I think the captain is in a great place, for the most part. I'll echo previous statements that the captain's buffing role should continue to be unrestricted by trait line.
But there are always places for improvement to the class.
1. Legendary Items. I find the whole legendary item situation for captains to be extremely annoying*. For a basic captain who only wants to play one role, he needs a fighting weapon, a swap weapon for buffs, a fighting emblem, and a swap emblem for buffs (both short-term and long-term). Additionally, the distribution of legacies between the major an minor pools is annoying. We covet healing emblems with 5 or 6 major legacies! It is quite a torturous situation for such a basic component of our healing abilities to be gated behind the caprices of the random number generator. Some suggestions:
- Remove legacies that improve Tactic: Relentless Attack, Tactic: On Guard, Tactic: Focus, and Motivating Speech. Increase the potency of those skills to compensate.
- Remove the legacy that improves Strength of Will. Increase the potency of Strengh of Will.
- Eliminate the restriction that major legacy scrolls cannot replace minor legacies on legendary items, eliminating the lottery for major legacies determining the usefulness of a particular legendary item.
- Reduce number of legacies that directly improve the captain's healing output. Roll these effects into class traits or into the base skills.
2. The leveling experience. The captain is an extremely satisfying character to play in groups at the higher levels. Once you have your legendary items set up properly, it is a blast. But leveling a captain can be quite tedious. Due to the various revamps over the years, some of the most fun class abilities are locked away until higher levels, leaving captains below level 60 pretty bored. Some examples:
- Level 46-53: Rallying cry cooldown reduced to 15 seconds
- Level 45-53: Pressing attack gets more than 2 targets
- Level 56: Call to Arms: Archer
- Level 58: Valiant Strike
- Level 60: Shadow's Lament
- Level 74: Blade Brother
I would propose that the distribution of skills during leveling be revamped, and perhaps add an AoE attack at low level as well (maybe a traited version of Sure Strike or some such?).
3. Heralds. The heralds are kinda fun at lower levels, but they are completely inferior to banners at higher levels. They die easily, provide inferior buffs to the captain, and produce negligible dps. They use freakin Common Damage! The archer is supposed to be a dps pet, but we get the archer about 30 levels after it would be most useful. I don't know how important heralds will be in the developers' vision for the captain class, but if they remain important, they need some serious buffs. Some suggestions:
- Increase damage output.
- Change damage type to match captain's weapon.
- Add a herald trait system similar to that of the skirmish soldier.
- Add some new cosmetics (it can't hurt, can it?).
- Increase the herald's buff output (perhaps tied to a trait for soloing captains?).
*Actually, I find the entire Legendary Item system extremely annoying, and I would prefer that it be scrapped, or at least reduced in importance, with the various buffs granted by legendary items distributed to other systems in the game.
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. ~ Faramir
Undo the U12 class changes. The trait trees were, are, and will always be a bad idea.
Maedhric 105 Captain, Nunion 110 Champion, Taraviel 85 Minstrel, etc...