that’s a big part of why they’re picked over FK
FK still won’t have as much DPS with smiter but he won’t struggle as hard with weaponry that don’t synergise well with mainstay…which is pretty much all of Kruber’s weapons barring shields. He needs a little love on damage output and durability
Ye, don’t get wrong, I fully agree about replace Mainstay with Smiter… if you remember, I wrote it also in a thread during beta. But, improving his damage output (which, I repeat, I’m not against), should not distract us from the real main point.
FK is a support and he should shine for his supporting abilities (stagger, aura, etc etc)… he must not become an alternative Merc with a little less dmg and a little more stagger.
Just wanna point out you’d be completely insane to replace Mainstay instead of Bulwark. Mainstay is pretty optimal for a number of FK builds, Bulwark is just trash.
yeah was gonna say bulwark should be replaced if anything
also
tbh I feel to achieve this he’d need a full rework from the ground up
I agree with you, guys: in its current state, Bulwark is bad… but I think that, its style, could fit very well with tanking/supporting careers… instead of remove Bulwark, I would prefer rework it (or, at most, fuse it with Mainstay).
I’d rather bulwark get deleted. I mean if you want to hit any of the relevant breakpoints as shield knight it’s better to run enhanced power.
Better range damage and better raw melee damage. Bulwark is just negligible for the team.
THANK YOU! I don’t understand why some people can’t get this part.
I approve of this comment by @Adelion.
I gave 3 good reasons in response to Adelion further up which have so far gone ignored. If you’re going to assert I’m wrong (which you are indirectly with this post), you owe the courtesy of at least explaining why the reasons I gave aren’t valid.
You’re not making an argument here, you’re just stating outright that other people are wrong with no justification in a kind of condescending tone.
If I’m going off your post more towards the top of this thread, your argument seems to be mostly that he’s fine as is, and that you prefer having staggering force as a meaningful choice, rather than something given to you. Ok, I agree importing the full 35% as a passive is way too much. I challenge you though to find an issue with the 15% version that replaces the stamina shield passive @Velsix and I have been advocating for. It would be a real stretch to call that power creep or problematic, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise.
Exactly… I mean, he can’t understand why many people want some stagger as default… well, there are an entire thread full of well motivated explanations. From wich, obvly, he can agree or disagree.
Honestly I don’t think that +35% passive as default would be too much (since, for example, Merc can reach 30% stagger power and he can do many things that FK can’t do, like tons of damage and juicy bonuses to his mates)… but you well motivated your point of view… and you proposed a valid alternatine… wich I love.
I would be happy also with +15% stagger passive. The important things, for me, are the capacity to stagger Monks’ combo with +10% skaven/berserker + the passive and the capacity to stagger CW’s overhead attack also without Tag Team and Enhanced power (for example passive + Staggering Force + 20/30 chaos/armoured). In my opinion, they would be two nice addition to FK’s style.
he has a point though about powercreep. But you would need to bring down 80% of careers to FK level then, which i wouldn’t be against, but its a lot of work. Powercreep as a whole is spread nicely between careers and weapon buffs in the history of patches, just look at mobility - there’s no negative dodge weapons anymore, low mobility is not a thing.
To be completely honest, i wouldn’t mind if they added stagger power as a passive but i also don’t think it’s needed, it literally wouldn’t make fk better in any way for me. I would rather see other changes to fk instead of stagger power, i have his ult up almost constantly when fighting and can stagger insane amounts with it. ( Yes i know there is a push bug, but that should just get fixed)
Also comparing against one of the strongest careers in the game is not the best way to bring arguments across, or saying 'merc can do 30% stagger without sacrificing his dps, so fk should get it cuz tank". Saying that is literally the definition of power creep.
For me it’s more of something to make FK stick out mechanically from Merc. Merc has cleave, WHC has tagging, Shade has backstabs, RV has ammo drops, UC has heat management/risk, IB has Gromril Armour, BH has consistency with Blessed Shots etc. Not all careers have something that’s good at making them stick out mechanically but I think they should, including FK.
Currently FK has an aura thing going on which in effect just means stand next to other players. If anything I think FK’s thing should be being good at keeping a frontline with minimal aid (but low dps), more so than other careers like Merc.
I also suggested making Merc’s cleave only affect damage cleave and giving FK a stagger cleave power passive to enhance synergy with 2h weapons, pushing FK up a little and bringing Merc down a little which isn’t unreasonable in my opinion. I’m happy with other careers being brought down to FK’s level as well, so long as the careers are reasonably balanced against each other and the difficulty (making the stagger of all careers except FK weaker is one way of doing this).
I’m open to other ideas though.
Well fk is protecting of teammates in terms of damage reduction and more stamina. If players want to replace the stamina with stagger power, thats absolutly fine by me, but it wouldn’t really add anything it would just push players into other must pick properties and talents. Also fk can already hold the frontline pretty good without any talents and has talents to support it even more. Is staggering a cw an obscure breakpoint, sure, should it be easily accesible though? Is a 20ish second ult or ulting on demand by taking dmg not enough to stagger cw’s? How many do you encounter anyway. I never had any issues staggering cw’s, when aggro’ing a patrol being able to stagger a group of them with my ult and create some breathing room the same way ib can by taunting them. Even adjusting his aura range would be super good, imagine a constant (dont’ remember exactly) 15% dmg reduction + his own personal dmg reduction, is merc better? Yes, dps + dmg red + temp hp are literally the best things combined so it would be hard to compete with that, but from playing i never had any trouble with fk in regards to staggering or cc.
This thread is more so pointing out the obvious power of mercenary and the unbalance it creates between the kruber careers. The point i’m getting from following this thread a bit is that merc should be nerfed to not overshadow fk so much. (Ofcourse fk should also get some changes).
Edit: something i thought of just now, what if fk’s dmg red aura was additive, so +15% dmg red on top of what ur teammates have? Would that be too strong?
If we’re talking mechanics that “stick out” I do like how FK can buff the team’s ult cooldown actively by staggering things with that one talent
maybe expand on that concept?
I wouldn’t mind fk’s dmg red passive to be secondary and have a more ‘interactive’ passive maybe. I’m not sure how strong ult cooldown talent is exactly, but it might be a good idea depending on how it’s balanced.
Also not sure how much people value 10% dmg reduction, or would you add it to the aura range? Or maybe add it in the old spot of cooldown talent?
good questions and no idea 
would love to be able to just throw these talent configs together and test
I agree with your posts, but just wanted to add that I think people get too caught up on the CW stagger break point in particular. There are a myriad of useful breakpoints for lots of Krub weapons but in my experience most of them require you to commit very hard to reach them. It’s not that I or others specifically want CWs to get bullied easier, it’s that we’d like a lot more stagger breakpoints to be reachable while still allowing some degree of build flexibility. Just wanted to clear that point up a bit.
Especially considering how CWs are the slowest of all elites, land the least number of hits on players and do the same damage as any other elite. It’s a glorious meme breakpoint.
Now, guys, I don’t want to change this thread into “FK vs other careers”… but reading your last posts, in my opinion, there is an important thing to add.
If we compare FK vs Merc we can say that Merc is practically better in almost every aspect… this could seems a Merc’s problem but, if we look the overall picture (aka the entire careers pool), we can notice that MANY careers are strong exactly as Merc.
So we could give some love to FK… or we could bring down almost the entire careers pool.
Honestly, the first option (buff FK), seems to me the best one. This for some reason:
Anyway I find this argument a little bit off topic… so I will not continue on this part.
If we added a well thought amount of stagger in order to reach specific breakpoints, it could be a nice addition to his style (also because, even with Staggering Force, FK can’t reach nothing unique… and this is a problem)… honestly, that Valiant Charge is almost constantly ready, seems to me a little bit an exaggeration.
But I’m also open to other types of buffs.
But this would not help Shields :x
Passive + Staggering Force + 30% vs chaos/armoured… honestly I would not call it “easily accesible”.
We have also to consider that you could stagger a CW:
-only with bash;
-only with the central part of the bash;
-only if the the CW is the first enemy you hit;
-only one CW at once.
It’s nothing too relevant.
Anyway, like I wrote posts ago, I do NOT want talk about Merc vs IB, but let me add one only thing about “chaos patrol situation”.
There is a big difference between
-(FK) stagger part of the patrol for… 4 seconds? and then wait 30 seconds for another ult
and
-(IB) make the entire patrol unharmful (and stack them, so your mates can damage them better) for 15 seconds
This because it’s the only relevent breakpoint for shields that FK could reach… I can understand that FK has many weapons and not only shields… but we should not forget them. Shields are an important part of FK’s gameplay.
Taken individually, yes… but, during an horde/bad situation, they can create a substantial amount of pressure. The capacity to handle an horde with 2-3 CWs (with the correct build/investment, as I was saying) would not be something to underestimate… it would enrich FK’s niche.
I wasn’t doing this, it was mostly you who was saying merc can reach better stagger then fk, i just commented on the fact that it’s not good to compare careers, especially not the strongest career amongst kruber career and even all careers.
In a fight his ult is up very fast, it’s like 20ish seconds if not less depending on properties and weapon. If not fighting it’s still low, but indeed it takes a bit longer.
I didn’t say that. I said it’s not really an easy accesible one, and then i asked, “should it be easily accesible, by adding the stagger power passive” thats what i meant with this:
Yes that’s true, ib can take aggro longer, it’s just different styles of tanking. When ib takes aggro from 10 cw’s, can he attack easily? I wouldn’t say so. Fk on the other hand can attack when they are all down. Ib is probably still stronger because of his team power talent on ult, but still, it’s just different styles.