White Lion Changes (8/25/2018)

[live4treasure]

I can clearly see a stylistic parody here and I have to say that this is more of a whine thread masquerading as an analysis of the class. I really think that before whining you should really give this class a good one week run. Analysing a few small changes is one thing, doing so for a class that was rebuilt from the ground up on the very day the change happened is another. Not to say it's completely disingenuous, but it's difficult to trust you at your word when what you are doing is essentially looking at the changes on paper, rather than in practice.

[Throlla]

.

[catholicism198]

Spoiler:

Hi guys, I just logged in and studied the White Lion changes a bit. This will not be a number crunch. It will be a few days before we can figure out how much damage all these changes equate to. But let's get the sad news out of the way: Guardian spec is gone.

Although Guardian wasn't viable for either 6v6 or warband play, it was undoubtedly one of the most powerful duel specs in the entire game. With that being said, try not to get too angry for the game being balanced around 1 v 1. At the end of the day, people are still people. Nobody likes being killed in a duel so completely. You'll notice that classes that excel in group play, such as the Slayer, Choppa, and Marauder are rarely called OP (at least proportionately to the Guardian White Lion). The reason? They don't necessarily kill people 1 v 1. It's time to accept that in their hearts of hearts, that's what people care about (despite the insincere blabber they regurgitate daily about "team-based play").

Now with that being said, let's take a look at what the White Lion has become as of today. I think a good place to start would be our three new stances. They are now called Hunter's Craft, Axeman's Craft, and Woodsman's Craft. The bonuses to them are similar to what you have become accustomed to. Hunter's Craft will give your lion the ability to debuff armor. Axeman's Craft will give you the familiar 5% crit chance bonus, and your lion gains the ability to "distract your enemies with its roar". I believe this means an interrupt on a 10 second cooldown (lot of potential here if timed correctly). Since it's basically a taunt, your pet gets a 30% damage boost, and even Sundering Axe is "improved" by it. Finally, we have Woodsman's Craft. For all intents and purposes, Woodsman is now our Guardian tree. This "stance" increases your toughness and grants your lion the ability to basically aoe and debuff enemy autoattack speeds. It's also worth noting that individual pet attacks (that are not the special attacks of the three stances) only exists in the Woodsman's stance (i.e. bite). I call these three "stances" because there are now certain abilities "tied" to these three buffs. This is partially what they mean by becoming "analogous" to Marauders.

Now to put it simply, the Woodsman (Guardian) tree reflects the Marauder's Monstrosity tree pretty closely. It is now our aoe tree for warband play. There are a few key differences though. For starters, it doesn't have the survivability that the Marauders have. When Marauders switch into their Monstrosity stance, they are basically immune to ALL armor penetration. This basically means that weaponskill means nothing to them. On top of that, their abilities used in this tree heals them. This is what makes Monstrosity Marauders so unbelievably tanky. White Lions do not get either of these. Instead, we get a tree that can "maybe" do more aoe damage. For starters, a tactic named Spirit Strike empowers ALL of our Woodsman abilities with spirit damage. Now whether this beats out the Marauder's passive 50% armor ignore tactic remains to be seen. In any case, the rest is pretty similar to Monstrosity: aoe damage, morale drain, interrupt, a cone knockdown...you get the idea. Basically think of it this way: Bouncin Squig Herders retain their roaming capabilities, Monstrosity Marauders retain their roaming capabilities, White Lions do not. You get the idea. That's called balance.

Now let's get into the really interesting stuff. I'm thinking you guys didn't roll, and continue to play, a White Lion because you wanted to join the zerg and do aoe dmg. So let's take a look at our traditional Hunter/Axeman build. To their credit, not much has been taken away. We did lose Primal Fury though. It is now core, but it no longer gives a flat 25% damage increase. Instead, you get 200 strength and toughness for 10 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown. Now let's look at what we did get. We now have the option of grabbing Thin the Herd as a viable choice. It is no longer an outgoing, but an incoming 50% heal debuff. BUT, both Thin the Herd and Pounce are respectively 13 point abilities in the Hunter and Axeman trees. So it is now basically a choice between the two. It can possibly be included in a 6v6 build though (where pounce isn't AS abused). The other two big things that Hunter/Axeman did receive was Brutal Pounce (knockdown) AND Leonine Frenzy. It is worth noting that we can't do much during the knockdown. Since our main burst abilities (Coordinated Strike and Cull the Weak) are locked into the Axeman stance dance, we have a 5 second lockout from switching to Hunter to use Brutal Pounce. 3 second knockdown vs 5 second stance lock. Sundering Chop spam is about it.

Here's the kicker: there has been no changes to our pet liability. They will still be targeted and killed (now in 1 second instead of 2 without Guardian toughness). So Brutal Pounce and Leonine Frenzy, the only two things that we got out of this, will be difficult to use against any group that knows what they're doing (or even just random aoe from a disrupt free magus and w/e else). Remember that pet guard that we didn't have enough points to spec into as Guardian? Protector of the Pack is now core. We now have the option of making our pet last 2 seconds longer, and half dying in the process (but this time, in full dps gear).

Conclusion: The changes are an overall disgrace to balance. While Savagery/Brutality Marauders still have the option of going defensive with Monstrosity stance to survive focus fire, Hunter/Axeman White Lions cannot. While Savagery/Brutality Marauders can run in a traditional melee train with a Guard and be at 100% effectiveness, White Lions still lose all their damage with the pet death that happens in the first two seconds of the confrontation. While Monstrosity Marauders still get to roam in their warband specs as unkillable, armor-penetration ignoring, self-healing machines, Woodsman White Lions are just as squishy as their Hunter/Axeman counterparts. While Savagery/Brutality Marauders have the option of stacking only strength due to their 50% armor ignore tactic, and having the option to stack their secondary stat defensively (initiative/toughness/armor), White Lions are still forced to stack Weaponskill as their secondary stat and becoming glass cannons. "Analogous" indeed.

Oh come on! You should know better than anyone how OPed Guardian was. Guardian White Lions were basically tanks with insane burst. It was a fun little experiment, but it had to go.

These new changes will take some time to get used to, but they're mostly understandable. They mostly just give White Lions a WB slot.

Since they're trying to mirror the Marauder, Pack Synergy should be a 7 point tactic like Growing Instability, and Threatening Distraction needs to be moved to core and replaced with something useful...

...and you do know that Monstrosity Marauders/Melee Squigs do very little damage right? Neither one can burst a target in 3 seconds.

[Lileldys]

Not a WL expert!

Whats the reason for the change from outgoing to incoming healdebuff?
While incoming healdebuff is usually better, outgoing has it uses.
For BW+WL team incoming healdebuff is great, but so is pounce. now you won´t getting both?
For SW+WL second one don´t need healdebuff (SW healdebuff is so strong, everyone should spec it)
For SL+WL I don´t know. Has the Slayer some viable options, if he is not forced to spec the healdebuff?
For WH+WL I think the left tree of WH (Confession) is usually not worth in group play, so WL don´t need to spec healdebuff.

The big difference here is you can't really take pounce along with it. You give up mobility for an inc heal debuff, a fine trade IMO.
BW+WL really don't need a heal debuff, the burst is strong enough.
ASW+WL is buffed because of this(cause ASW couldn't use HD iirc), Skirm/Scout SW+WL wasn't that good. With changes to Scout might be decent
SL+WL still the best combo due to the tanky nature of both classes.
WH+WL, recent changes to WH makes it's pressure stronger, and throw some WL burst on top its good.

You gotta remember also, WH/SL/SW HD is ailment, while WL is a curse. Means can't easily be grp-cleanse by DoK.

[dansari]

cause ASW couldn't use HD iirc

ASW can use HD

[ashton007]

"We dont balance around 6v6 or 1v1 we balance for WB" literally removes guardian because it was good 1v1. What about melee DoK? The 1v1 god class that cant do **** in WB... If you were gonna butcher guardian should have atleast put it in line with monstro mara survival wise.. i mean it IS the WB spec now which requires being face to face with zergs and order already lacks melee so.

[Foomy44]

I dont play wl and these changes doesnt concern me much but wl become the only class having 2 mechanics aka pet mechanic and stance mechanics and that looks abit wierd inst it

melee SH says hi

"We dont balance around 6v6 or 1v1 we balance for WB" literally removes guardian because it was good 1v1. What about melee DoK?

What about melee WP? Not a huge difference between the 2 in 1v1 far as I know so why are you comparing WL to a totally different class/spec as if that's it's mirror somehow? There are plenty of classes that destroy at 1v1, IMO the main problem with guardian WL was the combination of killing squishies faster than they can get up from the knockdown (something DoK's don't do), being impossible to run away from or catch (another thing DoK's don't do) and getting to do amazing dps while building for tank stats (again something DoK's can't do, and this combo of qualities is something no spec on destro has ever had access to)

I have a geared guardian WL and am very happy to see the spec gone, it was fun experiment but a complete joke balance-wise. There was over a month where my pet was winning 1v1s with me just standing there laughing 150 ft away, I'm sure plenty of people were arguing then it was perfectly balanced too.

[Fallenkezef]

"We dont balance around 6v6 or 1v1 we balance for WB" literally removes guardian because it was good 1v1. What about melee DoK? The 1v1 god class that cant do **** in WB... If you were gonna butcher guardian should have atleast put it in line with monstro mara survival wise.. i mean it IS the WB spec now which requires being face to face with zergs and order already lacks melee so.

Devs have said that DoK/WP are being looked at so I won't be surprised if they get a similar treatment.

[catholicism198]

"We dont balance around 6v6 or 1v1 we balance for WB" literally removes guardian because it was good 1v1. What about melee DoK? The 1v1 god class that cant do **** in WB... If you were gonna butcher guardian should have atleast put it in line with monstro mara survival wise.. i mean it IS the WB spec now which requires being face to face with zergs and order already lacks melee so.

Devs have said that DoK/WP are being looked at so I won't be surprised if they get a similar treatment.

WP/DoKs are getting 3 new Covenants in addition to their current ones that will alter their playstyle. So they aren't changing the way they currently behave, just adding 3 new options.

[soliticks]

Tested Hunter/Axeman. Slightly less burst than Guardian, less sustained than Guardian, has about enough leftover ap for maybe one sundering chop, roughly 1/2 the survivability, pet is definitely a little tankier, but still dies in seconds, and 5 second cooldown on stances leaves you stuck in Hunter for about 3 seconds more than necessary. Heck you're lucky if you can even stay alive long enough to switch. Draining Swipe, Thundering Blow, Rend, Touch of Rot, Touch of Instability...none of those, just Force Opportunity and Brutal pounce. Marauder's Savagery tree is its own independent spec. There's not even a need to go into Brutality until your Guillotine, and even that's not necessary. And without Stalker, the pet runs too slowly to fetch anyone on the run even with Speed Training.

Proposal: Since everybody's issue with Guardian was that it performed so well in duels, why not simply bring the spec back into the Hunter tree and make the lion scale off of strength? This way, White Lions can no longer stack toughness and wounds as a gearing method. Pet strength and weaponskill can be derived from the White Lion's strength from gear. Then White Lions can still enjoy the playstyle they love without keeping their tankiness that made them shine so much in 1 v 1 situations. And allowing us to focus on one stat (like the Marauder) will give us some freedom to toss in some initiative talismans and be a little more survivable (albeit nothing like before). To reiterate, Hunter could be the new Guardian tree, Axeman can be the traditional tree, and Woodsman can be our wb spec. I personally loved supporting my pet. It's a unique and fun playstyle that is original to my class.

Roaming is completely dead in all three specs. My small-scale class is gone. Thanks for all the effort you guys have been putting into the game though. Enjoy the warband stuff everyone. WE's...you win. Stomp those pugs uncontested once more. Take care.