For most of the classes there is one career that is noticeably superior (at least at the higher difficulties) than the others
I dont think these careers (Ironbreaker, Wayfarer, Pyro, Bounty Hunter) all need to be nerfed down, I think the other careers need to be adjusted to be competitive with the stand out careers
An easy way to do this would be to adjust a lot of the terrible talents that there are in the game
At the moment we have the illusion of talent choice, when in reality for most talent options there is only one right option
So many of the talents are trash tier, they feel like a troll job
Things like 5% movement speed, I can get this from a Blue weapon effect, they need to up these numbers to something noticeable, 15% move speed, 25% Dodge distance etc
A spec should make you feel different to another spec for the same hero, when as it stands pretty much everyone who plays X class will use mostly the same talents, rendering the whole point of the talents (to provide specialization/playstyle customisation within a career) pointless
TLDR : It feels lame that you love playing a class but feel like you would be way better of just playing the stronger class to give you an easier ride at the harder difficulties, give the weaker classes some changes to their rubbish talent trees to boost them up in competitiveness with the stronger classes
I think Fat Shark knows all this and is working on it, atleast the career balance.
You cannot buff the movement speed talents to 15% passive that would be nuts, that would allow you to outrun enemies right?
Also increasing the dodge distance by such a huge margin would allow you to easily dodge every boss attack thats way too insane aswell.
And the talents are only at fault to a degree here. The main culprit is the active ability of the stronger career.
Would you rather: Have a wizard that can stunlock bosses with his active + concentration potion and snipe specials / ONEHIT CHAOSWARRIORS ON LEGEND every, what 20 seconds?, or a wizard that can blink for 10m every 1 minuteâŚ
The same goes for Witch Hunter Captain. His actives CD is just WAY too long for what it does, meanwhile bounty hunter takes off 80% bosshealth in 4 seconds on legend with one the volley crossbow (Off Balance + Hunter + Shrapnelbomb + Concoction), and through the guaranteed crit has infinite ammo and can kill all those stormvermin that run around on legend.
And dont even get me started on the Zealot or most of the weapons being garbage.
We will have to wait and see how Fat Shark balances this. For now they made 1-2 patches per week and focused on gamebreaking bugs mostly. After those are out of the way I hope there will be more balance changes. (And lets not forget they probably want to gather as much data as possible before balancing)
Biggest problem that needs fixing in Stealth subclasses in my eyes.
The FOV bug that also makes you move and attack slower when you use your Career Ability is awful. (Itâs not just your FOV that borked, you do actually move and attack slower) Then thereâs the problem of stealth itself, like the Elfâs extra backstab dmg is useless outside of bosses because enemies are almost always facing you and taking the time to get behind them to get that damage bonus negates that damage bonus because if you just attacked it while it was facing you, you couldâve killed it faster. Not to mention all the Career Stealth Abilities that instantly make you visible as soon as you attack.
Stealth itself doesnât really lend itself well to co-op horde mode games as being unable to be attacked makes it worse for your teammates. Iâd much prefer just damage bonuses and cool special abilities over not being targetted anymore. (For example the Shadeâs special could do a Dance of Death instead and just whirlwind around killing aton of enemies)
Canât really agree with the non targettable person making it worse for your team as they can take out a couple of high value targets from behind during this period, especially so for a shade who has an instakill passive when critting from the back which would take a lot of pressure off your teammates or even 3 seconds of free hits on trash mobs you could kill quite a lot which would also minimize the fact that they are the only ones being targetted, if they canât hold the line for 3 seconds without you then you were probably carrying them in the first place.
While a whirlwind of death would be cool thatâs not really what the shade is there for and taking away that massive crit would diminish her boss killing ability (even as underwhelming as it is in its current state).
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that we should be buffing classes to the stronger oneâs standard and not nerfing classes to the weaker oneâs standard there is something here that is really bugging me.
1.) Itâs waystalker
2.) Handmaiden is actually a lot more viable in higher difficulties than Waystalker because Kerri bows donât have armor piercing making them bad at specialist hunting (what range is good for) and despite her inherit design flaws Handmaiden is an awesome support/tank (Elf is also just bad in Legendary due to her weapon choices)
3.) All of Marcusâs careers have a very good role and I would say are on par with each other. EDIT: You never said anything about Marcus. Apologies.
Itâs a matter of perspective and playstyle IMO. I easily outplay bh with Zealot. Waystalker is pretty weak in comparison with shade.Only two classes I think are a bit overtuned is pyromancer and ironbreaker. When I play either it makes champion a guaranteed win. 5% movement speed is godly,especially if you pair it with a 5% movement speed on an item. 15% movment speed would make you absolutely invincible. You wouldnât have to block because youâd just charged attack-move back + dodge,move forward with charged attack-repeat.
I really wouldnât disregard these talents until you actually play with them for a while. I know where youâre coming from,because at first I also was like âdodge distance increase?can barely notice it!â â5%ms?how is that better than any offensive trait?â
But I tried them and learned that:
Dancing around enemies is easy with 10% ms. I canât imagine how broken it would be with 15 or 20. For dodge distance - that 10% lets you jump into a chaos warriors face with a heavy attack while heâs charging his heavy attack and then dodge that attack with ease. You canât do that with standard dodge,hell,sometimes you have to dodge twice to avoid that attack.
All in all you just have to make a build that compliments your playstyle,not a build that is "metaâ(however silly it may sound in a co-op game). If your only indicator of something being strong is trash kills and damage dealt, then yes,you have one set of talents to play with. if you want to min-max along with your strengths and weaknesses then you have an awful lot of build to choose from.
I agree that talent trees need reworking,but I think they ALL need it,especially the lvl 20 talents.
Right now I think more specializations should be like Handmaiden in the abstract sense. On lower difficulties Handmaiden is almost entirely a downgrade to Waystalker. However, on higher difficulties a Handmaiden becomes incredibly useful to the team because of how much she augments the groupâs general utility while still having solid enough ranged damage output to deal with special threats.
long bow has armor piercing and can 1 headshot kill a stormvermin, with lvl25 talent, you will have infinite ammo and can just shot everything in your path. Glaive is a good choice of melee weapon for higher difficulties, it can cleave through horde, and it can kill chaos warrior pretty quick with charged atk
I still dont see it, literally anything is better than handmaiden. If ws isnt optimal choice then elf overall stops being optimal choice. You take footsoldier, ironbreaker, bounty hunter and pyro instead.
The only thing augmented by Handmaiden is herself, and itâs a non-existent superficial bonus. She is not useful to the team because the only Elf weapon with strong pushing to meet a CC standard is the Spear, and the damage it does is too low and itâs less reliable than shield pushing. With regards to Stam Regen: if all people are doing on a team is shoving and not actually killing the enemy then nothing is getting done. The class is not âincredibly useful at higher difficultiesâ and what you posted suggests you havenât played it, or you were being carried. In such games, someone is either going to be Foot Knight or Ironbreaker or even both and you are just dead weight no matter what youâre bringing.
The Handmaiden sucks and every bonus she gets sucks, especially in comparison to two other classes available that move the game forward at a proper pace and get work done.
Youâre not making a good case with any of this. All enemies move at 4.8 speed, players at 4.0. Even if you had +15% youâd not be outrunning anything and once you get locked into an engagement, itâs not going to make life as easy as, say, Crit Chance or anything else. The talents should be more meaningful to, as you say, complement a playstyle. Youâre not considering the team in your post.
But that aside, the point about âmin-maxing along the strengths and weaknesses of a classâ is missing that what some classes provide is nothing important (Handmaiden) or sub-par compared to others (Zealot).
I also feel that itâs just straight missing the point to snipe at the scoreboard trash killing thing because yes, if you kill everything and do it fast enough and not get held up shoving more than killing, then they are superior builds, not meta builds. The point of the game is to win and to do it as fast as possible. One tank is enough to enable that and two characters have access to keeping the team alive and performing well in other matters. Kerillianâs arsenal is middling to weak and we can only expect a balance wave in the future to upset it further.
I agree with above post if you replace Waystalker with Handmaiden, and add Footknight to the list. Waystalker is âokâ and FK is pretty solid, although it could use a few changes only due to the fact that right now its the only viable Kruber career for higher tier content but its extremely melee oriented and currently range is king (because of bugs, but its still king!).