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. I see it frequently gets +2 rerolls rather than the 1 the description has listed, but 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.

[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.