One of the Banner’s conduit feels like a slap to the face.
There’s a conduit that gives you and 4 others main stat buff. Cool. But the banner itself may only give it’s buff to TWO teammates.
Why are they so afraid of allowing the Banner providing it’s buff to you and 4 other teammates? It’ll feel a lot better and more at home to use for mythic +
if it didnt need to be charged then it would be fine with the way it is right now and reduce the cooldown to 1.5min
actually no i take that back because it would still be useless in pvp
The ability just kinda sucks, the CD is just way too long, the benefits of it are fairly insignificant(aside from the hp gain), and the requirement to stand in the radius of the banner is almost seldom ever possible in PvE, and don’t even get me started with how abysmal it is in PvP.
The ability just needs to be redesigned. Like, Critical strike damage is legit useless unless you’re playing fury, and even then it generally amounts to such an insignificant increase more often than not unless it’s specifically in an encounter where you can benefit from both ways to generate glory stacks, and even then it’s simply not worth it.
It’s just so hard to use and isn’t worth all the effort you need to put in to maximize its’ efficacy.
3 things I can suggest are:
Plain and simple; It needs a different benefit. Critical Strike damage just ain’t doing it. Rage generation, flat damage increase, ect, make it WORTH a 3 min CD.
Allow us to carry the banner. You’re seldom going to find a single fight in SL in which you can afford to stand within a 15 yard radius for 20s. Bosses are going throw stuff on the ground preventing you from standing in it and in PvP, any intelligent player can just draw you away from it. It may as well just be a 3 min cd to plant a cool looking flag.
LOWER THE CD. Like, this is NOT worth a 3 min CD! This is a 1.5 min CD at most. You’re rarely going ti have enough time or consistent rage generation to stack higher than 15 unless it’s in an add fight with things that die quickly, and again, even then you’re only stacking the crit damage proportion, which is kinda useless you are playing fury warrior where you can pop Recklessness and guarantee a few crits. Playing arms and Prot is kinda wasting time, cuz in arms you have no way to boost your crit chance aside from the banner itself and for Protection it does virtually nothing for you aside from the hp boost since it’s not even worth wasting the time to stack glory.
Idk, I can thunk of alot of ways to improve this ability, but it legit needs nothing short of a redesign imho.
People provided incessant feedback on Conq Banner in the beta and it was essentially ignored. The beta warrior Covenant class thread was filled with complaints.
They likely won’t take it seriously until they see representation numbers on live. Wowhead guides are live and they essentially say not to take this Covenant.
Ya I’m hoping that after the raid goes live next week and they see next to no warriors taking necrolords they’ll have to look into something different with it. I just really hope it won’t wait until the first content patch.
Unfortunately the cosmetics will likely affect player rates.
Like it or not, they do have one of the best looking armor sets and Necrolords is the warrior zone, even if it has a garbo ability, a lot of people are going to choose it just for that, skewing the numbers.
I took it to mess around with it until Monday night where I’ll be switching to either fight fae or bastion. I had to see for myself how bad it was.
You’re right though, the armor sets are incredible, but I’m literally the only warrior in the seat of the primus. Lots of DKs though…
I think they need to buff the rate at which you gain glory/crit damage. The ability stacks up to 30 max but I find it impossible to get anywhere close to that. Even then, 10-15% crit damage for 30 sec is far from compelling. It’ll probably get better further in the expansion when we have more crit/haste as has been mentioned but it won’t make it feel any better to use. That or they just need to make Glory do something else. Increase all damage done, increase haste… something that actually makes it feel like it’s making you stronger and doing something.
But if they really want to keep the crit damage then each stack of glory should give you 3-5% crit damage imo, make it possible to hit that 30 cap, where it might actually feel like you’re hitting noticeably harder.
Its pretty bad. I think as the expansion rolls forward the few remaining NecroWarrs will swap.
I did this. But also because that’s what Ion told us to do - play for something other than what is the highest spreadsheet choice. Unfortunately, that’s not always the most welcome reality.
Again, I feel:
I really also liked @Auzz remark about possibly seeing a Lucid effect - that’s the chance to refund Rage and heal, right?
The disparity is insane. Even while LEVELING the other abilities felt better. Especially in group content.
Necros feel unimpactful…virtually all the time.
If only they had a thread filled with posts about how gross it is…
90 sec CD is a must. It can’t be a 3 minute CD and also impactful because that is an oxymoron when it comes to covenant abilities.
drop the act and make it something to line up with avatar and we can hobble along until a major patch when those promises of covenant ability reworks an be shafted for some new system to try and fix them.
/shakes fist indignantly
They’re not going to change it if we do this.
Why would you listen to Ion of all people?
There’s always a concern that the aura effect could make this spiral out of control rapidly. Another reason I don’t like this ability.
The % strength also is going to make your party association rather important in raids. I doubt the Shaman wants your strength aura, even if it makes it better for you.
This is misunderstood.
The only party aura is +10% crit chance and +20% health.
(There is a +2% primary stat party aura on Emeni, but I believe that’s fine and am leaving it out of this analysis. This is specifically primary stat, so Enhancement Shaman would gain Agility instead of Strength.)
Glory is the stacking buff by using rage or getting kills. Your allies do not gain Glory.
Currently, there is a conduit which gives +24% (top end) Strength during banner. Again, this is exclusive to you, not your allies and is where the real strength of this covenant ability comes from (bad pun).
By swapping the conduit and the baseline Glory effect, that would give you a stacking strength buff for use after you lose the 10% crit chance. The conduit would then be isolated in the banner window, gaining a good portion of +crit damage (~40%-45% would be parity with +25% strength), where you have the aura crit chance benefit.
Honestly, even with this change, the 3 minute cooldown may be appropriate given the power window extends thanks to 30s of Glory. The downside for Warrior players is this is a ramp up; however, the payout is much more in line with the cost of (1) Cooldown, (2) Limited Mobility, and (3) Proper Glory Execution during Banner.
Glory stacks could be capped at 15, as then you’re gaining a 15% benefit for the max stacks (whereas the current Glory requires 30 stacks for a +15% benefit - see my earlier remarks on how 30% crit damage is actually a 15% buff above).
Hope this helps clear it up.
Edit 2: Napkin maths behind it.
| Current | Proposed | |
| Banner Duration | 20s | 20s |
| Banner Aura | +10% crit/+20% health | +10% crit/+20% health |
| Banner Conduit | +24% Strength | +45% Critical Damage |
| Glory Duration | 30s | 30s |
| Glory Benefit | 30 stacks, +30% Critical Damage |
15 stacks, +15% Strength* |
| Glory Ramp | 20s | 10s |
| Total Ability Cooldown | 180s | 120s |
Oh, and just an afterthought…
A lot of comments are “This will imbalance it LATER ON”. True, possibly. But it’s imbalanced now. And we’re fighting an actual problem today with a possible problem of tomorrow. That’s not a good policy position.
I like that proposed change a lot. Would still love to either see the radius ramped up to 30 yards or have it move with us too.
Dunklad’s version would be fine to me as well, but here’s about what I was imagining.
Conqueror’s Banner
Cooldown: 180 seconds. 2 Charges.
Plant the Conqueror’s Banner in the ground, granting 15% maximum health, Haste, Leech, and movement speed to you and the 2 nearest allies within 20 yds of the banner for 15 sec.While active, spending X Rage and killing enemies grants you Glory. Glory increases each of these effects on you by 1%. The duration of Glory exceeds the ability’s, fading at 1% per second after the banner’s duration has ended.
Reactivating the ability from within 10 yrds of the banner allows you to pick it up, pausing its effect but halving the speed at which its duration drains. Reactivating it a further time will place it back down.
Veteran’s Repute now instead causes you to start at 10 stacks of Glory and reduces the CD Conqueror’s Banner by 30 seconds. I realize the basic damage addition may be missed, but starting with 25% Haste (and Leech, Movement Speed, and bonus HP), up from 15%, and thus building more stacks over those 15 seconds and quadratically increasing the net effect of Glory stacks, is already huge.
I think it’s fine to have a planted banner, and would even enjoy the coordination element such would require, so long as timing flexibility is applied through a second charge. The same of course goes for the paired defensive and offensive benefits. That extra charge also amounts to, say, a good 10% CDR in a 30-minute run—none too shabby.
I want the idea here to be that melee suddenly feel a bit emboldened, and can perhaps even afford an extra minor mistake or two in the name of uptime cheese.
And, ofc, I concur with all Dunklad said about its VFX. Its visual aura needs to look more inviting, rather than like any other AoE effect that’d quickly two-shot or periodically drain one’s health in M+.
That seems like too much.
I’d be open to just a small change…like put it on my back and shorten the CD.
Oh, and make it impact party members. “Nearest two allies” is kind of weird, ya know?
Removing that clause would increase its capacity by 67%.
You’d be siphoning effects generally reserved for a co-melee and the tank, and further watering the effects on you, yourself, in order to generate party-directed throughput that’s increasingly wasted the more you pull your own weight (and especially once you start pulling the party’s).