Interview with xenosys-vex

[Aana]

This is what he said, copy/pasted straight from the article. It is a direct argument for a buff to Fell Cleave damage with the logic that because other classes got big hard hitting abilities, Fell Cleave is no longer "Fell Cleavey" enough and other abilities are stealing it's thunder.



Yes, he then argues that WAR is too burst dependent and says that an alternative to Fell Cleave buffs is to boost combo ability potencies.

He provided contradicting arguments that only agree on one thing, "WAR needs moar deeps!", which lines up with my satirical summation of the interview.

Really I feel his position is actually based less on objective concerns over balance and more about wanting to not feel challenged in WAR feeling like, as Xeno himself likes to put it, the "big dick" job.

What I got out of the interview was a few things regarding the "fell cleavyness" of war.

Its 2 separate ideas.

Idea1: FC used to have more individual 'impact' because 500 pot was unheard of in HW. To maintain that 'fell cleavyness' impact it would need to be increased because there has been potency creep across the board and FC did not participate in that. (Newer skills have high pot, like ast, old skills have power creeped significantly across all classes, etc)
Idea 2: War is very reliant on its burst window every 2 min and should be rebalanced to be less 'all in'. This is where he talks about increasing rotation potency and lowering FC.

A quick glance seems to say he wants to buff FC, buff the rotation, separate IR, buff buff buff moar damage.

But these are not mutually exclusive ideas. I think the core of his thing is that instead of giving FC power creep to keep up, we got IR and infuriate recast buffs. This lets us do MORE FCs, but each FC is less impactful and moved our damage to small windows. He wants to reverse that trend make FC more powerful to bring back the OOMPH it used to have and TRADE that extra power by lessening the burst windows. He even suggests just that. Make IR buff the next 3 FCs and put it on 1 min timer. Instead of 6 weak FCs every 2 min, do 3 stronger ones more regularly. This brings back the FC 'impact' while also changing the jobs focus on itty bitty bust windows. In addition to weakening the burst windows bump up the basic rotation to power creep it like most other jobs.

I don't see this as a BUFF WAR MOAR DAMAGE RAWR! Idea. I see it more as a reimagining of how war could PLAY.

I don't particularly agree with his view in all respects. Its essentially a rework of how war plays and that's not really a balance fix. Just a dream of playing his fantasy of war. You even see it in his discussion of why he played war. He always plays big 2handed weapon jobs. He wants that fantasy of cracking a mountain in half with 1 blow. Not being a ninja striking with 100 weak attacks. Instead of lots of 'little' FCs, he wants big, fewer, manly ones. Just his idea of fun.