I don't think changing clot's mana cost or the damage/tic time on bleeding is a good idea. Looking to the wider game, bleeding is still extremely effective where it is present outside of monks and warriors, and the classes that deal it don't need the extra damage/mana pressure at all, even if on paper 65-70 seems small. 100% think we can't afford to be careless with these things just because the floors for vitals went up.
Bleeding was more so a factor for monks than warriors. Warriors really never built that much bleeding historically. The rare exception was old blademaster with pinleg and rend chains, but even that was avoidable with good curing. Monks in general could get to dangerous (and frankly stupid) levels of bleeding pretty frequently and ramp up their damage really quickly. It seemed like every monk spec had the option to do it too.
The reason bleeding sucks so much here is because it's a really finicky mechanic to work with as an insta. When you compare to instas across other specs, and even historical warriors, you'll notice that there's something you have to build to that sticks. Wounds can be balanced in such a way where you can at least guarantee someone will be at the same level for 4 seconds if the warrior did his job. An affliction at critical level wounds with the new ice delay also means you can be sure the warrior will still have it stuck on them for the duration of a warrior balance (the same for old warriors with regen affs - cavalier specifically). These are good design choices for instas.
Pureblade suffers a lot because on top of that extra affliction, we get thrown in a random bleed amount, that most people will clot themselves down to 0 if they have to to avoid the kill. And you telegraph your intent with previous gut hits and landing the internalbleeding affliction, which makes it really easy for the system coder to just parry gut long enough for you not to be dangerous. (Everything being focused on the gut alone, is its own nasty problem)
To be honest, having it so that PB just bleeds someone's mana to zero over the course of a fight is a hairy concept for me, because there's little that's inherently difficult about targeting a body part and just hitting it right now. So if we were to design them to do that, by just spamming hits relatively thoughtlessly they are destroying people's mana and encroaching into health. I really hate that and think that'll be disgustingly unbalanced, and let's not even talk about how it'll poop all over group fights.
I think pureblade's bleed potential is okay for a warrior spec, with the exception of carve which still needs a boost to be worth it. But ideally we should re-evaluate if we want its insta to be based so much on bleeding, or at least consider giving it an alternative, more secure insta.
If we do stick with bleeding, the most balanced way to do it is to give them a lot of burst bleeding at high levels, and find a way to protect that somehow (stuns? giving them a way to slow haemophilia curing? a way to get a deadly amount of bleeding for wounds around the body ala a modified haymaker?).
Or some way for the PB to translate the bleed that they build at current levels into something that is required for their insta. Maybe a power ability targeted at the head (pommel knock) that deals some mental affs or head wounds that ramps up the less mana the target has. Next, change the bleed req on the insta to require those affs or head wounds. Something like that - build bleed to knock down mana to enable a burst of affs that leads to the instakill.
Everyone has seen a decrease in bleeding effectiveness due to the vitals changes, especially guilds that required bleeding to apply pressure like Shadowdancers and Harbingers.
1) Higher health pools mean tanking a larger amount of bleeding without forcing a sip, meaning you can survive with more bleeding with just sparkle/scroll than you could previously.
2) Much higher mana pools means you are using a significantly smaller percentage of mana to clot away bleeding.
3) Together, these represent a significantly diminished impact of bleeding across the board. I don't know what you mean by 'just because vitals went up.' Vitals increasing as much as they did have significantly changed how current bleed levels and costs impact several guilds and numerous skills, especially because we know bleeding levels were not changed for anyone.
There are two conversations here, one about warriors (specifically PB) and one about bleeding. I personally don't like bleed as an insta requirement due to how the target can manage bleeding on their own terms so it can become more about how the target manages bleeding levels and less about what the attacker is doing, unless it involves overwhelm tactics, which have their own problems.
That being said, something probably needs to be done about bleeding, perhaps on a case by case basis, but I don't think upping bleed tics or clot costs are bad ideas. Bleeding is most certainly not nearly as effective as it was previously, and there's little indication it was "OP" pre overhaul.
Well that is kind of the intent of Carve, to build bleed. The other big bleeds are Rupture Stomach and Disembowel. Pinarm/leg do very small amounts of bleed increase from testing.
The issue with Carve is it is based off Impale, and the only way to get a Carve is at Critical wounds so the writhe timer is long enough to get that 1 Carve in. The problem is the bleed from that Carve is only marginally higher than a regular strike. Meaning it is better to ignore Carve and just Strike.
Clotting right now can easily outpace bleeding with no pressure to mana. I am worried that raising the cost of Clot will make mana drains across the board based off bleeding much easier. SD comes to mind on that one. (NOT BEING PARTISAN)
Either Carve needs to be fundamentally changed in what it does, changed to burst drains of mana via clotting, or the bleed mechanic needs to be removed from the Instakill so it can be balanced without a weird mechanic.
The whole bleed thing makes Twist a useless skill too. If you are against someone with poor curing so you can ramp up bleeding then Twist is very nice for adding damage. If you are against anyone with a curing system that clots (M&M) then you will be lucky to see a bleed over 50 points on assess, barring group fights.
SDs do 150-200 bleeding every 10 seconds with redcap, and after 4 or 5 redcap tics, they can use the barghest for 250-300 bleeding (rough numbers, giver or take 50).
SDs have seen a huge hit to their effectiveness because, at the top tiers, the only way to pressure mana was to use nightgaze damage to force sips and the bleed/pixie forcing insomnia shaved off mana in the background and the final twist once they dropped below a certain threshold. You basically had to read their prios by hitting them and seeing how their system reacted.
This is no longer the case, you can't solo pressure health, it's not a thing wiccans can do. You can sparkle/regen/scroll it all off.
Currently, you either go hexes and aeon lock (where the bleed has little impact because you don't clot in aeon), or healer for tank/support/groupfight, or Astro for the damage bomb.
edit: Shuck is the exception, he's a beast and kind of messes with the balance.
I think increasing the clot mana cost can probably be justified by the vitals changes, if only just to restore a portion of its previous status quo. The only reason not to do it is because it'll affect different classes differently, based on their kits, and it actually works against some classes where it becomes harder to justify further changes if the general boost to bleed isn't enough for to compensate. It might be a better idea to take a scalpel approach and have each class that actually relies on bleed to do a certain task evaluate what changes need to be made within their skillset alone to patch up the shortfall from the changes. It's a longer, more involved, and more complicated approach, but it can be a good opportunity to do some reworks here and there, too.
Probably a combination, envoys should be going through their skills to adjust their bleed levels but at the same, we can probably raise the cost of clot to bring some of the status quo back. The primary intent of the vitals change was to shift the meta from damage spam, not shaft the mana killers.
LOL @ the partisan disagree flags already. Hot damn, that post was pretty benign too!
Not sure what you are referring to about Partisan flags, I haven't seen any Partisan posts and I just made that comment about not being partisan as a semi tongue in cheek remark.
Anyways, thanks for the information on the SD's. To be fair my main experience with SD mana drain is two SD's and quite frankly watching two of them mana drain and toad curse people one after another made me worry that increasing that mana drain would be to much for them. Again though that is two SD's and not a fair comparison to 1vs1.
If increasing clot will bring back the status quo then sure let's start there, I don't believe it will do anything for the PB issue, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
I'd be against a general mana cost increase at this point. When monks are overhauled/deleted and everything else is brought in line, then a general cost increase should be considered, but I'd be wary of impacting things too far.
I think it's probably better to adjust bleeding on a individual basis at this point.
Not sure what you are referring to about Partisan flags, I haven't seen any Partisan posts and I just made that comment about not being partisan as a semi tongue in cheek remark.
Anyways, thanks for the information on the SD's. To be fair my main experience with SD mana drain is two SD's and quite frankly watching two of them mana drain and toad curse people one after another made me worry that increasing that mana drain would be to much for them. Again though that is two SD's and not a fair comparison to 1vs1.
If increasing clot will bring back the status quo then sure let's start there, I don't believe it will do anything for the PB issue, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
Not you, Enyalida and the disagree/agree stuff. I was just talking about math! IDK what she's disagreeing with, but it's not unexpected.
Two SDs are a decent combo, definitely, but there are definitely better mana drain combos out there due to how shadowtwist works.
SD does require a different approach to prios than other mana drainers. You're fighting burst rather than a slow drain, so where as against an MD you can have your normal sipping thresholds to get full advantage of the sip/sparkle/scroll, against an SD you want to stay topped off all the time because it's the burst that get you, not the slow drain so I think SDs get more OP credit than they actually deserve largely because you can't treat them like MDs, and most people do.
Aside from that, Sidd's probably right and cost should wait until monks are done at the very least.
Well, we can discuss bleeding, vitals and how the overhaul affected the respective classes that rely on bleeding at another juncture, but my point here was:
1) It's unlikely to solve the issues with exsanguinate
2) It might have untoward effects elsewhere. We need to be careful before making blanket changes that affect combat so widely.
What about introducing an affliction that prevents clotting, like haemophilia but with no cure except time (can't be refreshed, costs power, only available to PB).
Well PB has Open Chest Haemophilia, but it is curable. I don't know how people feel about timer based cures. Though what if it (haemophilia) took time to cure like paralysis?
Not sure if we're allowed to introduce new affs at this point. Technically we can maybe repurpose internalbleeding as an aff somehow to make it more helpful toward the bleed strategy.
Edit: actually nevermind, I think timed affs never really counted anyway. They probably wouldn't mind. Only the ones with a cure were iffy.
My inspiration is from Harmonics Bloodstone, which puts an aura that bleeds you (for a very minimal amount) but is incurable unless you kether the bloodstone or kill the researcher.
It would be tricky considering the synergy with other bleed classes, but I think it could be made to work.
Considering that the Overhaul is officially over (according to Estarra), I think the aff shaving has come to an end.
There is a combat style, but I have found the spec combatstyles to add very little. If I recall Bleeder added 20 extra points of bleeding, compared to Aggressive's 200 points of damage.
I don't mean to say I don't use it, because I do use it (I use all the special styles), unless in damage kill mode. I was just saying that I don't believe it adds enough to make a difference given testing.
Edit:: Just double checked cause I couldn't remember the exact numbers.
Bleeder adds 60 bleeding Aggressive adds 200 damage Lightning shaves off .2 - .3 seconds (hard to be certain at that small a number with latency)
To be honest wounds don't matter unless you can land you insta kill. What's the point of getting to critical head as a bonecrusher and not being able to land your insta kill. You can take away a bunch of poisons or add a bunch of new one but that won't improve them.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make, but wounds are fundamental to warriors. Unless you are just standing there spamming damage strikes in a group.
I don't understand what you're saying @Rolsand - you should be working towards your kill condition the entire fight. If you're bringing up random limbs to critical, if should be to move toward your kill strat.
At the very least, bringing up other limbs may take away parry.curing from the limbs you do need to build on. Maybe if you provided specific examples instead of vague generalities, we may understand better, but at this point, you are not making a lot of sense.
@Rolsand almost every spec has an Insta that is achievable. PB right now has some issues due to the way bleeding works and PB not being able to put enough pressure on mana, but Bonecrusher and Blademaster both have very viable Instakills, Blademaster being one of the easiest specs for locks and kills. Bonecrusher's hindering on demand is also amazing for group fights.
I am not sure what insta you are having trouble with, granted I have not been an Axelord since pre-recent-warrior changes, so I am not 100% on their success rate now, but given they were the only spec that had no real changes I would say they are as good or better (with new wounding) than they were previously.
IMO the specialty combatstyles (all of them) need some tweaking and wounds needs to drop to 4 cured per apply, but as far as locks/poisons/and instakills go I think aside from a couple minor issues they are in a good place.
I dunno, the more I think about pureblade after testing more, the more I think that twist is pretty good use for bleeding, and in and of itself could serve as PB's "alternative kill route" (in similar concept to BC's pulp or BM's new haymaker) with tweaks to specific skills. Maybe just changing exsang to need internalbleeding alone won't be so bad and would definitely still keep PB as the "bleeder" spec. just food for thought.
Axelord currently has mutilated legs as heavy wounds, but PB has it at crit. WRG complaints of poor hindering for PB, maybe dropping PB mutilates to heavy might help??? idk. Openchest could also get a small token stun as it did under the old system. But just tossing out ideas.
I just switched to Axelord to have a look at it, but I don't see any reason it should not be viable. AFAIK damage can ramp up quickly with AL and openchest(?) or you can go the route of behead if you can get them to move their parries.
Warriors have instakills to work towards, but while working towards those they have good old fashioned damage to fall back on.
@Rivius my only issue with PB is the bleeding/clotting/mana pools that are impossible to drop down so bleeding will actually make a difference.
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The issue with Carve is it is based off Impale, and the only way to get a Carve is at Critical wounds so the writhe timer is long enough to get that 1 Carve in. The problem is the bleed from that Carve is only marginally higher than a regular strike. Meaning it is better to ignore Carve and just Strike.
Clotting right now can easily outpace bleeding with no pressure to mana. I am worried that raising the cost of Clot will make mana drains across the board based off bleeding much easier. SD comes to mind on that one. (NOT BEING PARTISAN)
Either Carve needs to be fundamentally changed in what it does, changed to burst drains of mana via clotting, or the bleed mechanic needs to be removed from the Instakill so it can be balanced without a weird mechanic.
The whole bleed thing makes Twist a useless skill too. If you are against someone with poor curing so you can ramp up bleeding then Twist is very nice for adding damage. If you are against anyone with a curing system that clots (M&M) then you will be lucky to see a bleed over 50 points on assess, barring group fights.
Anyways, thanks for the information on the SD's. To be fair my main experience with SD mana drain is two SD's and quite frankly watching two of them mana drain and toad curse people one after another made me worry that increasing that mana drain would be to much for them. Again though that is two SD's and not a fair comparison to 1vs1.
If increasing clot will bring back the status quo then sure let's start there, I don't believe it will do anything for the PB issue, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
Just a random thought, don't chew me out.
It would be tricky considering the synergy with other bleed classes, but I think it could be made to work.
Considering that the Overhaul is officially over (according to Estarra), I think the aff shaving has come to an end.
Could also look into a new combatstyle -- openwounds. Makes clotting less effective for a single target when you stabbify them.
EDIT: less effective as in less bleeding per clot cured.
Edit::
Just double checked cause I couldn't remember the exact numbers.
Bleeder adds 60 bleeding
Aggressive adds 200 damage
Lightning shaves off .2 - .3 seconds (hard to be certain at that small a number with latency)
I am not sure what insta you are having trouble with, granted I have not been an Axelord since pre-recent-warrior changes, so I am not 100% on their success rate now, but given they were the only spec that had no real changes I would say they are as good or better (with new wounding) than they were previously.
IMO the specialty combatstyles (all of them) need some tweaking and wounds needs to drop to 4 cured per apply, but as far as locks/poisons/and instakills go I think aside from a couple minor issues they are in a good place.
Warriors have instakills to work towards, but while working towards those they have good old fashioned damage to fall back on.
@Rivius my only issue with PB is the bleeding/clotting/mana pools that are impossible to drop down so bleeding will actually make a difference.