I’m very happy what soldier started receiving buffs, but that’s not nearly enough. Stat density became much better, but what we really missing is reworks.
We already talked about Cadence and War Cry, but right now i want to adress the elephant in the room - Blade Arc.
I always saw this skill as The Basic Melee Attack, and its really sad what this skill fallen behind, especially considering what soldier is supposed to be The Basic Newbie Friendly Mastery.
And while there’s no easy solution to reworking Cadence, the solution to make BA shine is right there - make this skill work with dual wield.
I have two massive arguments supporting this take:
Werewolf’s Feral Claws, mechanically speaking, identical to BA, and they actually can use DW. Despite that, Claws builds doesn’t break any records, even considering what Berserker is much stronger than Soldier by its own. The fact what Feral Claws can use two weapons when calculating damage just allows for much flexible building.
There’s already TONS of items (including new items from FoA), which support 1h BA - and they all forgotten and nobody actually uses them.
I’ve played one of the builds, provided by @afanasenkov26 with 1h BA and this is complete misery
While I’d argue that cadence is much more deserving of changes/rework/buffs, I do believe blade arc should deserve the ability of attacking with both hands when dual wielding.
Alternatively, I’d like more incentive to use it with a shield - currently there’s only like 2 shields that give bonuses to blade arc if I’m not mistaken. This oughta change if we’d like to see more reason for 1h blade arc.
I see the vision of a wide sweeping attack with a giant 2H weapon cleaving through multiple enemies. But I also see the practical reality in which many 1H/Shields have Blade Arc bonuses and just kinda feel like trash to play with. So I question whether it’s maybe worth making the skill better for 2H than it already is, rather than trying to make it something it isn’t. Especially given we’re in a world where most balance, like WPS/Flat stacking, favors dualwield over 2H as it is.
But, alas, I doubt that’s to be. I don’t imagine Blade Arc bonuses on 1H weapons are going anywhere because there’s just so very many of them and some meme-build would get upset if it suddenly lost them. So as long as those bonuses will be staying around I do think it’s worth making 1h/dualwield Blade Arc actually playable.
Which is all to say, I’m in agreement with the essence of this thread.
Side note: Clean Sweep is a mistake. I think the transmuter should be reworked and given a weapon restriction. It’s too hard to balance vanilla Blade Arc when the possibility of taking the transmuter and sending dot damage to the moon exists.
Agree with Ceno here. I think the transmuter is a parasitic element that makes the skill hard to balance around and probably why it’s like this. Maybe having the transmuter tied to 1h or 2h and balancing each mode of it around that rather than having it be accessible to both might be the fix, there is that 2h spear that resets its cooldown.
Crazy good leveling skill, though lol, that’s it’s true purpose right now
Agree with the general notion but not a fan of just band-aid fixing every underperforming skill by enabling Dual Wield scaling. Skills like BA, Bone Harvest and Amarasta Blade Burst should get more by actually playing them with a 2-hander.
(there’s dot both for 1h and 2h, likewise spam flat for both)