That was the case of Slayers DR talent. You needed one of them making Oblivious a no brainer unless you wanted to get smeared across the pavement. This was before the changes to dodging which itself was a bandaid fix to deal with ice skating enemies.
We wanted it as a passive before but the passive they got was just taking unstoppable out of leap, making it worse, and slapping it on our forehead and saying goodluck. Now we’ve lost a useful oblivious and we STILL have talents even in this… less than ideal example of a talent tree that are still no brainers. Like Adrenaline.
But see. Adrenaline is strong. Really strong. It gives us an endless amount of attack speed.
But Zealot gets Castigate and it’s up 100% of the time
Well… Shut up. Voice I made up for this argument. It’s weaker in both forms of it’s interaction and doesn’t give movement speed.
And if we stop comparing raw numbers it gives access to leap. While the new leap is less fun to use, hangs on so much as a pebble in the pathway, and in general is all around worse to use unless you’re jumping off of an already elevated position, it STILL leaps through an endless amount of enemies.
This can’t be slept on.
And you know what. Let’s make a comprehensive talent break down. Why not. This post isn’t nearly long enough already…
It should be noted that I won’t be covering the talents in order. But going instead from the least egregious to the most egregious in my eyes
- Arenaline
I believe Adrenaline should be kept as a Talent. It’s powerful and have multiple uses because it gives you your career skill faster, which has multiple uses. The problem isn’t Adrenaline being strong, it’s that the other two options are weak. They’ve never STOPPED being weak. And it’s even worse now.
- High Tally?
You could have 10% more damage or you could take distance, movement speed, and attack speed.
- Impatience?
You could take 30% movement speed or you could take distance, 25% movement speed, and attack speed.
Hmm…? So how would you fix it?
- Moving Target would be the only passive that could even pretend to compete with our new paper machete Slayer and it doesn’t exist.
- They could also have combined Mainstay with Smiter, Mainstay with the removed Unstoppable and gave it another stack. And these would ALSO be viable. They could have made mainstay give another stack and increase attack speed and this would ALSO be viable.
Hell let’s go one step forward. They could have taken Smiter and combined it with moving Target or taken Smiter and have given it attack speed as well. Give it an extra stack too so it actually can compete with Adrenaline Surge.
You see how easy this is?
And then given that you have movement speed AND attack speed you could do actual interesting things with your final talent. We will be talking at Length about that later.
Let’s talk about these guys:
- A Thousand Cuts
Easy to talk about. An alright ability that is enslaved by forcing Bardin to play a certain way. No adaptability and no flexibility. A counter choice to fun and engaging talents. Useless on plague monks who are attacking as well. The only time the extra stagger from power would actually be impactful
- Skull-Splitter
Equally easy to talk about. Provides power but limits your build. Forces you to play a certain way. Plus the power, while nice for cleaving, doesn’t assuage problems with trying to kill armor in a wave with the 2H axe. On top of now give you less AS by proxy of getting less Swiftslaying procs.
- Hack and Slash
Boring. And now the only choice in this tier if you use weapons of two different types. Throwing axes don’t interact with either so it goes here. (Throwing axes are also hard as hell to use so I can’t formulate an opinion on their worth to a Slayer at this time) Something like 5% crit should be a passive. What a rather unfortunate talent and, in my honest opinion, an actual waste of a slot.
Hmmmmmm…? So how would yo-
It’s actually easy to address this one. If FS wants to operate now on the philosophy of only playing a specific type of way. They could take both A Thousand Cuts and also Skull-Splitter and change how they work. Now instead of requiring both weapons be the same they apply their FULL effect to the weapon in question while providing 50% of that otherwise. If that’s not enough then we could rework them too.
- A Thousand Cuts could give AS under certain circumstances like time without being hit or after a charge attack. Enabling Slayers to mix up their playstyles and engaging them. Else it provides a weaker version of it’s buff and have a different enabling condition as well
- Skull-Splitter could just provide a static boost to power with an additional stipulation to cleave cleave more under the same conditionals as above. Cleave and stagger being incredibly important, it could give extra cleave on cleave or extra stagger on stagger. Both of these would help more weapons feel useful.
- Hack and Slash could be either set as a passive or removed and merged with the removed Crippling Wounds
So while I’m on a rowl (haha get it? What? Not funny?) we can also talk about
I’ve mentioned this before. Let’s talk about it again
- Oblivious to Pain
Only useful against elites (which shouldn’t hit you ever) or monsters (which still friggin hurt when they hit you given you only have 100 base hp). The only elite that can touch us are plague monks. And they’ll still shred through all of that 50% like a knife through butter. Rendering it rather pointless.
Pointless and useless. You specialize your DR against Elites and Monsters.
- Grimnir’s Focus
My thoughts about this ability are known. I’ll say it again. This skill is unreliable. Things you can’t rely on it all situations are as effectively useless. The only weapon that gets to engage with it being up all the time is the 2H weapon. As it’s heavy attacks cleaves and that helps assuage damage from alternate sources. Yes it’s even unreliable for hammers with maxed out AS and swift slaying. It simply can’t be relied on. Period. By the way. Completely doesn’t work with throwing axes.
https://streamable.com/rwj0m
Secondly. It’s very important to remind you that if they then buff this ability such that it then BECOMES consistent. It becomes mandatory in all builds, invalidate currently Oblivious, remove all choice and become broken in a way old Oblivious could never dream of.
Inconsistent and untrustworthy. Taking advantage of Drengi Grit to deploy this ability means you WILL die at some point from damage you intentionally soaked for no reason other than the ability wasn’t up.
- Barge
Barge is a newcomer that I actually like. So it’s with a heavy heart that I have to destroy Barge. Barge gives you protection against surrounds. That’s pretty nice. It then trades this off by being useless against bosses. Useless against (most) elites. Useless against specials.
Interesting and new Barge falls off against not hordes and has no impact on bosses and almost all specials
Hmm…? And you’d fix this how?
- If our health is to remain at 100, old Oblivious to Pain would be fine. Maybe reduced to 30% since that appears to be the magic number these days.
- On that same note you could take Barge and add a secondary effect. Such as the ability to have heavy push against elites or the ability for it to effect specials so you can scoot in the direction of a pouncing rat and yeet him out of the way.
- Grimnir’s Focus could be replaced with the old form of moving target. In that way it could have synergy with my improved suggestions for High Tally and my Improved Impatience.
And now it’s time to move on to what I believe is the worst trees in this tier
Time to finally talk about:
Why is this worse in my eyes? Well just read more and find out
- Bounding Leap
This ability. Is honestly unfathomably bad. You put yourself either in harms way or away from your group at max distance. If you have Adrenaline Surge you can leap back there. Else you now have to walk back there. Through what will undoubtedly be a dense hyper stacked horde. And now with NOTHING else to show for it. On the assumption that you don’t run AS, that means you have 40 seconds between leaps. It’s like how Sienna now has Whoosh! But no Sienna ever will take it because Burnout exists and is flat out better.
Bouding Leap just sucks.
And if FS’s or anybody elses logic was that it helps you kill specials? I did this match just now solely for the sake of making a point. I’ll pass:
psst we wiped in the finale though 
- Dawi-Drop
To you, the reader, you who are curious about Slayer, and you Fatshark especially. Do me an experiment. Go fight a boss. Use this ability. And tell me how much damage you do. Well how about chaos warriors.
For the people who already have actually tried this ability, it sucks as well. Logically you could use your leap to jump towards a horde and cleave them. In reality your cleave doesn’t go up so your damage doesn’t go that far up comparatively. It’s a gimmick trait, useful only for the pickaxe and nothing else. ALSO requires that you run Adrenaline Surge to get any mileage out of it more than once a fight, and also has low payoff. And this is ignoring how hard it is to actually use and the fact that it can’t be used at all dependent on the terrain.- The first 15 hours I spent in 2.0 was going systematically through every single weapon trying as hard as hell as I can to get any worth out of this. I can’t. You can do some funny bonk chaos warrior build with breakpoints in return for gimping your damage all around elsewhere and losing a hell of a lot of crit and AS to do so.
Make no mistake. This ability simply can’t stand on its own legs.
And a talent that is only useful for a single weapon is worthless.
- No Escape
This ability is mandatory. Everybody takes it because it provides a hell of a lot more than movement speed. It gives damage, survivability, AND support. You get the ability to get to specials or allies, evade being surrounded in stacks or more accurately maneuver that a surround can’t happen in your chokepoint, and you gain the ability to land more hits while being comparatively safer on bosses. This ability has the problem that Adrenaline Surge has. Everything else in it’s tier is a non option.
Hmm… but how?*
Easy.
- Give back Crunch or combine it with either Bounding Leap or Dawi-Drop.
- Remove either Bounding Leap or Dawi-Drop and give an ability that provides DR if no DR is provided elsewhere in our talent tree.
- Combine Bounding Leap AND Dawi Drop as it’s own new ability.
- Let Dawi-Drop give it’s 150% but in addition allow Trophy Hunter to continue stacking for 3 more stacks on top of High Tally, if you have it.
These create powerful talent choices for your final tier that then are split based on persona preference as opposed to just being forced into the only good option
And finally. The absolute worst tier of our talents is… The first one?
(Skip to the next page break for more insight about the job as a whole)
- Doomseeker
This ability is strictly inferior to Fury. A horde mobbing ability that doesn’t worth with all of our weapons. It’s betrayed and enslaved by its lack of overall career synergy. You have 1H hammer, 2x Hammer, 2H hammer, pick, and the third attack of the 2H axe. Anything else stops meaty well before 5 unless you’re carving through rats like a knife through warm butter.
With an inability to effect a lot of attacks from a lot of weapons and the return being low, this ability simply can’t compete with Slayer’s Fury.
It also have reverse synergy. The more damage and the faster you kill, the less temp hp you get and the faster it burns between fights
- Slayer’s Fury
This ability is the no brainer. With the addition of beast hordes it’s damn near mandatory. The only way you’re not crumpling after one of those is taking advantage of the higher than normal temp health that these things give you. It gives you accident forgiveness (thank… god…) from the existence of elites. The only downside is that if you’re in a boss fight and that boss last hit goes to anybody but you, you’re probably going to be in a very sore spot.
-
Infectious Fortitude
First of all insert J. Jonah Jameson here -
Second of all
No career skill that can be used for mitigation. No in built resistances. Two bad DR talents + the little Barge that could. And you give up the only reliable multipurpose mitigation you have “temp health” to help allies, almost all of whom are tanky or more survivable than YOU are? Absolutely not.
The best Slayers in the world could maybe make it through a Cata map without taking any kind of damage and leaving their life to luck with their small health pool of no mitigation and no protection for the generation that Natural Bond gives to heal their allies with this talent. But I suspect that those Slayers are all playing Zealot now and still don’t use this talent. Great on RV and IB. Terrible on Slayer.
How wou~
No. This tier has problems being universal in its traits as opposed to personalized even with the ones with similar effects. But if I really wanted to fix it
- I would first make Doomseeker provide far more gray health if during your cleave you stop meaty. This would make it something you didn’t mind doing as you swing into a horde to eliminate some armor. Or are fighting a beast horde
- Slayer’s Fury much like it’s other kill on hp talents are betrayed by the fact that it’s the strongest of it’s tier.
I almost didn’t want to talk about it. But when thinking about tiers that are just awful? Look no further than Slayer’s Fury.
And that’s that. These are my thoughts and fixes of Slayer Talents. Worthy of its own post but I’ll slap it here. A lot of time and effort was necessary to articulate my feelings (and drown out the idgaf until it was at a manageable level to do the one game I needed to prove a point)
There’s another post I need to make about Slayer weapons. But I don’t think I’m going to bother.
Facts
Because Buddy? That’s a hell of a lot of effort for a post that will ultimately be ignored as Feedback