Maintenance for the week of May 6:
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – May 6, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – May 8, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – May 8, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
We will be performing maintenance for patch 10.0.3 on the PTS on Monday at 10:00AM EDT (14:00 UTC).
RE: Stamina Warden Shalks (Sub Assault) Change
PVE Perspective
Having parsed a few times now;
- This change feels completely uninspired from top to bottom. It fails to address the biggest pains of Stamina Warden in any meaningful way. This feels like a PVP change exclusively to take away fracture, with no earthly idea how to add anything meaningful back to PVE.
- This takes an already clunky as hell rotation thanks to the awful birds change some patches ago, and adds 200% more clunk. Now you have to remember, after god knows how many patches, that your sub isn't every 3 skills, it's every 6. No one asked for this. Yes, we gain a global. It also wrecks sustain even harder, as Shalks is our cheapest "spammable" and birds is overpriced for what it does outside of Off-Balance.
- This change fails to address the lack of group utility Stamden has. It's their central pain. We bring nothing to a group outside of *** poor damage, and this change fails to resolve either of those issues. It won't be a meaningful DPS gain, as it's simply gaining a global every 3s at the cost of sustain. Theoretically, the one piece of group utility Stamden provided was AoE fracture. And now, like your money in South Park investment holdings, it's gone.
- I continue to feel as though no one in the actual dev/balance team has any idea how Stamden works, what makes them interesting/compelling to the player, and why they are such a meme in PVE. We finally get a change, and this...this is it? This is what we waited so long for? It's heartbreaking, disappointing and just pitiful.
- A much, much more meaningful change would have been to cap bird bleed stacks and unchain them from Off-Balance. It would have provided consistent, reliable damage for Stamden that doesn't crack our sustain in the skull even more, and give us a reason to slot birds again over Wrecking Blow.
I don't mean to be an ass, but unless you're willing to listen to people that
actually play the class in PVE, just delete it.