Another Melee DPS Post

And we’re back to what feels like a monthly occurance on the forums: Melee DPS.

Let’s be clear, I don’t want an entire new class. The devs have enough to do as it is, and I’m sure that a new class would take too much time away from adding new endgame content, improving early game tutorials, ect.

And let’s be honest, we don’t need a new class. We already have a class with the makings of melee DPS: Warrior.

While warrior is my favorite class in the game, I will also admit it is one of the more underperforming classes in the game. It could use a slight revitalization to make it more interesting, and finally decide whether melee DPS would work in Orbus.

I’m advocating for a talent or small shield change to give warrior the opportunity to be played as melee dps without being reported for game throwing when I pull up in a Mines 15 with my small shield.

The two main suggestions are:

  • Give warrior a damage bonus when using the small shield. It could even be a level 30 talent that just says “gain a 300% damage bonus when using the small shield”. We’ve seen damage modifiers based on shield already with the damage reduction due to the large shield, so it shouldn’t be too hard to implement.
  • Make wound bleed stack a few times. Currently, doing another wound will replace the bleed before it actually ticks, resulting in the bleed never doing any damage. Making it stack 3(?) times would allow the talent to actually do something. The weapon affix “bleed” already does this.

Both of these ideas have the infrastructure already implemented, and would be awesome to try out. Hell, let us try it out for a week and see what happens. If it’s awful, at least we will stop asking.

4 Likes

I’m for making the class function better in this aspect purely to make it more playable in pvp. I really don’t think you could or should make it a viable melee dps class. I’ve gone through the many reasons why close range melee dps classes don’t really work in Orbus many times in other posts before but the tldr of it is:

Warrior works because it has agro. Orbus’s movement is intentionally restrictive to make stamina a resource which is fine as long as you aren’t trying to stay within arms reach of an enemy walking away from you. tanks can sometimes try their best to keep enemies still but even the little repositioning strafes the enemies do would be incredibly frustrating.

There is nothing inherently skill testing about warrior if things aren’t attacking you. DPS classes need to be more complex and difficult to learn than tank and healers because they don’t need to worry as much about adapting to different bosses or situations. Warrior would have to be reworked to be significantly more complex to justify being a viable dps because in it’s current state it would have no relevant abilities besides sword rush and shield bash and it would just stand there spamming wound which is a problem because unlike mage combos are not hard to do or learn.

That being said I think the class could be buffed I just don’t think it should be remotely viable. If players want to live out their SAO fantasies I think they should be allowed to. It would help a lot with new player retention to have warrior function as a dps well enough to kill things in the overworld. additionally in pvp, the low inherent complexity of the class isn’t a problem because you are fighting things that are intelligent and fight back at melee range which functions as its own kind of complexity.

Shaman would like a word.

3 Likes

If a warrior can move 10 degrees to adjust to a strafing stafrusher I think a melee dps can do the same. If a ranged player pulls off a tank, do what the tank does and sword rush. Or hamstring if you’re paranoid.

I feel like people are overthinking it. Warrior dps is viable with number tweaking. Its toolbox is primitive and I personally think it wouldn’t be very fun to play.

2 Likes

I mean, let’s be honest. A fireball mage’s toolbox is just as primative. Warrior is essentially just fireball mage except you have more boss mechanics to worry about because you are a melee ranged dps. It’s easy to implement, and it’s up to the players to decide whether it works or is fun.

At worst, I expect it to be about as exciting as fireball mage or rapidity ranger, and at best it could be fun to dodge slams on temple, use your shield to block hits for main tank, hamstring for the main tank, ect.

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The difference for mage is that there is complexity inherent to the casting system. yes mages can just spam fireball but making fireballs is not easy to do and there is additional room for growth and complexity through shortcuts, perfect casts, and trying to cast as fast as possible. Additionally, players may choose to only spam fireball but that is a choice not a hard skill ceiling for the class. some mages do rotation and even fireball mages should know how to do knockback, frost 2/3, decurse, polymorph, affliction 2, resurrection, and triplicity.
warrior isn’t the same because doing a combo is not very hard. The game assigns the direction closest to what you swing in and there is no “failed swing” for not swinging exactly horizontal or vertical. Its also not very hard to do combos as fast as the game will let you. most players actually start out swinging too fast and need to slow down to proc their combos.

the difference between dps warrior and mage and ranger is that dps warrior has a very low skill ceiling. Again I’m 100% for getting it to a state where players can mess around with it, I just don’t think it should be able to actually keep up with actual dps classes. I think making bleed stack would make sense, maybe give it a bit more damage when its using small shield, maybe make cleave better to give them a second viable damage combo.

Also you can already do DPS warrior. Scott parsed almost 35k on it on Cindy and I’m sure you could probably get that quite a bit higher with practice and more thought put into optimizing the tiles and gear. The class doesn’t do great damage but it certainly does enough to matter and you could probably pull your weight up until mid level shards and even if your numbers are low you can still do high level shards and raids with it if you can convince people to bring you along. the proposed changes would be nice but they mostly just have to do with numbers so there really isn’t anything stopping you from slapping on a warrior and jumping into dungeons with it right now if you really want to find out how playable it is.

Sure, Scott used a +6 sword with perfect affixes and full potions and his best ever parse was able to hit roughly the same amount of DPS as a mediocre DPS of every other class.

I’ve done it in shards. It sucks. It’s a fraction of the DPS of any other class while being far more physically intensive than any other class (even mage). I can pull out my +6 charged strikes sword, hit 5 per second consistantly and have full CC + CD gear and I still cap out at around 20k. Adding pots and tiles, the highest estimate would be around 25k. Not quite sure what Scott did differently, but let’s say that 35k is the top a warrior could realistically do.

For your point about toolkit, warrior has its own kit. Cleave for AoE, hamstring to help a tank kite, wound for single target, stuns and interrupts with shield, sword raise and shield slam for party damage buff, blocking a hit for the tank with small shield, ect. Using sword dash on cooldown for the intimidate buff, same with shield slam.

Warriors need to keep up consistent, clean and wide swings 5 times per second in order to maintain maximum DPS. If you get sloppy and make you strikes to diagonal or small, it’s a dps loss, and performing incorrect swings will stop the entire combo leading to massive damage losses.

I don’t know if you’ve tried actually doing warrior DPS, but it’s incredibly difficult to keep up. It’s not like provoke where swing distance doesn’t matter and a small wrist flick through you shield will suffice. Swing damage is based on swing size, so you need to keep up fast, large motions for long fights while also dealing with boss mechanics like slams which a ranged DPS class doesn’t have to worry about.

It already has a skill ceiling and a skill floor, it only needs the numbers.

3 Likes

Dps warrior is one of the most distrutive hard to play classes in practice. Having the game aggree with full swing every swing at high speed seems impossible.

And when self shield breaking used to be a thing, it was also one of the most fun ones to think about for dps optimization. If that would be back it would in my opinion be a full fleshed dps mechanic wise.

3 Likes

Shaman would like 4 words actually. :joy_cat:

Agree with you on the Warrior being a viable DPS with some number tweaks. :relaxed:

Disagree with you on the fun to play part.

In OG I wandered the overworld as a DPS warrior, almost never even pulled out my shield(s) unless the enemies got overwhelming (as they got in the way), and had tons of fun.

The game is what you make it.

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