Onslaught change for WAR

[mxllxr]

Since the 4.05 update I've finally been able to enjoy my WAR like I remember it so kudos to SE for making those revisions - however, there are some minor tweaks/additions that need to be made but I'm focusing on Onslaught in this post whilst making note of other skills/synergies for easier critique/up-votes.

We already had 4 Beast Gauge dumps prior to learning our insane uppercut of Upheaval which has great planning/synergy with Defiance, plus a handful of other abilities whilst giving us a reason to switch out of Deliverance - this skill is perfect in my opinion.

On the other hand, the Beast Gauge cost to damage ratio of Onslaught is absolutely not worth the investment. We lost Fracture in 4.0 and the reduction in TP for Heavy Swing (albeit a welcomed change) leads to a lot of wasted TP in numerous situations, I can hardly get rid of it quickly enough. One being those moments of back-to-back Inner Beast/Fell Cleave combos as they act as a natural way to regenerate TP anyway. I want to feel an urge/requirement to plan around Equilibrium in Deliverance, not to mention Goad and Tactician are being thrown about so when are we even thinking about TP?


I propose the following change: Onslaught costs 20 TP but generates 10 Beast Gauge for 100 potency.


This way we can fill in those gaps around the 40/90 range, dump the excess TP, not be gated by having zero gauge before a pull, give the Deliverance:Equilibrium more forward-thinking/planning and add some complexity to our Beast Gauge generation and stance-dancing. Sometimes you need that oGCD to squeeze in an extra 10 gauge to get off another Inner Beast for some timely mitigation or damage from Fell Cleave.

As it stands I dislike the feeling of thinking I've wasted precious resources for a skill that could've been spent on something much more potent and integral to our class.

Thoughts?

[FPZ]

Onslaught synergies well with the 3 & 6 fel cleave mid-fight rotations / downtime rotations as well as generating x10 aggro which is amazing for your snap aggro + shirks.

In it's current form it has a strong foundation and fits neatly into all our rotations, I suggest simply raising the potency at this point and leaving the rest alone.

Wasting TP really doesn't come into the equation, it's all about beast gauge management, riding your GCD and landing your berserks every 60 seconds.

No need to try and make WAR even more complex then it is already by worrying about TP on top of everything else.

[Crater]

This is the thing about Onslaught and its damage/cost:

When you use a Fell Cleave, you're not just getting a boost of 500 potency for 50 Gauge, because if you didn't use Fell Cleave, you would be using a standard combo GCD instead. In other words, the gain from using a Fell Cleave can only really be said to be the difference between using FC, and using the combo action you would have used otherwise.

Storm's Path and Storm's Eye combos each total up to 610 potency across three GCDs, for an average of 203.3 potency per GCD. Fell Cleave is therefore (on average) a gain of 296.7 potency over the combo action you would have used instead during that GCD.
However, while using Fell Cleave costs BG, your standard combos are where you actually gain BG. Assuming that you're rotating Eye-Path-Path, you're generating 80 BG for every 9 standard combo GCDs, or an average of 8.9 BG/GCD. Fell Cleave represents a loss of this 8.9 BG, in addition to its 50BG cost, so the effective cost is 58.9 BG.

Potency/BG for every Fell Cleave is then 296.7/58.9, or ~5.04 p/BG. And bear in mind that losing 50 BG in one go reduces your crit rate by 5%.


Now with that in mind, let's look at Onslaught. This one is actually really simple: When you use Onslaught, any gains and costs are as-is, because you use Onslaught in addition to the GCD action you would be using otherwise.

Onslaught is 100 potency, for 20 BG. You can do that without really thinking: 5 potency per point of BG. The 20 BG cost also only lowers your crit rate by 2% on your next GCD.


The similarities there should be pretty striking. Neither skill is an automatic 'use BG on this ASAP, every time' skill like Upheaval or pre-4.05 Inner Release, so both of them are your BG dumps. Both of them convert BG into damage at a rate of approximately 5 potency per point of BG. In a vacuum, Onslaught and Fell Cleave are approximately equally good for your overall DPS. Fell Cleave has the advantage of pushing your combo back by one GCD, which can help a lot with aligning your combos to your Berserk/Infuriate. Onslaught has the advantages of being an insanely good enmity tool, and giving you more mobility than any other tank.

Think of Onslaught as a way to do one third of a Fell Cleave, at exactly the same level of efficiency. Pretty much every aspect of the skill is powerful, and getting rid of the associated costs is essentially just a straight DPS buff to the tank that already has a DPS advantage - while robbing the class of a key gauge management skill that plays a huge part in how smoothly WAR can cope with any downtime or mechanics.

[Felorr]

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Well said. I feel like people who are asking for Onslaught to be changed are still learning how warrior works. Without Onslaught as a gauge dump, you'll either be overcapping (bad) or using FC to dump too close to a Zerk (also bad). Onslaught lets us dump small amounts of gauge frequently so it is not wasted while managing the gauge optimally for use in Zerk phases.

[mxllxr]

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I really appreciate this response - the detail and patience executed here taught me a lot so thanks for that. Ultimately I'm still learning WAR but this approach to the number-crunching/CD management will help me going forward with other classes as well and broaden my thinking when it comes to skills. Kudos to you.

[mxllxr]

On a side note, what's your opinion on Infuriate not being usable out of combat? That's my main gripe from a fun-factor point of view, not being able to charge in immediately off the bat.

Starting a fight at 50 BG then dropping to 30 BG after an Onslaught into an Eye combo seems to fit nicely but would be bless to get your input on that.

(Unless you can guide me to another post that's already talking about this)

[Felorr]

On a side note, what's your opinion on Infuriate not being usable out of combat? That's my main gripe from a fun-factor point of view, not being able to charge in immediately off the bat.

Starting a fight at 50 BG then dropping to 30 BG after an Onslaught into an Eye combo seems to fit nicely but would be bless to get your input on that.

(Unless you can guide me to another post that's already talking about this)

It's a good thing. A very good thing. I don't know if you played WAR in 3.X, but the ~50 second pull macros were getting pretty old. If we could infuriate outside of combat, we'd be waiting +1min for every encounter.

[Shinkyo]

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If you're going to blow 20 gauge immediately, use upheaval instead. It can be good in certain fights (lakshmi EX) and upheaval will be back on CD for your delayed Zerk IR, plus as I'm sure you know, Infuriate will be back up as well.

But in general, don't use gauge until your IR, that way you maximize your opener during Trick Attack/ Embolden

[mxllxr]

Loving the input from the above posts, thanks a lot. Last question would be, outside of those Zerk IR windows and lining up CDs with other classes, should I use Onslaught on CD given what @Crater mentioned?

[Umbeliel]

Loving the input from the above posts, thanks a lot. Last question would be, outside of those Zerk IR windows and lining up CDs with other classes, should I use Onslaught on CD given what @Crater mentioned?

Not on cooldown. Basically you'll wind up using it in two circumstances:

1. Twice when Inner Release is up

2. Depending on the fight you might use it twice in-between a berserk to level out your gauge before serk is back up. The reason for it is because you SHOULD be using Upheaval pretty much on cooldown(basically, if berserk has >10s left before it's back up, use it. The goal is to always upheaval during serk.), which will spend 20 gauge and throw your generation out of sync if left as is between serks- the extra 40 spent levels it back out. There's other ways to do the same thing, though, but I've never sat down to do the math on using two onslaughts versus throwing out an extra cleave.

Both of these are, obviously, ignoring when you might use it for positioning. Which... isn't very common, but there's a lot of wiggle room to incorporate it as a part of point #2 since it's cd is only 15s(so you basically have a 15s window to throw it out at any given time). As a rule of thumb, you're aiming for 70~100 gauge on every berserk(I usually am at 70 or 80) and absolutely always 100 on every Inner Release, and in both cases you want to be using both as close to on cooldown as possible.

Onslaught as is is... more or less fine, but I'd appreciate if the potency was raised a bit.