Whats the point of powder?

[Tila]

Playing GNB a bit and it soon felt like their gameplay mechanic was a bit pointless. Since your powder combo is mostly cooldown gated, you have no way to use it defensively, and your normal use of it is all pure damage they could have just made the combo purely cooldown based, made fated circle a third button to your aoe rotation and burst strike a fourth button to your single target rotation. With this nothing would have really changed other than bloodfest losing purpose.

Without something there with the powder gauge to actually choose to use, it feels completely useless, tacked on even; like its just there to give GNB a gauge of some sort.

[ReiMakoto]

You can Stockpile powder to more effectively make use of burst windows such as no mercy, trick ect, having it be a 4th hit in the combo chain loses this flexibility.

[Tila]

You can Stockpile powder to more effectively make use of burst windows such as no mercy, trick ect, having it be a 4th hit in the combo chain loses this flexibility.

Counter point: since you can only hold two charges, keeping one cartridge on hand for your cartridge combo effectively ensures you'll always be able to do as you say for a burst window, and if you dont have your combo ready for the burst window you're doing something wrong. If you could have more than two at a time you'd have a point. As it's designed, its rather mindless and only there to give bloodfest a purpose.

[ReiMakoto]

Counter point: since you can only hold two charges, keeping one cartridge on hand for your cartridge combo effectively ensures you'll always be able to do as you say for a burst window, and if you dont have your combo ready for the burst window you're doing something wrong. If you could have more than two at a time you'd have a point. As it's designed, its rather mindless and only there to give bloodfest a purpose.

Picture a scenario, you've just used solid barrel, to go up to 2 charges. No Mercy/Trick attack is 6 or so seconds away. If Burst Strike was 4th in the combo string, you're forced to burst strike not in those buff windows, as it currently is you can go up to brutal shell in the combo, pop your buffs and get the full gnashing combo and burst strike under the trick window, and then you can solid and get another burst strike in no mercy.

Then thinking optimisation in a raid setting, if you know an add phase is approaching, you can stockpile your powder for when the adds spawn in order to burst them down quicker. More Freedom= More optimisation.

[Tila]

Picture a scenario, you've just used solid barrel, to go up to 2 charges. No Mercy/Trick attack is 6 or so seconds away. If Burst Strike was 4th in the combo string, you're forced to burst strike not in those buff windows, as it currently is you can go up to brutal shell in the combo, pop your buffs and get the full gnashing combo and burst strike under the trick window, and then you can solid and get another burst strike in no mercy.

Then thinking optimisation in a raid setting, if you know an add phase is approaching, you can stockpile your powder for when the adds spawn in order to burst them down quicker. More Freedom= More optimisation.

Thats the thing, you in effect have no reason to stockpile more than one at a time (and should always be doing so). You're over stating the importance here. If you have 3+ charges then yes, powder would have more meaning, but with only two powder at a time and needing one for your 25second combo, you should ALWAYS stockpile unless you're in a burst window and not near the start of a powder combo. Your own example if a bit of an extreme maybe. The only time you'd hold on is in the 6 seconds you'd need for a combo to go through being how much time till a burst window comes up. Sinces that is pretty much the ONLY thing powder is good for, and its not even that good at it as GNB has the worst burst window damage.

And it has that shitty burst window because there is so little powder. Having so little makes it meaningless.

[shao32]

No please let's don't give GNB a burst strike spam window we have enough tanks doing that. , The 2 charges are fine.

[BiffWellington]

Sean Patrick Flannery is a troubled yoot with psionic powers, just trying to make his way in the world. That's the point of Powder.

I didn't enjoy it, myself, but I know several people who did.

Oh! You weren't talking about the movie, were you? Never mind...

[Tila]

No please let's don't give GNB a burst strike spam window we have enough tanks doing that. , The 2 charges are fine.

I dont really want that, more so just wanting the powder to have purpose.