New Skill Trees Sneak Peek Part IV

[Team Kaos]

Intercepting Guard
Passive
Requires War specialization.
Requires 55 trains in War skills.
A defensive guard that helps to reduce the damage received while tanking or using a parry fighting style. Gladiators fighting with a shield will enjoy a much greater reduction to the damage they receive.

Along with the other War defensive skills, could we be seeing a return of the once devastating and outlawed Total Parry? what is now currently massively reduced and re-badged as Tank.

[Apoca1ypse]

It would be kinda cool to see

[Dainoji]

It would be kinda cool to see

No. No it wouldn't! Total Parry gave defensive glads near immunity without any regard to skill or gear or build. All one needed to do is set the drop down to Total Parry and you blocked 80% of all attacks.

I doubt we'll see something like the old Total Parry but certainly it looks like a 100 skill tree war glad will be tough to take down, although it would appear the rage tree will be their kryptonite.

[Kreegan]

Well, so far it seems that Theatrics will have very few chances against a defensive War and Rage will counter every attempt to play defensively, effectively keeping the Rage > War > Theatrics > Rage status quo. It all depends on how powerful each of the announced skills is compared to its "counter-skill" though.

[Apoca1ypse]

No. No it wouldn't! Total Parry gave defensive glads near immunity without any regard to skill or gear or build. All one needed to do is set the drop down to Total Parry and you blocked 80% of all attacks.

I doubt we'll see something like the old Total Parry but certainly it looks like a 100 skill tree war glad will be tough to take down, although it would appear the rage tree will be their kryptonite.

I should elaborate a tad: It would be cool to see defensive glads get a boost

[CaineDeSoulis]

you must not have fought a war in a while dain. a Warcry attack followed by a Round 1 Tank Blocks about 80% of attacks with a pretty massive reduction in damage. considering most of the higher level war glads use a Similar strat I could see why warcry was a tad too strong to keep around. Defensive based gladiators needed a pretty large increase in power. Most war gladiators currently are just Rage builds with armor and the best war skills available. personally i believe when a strategy starts becoming the "Only" strategy in conjunction with gladiator type there may be a problem with balance.

honestly if there were "Start of round x" trigger's we would be seeing a great deal of tanking.

[Dainoji]

I fight War glads all the time and Tank doesn't bother me too much, it can be hard to get through sometimes, but it isn't anywhere near as difficult as Total Parry was.

You are aware that there are triggers for rounds 1-6, yes?

[Prinny]

I believe Caine means that your glad starts with tank, switches to attacking and repeats this next round though I could be totally wrong Dain^^

[Cynaidh]

What he is talking about Dainoji is the strat that Oedi came up with that probably 90% of the higher end warriors use where they set their default attack to 10 bash 7(or something similar) and then their 2nd line is round 1 7 tank 1 (or something similar) what this is does is war cry wins initiative for the warrior they make 1 or 2 attacks (depending on 2h or duel wielding) and then the round 1 strat kicks in (your default fires off for the first 5ish seconds of a fight even if you have a round 1 trigger) putting them in tank, so they get off their attacks and then tank the rest of the round, its a great stratagy they do their damage and then tank all incoming damage for the rest of the round, war cry and armour movement is what makes it work. After the skill change warriors will no longer be able to do this strat.

I like the fact that the new trees give warriors a reason to use a shield, i know me and Prinny both where just trying out shields on warriors and it ended up working so much better to put a hammer in the off hand that it's not justifiable right now to run a shield.

What is surprising me the most with these changes is that the Theatrics tree is now going to be the old warrior tree + toys it looks like. If i had to pick the important warrior skills currently i'd go with a weapon skill, Create Distance, Armour Movement, War Cry, Hamstring, and Athleticism. The rest of the points go in other trees. Now lets look at the new theatrics tree, they don't get Create Distance but they get Crowd Pleaser and surprise ending instead (surprise ending is better then create distance in that it makes the attack hit the attacker rather then just avoiding it), they get armour movement, war cry (Overwhelming Presence just seems to be the old war cry under a new name), and hamstring. The only thing they didn't get was athleticism but instead they have KO, GV, and Sig Move to work with. With them having the old war cry (Overwhelming Presence) + counter attack... I think its safe to say they will always attack first, I think they will play a lot more like the current warriors duo then how theatrics currently play.

[AngryVermin]

Do you get extra points for a 10 in Tier 3 in another tree? That typically takes prob 30%+ more points to attain because your abilities prob do not align giving you a lower percentage and because of other items that you usually have unlearned?