Elf needs a nerf

Well we could actually do a congratulatory round of applause to FS for releasing the WP in a close-to-perfect state balance-wise AND fun-wise.
At least this proves to me they still have a good understanding of their game, and are capable of being reasonable.
If they applied these design choices retroactively on the elf and the forgotten relics weapons, I think most of the balance work would be done.

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Should we perhaps worry that they spent all the accumulated energy gained between the last big balance patch some 1+ year ago until the warrior priest release and they now need a recharge? T_T

I am a bit worried.

Talent nerfs & proposed changes

Waystalker
  • Career ability is too spammable and too strong.
    – Reduce default number of aimbot arrows to 1 (and rename “Trueshot Volley” to “Trueshot”)
    Piercing Shot : unchanged
    Loaded Bow : current 3 arrowed ult
    Kurnous Reward : ult kills on specials (not elites) refunds 30% ammo
    – Remove Blood Shot applying to ult
    – Change Asrai Focus to “Trueshot deals 10% increased damage.”
    – Increase cooldown to 90s, but give some CDR if she kills a special - either “special kills give 20s of ult CD (regardless of weapon)” or “Killing specials with Trueshot refunds 50% of the cooldown”.
Shade
  • Cloak of Mists is overloaded between the 100% crit chance steroid and the CDR
    – Remove the CDR

  • Add the utility CDR to Shadowstep

  • Reduce her ult generation on dealing damage.

Aim is to make pressing F a more tactical decision rather than a braindead muscle memory button on engaging any enemy.

SotT
  • Career ability wall shouldn’t eat swings and instead behave like most walls in this game, which we can swing through

  • Bloodrazor Thicket is overloaded
    – Reduce initial and DoT damage against armoured enemies by a lot
    – Reduce stagger to a non-monster level, encouraging Blackvenom Thicket choice
    – Slow down DoT ticks

  • Career ability spam
    – Increase Radiance cooldown to 2 minutes

  • An Attendance of Munificents (team-wide increased healing) should not continue to apply if elf is dead / waiting to be rescued

  • Halve her Aura ranges

Proposed rework :

  • I would have loved to have a floor AoE instead of a wall as her ult :
    – Default is thorny area on the floor in which enemies are slowed
    – Ironbark places a grassy area on the floor in which allies are granted some kind of damage resistance / increased healing / increased cooldown rate in addition to the slow
    – Bloodrazor behaves similarly to both bombs at once, with initial damage (low against armour) and DoT (also low against armour) to enemies that were in the initial cast area, and that resets the DoT duration to enemies within the area while it persists.
    – Blackvenom adds monster-level stagger in the area on cast ; and a delayed shrapnel effect when the thorns burst, staggering a second time

Weapons

Ranged
  • Moonbow is overtuned in all regards
    – Reduce the initial damage
    – Remove Shield Piercing on initial damage
    – Slow down DoT ticks
    – Reduce DoT stagger strength
    – Decrease reload speed

  • Javelins are overtuned
    – Decrease crit damage multiplier compared to non-crit
    – Reduce cleave (might be fixed by crit change)
    – Reduce stagger strength (might be fixed by crit change)
    – Increase reload time for the first reloaded Javelin
    – Reduce Melee damage somewhat

  • Deepwood staff brings too much control
    – The CC cost should depend on the lifted enemy
    – Overheating should down the elf like all other overheat weapons work. Alternatively, all other overheat weapons should “only” inflict 50 damage to player. This is a consistency issue more than a balance one.

  • Hagstalker should get reigned in somewhat by the nerfs I propose to WS and Kurnous’.

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I think its enough to just remove the bloodshot - ability interaction/bug, the baseline itself is actually borderline weak without that on it. And i mean weak because i am pretty sure that even if all 3 arrows land on the same target it does less damage than a pyro ability but with the same wonky rate of missfire.

On each of her arrows that is.

At least it used to do less damage, i remember that ages back a pyro burning head on legend could kill a chaos warrior but WS trueflight could not. But, if the ability is “too spammable” for its powerlevel even without bloodshot, then remove the 20% CDR talent and replace it with something else.

A nerf that really just hurts anything below cata but doesnt affect cata much at all i think, it´d be more solid to cap it at 30% ammo refund per ability use at most i think.

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My point was to overnerf, to possibly readjust a bit later on.

I’m actually not hostile to the idea of an interaction between Blood Shot and ult, as it would reward some keeping track of your buffs - just not the current (or previous, I don’t know anymore) iteration of the arrows being doubled.

I’m evaluating this on the basis of the ult only firing a single arrow.

Aim high for headshots and it does OS them, actually also hitting a second one for some minor damage.

Right, Asrai Focus is a problem, and so is Spirit Arrows. I’m tired of seeing WSs ulting 2 slave rats just because they can get away with it. Edited previous post.

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While i understand that there are times when overnerfing and then bumping things back up is a good idea, i really do not think the waystalker case is such a one.

Well my opinion on that aside, i didnt read that properly, my bad.

On legend these days? On cata it doesnt do this.

…Still it really goes to show the levels of powercreep for it to not just only kill them, but even have enough spunk to go for a bit more. And how big the difference between cata and legend has gotten.

Watching the Grail knight sweep through a few slaverats with his holy sword when there are elites has the same energy x)

Sure, Trueflight might not kill Chaos Warriors well, but then at the same time you could kill 6 Plague Monks with it instantly, or brainlessly murder 3+ specials.

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Yes, as you were talking about Legend :


Trueshot Volley doesn’t oneshot CWs on Cata, nor do I think the ability was intended to in its design.

To be fair, plague monks drop dead from a lot of ranged stuff, the trueflight volley isnt special at all in that regard, and as for killing so many specials in one round…well.

If they are clustered up, have nothing else nearby and your arrows dont go haywire? Sure, otherwise you´d probably want bloodshot to ensure you have at least a few arrows going in the right direction.

Fatshark really did overnerf the aimbot quality, feels weird to have it at all if its going to missfire so much.

It does raise the question of balancing from legend or cata all over again though, because the ability and a lot of stuff isnt considered strong at all up there but going by what you´ve explained it might be viewed as strong down in legend in the meanwhile.

If one wants to nerf it on that basis then suddenly a lot of stuff is very questionable.

No but it does highlight the damage aspect of it, seeing how a GK can sweep through 2 in one swing, in that regard i do not think the baseline ability is very powerful.-

I disagree. First, it is special in that it reliably deletes the entire pack of Plague monks that show up in Blood in the Darkness.
Second, they do not reliably drop from weapons like repeater handgun or BoP or volleybows or swiftbows, requiring 2-5 shots to die.
Third, on weapons like Xbow or handgun that do one-shot them, the reload time prevents you from killing 6 in the same time it takes an elf to press F.


Arrows and Burning Head going full tard is an issue that does need to be addressed.
I do separate bugs and balance issues.

Any shotgun can blast monks to the skies, at least a few of sienna´s staves can do it, any rapidly firing weapon from swiftbows to volleybows to miniguns also does it. Monks arent durable, so wiping a bunch quickly is really not much of an achievement, especially not given they practically never spawn in groups normally, one or two map events aside.

And yes maybe BoP needs 2 shots, but you can still just rapidfire gun down a whole pack of them with it.

And really, consider that it´s an ability so it needs to have at least a bit of “oomph” to it or it will be too subpar. Even if we wana keep more powerful stuff for the melee careers like WHC who with fervency can wipe half a stormvermin/chaos patrol in an instant.

Bounty saltz crossbow with a crit kills 1-2 per shot with speedy reloads, one ability of his can also kill a whole bunch if they line up which is nearly the same condition for WS to succeed.

Not 6, at best a Blunderbuss, Griffonfeet or Grudgebreaker can get like 3.

Edited above, I’m not planning on enumerating every ranged weapon in the game to make my point.

So at best you kill 4 before having to reload, and you’ve expended an entire clip on that move.
Or the elf can press F, delete 6 instantly, and having spent the grand total of 0 resource.

Again, I already answered that :


Not nearly the same setup, WS can one-shot a pack of monks that are behind a wall and she wasn’t even aware of (cause they’re behind her back and she was aiming at a distant blightstormer :sweat_smile:).
Jokes aside the “line-up” is not even remotely close to being the same. WS pressing F can expect to delete anything appearing in her field-of-view, not a single line.

But she did use her ability for it.

WHC, bounty, battlewiz, huntsman, GK among others can also wipe monks in similar fashion using theirs. ‘’’


Not really, you do not account for career specials that boost reload speed/pen or even damage.

Really, if a career can take their basic weapons and kill 4 monks practically instantly, is it really so outrageous that WS with her ability can wipe 2 more?

Base ability is nowhere near so strong on cata though, except against monks who are weirdly weak against it, on legend maybe but not on cata. The changes you propose would effectively gut the ability.

On cata you´d be thankful if it kills 2 stormvermin by itself, even moreso if you actually aimed at them and not the packmaster/assassin nearby.

Not as safely, not at the press of a button, and not once every 30 seconds - all 3 at the same time.

Yes, because others need to aim, it costs them ammo, it is not instant, and they aren’t as safe.

That’s the point.

I think Trueshot should be able to reliably remove a special - and that’s it. That is what I think it was designed to do. I don’t think it was designed to remove a group of 5-6 stormvermins without a str pot (in Legend), without having to aim or even see them, and while being able to do it again after 30 seconds.
If you want to reliably remove SVs, run Piercing Shot and git gud.

But in turn the others have their own merits easily match or exceed. WHC can during a single fervency shout bring down most of a stromvermin patrol or half or more of a CW one.

Waystalker? Kills 2-3 stormvermin or maybe 1 chaos warrior.

Ammo costs is a rather big joke considering pretty much none of the ranged careers ever struggle with ammo or even regaining spent ammo.

Which is far too much, its like doubling or tripling the cooldown on merc/WHC´s ability.

But this raises the problem of cata vs legend balance once more, if one wants to argue that legend should be the basepoint then pretty much everything should be gutted hard, except warrior priest i suppose.

But for starters both merc and WHC should have like double or triple the cooldowns that they have on their abilities given how impactful they are vs legend threat level.

Really i think it merits saying but, waystalker as a career is considered fairly strong(or very so if running&good with hagbane) for cata but her ability without bloodshot is among the weakest. Only pyro is worse.

“Edit”

oh and additionally

Longbow? Hagbane?? Why should the ability be barely on par with them when it has a 80 seconds cooldown? Heck no, it needs to be better or it might as well not exist. Even longbow huntsman gets to borderline anhiliate a monster if he has any luck and plays it right.

.Twitch

cata btw.

Just played a Cata game with Xbow on Zealot : you do not OS a plague monk with it.

Implying WS has no merit other than her braindead ult ?

Fervency synergizes too well with killing shot, but that’s not the point of this topic.

Agree. Hence why I’m reigning in the ammo regen somewhat. Ranged meta is back, and it sucks.

Piercing shot has no cooldown on headshots.

<.<

Implying they do not have merits beyond their less braindead ones? x)

WHC is competing for the title of most powerful career, WS sure as heck isnt, and before the bloodshot business became a thing her ability was never mentioned as problematic by anyone except the people playing her and watching it go haywire.

Point i was raising is that the ability is nowhere near powerful in the grand scheme of things, and killing shot does not affect chaos warriors which WHC can oneshot even without it if he builds for it.

Is back? When was it ever gone and when did it come back?

In the elf´s case the only things that really changed are the additions of moonfire and javelin, but they are topics of their own. But even with them added hagbane never stopped, BW exists, grudgeranger is one of the best ranged for modded content and whatnot.

Base ability too though?

If your nerfs were to be employed then it´d be effectively worse at killing stormvermin than longbow or even hagbane which is a pretty sad state for an ability made for killing stuff.

If you wish to argue that it should only be good for specials? Then the accuracy needs to be raised to 100% and the cooldown dropped to like 20-30 seconds if it´s going to be useful on cata…but i honestly believe that it would feel even worse to use.

This is actually getting frustrating here. The conversation feels stale because of some nitpicking.
What are you actually arguing for ? That WS is fine as she is ? That she’d be fine with lesser nerfs ?

I’m fully aware that there are other offenders, but this is not the topic to talk about WHC or griffonBH or BW or grudgeranger.

It is one where we can argue about those though…


My goal is to take WP as a baseline, and try to get WS (and Shade and SotT for that matter) to that level.

In an ideal world, it’d consistently one-shot any special with a Sigmardamn aimbot.

You could build it :

  • the “skilled” way, giving you a refund of that ability on manually aimed headshots (and fall back on your longbow when you miss, or get your moonbow out for a more horde-oriented approach) ;
  • the crowd-clearing way which is the current one ; or
  • the ammo-refund way for more thirsty weapons like hagbane

all while constraining the career to her ranged role of handling specials (while giving her the tools to do that efficiently) without ruining the fun of everyone who also have their role to fill.
I don’t want an elgi soloing runs with a 30s effective cd one-shot button.
Actually, in that sense, giving her some ult CD on special kill would encourage that use over clearing slaverats. :thinking:
I edited the post up there.

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I am saying you´re using a wrecking ball to hit a nail, you´ll knock down the house rather than repair it x)

She does have some problematic aspects like bloodshot and kurnous ammo shenanigans(only really a problem when combined with hagbane) but that´s about it, her ability and the rest of her kit itself does not warrant nerfs IF cata is the baseline.

But the problem is that even if we dont use cata as the baseline then there really is no justifying nerfing her before so many others given how she ranks behind them in power.

The cooldown talents are boring and deserve to be replaced rather than nerfed*.

And arguments about both have taken place here methinks, but what i meant to say was that they havent actually had much impact on waystalker unless we are talking the viability of piercing shot&loaded bow which suddenly became options when she got access to infinite ammo weapons.

But that is fundamentally a mistake, you cant balance damage classes, especially not ranged ones, based on a juggernaut esque melee career.

Or putting it this way, their abilities must be equal in effect to a melee who can make himself and possibly an ally fully immune to damage for a good few seconds with an added CC and fairly high damage blast at the end of it.

Some people call him weak in melee but he is freaking not, people are just too damn used to SoT / GK / shade / WHC. I’ve seen people absolutely steamroll through cata with him.

Preserving Piercing Arrow is fine and i dont mind that as one of the 3 options, but the problem as i see it for our argument lies in a difference in perspective. You call the 3 arrows ability a crowd clearer, and for all i know that is probably true for legend, but i play on cata where i am happy enough if it kills 2 stormvermin.

Do you think an ability that kills 2 stormverin or so every 65-80 seconds feels powerful or amazing to use? For reference i do not use the cooldown talents.

As for the ammo refund suggestion/change, my gripe with this one is that i honestly hate Kurnous reward to start with, having 1 of 3 options be the ammo sustaining one means majority of her ranged weapons are hard locked into it.

But secondly, her base ability already feels really “meh” in cata, any lesser variant of that would feel horribly stale to play.

I can respect this but i believe the best way to accomplish it is to just replace her cooldown related talents, not gut the crap out of components that do not deserve it.

Then if the WS wants to spam her volley she has to run into melee constantly which in turn sacrifices her ranged uptime.

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