Suggestions and Observations: Dreadnought

[Ela]

First and foremost, I want to apologize for the length of this post. It's a lot to read, but I think I've finally done enough testing of the Dreadnought class specialization to finally make some suggestions. I'll try not to compare the class to others too much but I might mention an ability or two.

The second thing I want to say is that I picked Dreadnought because it made me think of a plate DPS class. The TL;DR is that I'm not sure if it is dealing more damage than Guardian right now but it'd be difficult for me to test that out since I have two Dreadnoughts and zero Guardians.

With those two things out of the way, here I go!

Followup Punch / the Dreadnought punch from tactics Dreadnought

I'll mostly talk about Followup Punch but this applies to the Dreadnought tactics punch, too.

Followup Punch is in a tough spot right now. The damage cap on unarmed attacks is currently 35. It rolls using a standard melee attack with the Brawling skill and can stagger/stun for up to 3 seconds if it hits the head. It can also trigger occult bursts while channeling if such a thing is possible with your channel.

So what's the problem?

Recently, a change was implemented addressing durability loss with armor and weapons and striking/parrying/blocking. Although gloves only cover the left and right hands, I have found glove durability has absolutely plummeted. I've tried both average iron and exceptional bronze gauntlets. The bronze seems to lose durability at half the rate of average quality iron. After a period of roughly 90 minutes of grinding against netherim, this is what her iron gauntlets and cuirass looked like afterwards with Blade Catch enabled, Followup Punch disabled, in Dreadnought tactics:

Iron gauntlets
It appears to be scuffed (69%).

Iron cuirass
It appears to be in good repair (92%).

After a similar period of time, with Followup Punch enabled and with the same cuirass compared versus iron gauntlets, both starting at 100%:

Iron gauntlets
It appears to be scuffed (71%).

Iron cuirass
It appears to be scuffed (97%).

Brawling isn't any more or less difficult than any other skill to develop but it's probably not something most legacy characters have raised. I think newer Dreadnoughts might have an easier time here but it still won't train quickly. Even if you've trained it up, you're probably rolling with a minimal bonus, likely whatever you have from Melee Precision/Melee Combat Proficiency.

I believe the damage is outright lower than Followup Bash based off of what I've seen. Followup Bash also draws on Shield Use to roll and that skill is much more likely to be higher than Brawling would be for Dreadnoughts because you'll be using your shield for more abilities and skills.

I think the best part is that if you get the cooldowns lined up, you can trigger the Dreadnought class punch off of a parry/sustained hit and then trigger Followup Punch off of that hit. I personally haven't had it happen often but it's neat to get that burst of damage the stars align.

What can be changed?

Maybe raise the damage cap or retool it to work as a followup weapon bash functional only with hand and a half/two-handed weapons with reduced damage. The fantasy of a Dreadnought using their hand to deflect blows while swinging a giant weapon is what drew me in though, so the punching is neat and fitting even if it is kind of weak. Another idea would be to make it into a body check, like a shoulder, elbow or knee so that we're spreading the durability loss out.

Inner Strength

I mostly use this as a defensive cooldown to reduce the encumberance level of my character so that she has an easier time dodging and to pull stumps. It seems pretty unreliable in combat because you still need to hit to get value out of it, and it doesn't augment your rolls at all.

We can't raise Meditation right now so you'll likely receive no help in increasing its duration from that skill.

I also think this ability might be bugged when used with Mighty Blow. In the rare times I've used Inner Strength in combat and I've landed a Mighty Blow with it, the damage seems halved from normal. I could be unlucky but it'd be nice if some other players could weigh in with their experiences.

I'd prefer if this ability were partially converted into a passive of 12.5% increased strength, doing all of the stuff it does right now, but it can be activated to double the 12.5% up to what it is now with a cooldown attached.

Mighty Blow

This ability probably needs some sort of partial reroll because I think it feels bad to use and inferior to Staggering Blow. It also costs more energy than Staggering Blow.

Staggering Blow

On the other hand, Staggering Blow is really strong. The stun/stagger seems to have a wide range of effectiveness. Maybe it is too wide. If it is meant to be a stunning/staggering attack, it might be nice to tighten that range up and remove one of the rerolls to give to Mighty Blow to help it out?

Tackle

I probably sound crazy but I think Tackle is too strong. Here is what Tackle can do:

1. Miss
2. Hit and not stun/stagger the target (The target sees "You remain standing!" but this may be from Stability )
3. Hit and stagger the target for 8 seconds
4. Hit and stun/stagger the target for 8 seconds
5. Hit, knock the target prone and stun/stagger the target for 8 seconds

While you can't chain the stun, you can refresh the stagger by hitting multiple Tackle from organized users, and as of the time of posting, stagger is basically a stun. I don't know if this is simply because we lack balance right now.

I want to preface this next part by saying I have limited experience in CLOK CvC. I could be missing the mark entirely and if I am, I'd love for a neutral party to educate me on the matter.

My concern comes from using it with other abilities and organized users to lock someone in a state of inability to fight or act: even two Tackle users or one person using Tackle and another using Flip could put someone in a 20+ second period of being unable to act ( if an enemy is aiming, they'll incur a 6 RT on attack, so you tackle once to put them at a 13-14 second timer to act, and this can be refreshed or simply chained once the message is sent about the target no longer being staggered ) and as a Dreadnought, you would be able to Tackle someone and smack them with Staggering Blow. If you manage to knock a player prone while doing this, they have -4 on all defensive rolls unless they have the ability to stand up after being knocked down and it works.

Of course I would view this as less of a problem against evenly matched foes, but players are rarely evenly matched.

I've also never seen Stability halve the duration of a stun/stagger, and even if it did, it wouldn't matter right now unless you were hit with example #3, since you'd still be stunned from 8 seconds or staggered for 8 seconds and unable to act.

Stability

This might be bugged or not functioning correctly since we lack balance; it doesn't matter if it halves the duration of the stun if you're still staggered for 8 seconds or vice versa. Because of that, it's either all or nothing right now ( see above, example #2 ).

Cleaving Blow

My opinion is that it is completely balanced and serves its purpose effectively.

Deflective Defense

Without this ability, I don't think Dreadnought would function effectively enough for anyone to really want to play it. For anyone reading this at a later date, without Deflective Defense, plate users were in a tough spot due to large penalties to dodge from encumberance. Blade Catch is good but it isn't a substitute for shields and you're still taking damage from using it. That Deflective Defense is so needed to make the class work makes me think this should simply be a part of Dreadnought. I haven't worked up the courage yet to disable it to try grinding and seeing how bad it would be, but from looking at my combat logs and all of the 'armor-deflected' messages I can see, it'd be torture without it.

Armor Deflection

I don't see this ability trigger a lot but it is helpful. To me, it's just a stepping stone to the much more important Deflective Defense.

Blade Catch

A functional, nice ability. I've never had it disarm anyone but I have seen it "pull" a weapon with some NPCs.

I'm curious to hear what the experience of other Dreadnought players might be and if they're similar to mine.

EDIT: Fixed the mention of rerolls on Staggering Blow.

[Dorn]

Agree with pretty much everything. I've wondered if two-handed weapons as a whole need an uptick, as the combat style is weaker as a whole in Clok vs weapon/shield which in turn wouldn't necessarily require a damage tweak for our follow-up punches. At the same time, agree with the durability aspect and I almost wonder if it should be worked off "Armor Skill" and then randomized for location with appropriate messaging much like you commented on.

Ability wise, I can't comment on Tackle as I've no experience with it but pretty much agree with everything else.

[Rias]

I know it's not precisely something that was asked for, but per the changelog: Followup Punch will now rely on 85% Melee skill as its primary offense skill if that number is higher than the attacker's Brawling skill.

This should make it so people with Followup Punch who haven't kept their Brawling skill on par with their primary weapon skill (or just don't want to) still get some use out of Followup Punch based purely on their Melee. Being 85%, those who do go the extra mile to skill up their Brawling will be a little better off with Followup Punch for the effort. Note that that the 85% Melee is in addition to the standard 25% Melee that's applied to all melee attacks, so Followup Punch this way would be rolling based on 85% Melee + 25% Melee (110% total) rather than 100% Brawl + 25% Melee.

It didn't seem right to insist everyone with Followup Punch should have to keep an additional weapon skill trained up just for it to feel useful when it's a supplemental followup maneuver, often for characters that don't main Brawling as their weapon type of choice.

[Ela]

I know it's not precisely something that was asked for, but per the changelog: Followup Punch will now rely on 85% Melee skill as its primary offense skill if that number is higher than the attacker's Brawling skill.

This should make it so people with Followup Punch who haven't kept their Brawling skill on par with their primary weapon skill (or just don't want to) still get some use out of Followup Punch based purely on their Melee. Being 85%, those who do go the extra mile to skill up their Brawling will be a little better off with Followup Punch for the effort. Note that that the 85% Melee is in addition to the standard 25% Melee that's applied to all melee attacks, so Followup Punch this way would be rolling based on 85% Melee + 25% Melee (110% total) rather than 100% Brawl + 25% Melee.

It didn't seem right to insist everyone with Followup Punch should have to keep an additional weapon skill trained up just for it to feel useful when it's a supplemental followup maneuver, often for characters that don't main Brawling as their weapon type of choice.

Thank you again for problem, Rias. This change went a long way in solving difficulties surrounding the skills/rolls/damage from these punches. I'm sure Dorn will see similar end results, but my character went from rolling sub-1000 to basically cap on these attacks. I notice the damage is more consistent and it feels much better when I see the ability trigger. Since the rolls are basically capped now, I haven't tested it out but do the punches also still raise the Brawling skill if you hit something challenging enough to skill up, or will it only raise Melee Combat?

Continuing for the sake of current/future Dreadnought players, because of the consistency of her attacks landing, I really noticed gauntlet durability today. After burning through a single training for her weapon, from 5 to completed, I compared the durability of her weapon versus her gauntlets:

It appears to be scuffed (74%).

It appears to be damaged (24%).

Both were repaired to 100% at the same time. I did this testing on a Templar so she was battling netherim and that is worth considering when viewing these numbers.

If I'm being honest, this is probably something that we'll simply have to accept as players and adjust to carrying a spare pair of gauntlets to offset the durability loss. Given that they only weigh two pounds, it isn't going to hurt much or at all.

[Gorth]

Good memories. Defending the Logging Camp in COGG against a horde of Nethrim and getting to emote breaking a pair of iron gauntlets and tossing them to the ground.

[Lun]

Ela, on follow-up attack weapons seeing outsized damage, my shields on my Guardian also see an overwhelming amount of damage but it's something I had been willing to accept. Though, I did see the supply of maple shields is limited now so I'm mildly terrified at the prospect of not having a cheap resupply of shields in the future. A problem for future me.

[Ela]

Ela, on follow-up attack weapons seeing outsized damage, my shields on my Guardian also see an overwhelming amount of damage but it's something I had been willing to accept. Though, I did see the supply of maple shields is limited now so I'm mildly terrified at the prospect of not having a cheap resupply of shields in the future. A problem for future me.

That's good to know! I wasn't sure whether it was something limited to gauntlets and the recent change to durability, or if other follow-up attackers faced the same. Thank you, Lun!

[Dorn]

Thank you again for problem, Rias. This change went a long way in solving difficulties surrounding the skills/rolls/damage from these punches. I'm sure Dorn will see similar end results, but my character went from rolling sub-1000 to basically cap on these attacks. I notice the damage is more consistent and it feels much better when I see the ability trigger. Since the rolls are basically capped now, I haven't tested it out but do the punches also still raise the Brawling skill if you hit something challenging enough to skill up, or will it only raise Melee Combat?

Funnily, a hard one to test for myself in any regard at least against like-level opponents. The only mob around my range now with the Tanglewood revamp, are ranged. And either by design/bug, follow-up punch doesn't work on ranged mobs. Understandable counterattack doesn't.

Something I've bugged in case.

Wanting to get facts straight I pushed on...

And headed out towards the Desert of Desolation with mobs in general that aren't worthwhile for skill gain due to having much higher rolls for a lot of things that are sustainable for a capped character. Despite rolling under Basilisks, I still don't get any skill gain for Brawling. This ultimately means that if I actively want to be as effective as I can in my chosen Specialization, instead of slowly leveling Brawling while doing other stuff, I'm going to have to go ahead with a Brawling build.

Not sure if this is oversight, or intended. If intended, feels like short term boost for long term pain.