Bounty Hunter has a problem with his active ability, that problem is called Double-Shotted.
What do I think is the issue with it?
It’s a massive boost to the base ability itself. Not only does it double the damage of it by adding another shot, but it also gives 80% CDR if you hit both headshots. This is probably the biggest boost to a career ability ever. Imagine if WHC Unending Hunt talent gave him 2 charges of his ult alongside the 40% CDR, or if Mercenary gave double the THP from his ult alongside a 50% CDR.
Has the potential to simply delete monsters and lords very fast. I’m not a fan of 1 trick pony active abilities, it limits variety for a career and removes enemies that are often fun to fight. The damage output of it is insane.
Zero competition in that row. Partly you could say that the other 2 talent choices simply aren’t that good, but if we were to try and match Double-Shotted, just how strong would you have to make the other 2 choices, and how would they be different exactly?
In this thread, I want to propose a rework for that entire talent row - something that I think would create 3 roughly equal talents in terms of viability, and offering 3 distinct roles and playstyles.
Just Reward - every elite enemy killed gives 20% CDR. This would be your option if you want to primarily use your active ability for killing elites. It’s a simple and direct upgrade for the active ability.
Double-Shotted - fires an extra bullet and has x% higher headshot damage multiplier. CDR is removed entirely and instead turns Locked and Loaded into a high impact, high cooldown ability. Compared to the other 2 talents, this is focused on killing lords and monsters. In comparison to current Double-Shotted, this would do more burst damage, but would lack the sustain to keep going and fully delete whatever monster or lord you’re firing at. Even with just 40% cooldown reduction it would synergize too well with concentration/concoction potion and trinket CDR. Increased headshot damage multiplier means you still want to hit headshots with this and keeps it high skill.
Buckshot - modifies the sidearm into a blunderbuss and sets cooldown to 10s. Literally just turns it into the blunderbuss, same 12 pellets, with the same damage profile and same cleave. Every iteration of Buckshot has, in my opinion been a failure of a gimmick. This talent would be your horde clear option, and essentially just gives you a second ranged weapon. It’s simple and effective, would be fun to use and gives it a unique role.
Now let me say that the numbers and effects aren’t set in stone here. Maybe Just Reward should give CDR from special kills as well, maybe Double-Shotted should still have cooldown reduction, and maybe Buckshot should get a cooldown increase, etc. etc.
But you get the idea of this - one option would be a direct upgrade and meant for elite and special killing, another focuses on killing monsters and lords, while Buckshot would be your horde clear option.
Locked and Loaded is a low-impact active ability. It doesn’t do anything particularly exceptional like one-shot monsters with a really long cooldown, taunt all enemies in a radius or pump everyone with tHP. It also doesn’t give Victor any crowd control like WHC or Mercenary shouts, no mobility like Handmaiden dash or BW teleport, and no personal defensive boosts like Pyromancer’s Bonded Flame. Therefore I think it’s good to give it lots of CDR with Buckshot and Just Reward - you get to use it like a second ranged weapon without it destroying everything in one use. It becomes a highly offensive tool, and something that I think would be a lot of fun to use. Double-Shotted meanwhile would be the high-impact and high cooldown option to deal massive burst damage to single-targets.
Personally I think my favorite change would be the Buckshot one. Essentially it gives Victor access to a shotgun for his active ability - which is something no careers currently have. I like low-impact low cooldown abilities in general, and it looks simple and effective without any gimmicks like current Buckshot has.
Please remember to discuss about the general idea of 1 talent for elite/special killing, 1 for monster/lord killing and 1 for horde clear, instead of arguing about the specifics first. Those can always be changed and modified.
Would it still knockback monsters? I would it being able to knockback and also give insta refund will be pretty easy, which will allow to permastagger a monster. Also i don’t know how much 1 shot of his ult does, dmg wise, but if it can oneshot a cw, this will be picked over “just reward”.
Isn’t that like its now currently? it resembles a blunderbuss. i’m not sure if it has the same damage as one, or how its cleave is etc. But buckshot was always the horde clear option in my eyes. A buff to it wouldn’t hurt, i admit. i wouldn’t give it a 10 seconds cooldown though.
I’m still a bit worried about giving ults too much cooldown reduction.
It probably shouldn’t knock monsters back, although on this specific issue I would defer this to the devs or player feedback.
One shot of his ult one-shots a CW on Cataclysm only with a headshot or a crit. I’m not sure whether or not Just Reward would be worse than 100% headshot CDR, since I obviously don’t have practical experience with these changes, but just from thinking about it, they feel pretty equal to me in terms of viability.
Not at all. Current Buckshot has roughly a 53 base cooldown + a gimmick for more pellets per enemies killed with it.
My proposition would essentially give BH a second ranged weapon for his ult that you get to use a lot more without just destroying the horde in one use. I don’t see how it’d be OP since it’d be just as strong as 1 blunderbuss shot. You would be able to turn into Bluntsman, but only for a small time by drinking a concentration or concoction potion.
For ults like Mercenary or WHC, definitely. But for BH? It’s not as good as the other 2 ults I just mentioned, and some ults are meant to be used often, like FK Valiant Charge.
If Just reward gives 20% cdr back and oneshots elites, but double shotted gives all cooldown back and also oneshots, the only downside being that you have to headshot? it would probably be a choice between skill at this point, but double shotted gets chosen now not only because of its boss dps, but also because of single target dps, its basically a free elite delete and if you headshot you have more, if you mess up you only lose 20% cdr that just reward would give. seems like a worthy risk to take in my opinion.
Ah yea but the one before BBB. i was thinking about that one.
I mean 1 blunderbuss shot is pretty strong. i don’t mind it being an ult option, i just don’t think it should be on such a low cooldown, but those are just details. i like the idea.
Valiant charge is a support ult though, Bh being able to delete an elite is like waystalker ulting. i’m not saying bh is stronger then ws, i’m just pointing out to be cautious with adding cdr, or we will get another “delete 3 sv’s” every 40 seconds career. Also waystalker her piercing shot requires alot of power vs to oneshot a cw and it doesn’t stagger.
I agree and like it, but I have questions. What about the ult is getting changed, specifically? If double-shotted is no longer two bullets than will it have the buckshot part still?
Personal opinions:
I actually like the current version of Just Reward, like you said it is a very low impact active but the fast regen makes it fine to use on elites, specials, or hordes.
I still sort of still feel like double-shot should still be two bullets, but the massive cooldown has fostered a fairly toxic meta. I think there’s still room in the game for it just not with more than 30% achievable cdr, if any.
Fwiw, I have one teammate who insists on using buckshot, all the time. I think the current iteration still promotes toxic play. He uses the ult in hordes, as he should, and is never satisfied because the game is taunting him, holding the unobtainable 20 extra pellets out of reach and most of the time just frustrating him when he ults into a high density horde and comes away with extremely low returns with the long cooldown. So, i totally see you’re suggestion to just make it a free blunderbuss being a clearly better choice, but with a few things I think are problems. I think 10 seconds is way too short, I think the blunderbuss takes away from the charm of Salt’s fancy pistol, and ideally I think an ult should do something better than what he can do with repeater pistol or volley.
Headshots can be tough to get, especially if you’re under pressure. Just Reward would be the safe option to take. Although I can definitely see how headshot CDR could be simply better. The general idea is to make Just Reward for elites and specials, while Double-Shotted would be for monsters and lords. Since the knockback would be an issue as well, it could be better to revert Double-Shotted to give 2 shots, and instead remove the cooldown reduction, therefore make it have huge burst damage, but it doesn’t have the sustain to keep going and fully delete the monster.
Eh, I mean it shouldn’t be any higher than 20s in my opinion, but sure the cooldown specifically could be debated. I do really like the idea of BH getting an essentially second ranged weapon, which would be a solid horde clear option.
Think of it this way. You kill one elite. That’s essentially what a crossbow crit does. Valiant Charge is really powerful because yes, it’s a support ult, but can apply the strongest stagger effect in the game on a potentially unlimited number of enemies, which then applies a 40-60% damage taken debuff. That’s no joke, and definitely higher impact than just killing one elite or special enemy in my opinion.
I’ve used Double-Shotted for a lot of Cata runs and I can only agree that it is out of place in how crazy strong it is, but mainly through its burst damage potential in combination with a concentration potion or any potion using concoction.
Just Reward is a pretty good cooldown reduction talent with some talent setups, but as you said it’s overshadowed by double-shotted doing the same thing better with more damage on top. Indiscriminate Blast is a gimmick for gimmick builds and doesn’t really play in the same league as the other two.
It seems like a bug that both shots trigger the 40% reduction, to be honest. At 40% total it’d deal quite a bit less burst damage with a potion, though even that number is high considering the damage increase from that talent.
What do you mean by this? I’m not changing the base ult in any way, I’m just proposing a rework for the 3 talents that affect Locked and Loaded. The idea is to give a talent each for either elite, monster or horde killing.
As it is right now it’s a pretty solid talent, but still overshadowed by Double-Shotted. If we were to change the talents in the way I propose, while keeping Just Reward as it is currently, there’d be issues. It would tread on the monster-killing focus of the other talent, since the ult would get recharged by critting the monster/lord every 10-6s, instead of purely focusing it on elites/specials. It would also be worse at it’s specific role, since you would only get the CDR every 10-6s, instead of just every time you kill an elite, which would be potentially faster if you chain kill elites. Meanwhile, I really don’t think it’d be that oppressive, since you’d then only get 1 shot to kill an enemy of your choosing, which would be an equivalent of a crit crossbow bolt. This way it would be a single extra powerful shot to kill a specific enemy that you really want, like a supplement to your primary killing power.
Yeah, I think I agree. I’m probably leaning towards Double-Shotted keeping the extra shot, and either completely remove or vastly reduce the cooldown reduction. It’d still be focused on killing monsters and lords, and would remain superior compared to Just Reward or Buckshot. This way it’d be the less spammy, higher impact single ult with a powerful effect.
10s cooldown could definitely be too short, but that’s specifics that could be tweaked easily. The general idea is to still keep it as a low cooldown.
The point of this ult choice, as I’ve mentioned a few times now, is to basically give BH a second ranged weapon for horde clear, which I think would be very unique and solid. Besides, a blunderbuss shot is better at horde clear than what volley or repeater can do, especially if you use concoction or concentration. And you can always pick the other 2 talents if you’re not a fan of this.
I think thats the better choice, remove or heavily reduce the cooldown reduction you get. Then i could see double shotted being a burst or high hp single target, and then have your just reward idea for just deleting elites.
Yea it was badly worded on my end. I didn’t mean support doesn’t have a huge impact. Just that with bh, you see the result immediatly, on footknight and support ults (they are also very strong) their impact isn’t as visually showing. if that makes any sense.
My opinion is that ultimates should no get any cooldown reduction as talents. Different bonusses is fine, giving cooldown reduction on ult i find that its hard to balance.
edit: also didn’t respond on the buckshot part, I feel like otherwise we just keep repeating ourselves. my opinion is that i like the idea, but it depends on how its balanced.
Eh, I can’t really agree with this. There are definitely quite a few active abilities that I’d rather not see cooldown reduction on, whether cause it’s boring, unfitting or too strong, but I think Locked and Loaded is in general a great fit for cooldown reduction due to the various reasons I’ve discussed (low impact, second ranged weapon etc.)
If we also completely gut cooldown reduction from talents, that makes it harder to transform active abilities to fulfill certain roles. How would you turn a high cooldown high impact monster-killing ability into a low impact low cooldown horde-killing ability? Of course, you could just make Buckshot one-shot the entire horde in front of you, at the cost of a high cooldown, but that’s personally boring for me. I’d rather have an ability that chips away at something with a lower cooldown, being more flexible and fun to use instead of demolishing the obstacle in a instant.
I was just a little confused by your wording. Didn’t know if your talent rework took away the buckshot portion of his ults or stagger.
Unless they changed it, it’s 10 seconds only and not affected by the shorter blessed shots talent. But I understand what you mean about how it would tread on the monster killing aspect.
Something to consider in that debate is how buckshot is (or should be) extremely good against berserkers and maulers. Too short cooldown blunderbuss ult might feel abusable against those enemies.
Does Locked and Loaded have buckshot by default? Since I didn’t mention stagger in my post, it’s safe to assume I didn’t consider it.
It wouldn’t be as strong as Grudge-Ranger or Bluntsman in that case. Obviously, it shouldn’t, since you’re not using up a weapon slot. Think about how many shots RV or HS pumps out with shotguns constantly, and then consider that BH would only get to do that every 10 or so seconds. By drinking a concentration or concoction potion you would get to match what HS does with ult for a bit. Sounds nice and strong, but of course the drawback would be that you don’t have the safety net that is HS or RV ult.
I just think the default ult time a career has that should be the baseline and ult talents should be designed around that. How can you balance something once you start messing with the cdr. How can you add meaningfull choices to the ulitmate row, if 1 ultimate talent allows you to fire it twice in the time it takes to fire the other talent ult once? it would have to be a pretty good talent to sacrifice it.
Don’t get me wrong, cdr can be implemented well, looking at piercing shot, but thats also because waystalkers normal ult is pretty busted already and also has acces to cdr trough talents, which are all must picks (generally).
But this is very different topic and i could go more in depth, but i don’t wanna derail your thread to much.
No this is fine. Since CDR is a big part of Locked and Loaded, asking the question whether or not ults should have talents affecting CDR is relevant.
I can’t really say I follow this. You can definitely balance talents with CDR if you offer appropriate trade-offs or equally strong talent choices. Let’s take my proposed changes for Just Reward and Buckshot, for example. With Just Reward you’re focused on killing elites and specials, and get rewarded for doing so as well. This makes it so you take anti-elite weapons, and as you kill elites you get cooldown reduction as a reward which helps you focus on your role even more. The downside in this case would be that you’re specialized in one role. Buckshot would be the opposite, where instead of killing elites and specials you get an ability for horde clear. It’d also be different in that you get more flexibility by being allowed to take other weapons for different roles, instead of specializing for one thing like with Just Reward.
And with Just Reward, you could say why not just set the base cooldown to like 30s and call it a day? Because it makes it less dynamic. You don’t get rewarded for actively doing the role that you’ve decided to focus on, you’re not incentivized to specialize your kit for more elite killing power since killing elites no longer lowers your cooldown, and in cases where there’s a lot of elites, you get more use out of it and less uses when there’s less elites to kill.
Seems to me you’re overcomplicating things with double shotted. Simply limit it to 1 proc of the 40% CDR, whether 1 or both bullets hit the head. That would be pretty balanced with Just Rewards, since you can get about 60% CDR out of that one but it’s a bit weaker.
I kinda like your buckshot idea, I agree the route to go here is very low cooldown horde tool. I would like to see it have some more interesting properties though, like maybe armour penetration (while still not doing much actual damage to armour), which would make it a unique tool for clearing all the chaff around armoured targets.
I don’t think my original change is for Double-Shotted is overcomplicated (I mean, all I did was essentially take Piercing Shot and put it on BH), but I think I’m definitely leaning to returning the extra shot for Double-Shotted. However, in this regard I don’t agree with it having any CDR at all. It’d still synergize too well with concentration/concoction potion and trinket CDR for deleting bosses, and I’d like to have Double-Shotted as a high cooldown, high impact ability. I’m thinking something like extra shot + extra headshot damage for Double-Shotted talent, really make it a powerful high damage, high burst ability. It would deal a bit more damage than it does already to monsters, but wouldn’t have the sustain to keep going and fully delete a monster, and it would still incentivize getting headshots.
I mean, right now you can get 90% CDR with trinket property. My suggestion would take it down to 50% CDR with the same build. That’s literally multiplying its current cooldown time by 5, and would also remove its ability to hard stagger lock a boss with a conc pot, so yeah, I strongly believe that’s enough of a nerf as is. What you’re suggesting would just make Just Rewards the new default in all likelihood.
You would still recharge ult really fast with concentration/concoction potion, and still be able to potentially delete a monster with 1 potion. I also doubt Just Reward would become the meta so easily, since it would have far less burst damage, and you’d have to kill elites for it to activate. I’ve just updated Double-Shotted in my original post which I think works better than what I previously had there. It focuses heavily on single-target burst damage without treading on elite killing for Just Reward, and still rewards headshots, just with more damage instead.
I don’t think Double Shotted is as OP as people make it out to be.
It is capable of trivializing bosses but typically requires a potion, at least some aim and timing.
Not everybody is capable of landing headshot after headshot.
The mass limit is also greatly reduced; roughly 100% - 140% reduction.
(Some inconsistencies that I need to test some other time.)
Overall, Double Shotted has the potential to be great at bossing but it’s also niche.
Your solution doesn’t fix the “problem” either, Double Shotted is so strong at bossing not because of the damage but because of the perma stunlock.
Cutting the damage in half but granting 100% cooldown would only allow players to perma stunlock bosses without potions, it would probably make it even more unfun for teammates.
Just Reward is fine as is, I can consistently reduce the cooldown to roughly 30 seconds.
Going into melee or being more trigger happy would just shorten the cooldown even further.
Plus, it has just as good elite clearing but better horde clearing than Double Shotted.
Buckshot is wasted potential + it doesn’t break shields like the blunderbuss or grudge.
My suggestion would be to reduce the AP greatly or entirely but offer improved stagger.
Practically a ranged damaging valiant charge/wide charge on a longer cooldown.
Just Reward: General middle ground, consistent cooldown.
Double Shotted: Improved bossing, worse horde clearing. (Niche)
Buckshot: Hard CC, stagger at the cost of greatly reduced armour/boss damage.