Hello,

Please rework awakened Valkyrie to be more like awakened guardian.

Things Guardian has over Valkyrie:

1. E buff that gives useful stats & SA

2. Massive protected AoEs that kill people through walls

3. Low cooldowns

4. 3x better block

5. Iframe that saves you from 1vX and repositions you

6. Lingering Iframe

7. 2 iframe dashes/side steps

8. They have 2 versions of valk e buff, a slower run with SA and no cd, and a faster version with just fg on 7 sec cd

9. Insanely good PvE 

10. SA grab+long range if taking awak grab

11. No need to pre buff with unprotected skill to dish out damage

12. Perma SA rotation

13. Mobility that doesnt depend on block gauge

Things Valk has over Guardian:

1. Ally acc buff, and PA both with short range

2. 30% & 40% ally heal

3. Vacuum

With this in mind, please bring Valkyrie up to guardian level. 

Ima just drop this here.

Long post incoming.

I’ve been playing Valkyrie since 2017 and while I love the class, I always felt like it had trouble fulfilling what seemed to be her intended role as a frontline fighter that supports her allies. In recent years this has become harder and harder because of the advantages given to new classes and the lack of changes to valkyrie keep up with them.

Compare Valkyrie to the new block classes, Nova and Guardian. Valkyrie’s awakening block is weaker, she doesn’t have high enough mobility to simply avoid damage, and she doesn’t have multiple I frames to reposition safely and dodge grabs. Additionally, both Nova and Guardian have other strong points. Guardian is one of the strongest AoE damage classes and Nova is one of the fastest flank and burst class; both also have extremely punishing debuffs that they apply very easily with their AoE damage skills. Valkyrie’s other strong point was obviously supposed to be her ally support abilities, but her ally support is terrible because it is too reliant on healing. Healing after damage is done is near useless because targets that survive do so by constantly moving/I framing so any attempts to heal them are wasted as they will move out of range or be in I frame after a non-lethal hit. Targets that are Stationary are almost always cced and will almost never survive the damage of group pvp.

With all that being said, I would like to provide suggestions for the upcoming rework that I feel would help Valkyrie become truer to what I think her original concept was in a unique and fun way that works in the current state of the game. 

Overall suggestions:

• Make Pre-awakening more agile and protected in short bursts
• Make Pre-awakening attacks faster and giving meaningful ways to “counter” attackers
• Increase combo potential and variation of Pre-awakening attacks
• Increase range of awakening skills
• Increase and give more variety for support and defense capabilities

Pre-awakening skill suggestions:

• Forward/Charging/Sideways Slashes: All rolled into Valkyrie slash, new classes don’t bother to make basic attacks individual “skills” to level up.
• Shield strafe (hidden skill): This is the skill where Valkyrie does an evasive movement and has a brief moment of I frame. Make it an actual skill. Change the I frame to super armor for the entire animation, double or triple the distance traveled and create a 0.8s to 1s cooldown on the super armor.
• Severing light: Increase the area of base skill to a 120 degree arc in front of Valk, with both base and ultimate version given a similar range to 3^rd hit of Glaring Slash. Increase the animation speed of both versions and remove the 3^rd hit of the base version. Increase the heal and damage to usable amounts.
• Breath of Elion: Range increased by 20%, any HP healed over max becomes “temporary HP” that lasts for 10s.
• Sword of Judgement: increase animation speed by 20% or so, add SA on a 5s.
• Guard: Increase shield strength to current awakening shield strength.
• Shield strike: Forward guard on 5s CD, faster and more “disciplined” animation (less swinging around wildly).
• Shield counter: Add SA, increase AoE size, add -AP effect, add a 3s cd. Make the animation more “disciplined” (not losing balance like an amateur).
• Shield push: Much faster animation, forward guard, larger AoE, remove knockback, add an accuracy debuff.
• Shield chase: Change the FG/SA to I frame.
• Just Counter: Apply FG to all hits (currently, only first hit is guarded), increase the attack range of all hits match last hit, make the 2^nd stronger than 1^st, and 3^rd hit stronger than the 2^nd. Increase the animation speed. Add current flow to base skill, create a new flow that allows the 3^rd hit to be used if activated after certain shield attacks (for example: shield strike 3^rd hit, shield push, shield counter)
• Skyward Strike: add air smash, increase animation speed, increase hitbox size.
• Counter: change secondary hit to only trigger if attacked during the initial hit. Increase the animation speed and damage of secondary hit and add SA, change the CC from bound to stiffness.
• Sharp Light: Increase the range by 20%, change the flow to a second hit that pulls targets in that can be activated by holding the skill.
• Flurry of Kicks: Reduce number of kicks to 2, increase the animation speed, increase range of SP explosion, add air smash to SP explosion.
• Flying Kick: Increase damage of base skill and change flow to allow flying kick to travel forward further if used after certain skills (for example: flurry of kicks or righteous charge)
• Divine Power: Double the AoE size
• Heaven’s Echo: Double AoE size.
• Righteous charge: increase attack animation speed, increase initial hit and SP damage, remove knockback, allow SP explosion and final hit to activate after Just Counter
• Glaring slash: Increase the animation speed, make the 2^nd stronger than the 1^st, and the 3^rd stronger than the 2^nd.
• Celestial Spear: Increase AoE size by 20%. Increase crit buff effect to 100%, increase speed debuff to 50%
• Judgement of Light: make skill mid -ranged attack (similar to celestial spear), remove initial animation and ending animation, allow skill to be held longer for more hits.
• Shining dash: Change skill to non-collision attack with super armor. Allow additional dashes to be triggered without hitting a target.
• Elion’s Blessing: Increase AoE size by 30%. Increase damage reduction rate to 75%
• Celestial Cry: double AoE size, change DP buff to +60 for 10s.
• Celestial smite: Add 10% critical damage increase effect for self and nearby allies.
• Divine Descent: Add debuff removal effect with 10s of debuff immunity
• Divine Slam: Double AoE size.
• Divine Judgement of Light: Increase animation speed by 20%
• Shining Judgement of Light: Change animation to a single burst of light

Awakening skill suggestions:

• Noble Spirit: Change HP recovery to 2% HP every second to self and nearby allies, change SP recovery to stamina and block gauge recovery speed increase by 20%. Increase cast speed buff to 20%.
• Strong Defense: Increase shield strength to match Nova/Guardian shield strength. Grant passive “Aura” that reduces damage done to nearby allies by 20% while blocking. Change counterattack activation button to Q. add super armor on counterattack.
• Blitz Stab: Change first hit off Blitz stab to KD, make second hit a “Channel” like shield throw but with SA, allow blitz stab to be used after preawakening.
• Flow Breath of Elion: Change skill to allow a modified version of Breath of Elion to be used (both in awakening and preawakening) by holding Shift + E. Modified Breath of Elion will 1.5% HP every second for 15 seconds
• Sacrum Ferit: range increased, cooldown reduced to 5s
• Wave of Light: Increase skill range, increase suction AoE size
• Hastiludium: change to non-collision skill, increase control of direction traveled, allow final hit to be triggered instantly by holding LMB.
• Promptness: change to Super Armor, remove stiffness effect, reduce cooldown to 2 or 3 seconds.
• Sanctitas De Enslar: Change to travel to camera location if no target is selected.
• Verdict: Lancia Iustitiae: Change to function similarly to "Ultimate: Divine Power" where hit damage is distributed evenly through the skill animation. Faster initial activation. Allow the animation to be ended early. Increase PvE damage dramatically but keep the current total PvP damage. Add a -50 AP effect for 10s against enemies.
• Divine Impulsa: Forward range increase. Changed to T2 add ons

Possible new ideas:

• Make redundant “extra damage” skills a trigger or have some secondary effect
  • Ultimate Flurry of Kicks
  • Ultimate SoJ
  • Ultimate Righteous Charge
  • Ultimate Sharp Light
  • Flow double flying kick
• Introduce “Counter” buffs for attacking after blocking a certain amount of attacks or damage.
• Skill linking effect “prayers”: Using certain hits of skills grant a passive “prayer” stack that increases when using that skill; when triggering a “finisher” skill (ex: SoJ 3^rd hit, Glaring Slash 3^rd hit, Ultimate Severing light) the “prayer” is activated and a buff is applied. The buff lasts for a short duration (~5s) and can be refreshed by “finisher” skills. Each hit of a “Prayer” skill grants a different level of that “prayer”. Prayers of the different levels can stack, but prayers of the same level overwrite each other*. Certain “Clearing” skills can clear the bonuses instantly in favor of a more powerful effect. Examples:
  • Using Just Counter grants “Accuracy” prayer. Each level grants +3% Acc individually when activated by a “finisher”. If all 3 levels are active when a “finisher” is used, the buff is increased to +15% Acc
  • Using SoJ grants “Punishment” prayer. Each level grants +3 AP, all 3 together increases buff to 15 AP
  • Using Shield Strike grants “Protection” prayer. Levels grant +5 DP, all 3 increases buff to +30
  • Righteous Charge is a “clearing” skill and increases travel distance, speed, and damage for each level consumed.
  • Divine Power is a “clearing” skill and increases damage and debuff intensity for each level consumed.
  • Judgement of Light is a “clearing” skill and increases range for each level consumed
  • Examples:
    • Valk uses first and second hit of Just Counter and final hit of SoJ. She has “accuracy” prayers level 1 and 2, and “punishment” prayer level 3. When final hit of SoJ is triggered. The buff is +6% acc and +3 AP.
    • Valk uses all 3 levels of shield strike. The prayer buff is +30 DP.create more skill cancels that increase animation speeds or skips wind up. Examples:
    • Valk uses Judgement of Light with 3 levels of Prayer active. AoE size increased by 30% and Prayer stacks are cleared.
    • Valk uses Righteous charge with 2 levels of Prayer active, speed and damage increased by 20% and prayer stacks are cleared.
    • *Obviously the skills would need to be changed to link into each other during different hits, but I believe most of the spinning valk does on her moves can help link their animations together.
    • A More simple version would be stances that cause skills to have different secondary effects and have different buffs.
  • Increase skill flows

Examples:

• Sideways cut > shield strike
• Just Counter > Righteous charge
• Celestial spear > JoL
• Shield chase > shield counter
• Severing light > Glaring Slash
• Sideways cut > Severing light
• Allowing block to cancel certain skill animations like in awakening

You forgot to mention that valk also has arguably the strongest passive in the game that gives extra resists. It cannot be overlooked. I'll take it for any other class passive any time. In today's meta where you pretty much die after being CCed once, this passive is too strong and should be removed/reworked. Guardian is, however, hands down much better class than valk in most regards, but so can be said about most OG classes. The problem is that you cannot just simply give valk everything it does not have relative to guardian because guardian herself in an obviously overtuned class, so if you give her everything guardian has, valk would simply be another broken class. For example, having a 100% uptime SA rotation should not be a thing in this game because it basically means you HAVE to land a grab to stop it, or you have to gear check the enemy really hard if you go for SA trade, which means that grabless classes or those who cannot trade blows directly cannot win by default. Let's how PA reworks valk and then we can talk. Valk is by no means a weak class but she fades in comparison to the newest classes for sure.

Hi, my post was only talking about awakened Valkyrie. Awakened doesnt have the resist passive as thats a succession only passive. 

I like the idea of them fixing up pre awakening, but from what they have been doing with the newer classes, it looks like theyre trying to keep mainhand and awakening segregated. As in not need to go back into mainhand anymore. But they did mention that they wanted to rework skills that arent used much. So im hoping that we can see some good and useful changes. 

I'm pretty sure they will be revamping everything. But best to wait until the 2nd, since that is when we will know for sure what their approach is.

when is awakening getting the rmb bug fix? (e.g, hold rmb after sanctitas/f for flow damage, but then despite cancelling early, do sacrum ferit. I feel ridiculous with how often this has led to me getting cc-ed in skirmishes).

dashes and other movement skills are cut shorter and slowed down by range spam. fix this (but this applies to classes other than valk as well).

block stagger - inability to cast skills when blocking and under pressure from multi or rapid hit skills. to some extent, this has also been delayed or still not possible when attempting to use skills that are hotbarred. I certainly don't devote my hotbar to just slotting my full kit in for alternative activation. fix this.

shield chase directly cast from awakening stance has a gap at the very start. I am cc-ed out of it about 50% of the time now. When we had the status icons introduced to the game (the coloured icons that show whether and when a skill is iframe/super armour/forward guard), I noticed that the super armour icon has a slight pause before it comes up, however, if I use shield chase from preawakening, even successively, there is no such delay. Does this gap need to be here? In addition to all the other gaps we have at the start of our iframes/super armours?

Repurpose obsolete mainhand skills. I really liked the look and feel of that kit, but there's only a select few that have utility in present day PvP, a few that are for flair, and plenty that are locked or deliberately left de-ranked. The damage isn't there, and without having to play succession, I'd like to be able to dps combo in preawake for fun and diversity.

Personally for large scale, if celestial spear were a super armour, that would be very helpful. Alternatively, don't make c swap go on cooldown when celestial spear is used, so we can try to cover it with FG. That said, I think valk FG have very short and narrow protective cones, so this would be a more balanced option for 1v1.

And I just want the skills to cast faster. It feels like I'm several steps ahead of what I'm trying to do these days.

What I also don't want to see is animation cancels removed (such as the initial proposal for warrior rework) in favour of flows or ability effects mashed in together or automatically casted. Just doesn't feel as fun or as skillful. In fact, bring on more cancels I say :)

I would not like a style of valk that is a tank and lower damage, or more heavily reliant on blocking  or allied support. This would be my dealbreaker.

thought i was the only one who realises all those dumb bugs and gaps are a problem... 

when i suggested SA on spear people lost their shit. saying it would be too unfair... yea a midranged skill with 0 aoe that u mostly use for critbuff rather than cc anyway sooo unfair. meanwhile every other class has multiple protected cc's, we were one of the only ones left out only having shitty just counter that cant even cc a grass beetle. 
as long as promptness is unprotected sa on spear sadly wont do much. its promptness that screws you over the most. meanwhile other classes get iframe dashes to swap back into awa. 

also dont forget about the bug where you just end up not being able to use most pre awa skill. awa works perfectly fine but pre awa just doesnt respond anymore. usually only happens to me in BA or RBF. seems to be some area specific bug. in OW pvp i dont rly notice it