TLDR; High impact damaging cc abilities are not the issue, High impact damaging cc abilities that have virtually no startup animations eliminating their counterplay are the issue. Don’t nerf well designed combat flow abilities, adjust the ones that offer no counterplay other than being a mind reader.
The new vision for cc and staggers is a clear distinction between abilities that do damage and abilities that cc, as such it’s been stated that abilities that cc will do low or medium damage and abilities that are intended for damage will not stagger. This thought process is missing the core of the problem, in an action combat system we want out attacks and combos to have weight and impact if we land them; however on the other side we also need attacks that have high impact to the flow of combat to be telegraphed so that we can appropriately react assuming we aren’t animation locked. Staggers on high damaging high impact single target abilities are not bad in and of themself it is only when the animation for the high impact ability has no counter play. This is a systemic issue the devs keep getting wrong, musket and bb have the same issue since they have high damage abilities that are hitscan with no startup animations it’s bad for the game, same things applies for melee weapons with high damaging stagger abilities with no animation, it’s bad for the game.
Take for example two abilities Flourish and Finish on the rapier and Reverse stab on the sns. Both abilities do high damage have grit and stagger, the difference is that nobody has ever complained about reverse stab being too strong, why is that? The reason is because the revere stab startup animation before the stagger and damage is applied is very long and telegraphed and allows for a lot of counter play. Juxtapose this to flourish and finish which is an ability that staggers on the 3rd frame after the animation starts (~45ms) it’s not humanly possible to react to flourish and finish and instead you have to predict when the user is going to use it and block or roll before they even use the ability, this is bad design for a high damage ability in an action based combat system.
Considering the above here is a list of abilities that I think should keep their damage and cc component. Changes to these abilities should be reverted in the ptr. I would consider these abilities well balanced in their current state.
- Reverse stab
- Path of Destiny
- Wrecking Ball
- Shield Rush
- Feral Rush
- Evade Shot
- Incinerate
- Perforate
- Javelin
The following abilities should also keep their damage and stagger but have their startup animations increased to be more in line with the already well balanced damage + stagger/cc abilities in my first list:
- Flourish and Finish
- Reap
- Skyward slash
- Leaping strike
- Ice spike
- Maelstrom
