin to ghetto bashing or even better change it from arrows to something like Rock, Big Rock, Rock with gnome bits on. and make it a thrown item. That way might be even better it would justify the low range and you would only have to worry about the ammo?

Krag

[Bonequest]

I want a magic boomerang that has 100% proc rate Taunting Blow on it and always comes back. Seems like if Link could use one, I should be able to too.

Otherwise, water balloons (Zeniak Bladders?) filled with some unnamed yellow fluid should instill huge amounts of hate. I know it would really make me mad to be hit with one.

[Tugurok]

I really don't understand why people want hp/mana conversions. That's a terrible idea for warriors:

1. It KILLS warrior only gear, including class armors
2. It puts us in direct competition with hybrids for what has always been hybrid gear

I know it means we get more out of sucky ass LDoN and other recent itemization, but the solution there is BETTER ITEMIZATION, not the total nukage of warrior only gear.

[Khiloor]

How about putting Anger 3 augment on my stonewood compound bow instead of arrows?

[Kaesorn]

Heck I don't even think you can get procs from arrows, only the bows. Also, that Shadow Vortex effect on some bows used to be incredible agro, until they added the Recourse and killed the assigning of the agro.