[IB/BG] single target buffs

[GodlessCrom]

What is the issue?


Ironbreaker and Black Guard are well-designed classes overall, in my opinion. I have experience playing an r40/5X Ironbreaker both as solo and in an organized group, and I am currently leveling up a Black Guard, and they are by far my favorite classes to play in the game. Even the career mechanic, which receives some hate, as it were (badum tish!), is a positive in my opinion.

However, there is one fairly major issue with the classes I feel that impacts them at all levels above solo/duo PUG play: some of their single target stat buffs are lackluster compared to the AoE stat buffs provided by Chosen/Knight auras, and/or the stat steal procs from Black Orc/Swordmaster. The buffs do not stack with their AoE counterparts, and they generally require the IB/BG to be in melee range, landing melee attacks (which means you are using GCDs for things besides CC, interrupts, and dps assist), and so it becomes a major hassle to maintain these buffs for little perceivable gain.

Why is this an issue?

The Ironbreaker and Black Guard are single-target buffer/debuffer tanks: they rely on buffing an ally (which they can change at whim, granted, but that still requires in-game foresight and time spent slapping hotkeys) and debuffing a single enemy in front of them. Some of these buffs/debuffs are fairly strong, and need no alteration: Kneecapper/Crush the Weak, for example, is the strongest crit chance debuff in the game, and they're fairly spammable. Similarly, Guarded Attack and Force of Fury are two of the best armor buffs in the game (due to it stacking, Force of Fury is THE best armor buff in the game, not to mention its crit reduction attribute).

However, both IB and BG have several mirrored stat buff abilities which are utterly inferior to the AoE, GCDless stat buffs granted by Knight/Chosen, and rather inferior to the (admittedly RNG) AoE GCDless stat buffs granted by the stat steal proc from Black Orc/Swordmaster.

These abilities are:

Brutal Smash/Inspiring Attack - A strength buff combined with a Hate/Grudge scaling willpower buff
Feeding on Weakness/Vengeful Strike - A toughness buff (also an incredibly tiny self-heal for BG)

Black Guard also has Pitiless Strike, a single target toughness debuff, but it possesses no mirror amongst the Ironbreaker abilities and so I won't discuss it in this proposal.

The issue with these abilities, as stated above, is that they require a GCD to use (meaning you do not use that GCD for the application of CC, interrupts, or DPS assist), they are melee attacks (not in melee=no buff), and because they are melee attacks, they can be defended (poor positioning, poor RNG, or NA latency, means no buff). And yet, for all those disadvantages, they yield only a single-target buff of similar (if not the same, or worse, depending on mastery point allotment) value to the GCDless, AoE stat buffs of the other tanks.

Proposal

1) Make them stack

Similar to the recent buff to Force of Fury's armor buff component: make Brutal Smash/Inspiring Attack and Vengeful Strike/Feeding on Weakness stack with other stat buffs. This may necessitate reducing the amount by which these skills buff their respective stats, however.

2) Increase the amount by which these skills buff their respective stats.

Rather than having them stack, simply increase the amount by which they buff. So, for example, instead of a base Strength buff of 75 from Inspiring Attack/Brutal Smash, the base buff amount would be (total ballpark, finer minds than I can decide the final numebrs) 140 Strength. As it is a single-target buff, reliant on being within melee and getting off the attack on either a squishy target with low hard mitigation (a healer, f'rex) or achieving dominant position and getting the attack off on a harder target (requires good positioning, promoting skilled play), you would trade-off the convenience and AoE nature of other career's buffs for a stronger, more work-intensive single-target buff.

3) Tie the amount by which these skills buff their respective stats to their career mechanic

Inspiring Attack/Brutal Smash already do this with their Willpower buff component, which is I believe the single highest stat buff in the game (300 base at 100 Hate/Grudge), and while 300 strength/toughness would probably be overkill, a similar system of increasing buff strength as Hate/Grudge increases would play to the careers' shared mechanic (get stronger as fight goes longer). Again, I do not feel comfortable providing hard numbers (though 300+ to either strength or toughness sounds like a lot, though then again, we can provide to it to willpower so who knows), but perhaps something like this:

0-25 mechanic: 1/2 of current base buff
25-50 mechanic: current base buff
50-75: base buff x X amount
75-99: base buff x Y amount
100: base buff x Z amount

I am not necessarily in favor of any of the 3 proposed solutions over any of the others. I firmly feel that the single-target buffer/debuffer nature of IB/BG should not change, but its single-target buffs/debuffs should have an advantage over the AoE buffs/debuffs of other tank classes with less demanding mechanics.

[Penril]

Declining. These buffs are not exactly bad; problem is Auras/Stat steal are much easier to apply AND affect the whole group. They will be looked at in the future (Chosen/KotBS rework).