Primal rend and a tangent

I’ve been playing a fair bit of bozja content lately and have arrived at the realisation that I really don’t like primal rend as a concept.

Firstly and perhaps most importantly it doesn’t interact with the soft gauge of the infuriate cooldown. I appreciate that nascent chaos also doesn’t, but seeing as that’s the infuriate spender it doesn’t feel as odd.

Secondly it’s a gap closer. It just feels really bad trying to weave with it. Not to mention the inability to use it when rarely bound. Warrior already can spend 20 gauge every 10s has 3 charges on onslaught, does it really need another?

Third it’s a guaranteed direct crit which means that it hits like a wet noodle when compared to an actual direct crit on a comparable skill. This is particularly noticeable with the increasingly underwhelming potency of fell cleave. And with the fall off being so severe, it is barely stronger than decimate on a second target (700x0.3 = 210).

Fourth it’s very visually flashy while not really being much of anything. It just comes across as inner chaos 2: this time it’s onslaught.

It would be nice to replace it with a blood rage analogue, which really pushes the fell cleaves feeding themselves into overdrive. On a related note, warrior feels much better on a fast GCD - tank melds are still different as the difference in tank melds wasn’t just due to the 5 fell cleave inner release/blood weapon. Please consider removing the guaranteed direct crit aspect from warrior or returning inner release to a duration rather than this awkward halfway house.

Additionally it seems the homogenisation of tanks has lead to them all stagnating. Paladin’s flashy ranged goring blade combo after confetior is just about the biggest change any has since shadowbringers. I don’t know how to articulate this fully, but even now gaining fell cleave in the 50s has more gameplay impact than primal rend. It could have been so much more - eg make it invert or fill the beast gauge on use, really incentivise managing it so you’re using it when completely dry.

I really like Primal Rend, especially compared to the finishers the other tanks got.
It feels incredibly satisfying and brutal on a visual level with the snappy motion, the noticeable hit feedback and the subtle screenshake.

Its also nice to have the option between two different sorts of Gapcloser (GCD and OGCD)

Shadowbringer and Double Down feel kind of weightless and floaty in comparison.
Quite unsatisfying from a visual perspective.

The Pld Blade Combo feels nice too, also due to the subtle screenshake and the noticeable visual impact of them crashing down.

It's visually flashy, but that's about all it has going for it. I also don't think it carries the same visceral feel inner chaos does, possibly due to the way PR goes into the ground rather than IC's big explosion out their back. I also wouldn't describe its motion as snappy, particularly with the associated animation lock.

In theory that's nice, but in practice it has the same problem as dragoon where the attack is almost always used for damage not utility because of the discrepency in value. I don't think I'd advocate for damageless onslaught either though, it'd be way too niche.

The squeaky shopping trolley wheel sound effect on shadowbringer at least cuts through all the battle noise, even if visually it's lacking (dark knight having weightless attacks is a bit of an issue, particularly with how much damage living shadow contributes). Double down I think suffers from every gunbreaker animation being quite flashy which doesn't really let it stand out too much. I don't really know what could be done about that though, certainly I don't think toning down every gunbreaker animation would be a good solution. At least the damage it does feels hefty in a way little warrior has can match. I agree on paladin - it'd just be nice from a ui perspective if it replaced the goring blade combo or something so it's not same button spam.