I love onslaught! It makes plunge look like a fat kid on a diving board! Best gap closer ever! But this 20 gauge cost? Hell no! Please Square, follow my expository thread title and give us warriors the best gap smacker ever!
I love onslaught! It makes plunge look like a fat kid on a diving board! Best gap closer ever! But this 20 gauge cost? Hell no! Please Square, follow my expository thread title and give us warriors the best gap smacker ever!
FWIW Onslaught is a DPS gain over IB in Defiance and is part of the 3-cleave-6-cleave rotation that's now becoming popular over the 4-6 one. It's actually pretty much fine on the gauge.
It's actually irritating to me that Shoulder Tackle/Spineshatter Dive/Plunge still have potency. It means to maximize DPS you're spamming something that's supposed to be a tool for a particular situation (either stunning or closing a gap). I personally would rather they eliminate the potency on the other three and increase potency somewhere else to compensate for the DPS loss.
Basically you replace your 4 Fell Cleave+Path with 3 Fell, a Butcher's Block, Upheaval, and Onslaught.
One version: early theorycrafting version from Reddit. This guy's version is a bit old and doesn't include the BB, but you can figure out where you can fit it in from the 10 gauge saved using Onslaught+Upheaval over FC. It's also probably not worth BBing if you're going to rip hate as OT since the potency gain is so small, but you can worm it in if you're MT for extra hate.
Basically by doing this you gain a GCD and can have an Upheaval in every Berserk so you come out ahead 90 potency in your non-IR Berserks. In between the Berserks nothing changes at low skill speed. Some people have to do two Heavy Swings uncomboed if they have high SkS to line up their Berserk cooldown, but that's actually still a potency gain over a 4th Fell Cleave, which is really dumb. If you delay Berserk, then you can actually get the 4th Fell Cleave outside of Berserk by not using BB, but Berserk's cooldown is so short now I don't know that it's worth it.
I suspect this entire messed up rotation is a side-effect of SE falling for their own Fell-Cleave-meme-Warrior garbage. They probably never even considered the possibility that a player wouldn't want to Fell Cleave as much as possible, but actually it's not optimal to be mashing 1 button 21% of the time like SE apparently intended.
Sadly, mashing 1 button 21% of the time is optimal on PLD, but at least there's the casting aspect of having to turret to cast to keep it interesting if nothing else.
Ugh but do you really want to keep onslaught as it is just because it's a dps gain?
It doesn't feel right and it ain't fun.
Just get rid if the cost and tweak everything else so our optimum dps rotation won't require such complex testing to figure out.
As far as fell cleave spam, I wish they could limit it to 4 somehow. 6 is just too many. Takes too long to set up and too long to actually do. There are instances where the boss will transition to a new phase breaking the 6 fc combo.
Also, some boss mechanics like oushback or stun bypass inner release. Is this intentional? Really, really annoying.
The reason why Onslaught is "undesired" or "niche" atm is due to the 20 gauge cost. That is directly tied to how strapped we are with gauge when stance penalty is taken into consideration. If there was no stance penalty then I feel like Onslaught's cost would be some what justified and honestly the short cd means that I can move that much faster between adds and boss.
Feel's pretty bad ass sometimes when you are attacking a boss, add spawn and then you rush them and use an aoe attack. Also you need to consider content. It's great in pvp and I don't have to think about the cost since getting to the opponent immediately is far more important than spamming tomahawk till I get to melee range. Will it be great in Savage who knows? It's all up to the devs.
Or better yet make it gain resources instead of using them . . .
It's pretty similar to DRK's Plunge, outside of enmity generation, and less potency. I don't see why some abilities such as these have CDs if they cost a resource.
Of course it's imo. I thought that was implied.
They could have a min range req to prevent people from spamming it.
IMO, having a gap closer used as an ability to maximize dps is incredibly boring. Fc is my dps ability and id rather use that than a stupid shoulder tackle.
Oh hey, I remember this thread. I actually read it a while back and it was what got me really thinking about Onslaught.
I still don't think it's quite as bad as people think it is, but I'll fully agree that the skill feels off. And that's as valid of a criticism of it as any.
Unfun is the most valid criticism imo. Isn't that the whole point of gaming afterall?
Personally, what I find fun is adapting my resource use to adapt both to fights and to the group, as well as planning ahead and resource management. Part of why I like Onslaught is because it's not something you always want to hit off CD except to pick up adds or under certain conditions. WAR now is, IMHO, a LOT more fun than it was in HW.
For the record, I agree with the desire to not mash Onslaught on cooldown, and I like the fact that we're not doing that now.
I just can't think of a great way to keep that design and also make it feel good to press. The best idea that I came up with (which I'll be the first to admit isn't very good) is to just put it on the GCD.
They could just add a stun effect to it making it similar to shoulder tackle. That was the one thing that pissed me off about war and drk is that if they want a stun they need to role class it and its 25 seconds for low blow when in 3.0 brutal swing was only 20 seconds. Why the nerf to stuns SE?
But it's already as efficient as Fell Cleave, depending on the window alignment caused by saving that GCD...
Granted, I'd be fine with buffing Fell Cleave, too, faintly.
That said, the primary Warrior issue isn't its theoretical DPS; it's how rigid its best theoretical DPS rotation is. Means of reducing the skill gap would probably go a longer way than potency buffs themselves. This would include changes such as to the Beast Gauge costs on swap, and/or perhaps even further reducing the cooldown of Onslaught as an easily meshed spender.
Heck, you could up the potency and make the cost anywhere from 10 to 30, costing Beast Gauge in order to "rush" the cooldown. Then you'd have a really easy means of depleting gauge before a swap. You could then maybe use a similar system to remove the initial cost from Unchained or Inner Release but allowing a Rage cost (in amounts of 10 Rage and consequent seconds of "rush") to allow you to activate them 30 seconds early (at an effective CD of 90, down from 120)—slightly increasing maximal DPS, but mostly just allowing more toolkit leniency and optionality.
Or, you get rid of those issues entirely, perhaps with a faint reduction to the maximal rotation DPS to be balanced by tiny and less dependent potency buffs across staple skills, by getting rid of swap costs completely but decreasing the maximum gauge to an amount with less window of overcap leniency / prepared burst.
Is there a problem if I find it absurdly fun to be dashing all over the map? :)
Sure... controller and keyboard turner melee DPS must hate me now... and I'm probably not doing better DPS than an agile DPSer... but this thing is silly fun. In dungeons I use it often just to 'slap some enmity' onto a side mob, then go back to what I was focusing on. Or to quickly get to a boss that has just done the 'run to other side of map and line up a massive cone attack' move that SE loves so much...
My idea of fun is to not be hindered or punished for playing to the best of my ability. I can be punished for making a mistake and that's okay but to be punished for something as simple as changing stances when in 3.0 that wasn't an issue is wrong. Let's take SAM for example. It's gameplay is very smooth and all the moves flow into each other. Loosing sen for gauge is not even a big deal as it rewards you with more dps if you time it correctly. Now lets take a look at WAR. Everything is nice and smooth until you realize that you need to tank swap. Sitting at 100% gauge only to loose half for something as mundane as tank swapping is annoying.