Orion
Lead Designer
Hot off the heels of yesterday, let's take a look at how we are planning on changing the Guardians secondary spec, The Keen Blade
The ultimate goal with altering The Keen Blade is to give the guardian the ability to occupy a true DPS role at end game. The inherent survivability of the class means that there needs to be a little bit of a trade off when coming into The Keen Blade and that is why their self heals will be considerably lower. In fact, they will be cut in half. This follows the trend that we have for the damage aspect of other classes, so we don't believe that this is too much of a departure.
We are also leaning, more heavily, into bleeds and putting a new premium on critical chance with The Keen Blade. Rather than describing the changes in prose, let us move to the breakdown.
Role: Focuses on dealing damage. Skills have a high base damage, bleeds and powerful finishing skills.
Innate Bonus: Guardian self-healing is reduced by 50%, Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Breach and Whirling Breach; these skill allow the use of Parry and Block response chains. Parry and Block response skills deal 15% more damage.
Earns the skill Overwhlem
There are some truly transformative changes here to make the Guardian into a true damage dealer. Let us take a look at some of these.
First, Force Opening is no longer here, we will discuss that more when we get to The Fighter of Shadow tree, but for now we should be looking at the first major change: Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation. These two skills are replaced with Breach and Whirling Breach when specializing in The Keen Blade. The skills immediately open parry and block responses. This serves as a new opener for the Guardian and helps with their consistent damage output offered by the Parry and Block response damage bonus conferred by the baseline trait boost. You also earn the skill Overwhelm.
Thrill of Battle loses the heal aspect and becomes a critical chance bonus at 1% bonus per rank in the trait that stacks up to 5 times. This means that at rank 5 your critical chance on melee skills increases up to 25% from this trait alone. To balance that out, when you score a critical hit, the bonus is removed and reset so that you need to build back up. Taking this trait to its max should provide a level of clear consistency when executing guardian melee skills. And, to answer the question - no this does not apply to the critical on bleeds.
Skilled Deflection is removed from The Keen Blade and put back in through The Fighter of Shadow, all things in good time.
Heavy Weapons Training maintains the bonus to melee skills and adds a per rank bonus to using two-handed weapons. Yes, we are leaning into the desire to have two-handed weapons be the preferred style for the Guardian. But, if there are some changes to be made, it is possible that there could be an additional trait added to help Shield-bearing Keen Bladers to get a similar boost.
Bleed Them Dry moves up closer to the top of the Trait Set bonus, as we want more emphasis on the bleeds it just made sense and the fact that Reactive Parry was underwhelming.
Invigourating Response replaces Invigourating Parry and opens up Block response skills to the regeneration of power. Again, when taken in conjunction with Thrill of Battle the consistency to restore power should make a couple trait points in this trait yield the proverbial fruit.
Protection by the Sword like its The Defender of the Free counterpart is an aura conferred to fellowship and raid members near the guardian. This toggle cannot be interrupted and adds a damage boost to melee and ranged damage at a base 3%, currently. In addition, if a player affected by Protection by the sword scores a parry or a block, the Guardian opens the use of the response chain skills.
Battle-fury the new trait set bonus is an activated skill with a long cooldown that boosts the Guardian's damage and critical magnitude by a whopping 20% for 20s currently. We do expect that we might need to rein this in a little.
Into the Fray gets a minor nerf at the capstone rank with the trait only affecting the next melee attack.
Warrior's Advantage no longer modifies the skill Warrior's Heart. Instead, the trait becomes a passive boon present on the Guardian at all times.
Rupture replaces Honourable Combat and now modifies Hammer Down. Rupture alters the effect of Hammer Down to a) strip all current bleeds from the target dealing bonus damage for each bleed removed; b) each bleed removed increases damage dealt to the target by 2.5% for 5 seconds - this means that a target with four active bleeds removed has their incoming damage increased by 10% for 20s and lastly; c) applies a new bleed "Ruptured Artery" to the target that bleeds every 2 seconds for six seconds.
Those are all the changes currently implemented and soon to go under review. Numbers will need to be reviewed to ensure that The Keen Blade does not tip the scales too much, but all of that should work itself out as we march toward the first viewing on Bullroarer.
I hope to have the last portion of the tree detailed by the end of the day today. Keep your eyes open for the change to The Fighter of Shadow.
The ultimate goal with altering The Keen Blade is to give the guardian the ability to occupy a true DPS role at end game. The inherent survivability of the class means that there needs to be a little bit of a trade off when coming into The Keen Blade and that is why their self heals will be considerably lower. In fact, they will be cut in half. This follows the trend that we have for the damage aspect of other classes, so we don't believe that this is too much of a departure.
We are also leaning, more heavily, into bleeds and putting a new premium on critical chance with The Keen Blade. Rather than describing the changes in prose, let us move to the breakdown.
The Keen Blade
Descriptor: Uses bleeds and High-damage attacks to defeat foesRole: Focuses on dealing damage. Skills have a high base damage, bleeds and powerful finishing skills.
Innate Bonus: Guardian self-healing is reduced by 50%, Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Breach and Whirling Breach; these skill allow the use of Parry and Block response chains. Parry and Block response skills deal 15% more damage.
Earns the skill Overwhlem
The Keen Blade |
|---|
|
| Thrill of Battle 5 Ranks Your successful damage attacks increase your critical chance by 1%/tier and stack up to five times. Critical hits reset the effect. | Heavy Weapons Training 5 ranks +2% Skill Damage/tier +1% Damage to Two-handed Weapons/tier | |||
| Valorous Strength +10% Melee Damage +10% Critcal Chance | Broad Strokes 2 ranks 50% chance for Sweeping Cut to apply a bleed to targets +1 Sweeping Cut Target per rank | Thrust Earns the skill: Thrust | Removed via edit | |
| Bleed Them Dry All Guardian Bleeds have an extended duration | Brutal Assault Earns the skill: Brutal Assault | Tireless Blows 5 ranks – requires Brutal Assault +10% for Parry and Block Response skills to reset Brutal Assault Cooldown | Invigourating Response 4 ranks Critical hits with Parry and Block response skills restore 1% power per rank | |
| Protection by the Sword Grants the Skill: Protection by the Sword | Deeper Wounds 5 ranks – req. Thrust +1 Increase to Deep Wound Pulses +3% Increase damage of Deep Wound and Terrible Wounds per rank | To the King Earns the skill: To the King | ||
| Battle-fury Grants the Skill: Battle-fury | Haemorrhage 5 ranks – req Brutal Assault +20% chance for Brutal Assault to cause a bleed on your target per rank +3% bleed damage per rank | Into the Fray 6 ranks Ranks 1-6 +2% Charge run speed/rank +1 Charge duration/rank Rank 6 Your next melee attack automatically crits | ||
| Brutal Charge Charge becomes Brutal Charge +5s Charge Duration and Melee Skills attempt knockdown | Warrior’s Advantage Ranks 1 +[Level Based Value] Physical Mastery +1% Melee Crit Chance +1% Parry Chance +1.5% Partial Parry Chance | Blind Rage 5 ranks +20% Chance that To the King will increase your melee damage by 10% and your attack speed by 20% per rank | ||
| Heavy Blows +5% Melee Damage +10% Crit Damage | Hammer Down Earns the skill: Hammer Down | Rupture requires Hammer Down Successful hits with Hammer Down remove all current bleeds and increases incoming damage on the target by 2% for each bleed removed. /rank Adds a short cycle heavy bleed on the target. | ||
| Prey on the Weak Successful attacks against an opponent suffering from bleeds will inflict additional Damage |
There are some truly transformative changes here to make the Guardian into a true damage dealer. Let us take a look at some of these.
First, Force Opening is no longer here, we will discuss that more when we get to The Fighter of Shadow tree, but for now we should be looking at the first major change: Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation. These two skills are replaced with Breach and Whirling Breach when specializing in The Keen Blade. The skills immediately open parry and block responses. This serves as a new opener for the Guardian and helps with their consistent damage output offered by the Parry and Block response damage bonus conferred by the baseline trait boost. You also earn the skill Overwhelm.
Thrill of Battle loses the heal aspect and becomes a critical chance bonus at 1% bonus per rank in the trait that stacks up to 5 times. This means that at rank 5 your critical chance on melee skills increases up to 25% from this trait alone. To balance that out, when you score a critical hit, the bonus is removed and reset so that you need to build back up. Taking this trait to its max should provide a level of clear consistency when executing guardian melee skills. And, to answer the question - no this does not apply to the critical on bleeds.
Skilled Deflection is removed from The Keen Blade and put back in through The Fighter of Shadow, all things in good time.
Heavy Weapons Training maintains the bonus to melee skills and adds a per rank bonus to using two-handed weapons. Yes, we are leaning into the desire to have two-handed weapons be the preferred style for the Guardian. But, if there are some changes to be made, it is possible that there could be an additional trait added to help Shield-bearing Keen Bladers to get a similar boost.
Bleed Them Dry moves up closer to the top of the Trait Set bonus, as we want more emphasis on the bleeds it just made sense and the fact that Reactive Parry was underwhelming.
Invigourating Response replaces Invigourating Parry and opens up Block response skills to the regeneration of power. Again, when taken in conjunction with Thrill of Battle the consistency to restore power should make a couple trait points in this trait yield the proverbial fruit.
Protection by the Sword like its The Defender of the Free counterpart is an aura conferred to fellowship and raid members near the guardian. This toggle cannot be interrupted and adds a damage boost to melee and ranged damage at a base 3%, currently. In addition, if a player affected by Protection by the sword scores a parry or a block, the Guardian opens the use of the response chain skills.
Battle-fury the new trait set bonus is an activated skill with a long cooldown that boosts the Guardian's damage and critical magnitude by a whopping 20% for 20s currently. We do expect that we might need to rein this in a little.
Into the Fray gets a minor nerf at the capstone rank with the trait only affecting the next melee attack.
Warrior's Advantage no longer modifies the skill Warrior's Heart. Instead, the trait becomes a passive boon present on the Guardian at all times.
Rupture replaces Honourable Combat and now modifies Hammer Down. Rupture alters the effect of Hammer Down to a) strip all current bleeds from the target dealing bonus damage for each bleed removed; b) each bleed removed increases damage dealt to the target by 2.5% for 5 seconds - this means that a target with four active bleeds removed has their incoming damage increased by 10% for 20s and lastly; c) applies a new bleed "Ruptured Artery" to the target that bleeds every 2 seconds for six seconds.
Those are all the changes currently implemented and soon to go under review. Numbers will need to be reviewed to ensure that The Keen Blade does not tip the scales too much, but all of that should work itself out as we march toward the first viewing on Bullroarer.
I hope to have the last portion of the tree detailed by the end of the day today. Keep your eyes open for the change to The Fighter of Shadow.
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