Musketeer Class Changes

[Yecal_Wulf]

This sound like a very cool idea!
I think that its going to be hard to judge until we try it in general but the new talent changes sound perfect!

[Ewok]

It seems like most everyone likes the idea of resetting cooldowns and boosting damage/healing for a short time, just not the mechanism for doing it right?

With the idea of resetting cooldowns this is currently what the super ability does. So either this part could be left out or the super should be changed.

Also on the boosting damage/healing portion like Human said the orbs have been buffed anyway so it might not be needed(?) and Heals shouldn’t need to be empowered to be useful.

I would rather see the bonus (however it ends up being implemented) be a boost to everyone’s DPS to make it in line with a bard constantly boosting DPS. I think even if the musketeer was buffed to the point of being OP as a healer, people will still rather have a bard because they do enough healing to keep everyone alive AS WELL AS boost DPS.

[Colonel_Coon]

@Damage_Da_Mage Super happy musket is getting some love your the best.

[Charles_M1]

actually that comment about the shaman made me realize something. If the musky can shoot their turret the same way shaman can shoot orbs from their hand that may be a simple quality of life improvement for people who have short arms and can’t chuck their turret like a baseball player. This isn’t already a thing right? I haven’t played musky in a long time.

[Pyrarrows]

Looking forward to trying out the changes, All of them sound awesome, it will be nice having a bit more choice in our talents with the required ones being added as a core part of the class, also the Lifewell & Weakness/Frost orb changes are great as well. It does seem that the gizmos will need some work.

Personally I would like it if the gizmos would spawn orbiting around the musketeer (Not the musket itself, but floating around the player) & could either be shot or be thrown in the general direction of the turret (Or maybe grab & pull the trigger to use them, like when you switch turret modes). The other comments on making them more like the Rangers weak points would be good as well. In the end, since we don’t always stay near our turrets, having the gizmos spawn on the turret just doesn’t seem to work.

Gadgets need to be easy to use & not be a distraction as distracted healers lead to lots of wipes.

[Metris_Marshmallow]

I just woke up catchin up on the thread, glad that the gizmo-idea is dropped. I was never amongst those complaining to have nothing to do in fights. I relocate the turret as we go, overcharge/empower it, watch out for tank and group, using the shield on short cd in quite some fights, assist with poison and interrupts etc.
On bossfights I noticed going with very experienced tanks makes it a calmer job, group standing in a spot, not moving; with less experienced tanks or dmg dealers almost every boss requires movement though, and in those fights I don’t need minigames.
Turret: As many others stated by now the turret is for those places where I can’t be myself all the time, that’s the whole point of an independent healing-device.

The bard feels a bit solipsist already, instead of the group you focus on your weapon, mostly, living in your own little note-world, heals are on autopilot, the main thing to do is find safe spots to play your minigame. The least I want is Musky becoming another class like that, it is bad enough that right after overcharge we need to care for our own health so much.

As for the others:

• Add a charged shot stun to the class (expect this to function similarly to the Scoundrel charged shot)

Very nice change.

• Buff potency of renew and cure wounds
• Reduce the cooldown of cure wounds
• Reduce the cooldown of decurse
• Combine weakness and frost orbs into one orb that will significantly weaken and slow the opponent over a short time

I like all of these changes, specially the planed individual “musky-weakness” which should adress the problems Scott brought up.
(Will we still be able to mass-decurse by shooting the turret? Read nothing about changes to this mechanic))

• Replace the current weakness orb with an Impact Orb that does damage to all enemies within its range. This can be used against a solo enemy for a larger amount of damage or that damage can be split among multiple enemies.

Yes, why not… it should be really worth equipping it though, since if you want to do damage, at all, with poison and this orb two slots are already occupied.

• Lifewell will now be a permanent class ability and will be located on the player’s body instead of requiring an orb slot
• The Total Recall talent will be made an innate class ability
• Will be replaced with a shield orb related talent. Small healing along with shield as one choice, small AoE explosion on expiration as the other choice.

Very good choice! Finally no longer preaching “use Total Recall” to new players. Not sure if anyone chooses the AoE talent though, except perhaps when leveling and then you likely don’t use shield much, at all.

• The Empowered Turret talent will be made an innate class ability
• Will be replaced with a talent that moves the current default turret/orb interaction to the charged shot

Very good choice! No more preaching to new players “use Empowered Turret”. If shooting your turret requires a charged shot that is awesome for QoL because it prevents accidentally shooting it (not sure if that should be a talent though; sounds rather like a logical thing to have as innate class ability, too).

[Elton_L]

Any plan for recolor/reskin the turret? Just to clarify when its in damage or healing mode.

[Acavi]

I would rather see the bonus (however it ends up being implemented) be a boost to everyone’s DPS to make it in line with a bard constantly boosting DPS. I think even if the musketeer was buffed to the point of being OP as a healer, people will still rather have a bard because they do enough healing to keep everyone alive AS WELL AS boost DPS.

EXACTLY. And as long a Healer can not do this, you can still rather bring a bard instead of a musky.
What about an orb you can shoot the turret or player with to boost dps, or add something to boost dps to the current super of the musky

Any plan for recolor/reskin the turret? Just to clarify when its in damage or healing mode.

Yes, please we NEED that!!!

[Frank_R]

Weakness : An offensive orb which weakens enemies to increase damage dealt to them for a short period of time. Time this well with your other party members for maximum damage.

I’m assuming you mean something more than the class mechanic that does exactly that… is weakness or crap or something? Or just unavailable because of the need to focus on heals?

[NotScott]

Weakness orb was nothing in comparison to a Bard in terms of damage boosting. We will see if this is still the case.

[Human]

Heres something that hasnt really been talked about… I would prefer the increased damage to be harder to attain, requiring more skill to do well. This could make it feel much more rewarding and fun if its implemented correctly. If its something that is easily attainable, then its just going to be a chore to add to our other chores (empowering and overcharging).

I keep using weak points on the mobs as an example because (to me) that sounds like the most fun way to achieve it that i have seen proposed, so i will continue to do that for this example…

What if you got a stacking damage buff for each consecutive weak point you hit on a target, but the targets got smaller as you gained more stacks (making them harder to hit) Then when you miss one, your stacks reset, making it theoretically possible to get quite high damage output, but, also very hard (making it inconsistent). It would require more of your focus and attention, to the point that its unlikely you will be able to fully commit to dps without neglecting healing duties (unless you are an incredibly talented shot)

Anyone remember “rolling ignites” on fire mages from World of Warcraft? Basically if you crit with a fire spell it would add a DOT for a percentage of the damage. If you crit again before the DOT expired it would add the additional damage to the DOT and reset its timer, essentially allowing you to achieve massive DOTS that wouldn’t expire if RNG was in your favor with crits. It had its downsides for sure (aggro/inconsistency) which were both really bad traits for a dps class. But, it felt sooo gooood getting those crits. You could do more damage with ice, but it just diddnt feel as rewarding. That sense of rewarding is what i would love to see in the damage system for muskies, but skill based, not rng. The damage doesnt need to be insane, just enough to get you amped up when you hit those points.

[Axile_Salamandra]

Sorry, I know I’m super late to this but I might as well still speak up about my thoughts on this. I’m super pumped to hear about the changes being made and looking forward to it very much. Overall it sounds as though our gameplay will feel smoother (gizmos aside, but we’ll only briefly talk about it later) and give us a much needed boost to utility.

I’m thrilled to hear about the impact orb and changes to weakness and hope their potencies are high enough to substantially increase our usefulness on the battlefield. There’s no way to make a group want a healer for content that doesn’t absolutely require one at super high skill levels, and that’s fine. These changes will still have a big effect anytime a MSK is present in a group and let’s just hope that someday we get a quick class swap option added.

I’m a little concerned about being OP on heals, but it’s hard to say without knowing any numbers. What will be the CD timer on Cure Wounds? How big of potency increases are we talking? If we’re getting higher potencies on Renew and Cure, shorter CD on Cure, increased heal potency on the turret, an always on your belt Lifewell, and a potential heal on shield orb as well? This sounds like quite a lot to add to our healing capabilities, but I won’t harp on it too much until we see how it flows with the new content.

Also, I do have a concern to bring up about the new charge shot. What’s the cooldown for it and how long will you have to hold the trigger to use it? I tend to keep my trigger held down for extended periods while lining up a shot, or using an ability at a specific time in combat.

Since we shoot on release, I imagine I’m not the only one who does that and I’m wondering how much it will affect this gameplay style. Has it can been considered to make it gesture based instead of holding down the trigger for x seconds? I mean, it’s a waste to hold the trigger for more than 2 seconds anyway, but I feel like we will be unintentionally using our charge shot/interrupt a lot as a result of this change.

Lastly, about the gizmos. A lot has been said and I’m pretty sure it’s been changed by now anyways, but I’d like to add this view on it. I also don’t think it would be enjoyable to have the gizmo mechanic as displayed in the video, but what was super great about the idea was that it was unique to the MSK. And I think whatever mechanic does get used, should be unique to the MSK.

I do agree that hitting weak points on mobs would feel good and natural to the way the class plays, however since the mechanic exists to buff the turret; I feel it should involve us interacting with the turret. I’m all for gizmos spawning/floating around the player and shooting the turret with them.

[Metris_Marshmallow]

Has it can been considered to make it gesture based instead of holding down the trigger for x seconds?

I think that would be more complicated and prevents that kind of playstyle even more since you must release your orbs asap to have your hands/musket free to prepare a charged. Nothing bad happens if you unintentionally release a charged. AS long as the charged is also applying the orbs you held back, like a shield (not sure how that is planned).
It’s normally time to recharge if interrupts are needed and the animation did not start. I can’t even think of a situation where you hold back down orbs for that long by pressing the trigger.

I shoot on release, normally, but mostly that takes a split-second. When I load a shield in advance to be ready once warrior-shield brakes I don’t though, it wouldn’t be helpful at all to have it pressed all the time since you might need other orbs in between. So the only case when I keep the trigger pressed for more than 1 sec is when I was about to shoot, but something unforeseen happens like the tank suddenly moving outta my view; but even that’s hardly ever as long as for example the scoundrel charged take.

PS: The planned mechanics fit nicely for those used to them because they play scoundrel btw; we switch classes all the time, even during runs, I find them pretty unique already… to get a consistent feeling for timing at least some base factors like charge-times could be similar.

[LiquidFire]

I think there is a great opportunity to add “work” if it is needed without adding in mundane tasks, so I am very glad the litter pick up game was nixed. I really like the concept of using the “weakspots” for a shooter class. Considering musketeers are “support” I think adding a little more focus to buffing would make sense.

I think a good solution could be a mix of some of the fore mentioned ideas. Make the weakness orb more worthy by skill. The idea would be to hit the mob w/ the weakness orb. That would give a basic damage boost / armor debuff w/e. But, also have it expose weakspots for the musketeer to shoot, each hit increases the buff by x%. Size of the weak spots decrease as the stacks increase. A missed shot, ANY shot unless an orb is loaded, reduces the stack by 1, but will not remove the base buff.

Musketeers would have to balance their additional DPS support with heals, and it may be enough of an additional role to make the musketeer’s support role slightly more than just heal. I could see a Weakness, poison, stack Weakness buff, stack, stack, stack, and mixing in a few bonus heals as more of a hybrid rotation. Even if you ran Renew, cure, shield or decurse, we would likely run weakness and try to keep it stacked as much as possible, except when we know we have to interrupt.

This would certainly keep a healer infinitely busy, and give them a nice DPS boost for the entire group…as well as make solo work a little less painful. I’m legitimately just learning the class, I think lvl 8 right now, so I may be missing some of the tenants of the musky, but, I think this fits the role and expands the role without breaking any balance or mechanics.