Fist - Wrath activation abilities

With the change Blade this beta weekend where spirit blade is automatically formed after getting 5 chi I would love to see a similar change to Fist weapons. Having to slot either Frenzied Wrath or Invigorating Wrath feels terrible when we have so few slots to fill.

I propose implementing a few significant changes:

  1. When we hit full fury we automatically go into either Frenzied Wrath or Invigorating Wrath, depending on if we have at least 51% allocation in healing.

  2. As Wrath abilities are so similar to some power abilities, when Wrath activates don’t replace the whole hotbar and instead just replace our fist power abilities that we have on our hotbar with their respective counterpart from the wrath hotbar.

As an AR/Fist user these changes (as well as any others, obviously there would need to be a ton of changes to abilities and passives and weapons for this to work correctly but you’re currently doing that to everything so I figured why not ask.) Would let me get more use out of my offhand weapon of choice, whether I’m DPSing or healing I could still fire my grenades instead if them blowing up in my face for starters.

I feel like Invigorating Wrath is mostly designed as a burst heal and automatically making that transition kind of breaks that functionality.

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Big difference between having to slot Spirit Blade and having to slot a Wrath. Sure both take up a slot on a limited bar, but Wrath gives you 4 additional abilities, unlike Spirit Blade. Besides Wrath is a burst both for heals and damage no? Kinda nice to be able to time said burst, especially with it being on a timer.

As for Wrath being useful off hand. The offhand is not supposed to use its mechanic well, that is the job of the main hand weapon. I could be mistaken but i think the weapon that auto activates Wrath, is the one that belong to the group of weapons that are supposed to support offhanding.

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It’s a sorta burst, wrath abilities do less damage/healing than power moves but cost 0 energy. So it’s more like doing 7-8 power moves in a row, assuming you cast it 5 times, and then use the energy from those attacks to do a couple more power moves.

If it just wasn’t a timer then it’d be fine, make it 3-5 activations of alternate-mode moves and only flip abilities that are fist in your normal build.

I don’t use fists as main, but when I read that, I thought it would be a pain for fists to do that when you didn’t want it to. You’d have no control over it.

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This only works if you have 3-4 abilities on your bar… If you offhand you wont have that, and aforementioned weapon makes that possible.

The change from timer to charges could maybe be a thing, dont know fist enough to see through Any issues that would cause. Though isnt there a passive or build in mechanic where you get a dmg/heal increase for not getting off the max amount of attacks/heals?

Let me try to explain why these changes were done to blade.
1: The selfhealing portion of the blade was a problem for tanking with a blade offhand, AND a problem in general since you had to sacrifice Spirit Blade in order to proc passive healing. No other weapon functioned like that, and the main healing sources are now intended to be Cruel Delight & the first weapon’s passive. Chi overflow was kind of getting too much in the way.
2: Contrary to the other weapons which use a “slot tax”, Spirit Blade virtually was doing nothing. It was an ability that you had to have on your bar & press just in order to enable your blade’s specialty mechanic. That design was awful.

Now, the difference with Wrath abilities for fists is that Wrath completely changes your action bar and allows you to perform new actions. Wrath abilities actually DO something, and this kind of “slot tax” is likely the best in the game so far since it allows almost unlimited design space, just because of the fact that it doubles your action bar.

Right now, Wrath abilities probably feel underwhelming, but i’d say this has more to do with a DPS balance pass that didn’t happen yet (where the abilities in Wrath might also get redesigned).

If you wish to get rid of the slot tax and get Wrath triggered automatically, i think there’s a fist weapon that does that. But i don’t know exactly why would you even want to get rid of the Wrath ability itself - no amount of “offhand” abilities can compensate the DPS loss of Wrath anyway.

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Auto-Wrath is one of those things that sounds good on paper. But if you play around with the Wrath Inducers as a main hand weapon for a while (I have) you’ll probably also come to the conclusion that it’s a terrible idea.

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Definitely agree with you there, it really helps to be able to choose when it triggers. I ended up using my Wrath Inducers as upgrade fodder…

@Kaizher Possible solution to try is to test using Wrath Inducers as Offhand this weekend, and feed back whether it is of positive benefit to your playstyle?

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As someone that plays the Wrath Inducer as offhand (and cant remember its name) it can put you in some unfortunate situations, especially if you dont realize its about to enter Wrath.

In best case you miss out on some attack time. In worst case it activates when you badly need to use an Ability from your main weapon.

The latter has gotten me killed in the past

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The problem is that it changes the bar, if I use the Manticore Wrath Inducers as an offhand I now have 5 seconds where I can’t fire off a grenade if one is cooking, which can kill me if I’m not using the passive, or I can’t heal except with a potion that might be on CD. And that’s just for me as a rifle main.

A better design imo is: At 100 fury your next power ability that generates fury activates Frenzied Wrath or Invigorating Wrath if anima allocation is at least 51% healing.

Your next 5 power abilities and elite abilities are empowered:
Savage sweep becomes Shred
Mangle becomes Ravage
Berserk becomes Maim

Renewal becomes Revitalize
Feral Growth becomes Invigorate
Regeneration becomes Revivify - Still cleanses 2 detrimental effects as well.

Ferocity could then be used 2 or 3 times for some major burst damage or healing, even if you only have 1 of the power abilities and the elite slotted. For an offhand user like me, who only has 2 slots to use for fist this opens it up to my mangle being switched for Ravage for 5 hits and I can slot Ferocity in as well to boost the damage.

I suppose I could just slot Mangle and Savagery but completely ignoring Wrath just feels so bad.
But I suppose it’s why they made some weapons for offhands like the Manticore Wrath Inducers anyways.