Some love for VWs? :) - Phoenix Freeshard

Hey all,

I believe it was shortly after VWs were introduced on the live servers when they overhauled the scythe styles, which is really what this post is about. I was wondering how realistic it would be to implement those scythe styles on Phoenix, i.e. making grasping roots a pbaoe root, with conflagration as a follow up, and having blizzard blade in a 2 part style chain instead of 3.

After reaching r11 and lone enforcer on my VW on live, and then playing a VW here on Phoenix, I can certainly see why they decided to overhaul the scythe line. I’m sure there are some folks out there that would roll their eyes at a 2 part style chain for blizzard blade, but it’s a level 29 style, so, without some decent MoF, it will get resisted quite a bit.

Would the devs every consider this, and how would the community feel about this?

Sat 6 Jul 2019 4:07 AM by Leandrys

Front Ae root and conflagration would be a bit too much i think, VWs in the need of a up, but that could be a bit excessive at this historic stage of DAOC, imo.

Two-style side chain, why not, would still be often resisted which compensates a lot the theorical burst, could be good change for them, and instead of front chain i'd just add a to-hit bonus to VW's anytime as a beginning, currently by far their worst flaw.

Anyway they clearly need something to make them attractive for PuG and casual players.

Sun 7 Jul 2019 6:11 PM by Keelia

Man if there was only a hib melee group that was extremely successful with a VW in their group.......

Wed 10 Jul 2019 3:50 AM by Leandrys

Keelia wrote: ↑
Sun 7 Jul 2019 6:11 PM
Man if there was only a hib melee group that was extremely successful with a VW in their group.......

You mean the VW who almost doesn't play anymore ?

Or the one sticking with BG for AFK RPs ? i don't see your active sucessful VW, who is this ?

Wed 10 Jul 2019 12:36 PM by bm01

Well I don't know how things are here on Phoenix, but I used to play VW since SI came out and until a few weeks into ToA. And yeah, my group was quite successful, and I like to think that I wasn't a complete liability.

Really, you don't need anything else than Damaging Grasp. Spam it, and use Stunning Blade as a back up. I (used to) see too many people trying to pull off Blizzard Blade, even though it often gets resisted, breaks CCs, and may even simply do less damage than 3 Damaging Grasp on buffed targets. The only situation where you could afford using it is when for some reason you're not in an assist, and hitting a target that has weak defense capabilities. Otherwise, just forget it and exploit Damaging Grasp huge GR instead.

The other thing that's worth mentioning is that all buffs are equally important to the VW, but thanks to pots and higher conc I suppose this isn't much of a problem here. Back in the days if you didn't have one or two buffs bots, the VW may not be able to receive Acuity or D/Q, completely killing one of its hybrid aspect.

Also don't waste points on Det.

Personally I really don't think the VW needs a buff. Maybe something to make it more desirable in full groups, but it shouldn't affect its global power level. Or just less costly spells / higher mana pool maybe.

It's another topic but, thing that bothers me isn't that most of the Scythe line is unusable (after all this is the case for most weapon lines), but the fact that the Thane got that huge buff on his DD (less mana cost, 33 more delve, -0.6 on the cast time), making it as good as the VW lifetap under acuity buff.

Wed 10 Jul 2019 5:17 PM by Pirhana7

VWs are one of the strongest classes here and probably one of most versatile and enjoyable to play, Even with the old style system you will win most your 1v1 fights and still bring a lot to an 8man group with your damage ,backstun ,and disease proc. Even in keep defense you will kill people from a range.
VWs were always strong, people just didn't take the time to make one or actually learn the class. When they got upgraded to the new styles and abilities they became border line OPd. The Only think I would like to see is the anytime style or taunt style being upgraded. Other than that I love my 3 style chains, they do a lot of damage.

Fri 12 Jul 2019 12:57 PM by Milksteak

Pirhana7 wrote: ↑
Wed 10 Jul 2019 5:17 PM
VWs are one of the strongest classes here and probably one of most versatile and enjoyable to play, Even with the old style system you will win most your 1v1 fights and still bring a lot to an 8man group with your damage ,backstun ,and disease proc. Even in keep defense you will kill people from a range.
VWs were always strong, people just didn't take the time to make one or actually learn the class. When they got upgraded to the new styles and abilities they became border line OPd. The Only think I would like to see is the anytime style or taunt style being upgraded. Other than that I love my 3 style chains, they do a lot of damage.

What? vw are good 1v1 here? I don't think I've lost to a vw with my scout yet and I struggle in 1v1 all the time. I don't see vw being able to beat any stealthers 1v1 tbh. The VW population supports my statement I believe.

Fri 12 Jul 2019 4:36 PM by Leandrys

I am not exactly sure of how you could even win a 1vs1 with a scout versus a reasonnably mediocre VW tbh ! Well there are lots of potatoes here on Phoenix so everything's possible (i still remember Lunenoire maximum over failing 2 times in a row against my eld when i was 2L4 or that skald who imezzed and anytime+double DD my chanter's pet...) but VW were some kind of a total scourge for archers back in the days, and here they have a very strong package against that type of class.

Well, ofc, if the guy didn't take purge and Ichor but went for Deter first, then... Hey.

Fri 12 Jul 2019 5:45 PM by stinsfire

Leandrys wrote: ↑
Fri 12 Jul 2019 4:36 PM
I am not exactly sure of how you could even win a 1vs1 with a scout versus a reasonnably mediocre VW tbh ! Well there are lots of potatoes here on Phoenix so everything's possible (i still remember Lunenoire maximum over failing 2 times in a row against my eld when i was 2L4 or that skald who imezzed and anytime+double DD my chanter's pet...) but VW were some kind of a total scourge for archers back in the days, and here they have a very strong package against that type of class.

Well, ofc, if the guy didn't take purge and Ichor but went for Deter first, then... Hey.

I only fought VW twice on my hunter and it was before the buffs to BC but they totally wrecked me. Parried all arrows with this ability and then just meleed me down. On my second fight I tried kiting.. but well.. I forgot they have insta snare and insta dot.

Sun 14 Jul 2019 7:52 PM by bm01

Milksteak wrote: ↑
Fri 12 Jul 2019 12:57 PM
What? vw are good 1v1 here? I don't think I've lost to a vw with my scout yet and I struggle in 1v1 all the time. I don't see vw being able to beat any stealthers 1v1 tbh. The VW population supports my statement I believe.

Your logic is flawed, there are very few Champions too despite it being the best 1v1 class. At the time I'm writing this, there are 9 VWs and 13 Champions.
Personally I'd gladly play one (again) if Thane's DD wasn't 50% stronger than what it was at that patch level back in the days. Instead, well I just play a Thane.
But even if we put that aside, all of hib melee classes are somewhat shunned. 25 BMs, 16 Heroes...
You said you never lost against a VW. That's probably because you never found one that knows how to block arrows or that put points in MoC.

Mon 15 Jul 2019 12:12 AM by Moid

Phoenix developers...

Rationale for buffing Friars: Hey, hardly anyone plays a Friar so let’s buff Friars!
Rationale for nerfing Animists: Hey, hardly anyone plays VW’s and Hib is underpopulated, let’s nerf Animists!

Well, looks like the developers here are achieving what they set out to do, drive away anyone playing Hib. Congrats!

Mon 15 Jul 2019 9:10 AM by bm01

Well it's a little worse than that if we look at the hybrid class changes. Paladin, Friar, and Thane are the only ones that received huge buffs (the Paladin is still one of the least played classes though).
Warden and Valewalker could get some love.
I also blame the loss of Vale Defense. It wasn't amazing but it improved VW's "groupability" a bit.

Mon 15 Jul 2019 10:01 AM by Lollie

I've been playing my VW a bit more the past couple of days and had great fun in keeps/towers. Ichor is a really fun to use and always fun to nuke stuff. It really is a well balanced class. Only thing i'd like to see changed is our taunt to have a +hit bonus (I know there are other classes who have taunts without +hit to and it baffles me why their/our taunts don't)

Mon 15 Jul 2019 11:43 AM by Elekur

Leandrys wrote: ↑
Wed 10 Jul 2019 3:50 AM
Keelia wrote: ↑
Sun 7 Jul 2019 6:11 PM
Man if there was only a hib melee group that was extremely successful with a VW in their group.......

You mean the VW who almost doesn't play anymore ?

Or the one sticking with BG for AFK RPs ? i don't see your active sucessful VW, who is this ?

Your point is? The only thing that has to be changed is the miss chance on the second style of the chain and hybrids need a bit more HP since the server is a Caster heavy zerg fest.

Remove NF and we will be back:>

Mon 15 Jul 2019 3:03 PM by Leandrys

Sarcasm vs sarcasm, you just were passing by and didn't see what was happening, not your fault.

Mon 15 Jul 2019 7:10 PM by Keelia

Doki Doki ran a VW when they were playing and destroyed people. When the server started they were all the highest RRs until they quit.

Tue 16 Jul 2019 10:35 PM by Leandrys

D3C could play a lot of configurations, they'd still pown a lot of people back in the days of Phoenix. Meanwhile, most players struggle with multiple traits specific to VW on this server.

I play it sometimes here, and honnestly this can be strong depending of situations, but there also are ridiculous and outdated flaws, first of them beeing lack of BTH on anytime. This is the point that makes the class impossible to understand for a majority of people, problem is if you want to master VW, you have to be the standard bastard in combat, you're forced to, you have to cast everything you can before engaging at melee, you have to land that back stun when the enemy /stick/face you, you have to abuse latency to land that side chain once enemy pops purge and this makes 1vs1 absolutly impossible for casual players or shameful easy for experienced ones as most of your opponents are only able to play in a poor and mediocre way classes like skalds or BDs.

You abuse VW in its current state, or you don't play it, that's all. I don't like this balance tbh, it was my favourite class on live, here i find it disgusting because there's no real way to play it in a fair way, you'll just get destroyed if doing so. It needs a rework, not necessary a buff, but a rework.

Instead of working for nothing on multiple instances, i really think the staff should get rid of feather's credits, increase a lot feathers won in RvR to allow casual to gear up in a few days of zerg'ing and free'ing them of useless raids, stop wasting their time with things like instances and concentrate on class balancing (A.K.A. get rid of TWF on BDs...?), fix/rework some classes that need to be adapted to this server's mechanics and develop more events like Molvik.

Wed 17 Jul 2019 11:37 AM by Elekur

Thu 10 Oct 2019 1:46 PM by Razur Ur

What is with Love for Champions? ;-D