I hope that the Focused Feedback threads culminate into something later but I wanted to re-open a discussion about this line and only this line in comparison to ToV Itemization/Player Stats. I'm only addressing what I see as problems, I would like to see what others can think up for Solutions. Consummate Defender Effect: Adds 20% to Skill Bonus's Granted by the Defense Stance. Actual Change: Aggression 37.2 becomes 44.6 Defense/Parry 59.5 becomes 71.4 That is the only thing this AA changes, it doesn't add Mitigation well since that's what the line "Veteran's Shielding" is for; at least for Warriors it is. The problem is in a game where Contested Stats are all over-cap 7 Aggression or 12 Defense/Parry isn't doing anything for 5 AA. This makes this line completely not even worth it to continuing the Tree. Swinging Strike Effect: Adds 15% Base Damage to Overpower, Rupture, Faith-Strike, Pain bringer, Pummel and Waking Dragon as well as increasing their Critical Damage by 10% This AA is worth it. 15% Base damage alone would be enough to take it for 5 AA. Enhanced Rescue Effect: Reduced the Reuse Speed of Rescue by 50% We as players are all pretty much Capped on Reuse Speed, especially Fighters. This AA does absolutely nothing now and probably needs replaced. Again not worth the 5 AA to even continue the Tree. Offensive Prowess See Consummate Defenders problem and this is identical. Like Defender, Prowesss only adds 11.9 Offense Stats to a system where we are already over-cap. Since 100 Skills = 2% increase in minimum damage on an Auto-Attack this AA only grants a fraction over .2% Increase in minimum damage. This was a potentially relevant AA before we capped all our Weapons Skills. Again, I would say unless you live in Offense Stance this one is not worth it. Ripost Mastery Effect: Increases Ripost Damage by 25 25 What? Percent? This AA is inexact and Ripost Damage/Chance/Extra-Chance are barely understood by most players. Given Riposts only happen on a chance off a Successful Parry this AA really doesn't seem worth much unless a player could significantly raise their chance to convert a Parry into a Ripost. Something I have suggested that the Guardian Class could make good use of. Battle Hardening Effect: Up to 309 Damage Ignored. When we have 1.5 Million HP when were buffed? This is an insult of an amount now. In PvE this should be 309 Reduction per rank or something like that. Oh, I said I wouldn't' go giving ideas only present them. Anyway this AA grant's far too little just like the others. So when it comes to the Fighter line, take your pick of the garbage and keep placing AA is what it seems like.
Maybe make Battle Hardening to reduce damage by 1% per rank? I think that 5% straight DR would be neat.
All of the AA that give a +Skill need reworked, with the exception of maybe Block chance. so i am not sure atm about these 2. maybe give D stance DR, or HP? and O Stance, ... i done know... to sleepy. Ripost Mastery - all Ripost based abilities need to be made more transparent before any changes can be started to be made. Battle Hardening - I am thinking of staying with the existing idea... maybe # of Damage Ignored times your Stamina, or STR. like 5 DI/ STA... would give somewhere around 35000 damage ignored per hit and may be OP... the #s needs tweeked and i need sleep... i will come back and think at this tomorrow.
Try a lower value. 2.5 per STA may be more balanced. I have 11K Stamina and having 27K Damage Ignored falls more in line with what this AA was doing in The Shadow Odyssey when it was introduced.
I think a % reduction would be the way to go with Battle Hardening, honestly. While I'd love each hit to be reduced by 27k, remember the trash in Hive heroic only hits for like 14k (at least it does on my bruiser; was testing today and max hit was only around 14.8), so you'd effectively be invincible.
Unless they capped a set amount of Damage Ignore per Level of Play. Say in Heroic's you could only ignore up to 4,000 Damage regardless of how high your Ignore is. Flat numerics always run into that problem, they can be too high for some modes of play (27K is nothing in a Raid but it's Invicibility when you look at Solo/Heroic). Percentage probably would be the way to go, that or the ratio would have to be like .75 STA = Damage Ignored. Somewhat akin to the conversion on Enchanted Vigor.
I think i would prefer to see the Offensive Stance and Defensive Stance AA's be make useful in some way, more than i would like to see Battle Hardening be made better... but lets talk all of them while we are talking. Battle Hardening - 5%DR would be the fastest and easiest way to make this AA relevant, but i think something like 2-2.5/ STA Damage Immunity would be nice... with a Max of XX% of Damage Taken. so like Max of 20%, so in group it would not make you OP and it would do Max in raid... Solo it would do almost none... OR 5-10% Damage taken is returned as healing, or Power. Defensive Stance - Even if it was +100% of all Skills it would not be relevant at 95... but lets get more creative... More DR would be boring, I am not sure here. I am thinking of maybe X 25% Taunt amount. may make Taunts more effective. Offensive Stance - ST/Accuracy would not work.. CB would be boring... a Single target or Green/Blue Damage Proc would be interesting, but does not scale well.... i am not sure... Skills would also be useless... Enhanced Rescue - change it to a taunt multiplier, like 20-25% per rank. so double or more taunt amounts at 5 points. just some ideas with a clear head.
Hm, Silzin that is an interesting way to cap out the reduction of Ignore. I would cap it at 10% of damage received. The issue is, that would become a VERY powerful Tank AA that's not much of an investment. Up to 10% Damage Ignore would be more of an Endline than a part of a tree. Though it's only effecting Physical Damage (Auto-Attacks) so perhaps it's not quite too strong. If a boss was to be more healer-focused his auto's could have Magic Damage components to make up the 10% Physical Ignore. I agree that Taunting should be more effective, technically the Aggression Stat actually does increase taunts, overcapping Parry/Defense Stats also converts to Uncontested Block/Avoid but the return is minimal. O-Stance, it's hard to really think of much. Since all offense stats are pretty much present. The most relevant currently would be Strikethrough, but the Dragon AA already grants that. Skills would only be relevant if it was in a meaningful amount. Say 250 Skills = 4.5% Minimum Damage Increase. I'm still on the thinking train about Rescue. Positionals are already unique to Warriors and I feel it should stay that way. Perhaps a 10% Chance/rank to force an Epic Target to Target you for 3 seconds?
Not sure what you mean about positionals being unique to warriors, as brawlers have tons of positional snaps. That being said, it would be awesome if Enhance: Rescue decreased the BASE reuse of the ability, or possibly added additional positions. Riposte damage is totally worthless in every conceivable situation. First off, it only has a chance to happen when you parry an attack, and that pretty much never happens in relevant encounters. Parry is a contested check, and the least effective one of all. Secondly, riposte damage is just your base weapon damage, and is unaffected by modifiers like DPS mod, so even if it did happen frequently, it would be 0.001% of your parse. Battle Hardening really needs to scale, I'd suggest scaling by Stamina or max HP. As I understand it, damage reduction abilities like Hardening are already capped at a certain maximum percentage of damage per hit. That's why it reads "up to X damage".
I mean unique to that that Warrior Line has another Enhance Rescue that adds 1 Hate Position, that's what I mean by unique to Warriors. As per Hardening I think your right in that it already has a cap, both soft and hard based on a fight. I am on board with a Max HP or STA based scaling.
Consummate Defender I agree increased % base to taunts would be helpful. Also something that could bring a little differentiation to tanks based on damage type again would be a % damage reduction to the resist type we get on our defensive stance...i.e. elemental for warriors, noxious for bruiser/sk, arcane for pally/monk. Swinging Strike Fine as is. Enhanced Rescue Either base reuse, increase range to 25-30 meters, or you could always say "a force target that works on epics"...but of course it would never work on any encounter where you actually wanted it to. Offensive Prowess Since everyone is talking DI/STA for battle hardening, I would say this would be a good place to have WDB/STR. Say 0.001% WDB/STR. So at 10,000 str you get 10 wdb. Ripost Mastery As of right now riposte damage is terrible since it isn't modified by DPS or any other offensive mods, but if you make this too good classes that have 100% riposte abilities could clear rooms by just rounding up and hitting that. But I would say whatever their "increases riposte damage by 25" means it won't be worth taking till it's closer to "increases riposte damage by 25 times". Battle Hardening Scaling with Max HP/Sta would be fine, but as another idea so it's not a flat number across all content types would be for it to be a passive buff. Kind of what "Battle Hardening" brings to mind...as in the harder you're battled the more defensive you become... When damaged with a melee weapon, reduces incoming damage by X% (let's assume X=10 at 5 points) of the previous hit's amount. So if you're in raid and get hit for 800k it will reduce the next hit by 80k, if you're in Hive AS and get hit for 10k it will reduce the next hit by 1000. Still scales this way, but based on mobs damage rather than tanks stats, so it doesn't just make well geared tanks have max DI versus all content other than raids.
