(PvE)
SecondingDanAlcedo.3281 here, I don't see any reason why warrior spear exists.
It has comparable dps to rifle, which is already in a sorry state. The only benefit over rifle is that you can't be ammo-starved. You will have much the same issues with berserk uptime, since only Shattering Blow and Blood Reckoning are available to you to extend berserk's duration with no enemies in melee range.
Adrenaline generation is an issue with spear just like it is with rifle. You're basically forced to use Burst Mastery, otherwise you simply won't generate enough adrenaline in time for F1 to come off cooldown. And using Burst Mastery means you can't use Axe Mastery, which pretty much locks you into playing only ranged weapons, and both power options for warrior ranged weapons are terrible. If the intended purpose of a ranged weapon is to briefly get out of melee range when the situation requires so, and then return back to melee ASAP (which, I will reiterate, can no longer be considered good design because of the existence of ranged-only builds that are as good at damage as their melee-only competition) - rifle was already serving that purpose, and spear adds nothing new to the table.
Inverse-range-scaling mechanics are antithetical to the whole idea of a ranged weapon. If it's best used in melee - why would I use spear over a more capable melee weapon in the first place?
The aoe radius on #1 is way too small to provide any value unless the targets are really clumped up.
Using skill #2 at all is a net dps loss. And the 120 radius is smaller than melee range. And there is no visual indication on the aoe decal of what the radius WILL be. Surely you can implement a dynamically scaling decal if this mechanic is here to stay.
Dodge backwards on #3 is as "PvP design" as you can get. Rifle #4 already committed this sin long ago. It's going to be a "never press" button in PvE.
Skill #4 is a CC. Using it on cooldown is not a dps loss, but neither it is a dps gain. Therefore it will be used only for CC when needed.
The delay on #5 skill seems like it was shoehorned in in a desperate attempt to add somethingto scale depending on range but not affect the dps negatively. A solution to a self-created problem.
Which leaves spear with only 3 usable buttons for the purposes of dealing damage: 1, 5 and F1. And spear hardly has any other purpose besides dealing damage - it has zero boons or utility. Its toolkit is a barebones as it gets.It's somehow even more bland than axes, but at least axes are good at their job of dealing damage. Spear is not.
900 range is like adding an insult to injury.
You can tell the weapon is in a dire state when even resetting all cooldowns every 5 seconds in the golem training area and using all spear's "most powerful" skills with virtually no cooldown still yields about 50% of what the current standard of dps benchmarks is. It needs 50-100% damage buffs on all skills to compete with the currently prevailing ranged builds.
I really didn't want to make this statement in conclusion, but I feel like it's the only statement that's appropriate: scrap everything and start over from scratch. This ain't it, chief.
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An actual minor bug: damage numbers are not stacking up properly on berserker's F1 burst, I assume because it uses 2 different skills under the hood to throw spears using alternating hands.
The "arrow swoosh" audio on berserker's F1 sounds like it's mono with low bitrate, it's muffled. But even if it didn't - it still sounds like arrows being shot from a bow, it might even use the same sound as ranger longbow #2.
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After more tests, best I could manage to accomplish with spear/rifle was about 26k on a golem, out of 43k needed to provide competition to cvirt, meaning that both spear and rifle need 65%+ damage buffs.But even then ranged warrior would still be indisputably worse than cvirt and never a preferred choice by anyone except diehard warrior fans, due to the lack of utility and self-sustain. It's almost as if there is a bigger problem in the room, and it isn't warrior-shaped.
Berserk uptime is less of an issue than I thought, bursts+shatteringblow+heal can keep it up for about 2 mins. Adrenaline gain has pain points, but the biggest issues are mitigated by Burst Mastery and Versatile Rage. Commentary on spear skills remains valid, basically pressing any buttons besides 5 and F1 is a trap. Both spear and rifle remain incredibly uninspired and bland, both feeling like they're stuck in 2012 design, surpassed by every other new weapon of every other class.
Edited by ZEUStiger.3590
