JohnnyWayne wrote: Mon Sep 15, 2025 10:34 pm
I have to disagree with the sentiment of "the devs lack the competence so they'll **** it up". How about, you know, do it well instead of badly? BG focuses on debuffs, aoe damage and aoe debuffs. IB does focus on ST buffs and ST damage (which is neglectable on snb, so this mostly affects 2h). So it has less range and hits less targets. The IB with a on hit generation of grudge is STILL weaker than a BG (generation is limited by a internal cooldown iirc, so range matters here). This also does not explain why the absorb bubble on the IB is only absorbing non physical damage while having to spend attribute points to get it. I'll even go ahead and say 2h BG is way more defensive and tanky than 2h IB, due to parry tactic (which in turn needs high hatred and is the single reason 2h BG is surviving in WBs while the aoe debuffs make it viable). I'd say, fix the absorb and the class resource generation and then the classes are still sufficiently different from each other while not being out matched so blatantly.
You miss understood me with "devs lack the competence", its about they do have their own perspectives and what you/me/others say is irrelevant, they do move on with their own none public goals and vision. You/me/others may not like what they have planned. And im fine with how it is now, assuming all pros&cons im convinced IB could use only minor tweaks, and for any major change like grudges we will have to pay with something, be it dmg or surviveability or whatever and me personally not ready for that.
Good example is heavy blow, it used to have main stat scaler of 240 at 800 str, just like murderous wrath atm but was for no real reason butchered and now heavy blow main stat scaler is 160 at 800 str, balance team reasoning is clear - too much burst 2h IB brings in competetive organised environment (and this leads to my points about that it wont come without a cost so im against lobbing it). Was it a problem? No, never. But change is done. Hence im saying (ill rephrase a bit) - no straight up buff for IB is to be expected without a big cost of losing something else.
Grudge/hate generation is very tricky and deep question, its gonna be totally out of control dmgwise for competetive organised environment if 2h IB will just get grudges on hit for free. It wont affect oRvR so much of course, cause dmg is irrelevant there, but mark my word - if IB gets grudge on hit as basic its damage will be lowered.
In regards to other points:
a) defensive. first, there is no reason to run 2h IB in warband to begin with but if there would be any then IB could be built to survive just fine or even way better then BG in theory. no, 2h BG is not "way more defensive", its all about gearing afterall, for wb both can go either 7+ warlord and get that butchered (it now also decrease your own dmg) detaunt proc cause their dmg is irrelevant for orvr or uses various gear mixes for stats, BG is there for crimson+additional wounds debuff and thats it, on order kotbs does the same job and only one aoe wounds debuff to sort of balance to partywide wounds buff from WP. if say we talk about sc then IB is usually geared offensively to capitalize on its ability to do heavy bursts while BG still play a role to debuff stuff, both can be equally tanky or offensive its down to gearing. for meta wb play as BG you spend hate applying debuffs, so you cant stay at 100 with 100% uptime, thus 20% oathbound is more reliable then potentially 25% from anger drives me (i cba to do proper calculations but you usually stuck around ~70 from my experience so its 19% parry vs none conditional 20% from IB to 2 people at best). Plus BG has to use crit tactic and wounds debuff tactic thus leaving it with only 1 tactic slot which will go for toughness.
doubt you can reason your claim anyhow on that point.
b) runic shield vs shield of rage. i'd pick runic shield over shield of rage any day. value is not that high on both of them so runic at least serves a purpose to e.g. disrupt sorc rotation or you can use it for grudge gains, it nets you 30-45+ grudges easily within 2 seconds (what it means is that runic shield is
resource free in reality), its none physical nature is actually a feature not cons. problem with shield of rage it gets "eaten" way too easily with a stuff flying around, dots, procs, melee aoe etc. it all adds up of course, there are never enough of absorbs, but targeted usage of runic shield with additional component of grudge gains is imo >>> shield of rage.
runic shield absorb value could use a buff tho, cause as you mention its not core and specable, +30-40% would be nice.
Overall, i would love to see a plain buff without downsides for grudge generation (but i doubt its gonna be happening), runic shield absorb values increased by ~30-40%, AP battery spec revamp to be less dull. However what role for IB and vision balance team has is unknown thus im happy with how it is tbf.
Even with this patch IB is a pick for all content and has places. WL orvr meta is better to be changed instead of IB.