Ancestral Warchief

This is warchief, protector, earthbreaker, and kinda even chieftain feedback. Let me know if I should move this elsewhere.



As I'm sure y'all are aware, there have been rumblings among players for a while now about the state of melee, especially in relation to ancestor totems. The basic belief is that melee as a whole isn't great, and its numbers are being propped up by ancestral totem buffs. Many players find using ancestor totems for their buffs cumbersome and annoying, which leads many melee players either feeling like their characters are gimped for not using the meta buff setup or feeling like their build needs to be a clunky mess to deal damage.

The most common solution I've seen suggested is to remove the buff that ancestor totems give and bake it into melee skills (and maybe to things like thrown skills) directly. That way, those skills get their dps boost without feeling clunky, and ancestral totems still have a place similar to ballista totems as optional supplementary dps skills, especially for 2h builds that can 6l them.

This solution feels like it works as is. I've played with a few ideas of how to move the buff effect onto tree and spread it out to prevent op anoints, but they all feel like hacks rather than elegant solutions. However, I think it would be a shame to lose the "summon ancestral totems for buffs" archetype as a whole.

There was a while when ancestral totem buff effect was a chieftain exclusive. It was only like one or two patches, but at the time I remember it being really nifty. Many builds plopped down an ancestral protector for a temporary boost, but chieftain really went full tilt into it, summoning both protector and warcheif. And since they were a chieftain, it felt like it was just part of the class fantasy. You summoned totems to empower yourself and cut down the world with the aid of your ancestors.

Imo, it worked really well. If you picked chieftain and spent some ascendancy points on it, you were buying into the "I'm gonna summon totems for the buffs" fantasy, and the reward you got for doing it was amazing. The builds were strong. You felt empowered for the choice you made. We didn't have any access to lingering buffs at the time, I don't think, but it was alright because it was powerful enough to be worth it, and only people willing to put effort into summoning totems would spec that heavily into it. And since it was ascendancy exclusive, non-chieftains didn't feel left in the dust as they had their own powerful options to pick from to compete.

Maybe you could bring that feeling back in some form. Cut the buff effect from the gems, sure, but have Arohongui or Dawnstrider grant something like 4% more attack speed, 4% more attack damage, and 8% increased aoe per active ancestral totem. It's powerful enough to want to use, but has enough of an opportunity cost that people will refuse to pay it. Keep the fantasy of being buffed by your ancestors around without funneling every melee build into taking it.

Also consider changing the wording on a handful of notables and their lead-up nodes from "damage with totems" and "skills used by totems have increased x speed" to the more generic "damage while you have a totem active" and "speed while you have a totem active" to make them more appealing for hybrid totem builds.