[Feedback] Why can't Soldier have 100% War Cry uptime?

Thing that bothers a lot of players that play Soldier, that I am pretty sure of. Like it made sense in vanilla where Soldier was the only class with damage reduction and it was a pretty rare stat to have. Now two more classes have access to permanent damage reduction (Inquisitor and Necromancer) that works much better than War Cry and we have damage reduction in abundance on items, sets and even on devotions. So why does War Cry still have 7,5 seconds cooldown and 5 seconds uptime? It feels especially unfair since most of the Soldier builds are melee that can’t really afford downtime in damage reduction.

For some reason Krieg set leaves Soldier with 6s cooldown War Cry after flat cd reduction (so 1 second downtime). What’s the reason for that?

So what do you think? Should it be fixed? Or is it supposed to be like that? (if yes, give reasons, please)

    • Yes, War Cry should have permanent uptime no matter the build
    • No, it’s good as it is

0 voters

Voted no, but not because War Cry is good as it is (btw, those choices really incentivize people to vote yes :p, good job if that’s the intention). I think % damage reduction should become a rare commodity again. Nowadays aside from inq and Necro, we have those from items that also have a fair amount of uptime - the dawnshard “set”, Morgo items, just a few examples. If it was just soldier and overnerfed (in terms of the DR) censure, it still would’ve been fine if warcry stays the same.

:+1:

War Cry doesn’t have 100% uptime because I presume it needs some sort of downside (considering it has higher damage reduction than censure). All of the damage reduction skills have upsides and downsides. The upside of warcry is instantaneous large AoE damage reduction.

Other damage reduction skills are more or less the same (the exception being Ill Omen, I don’t know why it’s so good at only level 10). For example, censure has the lowest damage reduction value but it’s constant and passive, and Decay has a high damage reduction value but the duration is short and requires the enemy to constantly be hit by RE.

If war cry had 100% uptime it would be a bit too good (like Ill Omen is currently in my opinion).

If I was to buff war cry though, I would increase its damage reduction in the ultimate levels to scale up to 35%, although I’m not sure it’s even needed

If it had 100% uptime, I feel like the damage reduction value should be nerfed to 20%. I would still prefer 20% with 100% uptime over the current 25% with 66% uptime. Could also make overcapping warcry worth it more. Currently you just always softcap it without even thinking about over/undercapping it.
Another Idea would be to increase its duration with overcap points, so that you’d reach 100% uptime at 22/12 (without additional cdr).
Overall I voted “yes”, but more for “yes a change would be nice” rather than “just make it have 100% uptime”.

The thing is War Cry is used for physical RR as well. Very often occurs the scenario of using it against enemies and when you move to chase another in campaign or SR or new foes emerges in Crucible, you’re basically screwed, cause you can’t apply War Cry. Same thing applies to damage reduction. Game is dynamic, so War Cry isn’t very effective in terms of utility.

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I’m aware that it’s also used for RR, but all of my points above apply to the RR as well. It’s still an instantaneous AoE RR debuff (in fact it’s the highest source of “X reduced resistance” in the game), so it needs to have some downside.

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Overnerfed referring to current censure values or a hypothetical future nerf?

I’m not a praetorian so I don’t know anything about future nerfs. I’m not saying current censure DR is bad, it just went from “censure+seal is all the defense you need” to “censure+seal might not even be close to enough”, which is neither good or bad (and we need to adjust cause that’s how the game is now) but there was indeed a huge difference between old and new censure, subjectively.

They’re still both plenty strong for what they do (along with the rest of inquis high density passives), it’s just that the most prominent applications of inquis were riding on the “kill stuff before you take damage” strat which was more than sufficiently supported by the always active censure and on demand seal. Looking to something like the supposedly anemic deathmarked infiltrator you’ll note that it was hardly durability getting nerfed, just a touch up on global cold support and a more targeted reduction in damage. Builds that get still get monstrous damage can cruise fine since there’s simply less damage to mitigate.

But I doubt Crate is going to rollback all those damage reduction items and devotions. All while War Cry stays in its Vanilla state. So it’s easier to modernize War Cry, imo.

This, I don’t think it should have 100% uptime with current DR value. I would even take 15% DR but permanent coverage against what it is now.

It is, but flat RR is vastly overrated in my opinion. It’s just not as effective as -RR%. And current meta clearly demonstrates that: RR from Storm beacons in Crucible (15 flat rr) is more than enough for all the builds. I even made one of the fastest PB builds that has no flat RR, in fact, it was too fast for Zantai so he had to nerf it from multiple angles. Another example is my recent Warborn Dervish vs. Warborn Cadence Warlord thread where Warlord actually has 100% uptime on its War Cry (well it’s not technically 100% because you change position a lot) and had 22 more flat RR than Dervish. Somehow it almost didn’t scale at all.

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How about make it a per sec aura or add another transmutation as an aura. The penalty is decreasing its affecting range, DR % and disrupt skill time (or can’t disrupt at all).

Threatening transmutation, description like this:
As soldier masters his breathing technique on the battle field, each exhale becomes a threatening growl.

This seems to be a particular interest to some of late: 100% uptime RR/%DR.

First to the put RR on Omen, and now this. However, I kind of expected this to brew once Aura of Censure was introduced. :man_shrugging:

I like the Occultist class, but I wouldn’t want to see %DR on CoF!

TLDR: I think it is fine as is. The RR “math” of the game is what it is. :grimacing:

I just want a spammable damage-oriented war cry.

Maybe that useless transmuter could go for CDR and the removal of the DR, or the other way around: Normal war cry would be spammable damage, and terrify would add DR and cooldown

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Meanwhile Fwuffy be like: image

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I like the way it is and it makes sense. You can improve it with mods.

Otherwise might was well make it a passive nova and skip the inconvenience of casting it

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Lacking 100% uptime grants Soldier, a spec which is by-and-large cut-and-dry in its capabilities, choices for further customization. Do you want to itemize for flat CDR to take War Cry down to 100% uptime naturally? Do you want to roll the dice on random rolls and take War Cry down to 100% uptime with % CDR? Do you want to do either - is 100% uptime really necessary or can you get away with only using it as you need it?

Of course, perhaps I’m a bit biased, as I still miss the old Oleron’s Rage that had 16.67% uptime. But I’d wager that’s not the case here. War Cry is perfectly functional and one of the most powerful skills in Soldier’s arsenal, not because it inherently has high uptime (which it doesn’t, at 66% for the DR) but because of its customizability and the fact that the debuff effects on Break Morale scale independently of War Cry’s base investment.

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Ok, can we have mods on all Soldier related gear? Like Bloodrager? Why does Krieg have -1 seconds flat cdr and Warborn -3,5s? Is there is method to this design? Cuz this shit doesn’t exactly work well in todays meta, when Necromancers have TWO DR spells and Inquisitors casually stroll around with permanent DR.

Oh, and every Morgoneth’s item makes WC a bit of a joke.

After reading it I felt like we are playing different games really. There are few Soldier build archetypes each with a fixed itemization towards War Cry: Warborn (4,5s cd), Krieg (6s cd with dual Mindwarp, a bit less with S&B), Octavius (depends on the item choices, I haven’t really played that one, but I am guessing anywhere between 5,5 and 6,5s cd, might be wrong), Pierce Belgo/Shattered BM or Deathmarked BM (7,5s cd), Bloodrager Physical/Bleed (7,5s), Bloodrager Nadaan (6,2s if you roll 19% on the sword). There are also Retaliation specs that sometimes have tiny bit of cdr (Sentinel of the Three), sometimes not.

Why am I listing all those different build archetypes? Because once you choose one you pretty much have no choice when it comes to War Cry uptime. Ther is no “customizability”, because you are obviously not choosing your Soldier spec based on War Cry uptime, you just take whatever comes with the spec. There are no medals or amulets or Conduits (hello, useless Soldier Conduits) that affect War Cry CD, no shields or weapons or gloves mods.

And that just doesn’t fit well into the dynamic and fast game that Grim Dawn has became today. It might have worked well back when it was designed when the hardest content was Port of Valbury with its long pauses between fights, but right now it does not work well.

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Return of the singer barb! That would be great

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Well clearly you aren’t, based on your very-limited view of listed builds.

Yes. Krieg is a 5pc generalist set. Warborn is a 4pc specialist set focusing on Break Morale (a War Cry mod).