I want to add to your point by saying that while the Jav’s cleave is situational to maps with choke points, the cleave only works on unarmoured targets, the Javs will not cleave through shields or armour. So if you’re dealing with SSV, the Javlin will be stopped dead in its tracks.
The HM is more of a hybrid so it’s not unusual for a HM to be using range. As for Shade, you can definitely make that argument but she is a glass cannon, very good at deleting elites and monsters, but with trash she is vulnerable since her daggers have a short range and poor stamina. She’s also very vulnerable to ping. It’s for this reason I think you see Shades minding a safe distance. I for one only ever play Shade if I’m the host because of how squishy she is. So the caution from Shades I actually think is wise. She’s not a melee powerhouse like Slayer who has throwing axes, which is very similar to Javlin. Only difference is Slayers feel far more confident to dive head first into a horde. You can’t be so reckless with a Shade.
Sure but keeping distance will be in my opinion counter productive if you delete elites at range. First off you waste damage potential, second off as dagger shade you most certainly take THP on kill, if you kill the elites on range you wont get that juicy THP, killing them on distance will just delay your death if you dont go for it in melee.
For handmaiden, yeah you can play her as hybrid/support role and not as a damage career, and yeah a javelin is a good weapon on her especially for damage vs monster, she falls apart at this point.
@NewNoise10 I just wanted to point out if players want to go for damage and feeling strong, jav is more or less the wrong option, and i also wanted to point out that most players pick it for safetiness as you already mentioned.
But this “just throw” mentality is really annoying, on the one hand it encourages bad gameplay and false saftiness like the example with the thp on kill for double dagger shade. Because you wont gain your THP and on the other hand the “just throw” mentality is also one reason that some players completely shut down their brain and dont bother about friendly fire.
You don’t see how the comments you quoted compliment each other? Javlins are picked for their ammo management ability, which is what allows the elven players to hang back and snipe. A sniper one shotting a black rat on Legend is hardly surprising. Black rats have low hp, only 52hp on Legend. Most range weapons easily hit that break point. It’s not an issue. Once again its capabilities is no different to the Slayers throwing axes, the throwing axes performance is practically identical to the Javs yet no one has called for them to be nerfed. For that reason you can’t nerf the Javlins without nerfing Bardins throwing axes and I don’t want to see that happen just because there are people with elf bias.
That said people forget that the Elf is genuinely the range specialist character and the Javlins are highly picked because they’re needed in Cata runs. You can have 4+ specials spawn at a time, and weapons like a hand gun, with only 16 shots will quickly run out of ammunition.
In short, the Javlin damage output isn’t overpowered, no more than the MFB was, but they share the same issue which makes them arguably overpowered. It’s the unlimited ammo that makes Javlins so strong, it’s what made the MFB so strong. If you really want to nerf it, all you need to do is remove the unlimited ammo. If you do anything else to it then you risk gutting it like how the MFB was ruined. That said, whatever you do to the Javs you will have to do to throwing axes so be careful.
I don’t have THP issues when I play Shade with Javs. For two reasons.
If I’m solo with bots then I’ll have Merc and Unchained ultimate to give me THP.
With Shades Ults, I can practically delete any CW I see and get 60 to 120THP from killing 2 to 4 CW’s with the ult. This is why I hang back with Javs, I hang back to snipe any high priority targets, such as specials or beserkers, which is far more advantageous to do with the Javlins then the daggers. Especially in regards to zerkers who can obliterate you with one wrong move.
legit gameplay for sure and thats how you should play with jav on shade if you take it and playing on high ping. As we already discussed we both agree that its a nice weapon for safe gameplay and that jav is taken because of it.
But i have somehow the feeling that many players just copy the build from others and dont bother with other builds and for elven careers there are many strong builds, maybe even more than on other classes, which is a bit sad.
I think the reason for it is that it is too safe to play so there isnt a need to second guess it. And maybe the saftiness also supports bad habits.
I agree, the breakpoints are fine and it already needs some investiment to reach them on cata and most onehit breakpoints are already only for headshots.
Especially for the javelin i wouldnt say that the unlimited ammo makes it overpowered. It has a high reload time and if many specials are up at once, it can be a very busy situation with the jav compared to longbow. Longbow is much quicker in sniping. But for sure it is handy to have an unlimited ammo weapon if you are looking at the whole run.
As a conclusion i would say unlimited ammo on jav is handy for the overall run, but not overpowered if you encounter difficulty spikes.
I can see the relationship between the comments, that’s why I said “yes, and…” . However, it oversimplifies the matter to suggest that it’s purely ammo management making these weapons popular. Quite often, they serve as a straightforward one-shot weapon for Legend players, allowing them to steer clear of melee combat and tactically use their team as a barrier while they eliminate targets. It’s a widely adopted strategy. The breakpoint for one-shotting black rats and specials on legend may be low, but for elf, the Javelins are the easiest weapon to hit that breakpoint with and they offer a much faster spammable attack.
I believe you’re not considering all the factors. It’s not just about the one-shot kill; it’s a synergy of several aspects - penetration, impactful melee strikes, unlimited ammo, stagger ability, as well as the synergistic bonuses with various elf careers, to name a few.
I have to disagree. Throwing axes and javelins aren’t at all the same: throwing axes lack melee capabilities, they deal higher damage without penetration, and have a longer cooldown before reloading can begin. Plus, they have a smaller range and a larger arc per shot. Also, when considering synergy, elf careers tend to mesh better with javelins than the Ranger Vet or Slayer with throwing axes. Improving the throwing axes by speeding up the reload or adding some penetration could level the playing field a little.
This is true to an extent, as both Shade and Handmaiden only have one talent oriented toward ranged combat, but those two are primarily melee careers and SotT is a hybrid, that I think gets the most damage from melee with bleed/poison stacking. It’s quite common for players to exploit the javelins, resorting to spamming even when it’s not the most strategic move. This is a safety-first approach adopted by many elf players on Legend to grab easy kills.
I believe that a moderate adjustment, such as slowing the reload speed, could make the weapon less prone to spamming without necessarily damaging its core appeal.
However, I actually prefer the idea of limiting the weapon’s ammunition while keeping its other attributes intact. It’s a sensible solution, although it might not be popular among many players. The limit would have to be very low, like 9, and that’s keeping the reload, with a max of three at a time before reloading.
The MFB has its niche like we have discussed in the MFB topic, but it was totally shifted away from sniping. Considering the MFB as sniping weapon is just wrong. It is more a tool to boost your overall damage on certain builds while being capable to deal with specials. Sure dealing with specials takes a bit more effort, but it works. Real sniping weapons need less effort dealing with specials.
If you want to buff the MFB so it will be a real sniping weapon weapon again, then you are right. If they want to do this they have to remove the unlimited ammo. But buffing MFB and taking away the unlimited ammo would rival the other bows. Whether this is a good idea or not is open for debate, for me it would be a bad idea.
The javelin on the other hand is in my opinion more unique, it works different than bows. You can not spam successive shots if you encounter difficulty spikes.
If you want to nerf the jav you have to consider which flaws the jav already has
Here some drawbacks using the jav:
As @NewNoise10 has already said, the jav`s cleave is even stopped by shielded slaverats and shielded chaos trashmobs.
So it has already its drawbacks especially on cata with mixed hordes and you rely on map layout for lined up enemies
It has already a relativly high reload time, which forces you to stay back.
It has already only decent breakpoints and needs headshots to oneshot elites and specials.
Most javelin builds are already not the ones which enable the most overall damage.
So the only point for nerfs is the stagger, which can help to make the weapon a bit more unsafe to use, and make other weapons more competitve.
Nerfing the damage of the javelin would miss the point why players are picking it. They are picking it because its easy and safe not because of enabling the best damage build.
@Ensrick i guess @NewNoise10 is talking about cata he already said that if you have a cata build you will be overpowered with almost any weapon when it comes down to breakpoints. So i guess the legend arguments dont really count. I personally dont have experiences with legend, last time i have played it was long ago.
Have you forgotten that the LB and MFB exist? They both hit the same breakpoint for blackrats. They’re both snipers. It’s normal. You can certainly spam with the LB and MFB too. Heck the LB can hit CW breakpoints on legend if you really wanted to go all in on power creep.
The Jav only really gets bonuses from the WS, a little on HM and nothing on Shade. While you can attack with the Javlins, you can’t block so it’s not really advised to fight with the Javlin in melee. Its penetration is shared with the MFB, both weapons pierce super armour. While the Jav can stagger CW it will struggle to kill them unless you hit headshots.
That’s not true. Throwing Axes penetrate super armour. They also have good cleave too, so you can use them to delete hordes in a line, especially with conservative shooter and unlike Javlins, the Throwing Axes hit SV breakpoints by default without needing any power creep. They’re even better on RV with the ammo capacity, reload speed and increased damage. In fact I run them on RV because the pistol can’t penetrate super armour but throwing axes can, and it does stagger them too. In many ways they’re better than Javlins if you use them correctly.
It’s not an exploit to use a range weapon. This is game direction bias. There are people who think V2 should be a melee orientated game, without any real range choices. This idea is absurd. Especially when we have specials to deal with. It’s easy to cry “OP” when you look at their performance on Legend but on Cata, the Javlins will not kill a SV in 1 hit, it takes up to 2 or 3. CW have 250HP so if you’re the Shade where you only have 3 Javs, you will only kill 1 SV then have to reload and you certainly won’t kill that CW.
They really need to open Cata to the public so people can see for themselves that the weapons are not broken. They’re perfectly balanced on Cata. Legend is the easier/casual difficulty anyway. With all that said, if you want to nerf the Jav then take away its unlimited ammo but Cata runs will severely suffer from it if you do that so I don’t really agree with this idea just because people are unhappy of the Javlins performance on Legend.
The main reason why the original MFB (even if we remove its unlimited ammo) rivals the other bows is because when you compare all the bows performance to Cata runs, they’re quite lackluster with the exception of the LB. For example, Hag deals 9 dots in total on armour, so in 6 volleys you will kill a group of SV, but on Cata that number jumps to 9.
Now people will argue that the Hag is designed for horde clear, not armour, sure, but then you might end up dealing with a beast men horde where their health is 54 each. This in turn makes the Hag feel quite useless on Cata. Heck a hook rat has over 100health, so the amount of Hag arrows you need to hit a hookrat to kill one special is the reason we’re not seeing the Elves use the other weapons. It’s not because the snipers are “too good” it’s because their high damage is exactly what’s needed for a Cata run.
This is why I disagree with balancing weapons around the legendary difficulty. If you do that, there’s a good chance you’ll make them near useless on Cata. Never mind the fact Cata 3 exists.
Hmm with hooks i dont have much issues with the hagbane but i confirm the struggle with beastmen.
I also agree that weapons should be balanced around cata. Especially many players struggle already with the jump of difficulty from legend to cata.
And in general i am against nerfs of weapons even if it sounded different in the MFB topic. I indeed see that many are unhappy with the MFB, and even if i am fine with that new MFB, in future balance patches and reworks players shouldnt be punished for picking a weapon they like. Sure some balancing maybe have to be done. But nerfing damage or cleave is imo most often not the right way to do this. It will be enough if devs tweak the weapons so you have to be more careful. Decreasing damage and cleave would only anger the players. High risk high reward is a better way to balance them. If you perform good you should get good results. And thats the way i want to have the jav being balanced. Dont touch the the cleave and damage so you can have the same results like we have now, but make it a bit more risky by tweaking the stagger.
Btw the hagbane is surprisingly good vs specials, i did a duo run with bots on a more horde + more specials deed on cata:
A friend recorded it. I am the elf.
Edit: sorry of course i meant dont touch the cleave and damage so you can have the same results but tweak the stagger for more high risk high reward gameplay.
Not only do I agree with this sentiment, and your post, but this particular part reminded me of this scene in Rick in Morty which I think helps to emphasize your point.
Edit: In regards to the Hag performance with the hook rat, I mostly speak in regards to time to kill since a hook rat won’t release a grappled player unless it’s dead or staggered by an ult/bomb so generally I want to kill a hook rat as fast as possible.
Thats why i tend to use double dagger on Hagstalker, deleting horde with hagbane or staggering mixed horde with its AOE stagger and dealing with armoured units with the daggers. For more specials deed with more horde i go for S&D because you want to regain THP as fast as possible because most of the time you are busy with specials and shooting and you cant deny being hit here and then, after being hit you really need the THP of S&D so you are safe to shoot specials again.
I respectfully disagree; that is factually incorrect with respect to throwing axes. While it’s true that throwing axes are effective against individual armored opponents, they do not cleave or “delete hordes in a line”. If you utilize them frequently as suggested, it’s somewhat perplexing that you have not noticed.
I would like to reiterate my stance. Yes, throwing axes do pack more raw damage per shot and possess an edge over some of the other options. However, they suffer from limitations including a less desirable throwing arc, damage drop-off, absence of melee functionality, non-existent cleave/penetration, and a substantial delay before reloading. Consequently, they don’t outshine other weapon alternatives like the handgun, crossbow, or pistol when it comes to shooting an anemy in a crowd on the Ranger Veteran. When playing as the elf, the javelins provide a lazy solution to engaging enemies from a distance without the necessity of the same level of precision required for the axes since they have a decent throwing arc and damage dropoff with cleave through hordes.
It’s also important to mention that when you use the Ranger’s Ult, you can pierce all armor with any weapon and the delay before reloading on the axes becomes a problem if you want to take on a group of elites or take advantage of the time when your Ult smoke is up; reload bonuses do not apply to throwing weapons the same because technically, the reload on the axes happens automatically whenever you fire one. Take the cooldown on reload talent and watch every time you throw a throwing axe, it gives you some cooldown.
Contrasting javelins and axes using a single chaos warrior as a reference doesn’t suffice as a comprehensive comparison and it’s getting tediuos having conversations where people cherry pick scenarios to support their views. If the axes possessed crowd-piercing capabilities, I’d expect to see them being complained about as often as javelins. These differences highlight the critical distinctions between the two and explain why we’re seeing so many elf players leaning on javelins instead of putting in effort with other weapons.
I appreciate your input, @Max93. Although you might not engage with Legend, I do, in addition to Cata. Quite often, I find myself unable to locate Cata lobbies, and as a result, I resort to Legend for a more casual gaming experience. Hence, in my perspective, Legend holds relevance to this discourse. While it may not pertain directly to you, it does concern a significant proportion of the player base who grapple with the aforementioned issues.
They absolutely do cleave, and will delete trash in a line. Not sure what you’re on about here. I do it all the time. Heck, I just had a game where I had 170+ range kills and only 30 melee kills because I was mostly using the throwing axes.
This is such an exaggeration, are you trying to make the throwing axes sound like they’re trash?
The throwing arc is easy to adapt too and the damage drop off is only noticeable if you’re trying to snipe things at a great range. Most enemies will be within mid to close range so it isn’t really a problem. While the axes lack “melee” you can still throw them rapid fire without aiming so you can still attack with them. Once again they absolutely do have cleave/penetration. The only thing they won’t cleave is shields or armour but they absolutely will cleave through unarmored targets.
The only real drawback is the initial delay when you reload and the slow fire rate.
This isn’t an issue for me, I use Rangers Parting gift and will use bombs instead when I ult. The axes are for general use.
No it doesn’t since Kerillian is generally a range specialist and Bardin is generally a melee specialist. The Javlins and throwing axes function is similar but not identical. The axes generally do more damage and deal with armour better, and the Javlins generally have more range and cleave. The long winded post you made just to point out that distinction wasn’t necessary.
The point still stands, we shouldn’t be balancing weapons based on Legendary. We should be balancing weapons around Cataclysm. If a weapon is overpowered on Cata, then we have a problem.
My statement was not an exaggeration, but a factual differentiation. Throwing axes and javelins are throwing weapons with endless ammo, but that’s where the similarities end. To imply that a nerf to javelins necessitates a similar nerf to axes is, in my view, extremely misguiding.
I maintain my position: throwing axes do not possess a cleaving function. As for our disagreement on this point, it appears we may have to agree to disagree unless you’re interested in proving your point. I don’t have an interest in discussing this further if we’re not on the same page about the facts.
EDIT: For clarity, I know on the RMB hold-throws, throwing axes get a little bit of cleave.
I use them for fun, not because they’re the most effective. Still, hard to imagine any serious player would say they’re equivalent to javelins in terms of their overall usefulness.
@NewNoise10 Throwing axe has half the cleave of the javelin with charged throw and no cleave at all with an uncharged throw. It can reach identical stagger breakpoints as well
Here you can look up the cleave:
Here you can calculate your stagger breakpoints:
An ungor has 2,5 mass on cata and a gor has 7 mass on cata. That means a charged throw can cleave 5 ungor or 2 gor.
@Max93 Thank you for this. Not sure why Ensrick is saying throwing axes don’t have cleave when they actually do, and this proves it.
Wait, you mean to tell me you were judging the throwing axes performance by shooting from the hip instead of aiming? No wonder you think they’re so weak. That explains a lot. Try charging your shots first. You’ll delete chaos warriors and cleave through trash. If slave rats or fanatatics are in a conga line, you’ll delete a good number of them before they reach melee range. They can even reach hook rat break point on legend.
btw for chaos horde: throwing axes are cleaving 3 fanatics or 2 raider (fanatic: 3,25 mass and raider has 7,5 mass)
for skaven: 6 skavenslaves or 3 clanrats
these values are of course without “last resort”.
This build has a nice synergy because last resort will increase your fire bomb damage as well as the damage of the last throwing axe (you will get the buff as soon as you throw the last axe and when the axe hits the target the buff also counts for damage dealt by this thrown axe). Also you can increase the bomb damage even further by drinking your dropped potions so you indeed melt those patrols. And with concoction you can regain your ult fast to get more free bombs.
