Return of Reckoning

I don't have much experience with BG, but I'll do my best.

Two-handed Blackguards, and the inferiority of the playstyle compared to that of S&B, have been a topic on multiple occasions in the wider forum. The essence of it is that while using a shield grants access to the class-defining 5 second knockdown, forgoing that shield only grants Crimson Death, which has a short duration considering its place within the mastery trees, its requirement of a Great Weapon and easy Order access to crit in the form of Dirty Tricks and Encouraged Aim.

The question posed in this thread is: should Crimson Death's duration be increased to 10 seconds?

Thread made after seeing Kazekiri's topic.

This has been implemented with a 10s duration

Oh how I have waited for this thread! The first step to fixing 2h Bg

Before any complaints Or disguntlement I want to first point out that when the crimson death was bugged earlier with 10s duration, not a single complaint was heard

Next I want to point to this:

The average spec for SnB dps BG:
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=bg; ... 3:;0:0:0:0:

The remaining 3 points can be used to grab enraged beating or shielding anger

Vs the standard build for 2H spec Bg

http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=bg; ... 3:;0:0:0:0:
Then only reason ever to go 2h Bg is crimson death but it's duration is so short that your team cannot capatalize upon the short 5s duration

In exchange for CD you give up acess to the longest duration KD in the game, the surviveabilty that come with a shield and the ability to be a better guard tank, the utility of HTL! which by the way when combined with bgs others tools like shielding anger let them be near. 100% magic immune

Giving up the 5s kd alone is huge, that's a major CC tool on a class that has less cc tools than both. BO and chosen, and is also very selfish in nature and thus provide less buffs/buff potential than other tanks

A noticiable majority of the things that Bg brings such as it's strong debuffs:wounds, armor, toughness can all be brough on other classes that provide stronger versions of them, and Wave of Scorn is overshadowed by big brawlin

So there are very few unique things that Bg can bring, CD is one of them and it's purpose is not applying it's tool tip damage in an AoE becuase the dmg is irrelevant; you will never apply as much pressure as a real. DD, rather it's purpose is to apply the 10% crit debuff allowing you to become a melee train assist tank

Therefore I say that the ability should have 100% uptime of 10s duration with 10s. CD
furthermore I say that the ability should be made undefendable so that you can consistently apply the debuff


If you feel that crimson death would be too strong as an undefenadable attack with big tool tip dmg then I'm ok with reducing tool tip dmg and if anyone complains about potential 100% uptime crit debuff I'd like to point out that iniative stat steal increases chance to be crit by a much larger amount


As it stand right now their is no reason to play 2H BG over DPS spec SnB BG, you give up soo much and gain so little

Sorry if I broke any rules of the balance subs in my excitement to post

All for it, but only if the CD of it gets at least up to 15 seconds minimum. One should not forget that this spell is the hardest hitting tool of a BG as well and a buff to its utility definitely deserves a small nerf on the overall dmg output imo.

A just straight up buff to 10 seconds without any concessions would be fine. For a while on this server it was 10 seconds and I don't think anymore than a handful of people even noticed.

The knight has two mechanics which have virtually 100% uptime on the same amount of crit (10%). And neither of those mechanics are defendable or have any kind of real counterplay. I'm only stating this as a precedent that similar values are in the game (100% uptime on 10% increased crit chance).

Even with this change it will still be a hard sell to go 2H on BG. And with BO being much better than most would of thought pre-t4 on this server the BG can really use any help it can get to compete with BO/Chosen for a spot in meta groups. Having a completely unique mechanic to destro tanks (increased flat crit chance) could only be a good thing imo, but if it's implemented without 100% uptime or really any nerfs I think it's potential usefulness would be lost.

TL;DR

10s duration 10s CD and undefendable for DMG nerf I guess

CD should be a tool to apply the debuff much like rending blade is a tool to apply CS

I would vote against the change for now at least. BG is currently the weakest of the 3 destro tanks with no clear upside to BO/Chosen other than the often promoted but totally lacking "healer killer".

People often say that the class has "the longest KD in the game" and the superpunt. Truth is that the cooldown hurts the BG so much that these abilities seem worse to regular KDs and punts in the game.
Debuffs of the BG are 90% covered by the Destro mainstay Marauder.

So here is the catch: I agree that BG needs a buff but I think it needs to affect the whole class and not just the 2H tree. SnB would be superior to 2H even if CD gets buffed. Hence I believe the first course of action should be a buff to the BGs strongest aspect to bring it in line with other destro tanks, rather than buffing a niche tree of a niche class.

A 5 second increase for an ability that take 14 points to get in a tree that is trickly a 2h tree that also requires a great weapon to use? Seems fine to me...

In a 6v6, you would miss out on the extra mitigation a shield would give you as well as the 5s knockdown for extra dps. It will help destro mdps a good amount since they have crit multipliers but would people reasons to maybe choose BG over BO.

BO still provide great dps even in snb as well as fast morale regen so I don't think BO would suffer much from this change either.

I hope I followed the rules correctly since it's been a while since I read the guidelines for this forum

As was mentioned there are already 100% uptime 10% crit increase in the game that doesn't get that much attention.

I would say that bringing CD to 10s duration with 10s cooldown would be perfectly fine as a first step in making 2h BGs more attractive (ideally I'd want BGs and SM to be reworked to only use 2h but that's a topic for another thread). If you wanted you could even lower the CD to 5s with a 10s duration to make it easier to maintain uptime without having to use it on cooldown every time.

Duration increased to 10 sec would fit with "mirror" Encouraged Aim from kotbs, i think it could be just what the 2h black guard need to be more viable.

noisestorm wrote:All for it, but only if the CD of it gets at least up to 15 seconds minimum. One should not forget that this spell is the hardest hitting tool of a BG as well and a buff to its utility definitely deserves a small nerf on the overall dmg output imo.

If I may postulate: any BG that specs for this ability is missing out on a lot of other goodies/utility, and there is a prerequisite of using a 2H - BGs with a 2H lose their 5 second KD, and don't really offer anything to the group other than crimson death

I think the duration should be extended, and the damage/CD left untouched. I feel the best way to balance the BG is to balance certain aspects of it step by step, and this would be a welcomed buff.