Disclaimer
This post may be kinda long. It contains minor rants, my take on wrecking blow, and some solutions to make stamina builds more versatile. Please, grab a drink and some popcorn while you read.
If you have the attention span of a goldfish, you should probably leave now, but have a nice day all the same.
Right, disclaimer out of the way, let's get into it
You've just obliterated someone with the good ol' crit rush, wrecking blow, executioner combo on your stam sorc and you're feeling good.. and then the salty whispers begin to flood in
"ur just a wrecking blow spammer l2p" - I killed you, twice. Perhaps you should l2p.
"do you know how to do anything but wb omg" - No. No, I don't.
"ur boring and ur play style is boring" - It's pretty affective though, right?
"1000 CPs, WB and no skill m8" - I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you from the ground. Btw, there's a cap now.
Basically I've changed the wording of the whispers I get, but they are pretty close to the real thing and my responses to them.
As the title subtly suggests, Wrecking blow isn't OP, by any means. It's extremely slow, you have to dance around your target to position it correctly, and it's pretty much useless in a 1v1 against someone who knows what they're doing.
It is however dangerous in a group when you're being bombarded by stam sorcs and DKs with wrecking blow. They won't mind playing tennis with your body. But that's the same with every skill.
I mention stam sorcs and stam DKs because they are the biggest offenders. Sure, there are Nightblades and Templars that use it, but not all.. why? Because they have options. A nightblade can make use of surprise attack, and a Templar will jab you to death. Those who don't wish to use their class abilities, will opt for wrecking blow.
Looking at stam sorcs, they have stamina based buffs and some pretty nice passives to help them out, but no offensive skills based on weapon damage/stamina. The most affective skills for them are wrecking blow and steel tornado. What a coincidence, these are the abilities people cry about the most.
Stam DKs are somewhat in the same boat there. Sure, they have stamina based DoTs, but you can't rely on them for damage when things get purged or cloaked in the blink of an eye. A direct damage ability is required. For lack of a stamina whip, they need to rely on weapon abilities, just like the stam sorc. So we're back to the wrecking blow again.
That's a pretty large population of people using this ability, so of course it's going to come across as "spammed" and "OP" when everyone is smashing your face in with this effective skill.
Personally, if you gave me a stam whip, I would kiss wrecking blow goodbye forever. Until then, get rekt.
OK, so I have a couple of solutions, if you will.
Solution Uno - Stam morphs for Sorc and DK DD abilities
For sorc, this could be a stam frag (though I find that idea a little silly). I've always thought a lightning whip would be badass.
For DK, a stam whip.
And that's pretty much it. Obviously details would need to be worked out, but the base idea is that simple.
Solution Dos - Stop making a stams life revolve around 2h
When you think about creating a stamina build, the first thing that pops into your mind is a 2h weapon. Why? Wrecking blow and Rally. This idea is a little more complex than the first, but could provide access to more versatile builds.
1. Add weapon ultimates
2. Increase Mages Guild and Fighters Guild skills by 1.
2.1. Add a skill to the Fighter's Guild at rank 4 that grants Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) and heals you for X every Y seconds (Yes, exactly like Entropy for mages)
2.2. Add whatever skill to Mages Guild to fill in the blank
3. Make some kind of useful DD dual wield skill. Something like base damage with a tiny DoT at the end. Just make it as simple as possible.
4. Amp the damage on Cleave, but reduce the bleeding damage dealt. This skill might actually be useful.
So we've covered a few things in this scenario.
1. Made a brutality buff available to stam builds in the FG tree, so they can gain it easily enough no matter their level or what weapon they use, just like Mages can do now. This might help promote different builds instead of just always relying on a 2h.
2. Added some simple DD abilities to both the 2h and dual wield tree. I'm sure some would find these more useful than the extremely slow wrecking blow. Not all would, but some. The idea is to limit the amount of WB heroes running around Cyrodiil, not annihilate them.
Fin.