If you read a little further up you will see I have indeed tried the mod and that’s exactly what I’m basing this on.
Crossbow is a single target sniping weapon, so volleybow having cleave in no way eats into crossbow’s niche.
I agree with the vast majority of what you said, bit I still think the cleave is fine as is. It has less damage per bolt, worse accuracy, much longer reload, performs much worse at medium to long range etc etc. So yeah I think it’s fine for it to have the same cleave as crossbow when you consider all that.
I just don’t see how It’d be worth using for hordes at all with any less cleave. When you factor the damage drop-off, the still very long reload time, and mediocre armour damage (+general unwieldiness in close quarters). It’s still probably less effective at horde clear than shortbow, hagbane, both shotguns, and like half of Sienna’s ranged weapons. How is that overtuned for a weapon that only does well on groups? If it was melting specials and armour too then sure, the cleave would be too much.
Even with these buffs it’s a niche weapon, please let it excel at its niche. If the mod makers decide it’s too much and reduce the cleave I’ll try it again and revaluate, but I really can’t emphasise enough that it doesn’t feel that strong right now to me, just actually viable. Maybe that changes when you’re a Cata level player, but I’d remind you legend players are more representative of the player than Cata+ players, so I hope you’re both taking that into consideration with your evaluation.
I posted a screenshot and analysis of a Cataclysm run I did with BH volley crossbow which explains why I think so. The horde clear on it was really good, definitely felt like around blunderbuss Huntsman levels of good. I also feel like you’re underselling the special killing power of it. For me, it felt like a slightly worse repeater handgun (which is to say, very good), it had a good fire rate and high ammo capacity, meaning it can kill quite a lot of specials in one go on short-medium ranges, and with BH crits, long ranges weren’t bad either. The elite killing power it had was pretty great too: did lots of burst damage to chaos warriors, could mulch stormvermin and maulers quite effectively. Coupled with the great ammo efficiency it has, this is why I think it should get a decrease to its’ cleave. It would still be a horde clearing weapon, and still a very good one (I actually don’t know if it would even be that noticeable in Legend) and make the weapon perfectly balanced on paper.
I’m assuming you’ve played with War Pick? What is the weakness you’re trying to buff? Its very good on slayer rn is why I’m asking. Don’t want to get carried away.
Basically making it work on IB/RV, without making it too OP on Slayer.
This would probably do that a bit.
The other two, however, would probably help a lot. RV and IB have the issue of being stuck in slow motion, and even relying on full AS builds + even Merc’s Strike together, to make it even slightly viable. And even with all of that, you still need some support in melee.
Consider Slayer’s AS (67.5% & possible 15% Crit) compared to theirs (30% &35% without Merc, and only 10% Crit if you’re willing to drop Stam), his short CD AoE stun Ultimate, and the fact that his faster attacks already allow him to get SS up without the need of additional Crit%.
The most viable builds I’ve found for it consist of running an AS/Stamina heavy build, and spamming the Push-Attack > L2 combo. It’s still unsafe, and if left alone, unsupported, you can’t keep up with the enemies, but that’s the best build I’ve found. Spamming Flamethrower 24/7 doesn’t count.
I’ve been around for quite some time but just never frequented the forums, happy to respond to any queries that anyone may have regarding the mod or myself
Volley is actually doing damage against specials and have more ammo in the mod. Making it very viable to actually target “a single” target as well. The fact that it can cleave through as much enemies than the “single target” sniping weapon have the downside to actually make it better than the crossbow even in “single target” at the expense of ammo (you can use like 2 bolts instead of one to kill your target). An expense which is now less an expense as it have more ammo.
Less cleave would only put it back “a bit” so you still have a choice between volley and crossbow (the fact that you can’t really hyper long range is a bit too situationnal to be really a selling point, you “usually” don’t have to hyper long range except in a very few parts of very specific maps).
If I summarise, volley crossbow should be able to put damage in a horizontal line, which it does. And “single shot” crossbow, in a piercing line. Which it does. Giving piercing to volley is a bit too much. All others changes are great though.
Ok so I did a bit of testing with creature spawner on legend difficulty to see how many enemies in a line volleybow could cleave/kill of different types. Shots were with blessed shots active, aimed at body level.
Slave rats: 5
Clan rats: 3
Gor & Marauders: 2
What would you both think is a reasonable number of these enemy types to cleave? I can see the slave rat and clan rat number is a bit much, but if its cleave was lowered to the point it no longer reached a second Gor/Marauder that would neuter it to much IMO.
I don’t know where those breakpoints are, but after testing I concede the cleave probably is a bit much as is when you look at the low mass enemies.
Crossbow is horrible for horde clear. The horde clear of xbow isn’t really relative to the weapons role. Xbow is a sniping weapon. It is far superior at killing specials and elites. Volley is better at hordes. If you’re only comparing the horde clear of each weapon of course volley would be overtuned right now.
Yeah, but crossbow is good for elite clear. And sometimes, you do use that pierce to align either 2 elites/special, or kill some elite/special behind some rat/whatever other enemy. This is something that crossbow does better than volley, and it should probably stay this way for balance purpose.
It does do that better than volley atm. The only elite either can cleave is a beserker. Volley xbow does low damage to berserker armor type. They can both cleave gas rats and assassins, but you don’t want to lower mass enough that volley cannot. As far as shooting priority targets through hordes, Xbow is still better at this just because it has far superior break points. It takes 4 left clicks to kill armored specials on volley if you don’t crit. You can hit a 1 arrow BP on xbow. Just as an example.
I agree with this. Push-Attack > L2 > L3, is safer and faster cleave damage than the Push-Attack > Heavy 2 > L3 combo. (unmodded ofc)
Giving this Weapon 1 Stam Shield and/or increasing the Push-Attack Speed, would be how I would make this Weapon more viable on RV/IB. It’s already insane on Slayer.
In the next patch, we will be reverting the L3 animation but leaving the ST damage profile. Otherwise, it’s back to being a worse 2HH. With the current profile, it does more monster dps and infantry dps while doing less super armor dps. On heavies, does more cleave damages while 2HH has more control/stagger. How would you suggest compensating for the dps loss if L3 is reverted? Or do you think GA is in a good spot on official?
It’s too risky for RV and IB. Slayer can do insane damage with it. Once you get Swift Slaying up, you can spam the Lights combo over and over, and do incredible damage to Bosses, regardless of the sweep L3.
My suggestions have been either:
Half-cost pushes
One Extra Stamina Shield
(Allows RV to not have to take Stam, allows IB to take Crit/AS)
Additionally an improvement to the Push-Attack to make it safer.
How does this not make Slayer OP?
Slayer usually switches to a heavy CC Weapon when it’s time to go defensive. The Push-Attack combos aren’t really necessary with him, because you can Ult > switch to GAxe > blow up an Elite > switch back to safe Weapon.
I’ve played with Kruber’s Greatsword and 1h Sword some more. Here are my thoughts:
I like the attack speed buff for the Greatsword.
I was finding that I could light attack into high mass Chaos hordes even on FK, and that it seemed to sometimes be more effective to use the lights to clear trash around a single elite rather than the heavies. Maybe a little less would be ideal (5% less attack speed would be my rough guess).
The main difference I noticed with the 1h Sword was that I didn’t need to land every single headshot to kill SVs at a passable speed, especially for shielded ones.
I think the heavy is too slow (for me, it feels comparable to the 2 handed hammer but with less range and no non-CW elite cleave). Perhaps increasing the heavy speed, but decreasing the stagger cleave limit could work well (if possible)?
Currently the only thing it seems to have over the Spear imo is 10% dodge distance, so even with the extra headshot/crit damage I can’t see a reason to use it on any of Kruber’s careers, besides being bored of the Spear on Huntsmen.
I’ve also tried out Kerillian’s Greatsword and it seems pretty meh. Maybe heavy linesmen on the heavy sweep would be good.
Instead of trying to shoehorn the repeater pistol into it’s one shot chaos warrior meme build, I think it would be much more interesting if you’d lower it’s magazine size to 6, but giving it a tiny bit more damage.