How useful are additional engagements in 2.0? And what is the role of a Fighter in 2.0?

[Ymarsakar]

Yea, defender nerf was a bit too harsh, especially since they nerfed deflection overall. DR and buffs are much more powerful or at least, effective.

 

Since I had some time, I did a few fights in White March to test the new 2.0 AI with the new mob abilities. The paralysis blowgun is pretty effective, for the enemy that is. Their champions have paladin buffs or maybe it was priest buffs, and then they target whoever is casting spells from my party, and hits them with paralysis.

 

I fought the same group, the bridge and then west of the bridge, about 5-10 times total, using same composition more or less. Every time it was different, some due to positioning, other times due to how I pulled them. Party level was 9-11.

 

Closest result was 3 downed characters, leaving only my fighter, paladin, and cipher combat effective. Other times they focused in on the priest and he got hammered (cause of paralysis due to spells, and not having cast defense against paralysis yet). I was tanking on two fronts at least, even with using chokepoints on open field. On the bridge, it was a lot easier, I was able to ensure the blowgun users were either CCed or out of visual range of my casters. First time, I didn't even suffer below 80% endurance on most of my characters and health was still green (above 50%). Second time I tried the fight on the bridge, everyone went to 50% health or below.

 

Generally, if I can cast my long range ccs and mess up their accuracy or disable them, then they have little chance to get back into the fight once the priest casts rolling the buffs out. But, they tend to interrupt people with that paralysis attack, which must be an interesting script, although I don't think it ignores recovery.

 

So in this context, the fighter with his regen, allowed him to tank an entire battle line on his own without getting killed, and he was getting hit hard all the time. Only his high DR and deflection shields allowed him to regen it back in time. This ensured my priest didn't get in range of stuff that was bad, and I was able to keep the formation in the spot I wanted it. So tactically, the toughness of the fighter allows more random or unplanned for fight pulls against enemies with a lot of cc or dps.

 

There's also those ice spirits that do aoe and cone attacks. They should be intercepted before they get near your backline and then turned around so their cone hits empty space. You're going to need a good solid tank for that, that can heal on their own.

 

Of course paladin is more versatile and has group buffs, which makes it pretty powerful since it stacks with chanter and priest buffs. The fighter is easier to use, which was mentioned a lot early on when they developed it. In a fight where I was using cipher, priest, druid, wizard, I didn't have time to use paladin abilities much. So having a passive tank that you just click on to make him unkillable, is useful given certain compositions that don't use ranger or rogues.

 

Here's some of the highlights of the tactical test.

 

1. Main Tank Eder

2. Off tank dps Pallegina.

3. Debuffer wizard Aloth

4. Healer priest durance

5. Healer druid 

6. Main dps cipher PC

 

All mostly level 11, some tests were done using level 10. Got killed on level 9, but that was due to inexperience usually and trying to pull the entire enemy using one guy that got paralyzed and swarmed. Path of the Damned difficulty, with info turned on for accuracy and defenses. Chose "high level content" in White March.

 

Interesting MVP spells were citzal's spirit lance. Pretty OP, but it's a level 5 spell. Venom bloom, raw damage ate through the DR of enemies and also debuffed them. Great with roots and tangle from druid. Priest buff level 4, +20 accuracy, great stuff. Armor of faith and blessing didn't do too much, which was expected given the type of damages we got and how low level they were. Dire blessing was pretty useful as I was dps limited. Paladin's lay on hands was critical at times in saving a person tanking enemies, but which didn't have the healers near him. Consecrated and moon well were the primary heals, plus the healing boots that hold consecrated. Spike healing from the direct heals, weren't really effective because there's some enemy that'll paralyze the healer at that point. Coincidentally.

Edited September 2, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[KDubya]

I agree that Defender was OP before & understand why obsidian tweaked it, but a deflection penalty is going too far. Nerfing the deflection bonus makes sense, but replacing it a penalty leaves me scratching my head.

 

 

The old Defender and Wary Defender were good, perhaps even great but not OP. It took an ability and a talent, had a big malus of -20% attack speed, +2 engagements,+15 deflection and +10 reflex, will and fortitude. It also kept you from using Savage attack, and Cautious Attack modals.

 

Compare that to a Paladin's Faith and Conviction and Hold the Line. You get +8 deflection, +16 will, reflex and fortitude, and +1 engagements. There are no malus effects and you can also run any other modal that you want to. That gave you -7 deflection, +6 will, +6 reflex, +6 fortitude, +20% attack speed and -1 engagement.

 

The comparison between the two was pretty even with the Paladin probably being ahead due to being able to also run other modals.

 

Now Defender 2.0 and Wary defender gets you +2 engagement, -5 deflection, +5 reflex, +5 will and +5 fortitude. The Paladin still gets the same as before and in comparison gets +13 deflection, +11 reflex, +11 will, +11 fortitude and -1 engagement. Plus the paladin can run any other modal that he wants.

 

The Paladin is way ahead of the Defender 2.0

 

 

 

Yea, defender nerf was a bit too harsh, especially since they nerfed deflection overall. DR and buffs are much more powerful or at least, effective.

 

Since I had some time, I did a few fights in White March to test the new 2.0 AI with the new mob abilities. The paralysis blowgun is pretty effective, for the enemy that is. Their champions have paladin buffs or maybe it was priest buffs, and then they target whoever is casting spells from my party, and hits them with paralysis.

 

I fought the same group, the bridge and then west of the bridge, about 5-10 times total, using same composition more or less. Every time it was different, some due to positioning, other times due to how I pulled them. Party level was 9-11.

 

Closest result was 3 downed characters, leaving only my fighter, paladin, and cipher combat effective. Other times they focused in on the priest and he got hammered (cause of paralysis due to spells, and not having cast defense against paralysis yet). I was tanking on two fronts at least, even with using chokepoints on open field. On the bridge, it was a lot easier, I was able to ensure the blowgun users were either CCed or out of visual range of my casters. First time, I didn't even suffer below 80% endurance on most of my characters and health was still green (above 50%). Second time I tried the fight on the bridge, everyone went to 50% health or below.

 

Generally, if I can cast my long range ccs and mess up their accuracy or disable them, then they have little chance to get back into the fight once the priest casts rolling the buffs out. But, they tend to interrupt people with that paralysis attack, which must be an interesting script, although I don't think it ignores recovery.

 

So in this context, the fighter with his regen, allowed him to tank an entire battle line on his own without getting killed, and he was getting hit hard all the time. Only his high DR and deflection shields allowed him to regen it back in time. This ensured my priest didn't get in range of stuff that was bad, and I was able to keep the formation in the spot I wanted it. So tactically, the toughness of the fighter allows more random or unplanned for fight pulls against enemies with a lot of cc or dps.

 

There's also those ice spirits that do aoe and cone attacks. They should be intercepted before they get near your backline and then turned around so their cone hits empty space. You're going to need a good solid tank for that, that can heal on their own.

 

Of course paladin is more versatile and has group buffs, which makes it pretty powerful since it stacks with chanter and priest buffs. The fighter is easier to use, which was mentioned a lot early on when they developed it. In a fight where I was using cipher, priest, druid, wizard, I didn't have time to use paladin abilities much. So having a passive tank that you just click on to make him unkillable, is useful given certain compositions that don't use ranger or rogues.

 

Here's some of the highlights of the tactical test.

 

1. Main Tank Eder

2. Off tank dps Pallegina.

3. Debuffer wizard Aloth

4. Healer priest durance

5. Healer druid 

6. Main dps cipher PC

 

All mostly level 11, some tests were done using level 10. Got killed on level 9, but that was due to inexperience usually and trying to pull the entire enemy using one guy that got paralyzed and swarmed. Path of the Damned difficulty, with info turned on for accuracy and defenses. Chose "high level content" in White March.

 

Interesting MVP spells were citzal's spirit lance. Pretty OP, but it's a level 5 spell. Venom bloom, raw damage ate through the DR of enemies and also debuffed them. Great with roots and tangle from druid. Priest buff level 4, +20 accuracy, great stuff. Armor of faith and blessing didn't do too much, which was expected given the type of damages we got and how low level they were. Dire blessing was pretty useful as I was dps limited. Paladin's lay on hands was critical at times in saving a person tanking enemies, but which didn't have the healers near him. Consecrated and moon well were the primary heals, plus the healing boots that hold consecrated. Spike healing from the direct heals, weren't really effective because there's some enemy that'll paralyze the healer at that point. Coincidentally.

 

The Fighter regen is pretty minimal, at best it is less than half as strong as the Paladin's Lay on Hands (which scales with level) which also gets you the healing over 5 seconds instead of over 90. Let's see 3 endurance every 3 seconds for 90 seconds (90 endurance healed in total) or 100+ endurance over five seconds and you can do it twice and to anyone not just you. If you need healing it is better to get all your healing at once rather than spread out over 90 seconds, the fight might end sooner or you might get KO'd before you get all your regen.

 

With a two clicks of Lay on Hands a Paladin would have been able to regain more than twice as much endurance as the Fighter, all the while with better deflection and defenses from Faith and Conviction, plus all the other team friendly Paladin stuff.

 

In your example the Fighter's contribution to the team was that you did not need to heal him with someone else and that he survived so that the rest of the team could kill the enemy. A Paladin who only used Lay on Hands on himself would have done just as well or better and would have made the team stronger as well. A monk with some healing support would have been able to put down CC, AoE damage and general mayhem.

 

 

 

If a Fighter's ability to withstand damage is to be reduced to the current levels then he needs to get an offensive buff so that he has a purpose.

 

1.) Change weapon specialty from +15% damage to +5 Accuracy and +15% damage. Or make it +20% damage.

 

2.) Change weapon mastery from +10% damage to +5 accuracy and +15% damage. Or make it +20% damage.

 

3.) Change Clear Out to per encounter instead of per rest.

 

4.) Allow Defender modal to be active at the same time as Savage Attack and Cautious Attack.

 

5.) Have the passive regen scale with level.

[Njall]

Also, you have no control over when constant recovery starts, which means that the first ticks have a good chance of being wasted while you move into position and/or if the enemy misses you, and every time you sit at full health for 3+ seconds, constant recovery overheals you, so in practice, it's often less than 90 endurance. 

TBH, I'm not even sure that Constant Recovery now having a duration isn't a bug, considering that the lead dev mentioned that it was supposed to scale with level ( which it doesn't ) but, IIRC,  didn't talk about the fact that it only lasts 90 seconds now.

Edited September 3, 2015 by Njall

[Katarack21]

Just having the passive regen scale with level would make a big difference. It's near useless at max level.