[WL]- several proposals following recent patch

[Sundowner]

Hello,

I would like to present few proposal for WL mastery trees distribution after recent patch. This will be a bit long post, since I will break-down all viable builds for WL, new patch's effect on them, and my proposals. I am 85+ rr WL, play with orginized guild in cities and small-scale, play solo ranked and solo-roam, hence I think I have pretty good understanding of this class.

First, lets talk about how mastery trees are classified nowadays. WL's mastery trees are not divided by ST/AOE, but rather by interaction between elf and pet. Hunter- elf and pet both deal damage, axeman- pet tanks/distracts and elfs deals damage, guardian- elf is tanky while chad jacked pet deals damage. The problem with this distribution is that attributing skills to mastery trees is very tricky, because you either could create overtuned build (discussed below) or make some builds obsolete.

White Lion builds for different parts of the game

City/largescale- for wb play WL has 2 viable builds. 13/5/5 if you have 3 or more WLs, with aoe armorpen, armor debuff, dmg increase and interrupt, this build was not affected by recent patch. 13/9/0 if you have 2 or less WLs, because 15ft interrupt is sub-optimal and finisher is better in this case. I think if WL is overtuned in something, it was in this build, because you could have good aoe dmg, finisher and pounce to execute fast skills with great mobility. recent patch took away this ability, which is fair in my opinion. AOE should be AOE and ST should be ST. One thing that should be always taken into considerations is that in largescale you DO NOT run pet, because pet only gives ST utility+50% crit. bonus, but it dies way too quickly to capitalize on it's advantages, even with revenge tactic slotted you lose 5 secs of damage and 1 gcd. Since echoing roar is 15ft around elf and pet and you take this ability only when running aoe, it's effective range is 15ft around the elf.

Small-scale/Solo-roam- you go either 9/0/13 or 9/9/9 (with 6pc sov), neither of this specs have been affected by recent patch.

Solo ranked- if you are vanq or below you should run with pet to deal at least some dmg, but this build is very ineffective, because pet dies easily and you are left without crit. dmg bonus and cc. The most viable for ranked solo is loner+AA speed tactic, or AA speed tactic and ravange tactic, because pet dies very fast (and thus u cannot slot pet speed tactic hindering utility) Patch has affected given build the most. before patch you could run 9/13 build with armor+healdebuff and pounce, after patch you could either run pounce or healdebuff, which greatly affects class, because with pounce you are mSH but without kd and cd increaser and without HD you are mara, which can run armor debuff, better HD, wounds debuff and finisher. Before that, WLs only upper hand in solo ranked was to HD healer and quickly pounce to dps.

My main suggestion is to reshuffle mastery trees. Create one AOE tree to be dedicated to AOE skills and 2 trees for WL+pet. This would not require much changes to class, just moving abilities between trees.
Path of the Kingsguard- dedicated AOE tree. In lore white lions are not only hunters/woodsmen (lul), but guardians of the kings and generals in high elf army. (current hunter tree)
Path of the Axeman- focused on offensive abilities from elf and defensive from the lion. (same as current axeman tree)
Path of the Hunter- focused on defensive elf and offensive lion, more or less, because even in guardian tree you are mainly both offensive (current guardian tree)

Change in abilities (I will use current names of mastery trees to avoid confusion)
1. coordinated strike moved to guardian tree.
2. Lion's fury moved to axeman tree.
3. tactics lionheart and blindsided! (hunter and axeman 3pt tactics) are swapped, blindised! renamed into "terrifying roar"- effect is to increase echoing roar's radius around elf to 30ft and increase build-ups by 50% (mimic's mara's tactic for interrupt to increase build-up time)
4. tactics Pack hunting and threatening distraction are swapped. Pack hunting (50% AA speed increase) better suits axeman tree, since buffs only elf, and threatening distraction will be useful for PVE mob farming (since aoe+agro reduction will synergize very good).
5. force opportunity moved to axeman tree 5pt ability.
6. Primal fury moved to 9pt hunter ability.
7. Cull the weak and thin the herd are swapped to avoid stacking cull the weak and leonine frenzy together for crazy dmg.

So, mastery trees would look like this:

Path of the hunter (new path of the kingsguard)- Terrifying roar (ref: 3rd point), echoing roar, threatening distraction, primal fury, hack and slash, whirling axe.
Path of the axeman (the same)- Lionheart, force opportunity, pack hunting, Thin the herd, full-grown, Cull the weak
path of the guardian (new path of the hunter)- stalker, pounce, furious mending, brutal pounce, baited trap, leonine frenzy.

I do not think that these proposals are perfect, but what they achieve mitigate WLs double spec (good aoe, st and mobility at the same time) and make builds overall more balanced, this build brings some buffs to the ST specs, but I think it is justified since WL's got nerfed pounce and now are more frontline dps, than gap closers. Given changes would make solo ranked build viable again. this is mere outline how the class could develop in the future, hope you find even some suggestions appealing.

Best regards,

Edit: Upon further reflection, given changes could make ST spec a bit too strong in possible dmg. dealt, possibly nerf of dmg. abilities/rework should be needed if you decide to change WL mastery trees like this