2H Change

Leviticus

I am curious to see what others think of the 2H change, specifically the change to overwhelm, brain and head fractures? I don't know the intent of the change besides going off of Classlead 165. Anyone who sticks around to let you hammer-time on their head is probably not going to survive anyways

Morthif

My reason for the classlead was in hopes for a little more flexibility in group combat since 2h is almost always a liability in a group. The damage scales well for overwhelm/brain vs skull fractures I just don't ever see it being a scenario in groups or 1v1. You can also just brain twice in the same time it takes to Overwhelm then brain.

Morthif

Also how does having Discipline on a 40 second cooldown help mitigate clumsiness for 2h?

Leviticus

Yeah, I don't understand the change either.

Mindshell

It ensures you don't miss your hew/pulverise + upset. 2h still has access to prep to get your momentum going.

Regi

My opinion is the discipline addition on 45s balance is a good counter to clumsiness situationally, while remaining long enough cooldown to not be too strong of a buff. Like Mindshell said, the only practical time to really consistently use it is on limb damage break shots, which is a good thing. Good change, appropriate rebalance. 2h really doesn't have too much issue with clumsiness that can't be solved by playing defensively. A pure momentum class that's focused on sticking clumsy should be able to punish and slow you down, end of story. Very very glad they didn't do the maintaining damage/fracture change.

Overwhelm Brain though is very disappointing. It is a burst damage form that takes 6.5s of balance (the hit landing after 3s), and relies on head fractures, which are (rightly) easily the hardest fracture to keep for any length of time. There are many ways it could be changed to be more viable, but the first thing I'd do is at MINIMUM make sure it hits as hard as a standard brain, for that extra 3s cost, having the possibility of doing less damage is pretty silly. After that, the incremental damage increase from head fractures could be tuned to something less aggressive obviously, but honestly this would still be a niche move. With those same amount of stuck head fractures that make using this move worth it, you're still better off using dry-disembowel for the level of burst damage it can provide.

For numbers, Overwhelm/Brain does a fixed % of damage at base (0) head fractures, then adds that exact same amount per head fracture. This number seems to vary from about 5-12% based on the target's relative blunt defense and damage mitigation. Brain without overwhelm has been cut down by about 30% of its original damage (Don't have thorough notes on this, but a target that used to take 28% on a brain now takes 19%, I know that), but brain with broken head now doubles the damage (from about 19% to 38%). This means "dry" brains are really never worth using over hew/pulverise, because they don't provide valuable skull fractures.

Brain as a maneuver was never viable in 1v1 and duelling, and it definitely still isn't, in fact it's now much worse. It used to be able to punish mistakes on poorly advised tumbles, or provide a bit of extra momentum/burst through rebounding, but with the re-balanced damage formula I probably won't be using it at all, even in group combat. I may have to change my alias to break the habit too, because damn I loved the move in group fights prior to this change. For 1v1, the change won't really cause me to lose duels, because I was already only using it for the more challenging option of execution methods, but it's gone from barely viable to pretty much bad manners to kill people with. Very sad days.