Changes I'd like to see

  • Increase Repeater Pistol’s max ammo by 8 and increase boss damage a bit with the shotgun

  • Increase both Volley Crossbow’s max ammo by 15

  • Decrease Brace of Pistol’s boss damage and remove its infinite dodges

  • Decrease elite dodge tracking time to 2-2.5 seconds

  • Revert Zealot’s stacks back to being determined by current hp instead of green hp

  • Decrease attack speed of Falchion & Axe

  • Decrease attack speed of Crowbill

  • Give shields 10-25% block cost reduction and/or damage reduction

  • Increase the time it takes to get to the 2nd stage of Warpick’s heavy attack (but not as long as it was before)

  • Decrease Spear’s stagger versus armor with light attacks

  • Change Resourceful Combatant/Sharpshooter to a 1-2 second cooldown

  • Change how Saves work so that Heroic Intervention can finally work properly

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Yeah, those are pretty good changes.

Unpopular opinion, though; Crowbill isn’t that good. Not by an objective comparison to other weapons. It’s just a worse Hand Axe - it seems to have like 100% armor piercing, which is neat and unique, but its swings do less raw damage than the Hand Axes, meaning it can’t one-shot bodyshot any chaff besides Slaverats (without a headshot, that is). It just a world-destroyer when combined with Unchained’s damage bonus, and synergizes well with Sienna in general, since armor (especially heavy armor) is kind of her weakness.

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I personally kinda like the attack speed part in axe and falchion (and in dual wielders in general). I would probably personally start with just removing the additional dodge range and maybe some damage numbers in places.
For the last 2 i would probably just fully rework those traits instead of bothering to fix them.
Rest of the stuff i can mostly agree with.

2 Likes

Yeah, you’re right about that. It’s just that Sienna has the best horde clear options that she can use infinitely (one of the reasons why FS won’t give Sienna a “top-tier” melee weapon), so having a high damage to armor weapon that is easy to use like Crowbill is kind of OP in my opinion. I guess the only thing they could do is nerf it in some way only when Unchained uses it (or nerf Unchained :wink:).

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More ammo would be fine, boss damage is basically ok imho.

Volleys need some overall love, one additional mag would be fine though.

Slight reduction might be in order, but the majority of its boss melting power comes from Zealot having his power boost affect ranged damage (which it shouldn’t). BoP is fine and the relatively long reload balances it out.

Maybe. I find the game to be in a good spot as of now when playing as client.

I think the change is overall pretty good, but it synergizes with the rest of his kit too well. His 50% damage reduction talents needs some rethinking (maybe) but otherwise, any talent or ability that triggers when under a certain amount of health should disregard temp health.

The weapon is fine imho, but if anything gets tampered with, attack speed might be the best candidate.

crowbill is fine and is just a testament on how Sienna’s melee arsenal is more than sub par. It’s a beastly weapon on UC, but UC is a high risk high reward carreer so that’s okay in my books. It makes the mace obsolete, which could use some love.

Shields already have “strong blocks”, meaning that attacks from the front angle cost 0.1. With block cost reduction abilities added, front attack blocking costs virtually no stamina. Other than that, shields don’t derive their strengths from having low block cost or high stamina (which are nice to have, don’t get me wrong), but from their very high CC ability. AnS and SnS are incredibly potent weapons on IB and FK. IB with a proper AnS is virtually untouchable by anything, can dispatch armoured elites without breaking a sweat and CC hordes till kingdom come without ever running out of stamina. SnS is in a similar sport, requiring a little more effort with attack combos to deal with armour, but with a proper setup and use of the very accurate push-attack and 2nd heavy attack, it’s not that worse of than AnS and has arguably better horde clearing due to better cleave.

Warpick is fine.

Spear is fine.

Needs a complete overhaul. It’s only realistically usable on weapons that don’t require ammo and even there it is more than questionable.

Agree.

2 Likes
  • Increase Repeater Pistol’s max ammo by 8 and increase boss damage a bit with the shotgun
    Are the current numbers really that bad? My biggest peeve with this one is that it feels like a popgun to use.

  • Revert Zealot’s stacks back to being determined by current hp instead of green hp
    Agreed. Considering he’s got very strong damage mitigation through talents and a career perk that stops him from taking lethal damage, getting the full stack bonus while he’s effectively at full health is a bit much.

  • Decrease attack speed of Falchion & Axe
    Agreed that it needs a nerf, but not sure about what to touch. It’s Saltz’ strongest weapon by a long shot. It’s even close to OP on BH, who has no special career synergy with it.

  • Decrease attack speed of Crowbill
    This is a tough one. Crowbill has basically no cleave and big stagger, so it relies on being able to hit fast and use mobility to stop the player from being overwhelmed. If it needs nerfing, I’d look to mobility first.

  • Give shields 10-25% block cost reduction and/or damage reduction
    Not sure about this one. Blocking too much really does hurt your chances at surviving a run, and shields already have a problem where people block too much. I’d like to see them get some extra effectiveness against berserkers so that you can more reliably slam them down.

  • Increase the time it takes to get to the 2nd stage of Warpick’s heavy attack (but not as long as it was before)
    I think the charge time is ok. It can already be tough to get to full charge if you’re under pressure. I feel like it’s intended to be a tactical nuke for big armoured baddies, so if it needs a nerf I think it should be targeted at it’s trash clear first.

  • Decrease Spear’s stagger versus armor with light attacks
    I haven’t really used the spear since the BBB. Does this work on bodyshots or just headshots?

  • Change Resourceful Combatant/Sharpshooter to a 1-2 second cooldown
    What is it now? 5? Maybe 3 would be a better starting point if we want to bring it down. We don’t want to go back to having pyros soloing maps with their instant-recharge ults.

  • Change how Saves work so that Heroic Intervention can finally work properly
    How are you thinking it should work?

It’s basically Sienna’s version of the 1H Axe, the weapon that’s often the butt of a joke. The fact that it seems strong on her reflects what @LuiKangBakingAPie says about the rest of her melee weapons being sub-par. I often look at her weapon selection and think they’re really good, but the fact is I’ve been using Crowbill since it came out simply because it outperforms the rest. Basically the effectiveness against armor by themselves or among infantry is too good to pass up. It’s not just Unchained that it’s effective on:

  • It has high crit damage, so building up overcharge on Pyro for the crit % works really well. Get the attack speed with overcharge talent and Swift Slaying and you’re a force to be reckoned with.
  • BW can have 25% additional power through a talent and can easily have 100% block cost reduction. Combine that with her career skill and and you have a strong attacker that won’t often be overwhelmed.
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1h axes in general are really pretty strong though and the crowbill is no exception. They’ve all got good-to-great mobility, high attack speed and armour pen on lights. This is offset by them only being able to hit one, maybe two things at a time. It’s a weapon that excels at reliably killing individual targets very quickly, but is a bit weaker against big groups of enemies because of a slower trash clear rate.
The reason I suggested mobility as a place to look at for balancing is that the part about the trash clear rate isn’t quite true anymore, and mobility is the cause. It was true before the extension of the dodge window because back then you spent more of your fight time blocking and pushing, which meant less time swinging. Now you spend much more time swinging, and more time swinging means lower ttk.

Whether this pushes it into OP territory is up to the individual I guess. I personally think it’s too easy to use considering the output potential it has.

Oh I know 1H Axes are good. I said it many a time back before the forum purge, and was mocked for it. I was just being spiteful about Crowbill being considered too strong.

There was another post talking about dodge timers, I’m more interested what effect adjusting that would have since dodging is an overly strong asset right now on pretty much any weapon. You can dodge circles around clumps of enemies while spamming attacks and never get hit in many cases. So the weapons that can chop down armor and infantry with basic attack spam have the highest bang-for-buck.

Ah, another thread of “I want”.
This one’s surprisingly sensible, though.
I don’t agree with changing shields (look at the Arsenal, their blocks are dirt cheap) and I’m not sure Volley needs more ammo or that Pick would be too strong (rare to see it anyways), but overall I find myself agreeing with most of this.
Regarding FnA, I think the light attacks rather need less power - about the equivalent of a 6% or so decrease - and the heavies be a bit slower as suggested. And possibly 10% reduced dodge range.
Resourceful Combatant would indeed not be overpowered with a 2 second cooldown - it was 0 before and that caused a problem, because it could trigger multiple times on a single cleave.
Triggering once on every strike, I believe, would not be a problem.

Oh, let me add one: Slightly decrease the AoE damage and blast gfx duration of uncharged fireballs.

A lot of these have been talked about before (and more extensively), but I guess I’m bored enough to reply. So TL;DR: I agree about most things that need changing, but several are more complicated than this.

I’m not sure what increasing the Repeater pistol’s ammo would accomplish. I don’t think it’s in a pretty good place, mostly. If anything, I think it could use a little “side-grade”: Decrease its crit multiplier a bit, but increase the base damage by equivalent amount. This would be to make it less dependent on crits and as such, help its place on Careers other than Bounty Hunter. The shotguns are quite fine as they are, I think.

Both Volley Crossbows indeed do need a bit more attention. I’m not sure if adding more ammo is the answer, but they are lacking behind other options in either effectiveness or efficiency (or both) in both cases.

BoP’s boss damage was overdone in my thinking too, but I think its mobility is fine. That gives it a unique use, after all, and you still have limited offense and no other defense when they’re out.

Dodge tracking could use tweaks, but it might also need other mechanisms to support it. That’s one thing there’s more discussion about in its own thread.

Zealot has a lot to look at, not just his stack effectiveness. On on hand, I don’t like how it currently works as he can pretty easily keep himself effectively in high health to reduce the downsides of his style to effectively zero… but if his stacks were dependent on his total health (as they used to be), the ability ends up being quite unreliable. There’s also the DR Talent, which is problematically effective.

Falch and Axe need a lot more than just attack speed reduction. They have, in addition to high damage, attack speed and armor piercing, a good enough stamina and the best dodges of Victor’s melee weapons. Separating the weapons’ heavy attack damage profiles, reducing its mobility to at least the same level as either weapon alone (probably lower, in all honesty), and possibly shifting its push-attack follow-up from a Falch strike to an Axe one would go a long way. After those, it would be time to look at other tweaks.

For Crowbill, a slight attack speed decrease wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but I’m not sure if it’s actually needed.

Shields already block more effectively, and DR would be overly effective (or useless, if limited to when the shield is up). They do need something, and preferably defensive advantages. I think allowing blocking a few more special kinds of attacks would be a help, but this is something that also has been discussed quite extensively before.

Warpick is in a pretty good place right now, and I don’t think it needs changes.

I was suspicious of the Spear’s effectiveness immediately after the changes to its current form, but after a while, I think that while it is still very effective at fishing out those headshots and staggering enemies while doing it, it single-target nature is kind of a self-limiting factor. I’m no sure whether things need changing, but if change is needed this exactly where it should hit.

Both Resourceful Traits need far more changes before they’re ever in balance. Its effect cooldown being reduced will help a bit, but will in no way affect their fundamentally imbalanced nature. See here for more of my thoughts on that.

Heroic intervention relies on a non-existent mechanic to work, and unless that mechanic is reinstated, its is and will be worthless. I think it’d be better to scratch that particular Trait, but see the previous link again for more thoughts.

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Exactly.

I’m not sure about touching the dodge timers themselves. Enemy skating has basically disappeared for me since the change went through. Changing some weapons’ dodge stats might help though. There are certainly some that have much more than they need, even if we ignore the long window.

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