Please don't mess with Empower or change Wrecking blows empower to a new buff

MaxwellC

As a Stamina DK I utilize the good ol wrecking blow into take flight to make up for what I lack as a class i.e burst damage. Wrecking blow on live currently empowers your next ability used within X seconds by 20%. Changing Empower to so it'll tie into the imbue skill is pretty unfair especially with after testing the new skill in PvP, it's rather lackluster and difficult to pull off as a Stam DK (Nightblades may have a better time using it).
You empower then use imbue and try to land a light attack within the limited time-frame in PvP is rather difficult to even attempt especially if you're fighting someone who is bare minimum competent. I'm sure there will be support due to gankers (mainly nightblades) who insta KO them and I just gotta say get over it. I get ganked plenty of times and I love the messages I receive from them afterwards but I still rather not lose something that is important to a lot of PvPers out there.

So TL;DR
Don't mess with empower (probably too late) or make wrecking blow increase the damage by 20% as a new buff that is unique to that skill.

casparian

If you can't kill people with Take Flight > Executioner without an empower than you're doing something wrong.

But I agree that Wrecking Blow needs some love now. It's currently completely non-competitive with Dizzy Swing in PVP, and this change will only make that disparity worse. In PVE, 2H builds are getting a big nerf this patch, and making Wrecking Blow do something more interesting than buff one (nerfed) light attack would do something to alleviate that.

MaxwellC

@casparian
Yeah because that type of play only works if the player is near execute. You can't just expect to ultimate someone then be able to execute them and if you feel that is the way it works in PvP then I'm not sure what to tell you.

Wrecking blow + take flight = more damage done and a higher possibility to execute targets.

casparian

MaxwellC wrote: »

@casparian
Yeah because that type of play only works if the player is near execute. You can't just expect to ultimate someone then be able to execute them and if you feel that is the way it works in PvP then I'm not sure what to tell you.

Wrecking blow + take flight = more damage done and a higher possibility to execute targets.

Of course it only works if they're already low. Empowering your Take Flight just raises the threshold for ulting them a bit. DOTs + Ransack cancel spam is good enough IMO, but I don't mean to say your playstyle is bad. Just that stamDKs will still be fine in PVP without the Empower.

MaxwellC

@casparian
Nah I didn't take that as bad mouthing my way of combat but rather that you cannot expect to ultimate someone and hit execute.
Stam Dks preform alright but again I stated this was about burst damage and empowering would be something to meet that end which is why I said I wanted it to stay or something that kept the 20% to next ability used in place. Stam DKs lack burst damage unless you wanna count animation cancelling as a form of burst damage but that isn't quite accurate.

Currently as a Stam DK we literally offset a good 85-90% of our entire ability bar to other skills in the weapon line rather than our own but the only thing keeping us together is our outdated passives (we finally will get one updated when summerset launches).

Apache_Kid

I think it would be fitting if Wrecking blow got a new feature after the empower change. There really is no reason to choose this over dizzying swing post-summerset.

Dottzgaming

I was thinking about this the other day actually. It seems theyre dead set on the Empower change, so id like to see skills like Wrecking Blow and Empowering Chains have new effects since the Empowerment is what made them so desirable to their counterparts. Something like adding Minor Vulnerability would be nice, or just something that gives a dmg increase of some sorts

casparian

Dottzgaming wrote: »

I was thinking about this the other day actually. It seems theyre dead set on the Empower change, so id like to see skills like Wrecking Blow and Empowering Chains have new effects since the Empowerment is what made them so desirable to their counterparts. Something like adding Minor Vulnerability would be nice, or just something that gives a dmg increase of some sorts

Minor Vulnerability would probably be too OP on an undodgeable attack like Chains, and mostly useless in PVE, since everything is pretty much always Concussed anyway. But yeah, something else would be nice on some of the old Empower skills.

Not Chains, though. I'm looking forward to those two massive inferno staff light attacks when low-health people are trying to get away from me.

Leemado

The change to empower is in fact made to avoid what you want to continue to do:

Buffs and Debuffs
Empower: This buff category now increases the damage done by your next Light Attack by 40%, instead of increasing the damage done of any attack by 20%.
Developer Comments:
This makes Empower a friendly buff to use in rotations, and decreases some of the burst potential of combining it with other abilities.

I like Wrecking Blow in PTS, in fact i use Dizzying in live and planning to move to Wrecking Blow in PTS since i always swing a LA with wrecking blow. PVE wise i like the new wrecking blow and the change to empower.

What i dont like is the nerf to 2H Light attacks.

MaxwellC

@Leemado
I never knew anyone used wrecking blow in PvE I'd thought Wrecking blow/Dizzing swing were strictly something used in PvP. In PvP I've tried this and it sucks terribly (on the PTS and live), Wrecking blow is something that should continue to be PvP focused IMO.

Leemado

MaxwellC wrote: »

@Leemado
I never knew anyone used wrecking blow in PvE I'd thought Wrecking blow/Dizzing swing were strictly something used in PvP. In PvP I've tried this and it sucks terribly (on the PTS and live), Wrecking blow is something that should continue to be PvP focused IMO.

Im a stamina sorcerer, i don't have other spammables.

MaxwellC

@Leemado
I get that but my point was that I never seen 2h being a viable option in a PvE setting especially since you eluded to wrecking blow light attack as your rotation (that would be bad DPS).

tyr509

Here is a suggestion I had in another thread:

For Wrecking Blow (non-stun morph), make it insta-cast and deal only 66-75% (somewhere in this range) of the current damage.
Example:
Morph A (Current Dizzy Swing): 15k tooltip, 1 second cast time with a stun
OR
Morph B: 10k-11.25k tooltip, insta-cast with no stun
(The numbers can be tweaked for balance obviously)

MaxwellC

@tyr509
That's pretty interesting honestly like I'm thinking about how it would play in PvP as my current wrecking blow (no empower) hits around 8k-15k (highest being around the crit area) so that wouldn't be a bad suggestion IMO.