I agree with that. Either less ammo or no ammo pickups, the latter would make it a very interesting option. Perhaps being able to reload it with your held bomb ?
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It outperforms every other sniper weapon in the game (handgun, bolt, x/longbow) in terms of damage and rate of fire regardless of elf career while also smashing monsters and skewering hordes both in melee and range. Easily the second best ranged weapon in the game, second only to moonfire bow and leagues beyond everything else that is available.
Hagbane isn’t overpowered at all. Rather it’s a design flaw of the waystalker that’s been around since WoM. If you’d rework Waystalker such that people aren’t pidgeon-holed into Kurnous’ Reward for ammo sustain, the OP-ness of the hagbane would suddenly vanish. I think it would be enough to bring back in some form the old Scavenger trait on her melee weapons.
Coghammer was never touched, to my recollection. Billhook eats stamina with the special attack, but that’s only a problem on BH where the weapon doesn’t work anyway. iirc the tuskgor’s spear stagger power has been nerfed slightly, but it’s still one of the very best melee weapons for Kruber.
That isn’t really as impactful as you would imagine. At least it’s a staff that has personality to it, as the vanilla ones are pretty bland. If I’d touch anything about it, it’s the effectiveness of the left click at long range, but that would be true for all the shotguns in this game.
Outperforms handgun : sure ; outperforms longbow and xbow : I disagree. Attack speed and damage are on par, it has less continuous damage because of the reload betweern bursts of shots, but more overall sustain due to no ammo. The fact that it has no ammo limit and no drawbacks to spamming them allows players to be way less conservative about them, which kind of defeats the melee oriented rest of the game.
I’d clarify how the alt fire works, because currently I understand nothing of how the tornado does damage. See threads about synergies with famished flames and all, it is a mess…
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More or less. But as said that is the result of the “fix”. Before the Heavy 1 explosion was mostly a visual effect. Now it actually explodes creating this large stagger effect. So as said, before the last BBB it was actually quite balanced. Better as now at least.
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Granted, I only played it briefly on bw. Most of my experience is on Pyro as the one staff that isn’t obnoxious to use on her. You certainly get something out of Heat Sink, but I don’t think it falls into any definition of “OP”. On bw with FF I don’t see it’s point when beam staff exists, which again is mostly a problem about how the class is designed, rather than the weapons themselves.
Thing is, it doesn’t really matter too much how many overpowered weapons there are. Cause when there’s at least one, that’s all you’re going to be seeing in matches.
For example, I literally can’t remember the last time I’ve seen HM or Shade use anything but Moonfire Bow. Sure, there’s other, non-overpowered options like non-WS Hagbane, longbow and swiftbow, but those weapons might as well not exist now.
Most of the elfs I’ve been seeing have been SotT with sword & dagger + whatever flavour of ranged weapon they want, ranging from Moonfire to Javelins to Staff (all of which are at least situationally overpowered).
A weapon doesn’t have to be universally overpowered either to mess with balance. Take Griffon Pistols as an example. Worse range and higher spread, but they’re the best shotgun in the game for clearing hordes by a fair bit. They hyper specialize into one thing, and they do it very well, which makes them situationally overpowered when they clear hordes extremely well. I don’t think that’s particularly fun either.
Masterwork Pistol is another example. Most of the times you see a Ranger or Engineer it is with the pistol, and likewise it makes me question why I’d ever take crossbow or handgun.
Despite making up the minority of the armoury, you will see them in the majority of matches. Other weapons might as well not exist then.
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The LMB kills anything which is not armored on Cataclysm. On difficulties below it is even more effective. The RMB kills anything which is not CW or boss on Cataclysm. On difficulties below it is less effective.
But starting on Legend and even more so on Cataclysm it is devastating due to no cleave limit and the high damage. There are only two enemies which you would have to keep the whole 10 seconds in the fire cone for it to kill. The rest is dying faster like for example all horde enemies. Just place it on ledge drops or spawn points or close to the melee front line and it is working like a lava pool. And you can easily place 4-5 fire cones at the same time due to the low cost. There is a Stormvermin patrol? Place two fire cones, stagger them twice and they are all dead. The higher the density the more effective the RMB is. The lower the difficulty the more effective the LMB is. The weapon is overpowered.
Granted there is not much which would have to be changed as it has a lot of intrinsic balance qualities with regards to talents (even if completely unintuitive). Personally, I would start with 20 % less damage but 25 % more burn time. Would be nearly the same overall damage but need a tiny bit more effort to keep enemies in the affected area. Not sure if that would be enough.
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How coruscation staff is op? I somehow couldnt make use of it, everything i tried i did better with fireball.
Its op as hell, insane cleave, insane stagger (same or bigger than shield bash on heavies) good dodge good attack pattern (though need to learned or just spam lights)
Its the passive component of it, you can just throw a heap of those gouts down and then proceed to go take a drink and you´ll be doing a heap of damage without even having to move.
So in say a melee with a stormvermin patrol/monster where you´d normally be unable unable to make use of the staff, you can.
The cleave by default doesnt strike me as amazing, the stagger is indeed on the strong side but that´s only really notable on CW´s that it doesnt cleave. The rest of the things you noted i do agree with.
But it´s a fairly slow one to compensate for the above. So the sum of the parts is a strong weapon indeed but i hesitate to call it an overpowered one.
Lights have Linesman and Heavies have Heavy Linesman properties. They do cleave CWs, though the cleave limit is kind of low so it’s not that noticeable. The stagger is really strong though, and has the same cleave as its damage.
A Chaos Warrior has 20 mass, 10 against Heavy Linesman so the cleave isn’t that obvious with a 10.45 cleave limit.
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Wut.
That thing does way less damage than a longbow/crossbow at a distance and has an inferior rate of fire compared to them. And remember that bosses got ranged damage reductions in place so while it hits normal mobs hard it doesnt hit bosses quite so.
But yes the cleave is on the too strong side at the present, however the melee component? What? Its single target, it cant block, its extremely headshot/crit dependent.
I am not amazed on any front of the melee aspect except how it feels to play it for it is smooth and accurate with beautifully clean hitboxes.
You sir, and i, have very different views and we will not reach a consensus upon this matter.
I might have gotten coghammer mixed up with something else, but i am fairly sure both billhook and tuskgor ate more than minor nerfs post releases.
I´d argue that on the contrary it has no personality and is bland. And it´s that same blandness that masks just how effective it truly is at dishing out a lot of damage without anyone noticing.
At least with something like fireballs you…well, you end up tossing fireballs around and there´s explosions and reactions. But with this staff you just drop some spots on the ground and now you are nearly done.
I use that dang staff myself.
No. Same fire rate as charged longbow arrows, more damage at longer range (even more so on other classes than WS cause she increases effective range ; javelins have no dropoff) except on headshots where the longbow has more multiplier.
Javelins have practically infinite cleave on hordes, infinite ammo with a decently slow reload time, and the melee is extremely strong due to its speed. Javelins melee’s attack speed is similar to S&D’s, and double the damage. They’re a better spear than the spear ffs…
No block isn’t that big of a deal since you can easily right-click and press Q if needed, like any other ranged weapon ; and it has 20% 6-count dodges.
I also don’t see the issue with hagbane. Perhaps it’s because I’m only seeing moonfire bows, which does the same but better ; but even before its release it never felt overwhelming when I was using it.
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The LMB should do precisely that in close quarters, as it is a shotgun blast. There’d be no point to it otherwise. I think it should suffer more drop-off with range and become ineffective at greater distances, but in close quarters its fine.
As for the fire cone, it’s highly dependent on enemies actually sitting in it instead of running around and poking people, which isn’t the case if you don’t have a dedicated person holding them in place. Again, it’s something that’s more tied to the bw career than the weapon itself.
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But at a distance the javelins are inaccurate whilst the others are not, thus letting them headshot and do more damage. And while the rate of fire is similar the reload is not.
This is a poor way of looking at it x)
Yes the default melee speed is similar but SnD can use swift slaying, they do have some cleave but the javelin cant mix in pushes into it´s attacks to stagger enemies and thus raise damage output from that. SnD also has 10% bonus crit chance and linesman here and there among it´s attacks.
Furthermore Javelin has no linesman modifier so in a horde it cant just rain light attacks on a group of enemies with one armor/shield in there to clear everything around and even damage the armor/shield in the process.
Heavy damage? SnD heavy 2 does more damage on a headshot than the javelin does.
…
Also how does the javelin do more than the spear? I used a light from both on a dummy and i got the same number but Spear can use swift slaying…Sure though, javelin has better crit modifiers but again, no linesman which the spear also has.
The only thing moonfire does better is anti armor, hagbane basically outpaces it in everything else and by pretty far at that in a horde dense environment. Only in lower difficulties or when enemy density is on the low end where moonfire´s output equals a larger percentage does it beat hag.
I do not do it anymore but i do not find it hard at all to basically monopolize kills of all kinds during a run with a hagbane much the same as some griffonfoot BH´s now do these days.
I am not talking about BW though. That is with Unchained. And it is not particularly difficult to keep enemies inside the cone. As I said, just place it on spawn and ledge points which are available during absolutely every horde attack. You don’t need a dedicated person holding them in place. In normal case, you can be that person yourself. I am not even sure that enemy actually reroute around the cone. Even when, you can easily create a wall.
The issue is not the career but the weapon. Because it is easy to do on all Sienna careers.
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Makes sense to use it on ledges and dropdowns though. That’s essentially the one advantage the weapon has. Verm1’s hasted conflag staff was split in two weapons. Verm2’s vanilla conflag which got the stagger and area of effect, and this thing which got the attack speed and damage. An unnecessary split imo, but it’s fine the way it is.
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Which makes it useable in all situations and coupled with unlimited cleave it is melting horde enemies in 4-6 seconds or less while melting anything not Chaos Warrior in 10 seconds or less. It is overpowered. Couple this with the ease of use by not creating friendly fire and the ability to defend with melee weapons while the burn does its damage then there is no other result than the weapon being to strong currently. It is a weapon issue.
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Again, untrue. They have pinpoint accuracy, with some minor ballistic drop ; but they have no horizontal deviation whatsoever.
Fair.
Its the ballistic drop that messes with the accuracy, you are forced to guess&gauge where you ought to aim beyond a fairly short distance which inevitably means the accuracy falls behind a longbow.
At a short range there is no problem whatsoever but no so for longer ones.
…
And really i double checked the cleave, it pierces 2 raiders/maulers worth of enemies. Or 4 marauders if you will, no armor or shields.
Strong? Yes…but how often is this actually really useful? O_O
Enemies will have to do a conga line for it to really shine and if that gets nerfed it will probably just be a discount longbow x)
That’s my argument against Blunderbuss 
But no, try it on rats and see how many you can cleave in a skaven horde coming in a corridor or on a bridge. One javelin and there is practically nothing left.