[Suggestion] Two Handed weapons given "Blade Cloak" option & Dual Wield a Bubble

Jrk

TLDR: From asking around, instead of giving 2H an AOE reduction & DW a mini bubble:

Medium Armor Tree: The Agility Passive (w/ 5 medium equipped) Weapon Damage Increased by 6/12%. When you deal damage you take 10/20% reduced damage from AOE for 6 seconds. (due to being so agile in your leather pants.)
Blade Cloak & morphs have their AOE reduction removed, replaced with Minor Evasion (5% dodge, currently only available to wardens using Deceptive Predator.)

All else remains the same.

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As you hit endgame, a big consensus I've seen regarding 2handed vs dual wield is dual wield has more survivability for one sole skill: Blade Cloak. Having a flat 25% in aoe mitigation works just the same on a 1 add boss vs having a floor full of adds. Brawler is great on scaling with density, but on the one add fight a 4-5k Bubble pales in comparison to a flat 25% aoe mitigation.

Likewise, as a Dual Wield (Nightblade for example) there is no real option to temporarily increase your effective health (Bubble) without relying on pre-existing (& already used) party mechanics or really reaching for it & in turn damaging your damage.

Solutions:

The Forward Momentum morph no longer Grants Major Brutality, taking the 20% weapon damage and replacing it with 15% aoe mitigation. There are several ways to get Major Brutality (potions for one, Sap Essence two). The mechanic fits the name too. =p

The Quick Cloak morph no longer grants expedition (same, Several several sources already) but instead on each tick procs a weaker-than-brawler bubble (~1200 @CP160) lasting 3 seconds, increasing shield strength by 50% for each enemy hit. Name change possibly needed, Balanced Cloak maybe.

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Two handers still have stronger density scaling bubbles (or can maybe feasibly go minor heroism), but get some aoe mitigation.
DW still has its strong aoe mitigation, but gets a small bubble, that on 4 targets is providing a 3600 bubble, 1800 on a single target.
2H can spam bubbles (at a cost with much less return on a single target) if needbe, but doesn't help your aoe mitigation increase.
Momentum Becomes a choice of heals or mitigation. Rally isn't immediately the go-to for the activated heal, but in turn you lose that heal on command if you choose mitigation.
DW cannot spam blade cloak for greater bubble procs (better for resource management in the long run), but when the cloak wears off or a tick misses, you lose that bubble quick; on a single target with good rotation it's effectively giving you +1800 effective health once every 3 seconds.
Blade Cloak has more of an alluring choice: damage or temporary Effective Health. Your damage drops slightly but you have slightly more of a window for heals to pick you back up.
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To compare: As seen with the changes to the Poisoned Status effect, the opportunity for redundancy was removed. They halved the duration as over a course of 12 seconds from 12 people, the effect would be reapplied several times without stacking. It still procs the same, but less overlapping.

With Major Expedition, there are so many passives & abilities, both procced and activated, to have this grossly overlap in a group or solo scenario. Same with Major Brutality. In PVP, you have class and other weapon abilities. In PVE as a dps, potions are the option. You could use pots for stamina & heath regen along with Savagery, getting as huge heal when you pot. That would be more nifty (& viable), if you weren't rolling pots every 45 seconds for damage/recovery buffs. I understand the need for some redundancy, dilemmas & contractions in mechanics when applied in several ways, but just as Poisoned was changed for good reason, so can other mechanics that limit variation in endgame.


Thoughts?

Waffennacht

You don't PvP at all do you?

Jrk

Waffennacht wrote: »

You don't PvP at all do you?

I do actually. In what regards do you ask? Brutality? Bubbles? 2Handers in full heavy with moar aoe mitigation? If the third, is that really a problem with implementing this change, or heavy in general prior?

Edit: I think the wrath change was a sort of solution; taking the last damage modifier passive from a tanking armor tree. Which is, what, about 2k off burst setups? If they are looking to boost tanking damage, then S&B is the place for that.

casparian

Jrk wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

You don't PvP at all do you?

I do actually. In what regards do you ask? Brutality? Bubbles? 2Handers in full heavy with moar aoe mitigation?

Forward Momentum is absolutely necessary for most heavy armor builds right now, and removing its Major Brutality would be a major nerf to those builds, as they would then be forced to either abandon good potions to use Weapon Power pots or give up a precious skill slot for inferior skills like Igneous Weapons or Sap Essence.

Waffennacht

casparian wrote: »

Jrk wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

You don't PvP at all do you?

I do actually. In what regards do you ask? Brutality? Bubbles? 2Handers in full heavy with moar aoe mitigation?

Forward Momentum is absolutely necessary for most heavy armor builds right now, and removing its Major Brutality would be a major nerf to those builds, as they would then be forced to either abandon good potions to use Weapon Power pots or give up a precious skill slot for inferior skills like Igneous Weapons or Sap Essence.

This.

Plus removal of expedition from quick cloak (if that's what you said) is another nerf/pia for say... DW Templars.

Jrk

casparian wrote: »

Forward Momentum is absolutely necessary for most heavy armor builds right now, and removing its Major Brutality would be a major nerf to those builds, as they would then be forced to either abandon good potions to use Weapon Power pots or give up a precious skill slot for inferior skills like Igneous Weapons or Sap Essence.

That makes perfect sense, however you can still get immunization on command with many other routes & still get Brutality with Rally.

Immovable, Berserker Strike, Break Free first come to mind. If the wrath change was enough to tempt more for medium armor, shuffle comes into play too.

In its current state, with Forward Momentum you get the best of both worlds for PVP in regards to immunity on command & damage buffs. Personally I'd rather see Immovable Brute with Rally. But I'm a scrub, lol.

Jrk

Waffennacht wrote: »

casparian wrote: »

Jrk wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

You don't PvP at all do you?

I do actually. In what regards do you ask? Brutality? Bubbles? 2Handers in full heavy with moar aoe mitigation?

Forward Momentum is absolutely necessary for most heavy armor builds right now, and removing its Major Brutality would be a major nerf to those builds, as they would then be forced to either abandon good potions to use Weapon Power pots or give up a precious skill slot for inferior skills like Igneous Weapons or Sap Essence.

This.

Plus removal of expedition from quick cloak (if that's what you said) is another nerf/pia for say... DW Templars.

That is a valid point. Here is what I had said in my other post regarding this:

SodanTok wrote: »

People use forward momentum in PVP and this would be too huge of buff for those that do have other brutality sources and too big of nerf for the others.

But I agree there should be AoE damage reduction somewhere outside of weapon trees. One morph of medium armor evasion for example, or Evil Hunter in Fighters Guild.

//edit: Actually it would be huge buffs for pretty much everybody, because FM is very good ability even without Major Brutality.

It's the fact it removes snares for the low cost & usable alongside break free. It's that simple.

I actually think the aoe damage reduction should be within the weapon trees & am happy dps modifiers were removed from the heavy armor tree. That or remove the AOE mitigation from blade cloak, have an aoe reduction implanted someway into the medium armor tree & make blade cloak do something else as its core.

I.E. The Agility Passive reduces AOE damage by 10/20% on top of weapon damage & Blade Cloak gives something else; minor evasion, minor protection, or the mini less scaling bubble as described above. The Bubble mechanic on both DW & 2H kinda removes differentiation from the two trees. I Opt evasion. It's not too OP in PVE or PVP, it stacks with Major Evasion, & most importantly, there is only one source of it in the ENTIRE game, limited to those wardens who bar it & can only put it on themselves. This option opens the Minor Evasion buff up to other classes, both DW & 2H get the aoe reduction but limits it to squishy DPS wearing medium, and people keep their other pre-existing skill buffs.

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The initial idea is subject to change like the rest of the world, it helps when you have constructive criticism. Keep it up!