could bump up his personal DR from 10% to 20%, making him a genuine tank
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I was kind of getting behind the idea of FK having stronger stagger. Isn’t he a bit of a wet blanket once you hit upper weaves or even mod realm?
yes but not because of his stagger
I figured it was because cata+ content takes away his ability to control mixed hordes. Feels like cc should be his defining feature since his aura doesn’t make a difference for the team.
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If I may ask, what’s the reason for FK performing poorly in modded content? Surely they would be very powerful in a duo with Tag Team + a dps career.
in a duo it’d be fine sure
most modded content isn’t duo though
it depends on the cata+ content, he can control things just fine in cata 3 weaves. in modded he’s about on par with anything else in deathwish outside his ult; his ult actually provides a lot of crowd control. The problem is he’s lacking in literally every other aspect, he doesn’t provide thp or attack speed to the team like merc, his dps is overall lower, he can’t butcher elites and monsters like GK and his dps is again much lower. In terms of supportive elements he just kinda sucks too, his aura of 15% DR (and potentially 20% BCR) just doesn’t mean a whole lot compared to what GK and Merc can provide
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Yep, totally! More I think about your and @Velsix idea, and more I like it… It seems a very solid compromise, an half way, if someone thinks that “Staggering Force as passive” could be too much.
It would give a better synergy between FK and shields, for example I could:
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adopt an hybrid build, still “shielded” but a little more aggressive. 15% stagger as passive + 20% Skaven/Berserker would be enough to stagger Monks… so I could use Crowd Clearer or Have a Thee! to give some “aggressibity” to shields;
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or adopt a full staggering build. 15% stagger as passive + Staggering Force + 30% Chaos/Armoured (so still a huge investment) in order to stagger CW overhead attack (and it would not be over power, since I could stagger at most 1 CW at once);
Or I simply could use Halber, Mace&Sword, Exe Sword, Bretonnian Sword aggressivly without losing part of FK’s identity… so keeping some staggering capacity (but, at same time, it would not so impacting or relevant like +35% from an hypothetical Staggering Force as passive… 15% isn’t a huge different).
I agree. If we compare FK’s passives with some other careers’ ones… FK’s abilites not even seem passives.
If I have to choose between some more stagger power (like +15%) OR dmg reduction… I would prefer the stagger.
But yes, in my opinion, FK dmg reduction is too low… not only there are not-tank careers with 30%… but considering how dmg reduction now stacks, FK has even less than 25%.
With “wet blanket” do you mean that, in high weaves and mods, FK loses part of his abilites? Because I would agree.
If you are interested in my personal idea, I think this because, in most cases, 15% DR doesn’t make any difference… or again he loses part of his stagger breakpoints from Staggering Force.
Honestly I have still to test Tag Team… but it’s a little bit random.
Exactly.
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Well, 25% DR is nothing to sniff at, he’s certainly not a fragile career. The stamina is weak admittedly and I suppose that an extra passive wouldn’t make him game breaking.
It doesn’t even need to be extra, the stagger/stagger cleave passive can replace the extra stamina shield passive, and if anything that also functions to make Ironbreaker more unique at the same time.
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I think we could add a +15% stagger power as an extra passive… afterall we have many careers with 3 passives (or 4!) and, as Battering-Ram says, I don’t think this would be game breaking (also because 15% isn’t a percentage that changes the world :/)… BUT, if Fatshark decided that his passives must remain only two, replace +1 stamina shield with stagger power would be a nice trade for FK’s style/identity. Imho.
Ok, I’m gonna give you three good reasons it should be given to him as a passive (though I suspect you’ll disagree on the “good” part), but not as an extra passive, it should replace the extra stamina shield passive.
- As pointed out further up by @doom_hamster, his current passives are undeniably lackluster compared to the rest of the cast. 2 out of 3 of them are small amounts of damage reduction that, even added together aren’t worth a lot.
- To my recollection he is the only class that shares a passive with another class. Hence replace the extra stamina shield with extra stagger/stagger cleave, and you make both FK and IB have more of a unique identity in one move.
- A damage/power stacking Merc out staggers FK unless FK specifically takes staggering force. That seems very strange to me, and not befitting their identities.
Now to address a few other things you said.
100% agreed. There are a heap of interesting stagger breakpoints you can hit with a variety of weapons. It’s a shame you need to painstakingly test with creature spawner to find out what they are though. Wouldn’t blame newer players for thinking staggering force does nothing at all, since every kind of breakpoint in this game is so obfuscated.
FK has been one of my favourite classes since launch, and frankly I strongly disagree with your assertion here. Whether or not it was intentional, control/stagger has definitely become his defining characteristic. I think this is very clearly displayed in his Ult, as well as the myriad of talents he has that revolve around staggering, including being one of the only classes in the game that can run Mainstay very very effectively. Protecting teammates is absolutely secondary to his identity of control. This is mostly a very subjective point, I know, but from my experience with the class you’re well off the mark on this one.
Another reason I generally disagree with you here, is that even if you added 15% stagger as a passive, for most stagger breakpoints you’d still need to take staggering force + opportunist on your weapon bare minimum, which is already sacrificing up to 30% attack speed from crowd clearer + swift slaying. Many breakpoints would still require even more investment than this with power properties/Tag Team/enhanced power. So yeah, I think that’s still plenty of investment required to hit stagger breakpoints.
For sure adding the full 35% would be too much, but I really don’t think there’s any good argument against 15% replacing his extra stamina talent, and if there is it’s yet to be posted in this thread.
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for real though, giving FK more stagger will not solve his problems
he needs smiter/a dps solution and more damage reduction. Stagger is the one thing he’s already good at and making that better won’t cover his inherent weaknesses at all unless you put it to absurd values
Let’s say Merc had like 60 base hp or something, giving him more cleave won’t make him more viable, he’d need more hp
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No it won’t, but it will help solidify his identity and make hitting stagger breakpoints require less absurd commitment, and these changes are not mutually exclusive after all.
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I agree. I feel fk needs some more damage reduction or something like that. Even just making his aura range higher would already be a super good change imo.
Nothing personal, but i find it funny that Wom introduced so many stagger talents to make teamplay more important and now we are all just asking for smiter :).
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tbh that whole system either needs a rework or removal
the two best talents are the ones that allow you to ignore the system’s existence
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Let’s imagine a scenario where FK is the only one that can stagger anything, and everyone else is incapable of dealing any stagger at all, including through ults. That’s an extreme scenario but it would certainly make FK stand out (it’s also another approach to balancing this that I’ve been thinking about). Perhaps it is more of a case that other careers have it too easy in this regard, making FK bringing stagger not valuable? After all, who needs that ult when you can just stack stamina recovery and push horde enemies.
Making up for Weaknesses
It really depends on if the career is able to make up for a deficiency in other ways. E.g. Slayer makes up for not having a range weapon by having good melee control options and taking melee dps pressure off allies, while also having a good ult for getting to specials/allies and movement speed options if needed. WHC has very weak pushes but has good cc from Cast Away and their Ult (+ crazy dps). Merc’s cleave is useful for triggering Paced Strikes, but after a certain point the number of enemies they can hit is limited by the reach of their weapons and enemy density, so even more cleave would be pretty meh on Merc (on normal Cata that is).
If FK could say, enable a Shade to stand still in the middle of a horde and just spam heavies into elite heads in complete safety on DWONSC3, that would be pretty powerful surely? Not that I’d want to go that far. Again if no one else could stagger basic horde enemies except FK, they’d be useful as well.
On Merc I can already stagger SV with the Greatsword’s push with just MtM and Reaper. Zealot can Flail things, BW can use any aoe staff etc. Lots of easy and quick stagger options for other careers, potentially too many that step onto what FK does.
Mainstay
Mainstay does let FK hit some really nice and easy elite breakpoints with shields (push stab - heavy stab 1 headshots 1 shot SV on Cata with Have At Thee and Taal’s Champion). This can’t be reached by Smiter without property investments. If FK had a stagger passive, they’d get better use out of Mainstay on non-shield weapons. Even just merging Mainstay and Bulwark and increasing the damage to 80% would be massive, since that would let something like the shield combo one shot Bestigors. Adelion made another thread about this with some modifications to the other talents to bring them inline with Mainstay rather than the reverse (this would work too, since balance would be achieved, and a lot of the numbers Adelion came up with are quite well thought according to my own testing). Personally I’d just like Mainstay to have some kind of visual effect as silly as it sounds. At least on hordes it’s hard to tell if it’s actually doing anything.
The more health enemies have, the more value Mainstay gets if enemies can still be staggered very quickly. Perhaps something like Mainstay lets you deal more damage to enemies that are targeting you? Good for a frontliner, and gives it applications on bosses.
Damage Reduction
Maybe give FK an inverted form of Oblivious to Pain? So it applies to horde enemies but not stronger ones like elites, specials, monsters? That would reinforce the frontlining aspect, while also making FK a comparable tank to IB in a lore-friendly way (since steel plate is weaker than Gromril). In practical play this would let FK take hits from horde enemies when taking down an elite. 50% would be too much, so an additional 20% on top of FK’s normal damage reduction but it only applies to chaff enemies could be appropriate.
Tl;dr 20% extra dmg reduction for FK but the extra only applies to chaff, Mainstay applies to enemies that are targeting you as well as staggered enemies, 15% stagger power passive.
Edit: Oh, and how about making enemies that are recoiling from a player parrying their attack slightly more susceptible to stagger?
Have At Thee
Another thought is buffing the power increase of Have At Thee to 25% or 30%, but make it only apply to elites.
That, or just buffing it to 20% would be appropriate and inline with the other power/attack speed buffs (on Slayer it’s 10% attack speed or 15% power, on Merc it’s 10% more attack speed or 15% more power). Could make the trigger condition staggering an elite with a melee headshot.
This would mean FK would have 30% power vs Merc, but with the passive stagger increase of 15% would have 5% more stagger power. They’d still have a lot less dps overall even with Bull of Ostland which is fair.
4 Likes
The FK to me seems a bit of a meh class, im not sure adding a little stagger to his attacks will do much. The 15% DR is barely noticeable and a bit of a nombo, your team is rarely in trouble when everyone is standing on top of each other. It usually all goes to s*%t when someone gets pounced or dragged off away from the group. Which consigns That’s Bloody Teamwork to the useless bin.
Even his weapons are kinda meh, Halberd is okish, a bit slow without Crowd Clearer, and clunky to use in zerg clearing scenarios. Sword - Mace is ok until some decent armour hits the field, which is a lot on Cata and up. Or a heavy iron pop on a twitch game, then ur just sliding around with ur block up waiting for the team to finish all the CW’s.
Shield, if you put everything into stagger debatable if it is better than say just taking a horde clearer? Just take a GK and help the Slayer and Kerillian cleave through the horde. You also have some good team buffs and have serious monster slaying DPS on hand with the Blessed Blade with GK.
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i was among people who were vehemently against adding such stagger-damage mechanic during WoM beta testing. It was instantly clear for me that this system won’t really work, to make it work the game needs to be redesigned from the ground-up, with changes to enemy count, their whole stagger behaviour (animations, durations, stagger levels).
This type of system doesn’t suit horde-style melee game, not as a core mechanic at least. Its like from
a fighting game vs 1-5 opponents.
6 Likes
This is the crux, isnt it? Alot of Careers have as much stagger as a FK without staggering force. All of them deal more damage them him, or bring more team support, or are equally or even more tanky than him. Some all of that at once.
The only time his extra stagger from his charge becomes valuable is when there is a bunch of CWs, or more Monks than one can count and no ammo in your pouches.
I dont think some elusive stagger power modifier will handle that problem. A new passive that would stagger the first non boss target hit for sure when hit with a heavy, or push attack would actually do something. A talent, maybe Staggering Force, might build on this and make shield push a for sure AoE stagger for human-sized targets.
The single target stagger would actually allow you to heavy/push attack into a heavy attack of a mauler/cw to save yourself, or a mate, without having to think about weird stagger breakpoints not working. The AoE Talent would promote Shields, since you dont have to gamble Zerkers not getting staggered by your push.
It would hardly be as strong of a passive as killing something dead on a crit by headshot, or the back. All it would do is bring some consistency into his stagger role. (Wouldnt even count Valliant Charge as consistent, since enemies have a tendency to just teleport into attack position. But that is another age old story.)
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I agree with your entire post… apart the little phrase that I underlined.
This new staggering passive, in my opinion, should be thought precisely to reach (with Staggering Force + properties, so still a huge investment) any interesting stagger breakpoints without using Enhanced Power and Tag Team. These two talents, indeed, should be meant (for example with Have a Thee) for who wants play FK aggressivly.
If I want to stagger enemies, with a shield for example, it’s because I want to fulfill a “supporting” role… and, if I want to fulfill that role, would be sad give up to supporting abilites as aura or Bulwark. It would not be worth. I mean: if to reach new goals (new stagger breakpoints) I have to lose something else (aura and Bulwark)… the situation would not be much better than now. Even now I can stagger CW’s overhead with Staggering Force + 30% properties + Tag Team + Enhanced Power… but it’s a kind of meme build.
Also because, the “hardest” stagger breakpoint, is CW during the overhead attack… but, for how much stagger power I can stack, I will be able to stagger only one CW at time and only with a shield’s bash (and only if it’s the first enemy that I hit)… so, or we rework the entire shields’ staggering cone/AoE, or this breakpoint will never be something extremely relevant.
Smiter instead of Mainstay? I agree… but, apart this, I think we should focus on something else… not on damage. There already are many melee careers based on damage… and even considering only our Krub, we can choose Merc and GK.
About stagger, we should aim toward interesting stagger breakpoints (like Monks or CWs) without the need to invest the entire career in those breakpoints (aka without Tag Team or Enhanced Power, talking about CW)… Honestly I don’t know, with more stagger, if we can obtain a relevant improvement… but, in my opinion, this is the right way: supporting abilities.
Stagger is the one thing he’s already good at and making that better won’t cover his inherent weaknesses at all unless you put it to absurd values
For example: FK can stagger Monks with Staggering Force… IB can do the same with two properties + Blood of Grimnir.
Start a discussion about FK vs IB is the LAST thing I want… it was only to explain that, FK’s abilities to stagger Monks, isn’t nothing unique.
Or again: FK can stagger CW… but it’s a not worthing meme build.
We could work on this. If I could stagger Monks with some stagger as passive + 10% skaven/berserker, I could choose Have a Thee or Crowd Clear in order to use shields in unique way (and it would not be game breaking: Have a Thee! doesn’t add any particular dmg breakpoints to shields… while Crowd Clearer would just let to use the bash a little bit faster. Nothing special)… Or again: if I could stagger CW overhead attack with passive + Staggering Force + 20/30% chaos/armoured (without Tag Team and Enhanced Power)… maybe it would not be a meme build, since I could use Bulwark and aura to fulfill my supporting role (but still not over power, since the investment is still huge and I could stagger one CW at once).
Well, yes, there are careers capable to inflict a lot of stagger and, at the same time, inflict a lot of damage too and give juicy bonus to their mates.
In general I agree with you… but if we add the correct % of stagger as passive, in my opinion we can reach interesting breakpoints and make FK more specialized in creating space.
Read, if you want, what I wrote under Incandescent quote.
I agree… anyway, as wrote above (under Incandescent quote), a well thought % of passive stagger can help to reach interesting stagger breakpoints. It can be a good start… but, sure, your ideas are very, very cool.
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