After the week 3 changes, the nerf to rip and tear with the intention of having bloody gnash be the preferred morph for group DPS did nothing.

The only reason rip and tear was and still is better, is because it has a guaranteed sunder proc. While bloody gnash has a guaranteed hemorrhage proc when already have close to 100% uptime on hemorrhage without this skill, so it ends up adding basically nothing apart from having 200% execute damage instead of 175% (A whopping 14.29% stronger execute), and access to the Blood Hunger mechanic which is what I would call entirely useless. The sundered from Rip and Tear is decently stronger than both the stronger execute and blood hunger damage increase from Bloody Gnash. This is partly because Signet is most probably BiS for Werewolf DPS.

The reason I call Blood Hunger useless is because of the rng element tied to Bloody Gnash, and it's adding only 25% to the first part of the skill, so this bonus becomes completely irrelevant when you get to execute where the 2nd hit of the skill gets giga boosted.

For Bloody Gnash to be competitive or better than Rip and Tear for Group DPS, it has to have guaranteed sundered instead of hemorrhage, or it'll need a somewhat significant damage increase to the direct hit of the skill.

Or another probably better way to achieve this would be to remove guaranteed sunder from Rip and Tear, and put Minor Beach on it alongside Major Breach, this would keep the utitility on the skill without completely nuking its damage as it'll still be able to proc sunder sometimes, so it won't suddenly be bad for damage for Solo for instance, and it'll keep its utility for both Solo and Tanking in providing Major and Minor Breach. And trust me, werewolf does not need more damage by buffing Bloody Gnash.

In the two parses I've attached, the difference between Rip and Tear and Bloody Gnash is clear, Rip and Tear providing almost double the DPS from sundered. While the direct hits of both skills are basically the same. And it's no surprise that Rip and Tear parses higher.

For some additonal context, gear, CPs, and everything is the same in both of these parses. And I did multiple of each and picked the best, the difference between the two remained consistent in all my parses.

Edit: This test is on a pure Warden, I've tested across multiple classes and this remains consistent.

Another Edit: I've done some more testing to be absolutely sure, and in most parses, when I'm using Bloody Gnash over Rip and Tear, I'm gaining like 4k hemorrhage DPS while losing 10k sundered DPS. And the gain from the ever so slightly stronger execute and Blood Hunger is not making any difference. Crit luck and status rng can push either of them higher than the other, it's almost no difference.

ADarklore wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

I will reiterate the issue with the 2 offensive templar masteries, in hopes that we can see some last minute changes.
Bright harbinger: compared to other similar passives this is just plain boring and weak. Please just add at least major sorcery to it, it wouldn't break the passive but would open up some skill options.

Judgements brand: 750 flat damage is still extremely weak. Outside of jabs, most other templar damage is on a 2 second tick rate and this doesn't even significantly help jabs, like you can reach 5k tt on it with just increasing weapon damage. I have 2 suggestions here:

1. Double the flat amount for both pve and pvp, but give it a cooldown let's say 10 seconds. This would create a meaningful burst windows for pvp, without breaking it for pve.
2. Make it apply to all damage, but reduce the amount to about 450 both pve and pvp. This would decouple it from jabs, but could create interesting interaction for dot/status builds.

Unless these passive change or get buffed, pure class templar damage is going to be awful next patch, which is wierd considering how these passives are supposed bridge the power level between sub and pure classes.

^THIS! Right now there is absolutely no reason for me to pure class as a Templar, when other subclassing specs still far outperform the use of Class Mastery. When will the new ZOS team actually decide to take a LEAP and give us a real boost while we wait for individual class refresh, instead of still trying to balance around an unbalanced class structure? I mean, letting DK, then Warden, then Sorc become much stronger after their refresh... while the rest of us continue our wait to shine. Instead, give us some real boost now and let us play for awhile and see how it actually works out on LIVE before making adjustments. Originally Judgement Brand was supposed to be at 2000, then they nerfed it to 1250, then increased to 1500, but 2000 should have been the starting point as originally planned.

For pvp Judgements brand is even worse, since its cut in half vs players and then again reduced by 50% by battle spirit. Basically provides next to no damage.

Font of Power



This passive provides 851 weapon and spell damage on my character carried over from live. The sheer amount of raw stats offered is a little concerning but the passive doesnt have any secondary effects like granting maximum crux to arcanist or granting 300 weapon and spell damage to team members like templar. Imo the passive doesnt need a nerf, but would be a good idea to keep an eye on it.