Version 1.0.8's impact on Warriors

[Kyrottimus]

Having only played Archers and Warriors with this update, I can only lend opinion regarding their affected changes.

In this thread, I shall focus on both the positive aspects of the new combat system and those I see as negative.

Positive: Global Cooldown (GCD) revamp. It sort of levels the playing field for all classes at their foundations.

Negative: While I like GCD and the implemented concept, it does bring with it some negative results. First of which is that other spells, created and balanced before this revamped GCD system, have not been tuned to work in sync with the new system.

For instance: Ripost, Shield Bash, Howl, Roar, etc. all have a casting time of 0.5 seconds. With the new GCD system, even instant spells have a greater delay to cast than in 1.0.7. This compounds to make 0.5 second cast spells (both direct and area) much harder to pull off.

EXAMPLE: Get on a Knight character, and stand still in your arena had have a friend on a mage character run around in a circle around you. Try to get shield bash to trigger. It is very difficult to get this to work on a moving target, and I can't even get it to cast myself if I'm moving.

Same for Ripost, Howl, Roar, etc.


In 1.0.7, warriors did enjoy a good rhythm to combat. It was fairly fast, transitioned well between normals and spells/buffs, and was fluid and easy to learn.

Now, it's far more stop-go, herky jerky, awkward and cumbersome to buff and execute certain non-instant attack spells.


Granted, it is more of a fair matchup between warriors and archers/mages with this new system, but I still find it far more frustrating to enjoy the flow of combat as I did in 1.0.7. I used to grind my knight quite a bit vs. Aquantis Captains. Since they spam their crazy area-knock attack all the time (aquantis thrust), I would usually lead off with shield bash4.

It was easy, I'd select an Aquantis Captain, targeting it, and as I'm running up I'd click on my Shield Bash4 hotkey. As soon as I'd get in range, my knight would stop, cast timer begain immediately upon reaching range of target and stopping, and as long as the target stayed in range, my knight would execute his shield bash attack.

This was the same method by which I used it upon enemy players. Sometimes they were able to avoid it by getting out of range as it cast, but there was a margin of error and if you knew how to approach a moving target it wasn't hard at all to make it work.


Now, if you want to do a spell like shield bash, or ripost, or roar or howl or any non-instant as a warrior, you literally have to stop in place and wait 2 seconds (yes, spell says 0.5 seconds to cast but there is a 1-2 second delay between normals and spells now). Even if I approach a target with my character not in attack-mode, and click on shield bash, it takes a solid 1-2 seconds before it even begins cast-timer.


This results in a far slower, clunkier flow of combat and frankly if it is not changed, I will not skill shield bash anymore because it is hard enough to get work on mobs, let alone a moving player. And no, knocking down a player + shield bash wouldn't work, because dizzy does not affect knocked opponents.


I use shield bash mostly as an example because it used to be a staple skill for my knight. Now the go-stop-go-stop type of fighting is boring, uninspiring and cumbersome.

I realize that there will still be tweaking on 1.0.8, I just hope that the "flow" of warrior combat is brought back to the same "feel" (or close to it) as 1.0.7 with how spells trigger while I or my opponent move.



I'd really hate to see 2 players just standing still, spamming spells. I'd miss the circling, strafing, running around while fighting excitement of 1.0.7 with warriors.

On my archer I can maintain a good rhythm of fighting, even while standing still. Let's give that to warriors again. Fix the cast-times and triggering of warriors spells. Make it so they can all be cast while moving (both auto-run and movement keys), instead of getting canceled by movement. Same with archers, make it so that when one is running, and they click a buff or spell, they will stop, cast/buff/attack, and continue movement after completed.

The movement of your char, pretty much canceling everything, destroys the flow of combat with all classes.






It would be nice for other warriors to opine about this. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have noticed my fluidity of warrior combat to have been hamstrung.

--Kyro