Wings have been around for a while and in all honesty they kinda are underwhelming. Down the road you start getting into dps numbers that kinda make ultimates hilariously puny for the time it takes to charge it.
But hey…it’s optional stuff that doesn’t take that much away. On the other hand why does it even exist in it’s current form. Strikes me as a lot work including a system that does one job and that not really that marvelous.
Not really my point I trying to make but I thought I ask what you guys thing could be extended on the currently avaidable ultimate?
New extension systems? New signets? New ultimates to pick from? What would make ultimates the new hot system that’s worth playing around with? Healing ults? Tank ults? Utility ults?
Or do we even need the system to begin with? Does it just need improvement on it’s current extend or should it stay the same?
See it as a general opening of the can of worms that is Ultimates and discussion around it could bring with it.
In SWL, Wings are meh. They do less than my power ability when it crits (sure I have only lvl 1 legendary increased power of wings signet thingy), but still. In TSW, wings were way better. I used them 1) as defensive CD (too greedy as DPS? no worries, I wing) or 2) killing adds super fast (there were situations when it was useful!).
To make wings useful in SWL, they should be treated as an extra ability IMO. You could unlock different types of wings and then pick one of those (basically general abilities like we had in TSW). But what abilities and with what CD… No idea…
My prediction is that at the end of Congo and the showdown with Mr. Marquard, we get another type of wings that’ll make everyone wish they would’ve had leveled the recharge signet instead of the damage one and then wings go the way of additional scenario types.
The obvious flaw to me is the way it roots you - you can’t be moving when you cast it, you can’t move while you cast it. If it was just like, you get your wings as a non-gcd instant and then have a 10m aura of death around you over the next 3-4 seconds, you could still have the fancy animations but it wouldn’t be so annoying to cast.
Simple targeting being able to waste wings is also really bad. cast wings on an enemy with simple targeting, that enemy dies during the castbar, you lose your charge and wings deals no damage to anything. Makes it so even if you want to use it in a group context against mobs (the only time it’s uefu) it’s easy to skip using it.
Wings have niche uses. An (unreliable at times) immortality button, a mass add destroyer (useful in scenarios and, er…raids and dungeons that don’t exist in SWL), and a little extra damage.
Wings exist as much because they are a story mechanic as anything. What better way to drive home the point that you aren’t what you used to be, and never will be again, then give you giant eff-off angel wings? As a story system, they are brilliant. In TSW at least, everything about them, UI included, combined to tell a story. The SWL UI isn’t as integrated that way, but it’s close enough.
Anyway, ultimates have been planned to be swappable for years, and one day we might get to see that. As much as I’d like the TSW wing heal back, I think it would be absurd in SWL so it’s OK it’s gone.
I’m mostly happy with how they work now, but there is certainly opportunity to tweak them. Now we have anima allocation, there’s a potential to automatically vary their effect based on your allocation. For example, if your heal allocation is above 50, your wings will heal group/raid members nearby for 3000 plus give them 500 HoT for 15 seconds; if your survivability allocation is above 50, your wings will increase your protection rating by something impressive or maybe give you a barrier for tens of thousands over 15 sec.
Those have just come off the top of my head and would probably be rather unbalanced or disappointing (focus on the intention rather than the numbers!). But for any Ultimate Ability, it’s going to want to have a “wow” factor, and be something that you cast for important moments. Much as I’d find it nice to have a dozen options for different play styles, I think having too many abilities would dilute them and make them less special. But certainly, adding healing/protection wings would be a good move.
Not sure i ever hear a confirmation on that it would 100% be coming, but they did mention way back in beta or very close to relaunch, that the hope was to build on the system and have other ultimates, potentially with focus on the roles. That would make our current Wings our DPS Ultimate.
In TSW there probably was no near future at that point with major new content. Wings were this big attack you receive at the “end” of it. In SWL that is different.
While Wings in TSW were nice to burn through bosses, I can’t say i miss that. It was way too powerful imo. These new wings can still give you that last push, just not as early as before. That aside my fav use of them is against Adds. I am always sad to see how few are willing to just pop the damn wings on the Dweller adds. They are also my go to if a Scenario get overrun. It is that one chance to turn the direction it’s going around again. The real power to them is the 30 target limit instead of 6, and in some cases the short immunity can still save your butt.
I never really understood the reasoning behind making the type of wings dependent on story choices. Right from the start, you’d need to research the choices to make in order to get the wings you want that would work best for you and make those choices regardless of how you would personally react, which to me defeats the point of having these choices. Either that or you don’t research which choices to get specific wings, and potentially end up with wings that aren’t as useful to you.
I like the idea that the choices you make affect the story in the future, but this seems like something that you would want to manipulate in order to get the result you want.
I like they are the same now. The choice should never have been based on what wings are “best”, but what suits the character. And yes ppl would choose based on what was best over RP in a lot of cases, or be mad that they picked the “wrong wings”.
I’m still hoping they will eventually let us move and bring up the targeting at the same time … It’s kills me more than anything.
Such as skipping the mind numbingly boring Stare at the invulnerable the mob while he channels meteors down from the sky and/or spawns trash at the end of Killers on the Road.
Try having choices you made YEARS ago finally determine which set you get, each with a slight variation in their mechanics, one of which was a handicap in the obligatory “Use wings here” bossfight.
Funny thing about that, I never saw people die because of gold wings in that fight (it was easy to deal with—cast and move), but blue winged people died left and right winging trash mobs because blue wings were a DoT.
Moving away from the adds with normal movement had a very annoyingly short window of timing on it, because the scorpions were much faster than the player, so I usually took either Flicker or DfA when I was on wing duty.
As for the blue wings, I’m not sure how they would die from winging mobs other than just generally being unskilled, because blue wings had the best healing and the most stable damage, because each of the three hits could crit or pen after the update that made wing hits stop counting as DoTs for damage purposes.
They died because they expected the trash mobs to die instantly but the mobs did not. Gold wing players were usually well aware they needed to move after casting on anything, because the damage was delayed, but apparently blue wing players weren’t as often used to trash mobs living through the initial tick.
I pugged that dungeon a lot, and it was blue wing players who died most, to trash mobs that gold and purple could one-shot.