It sounds like you have a hard time utilising the other heroes. Shade has options to prevent being smacked in the face. Headshotting and hagbaning may also require son practise or getting used to, but in that regard GK is the same. It’s way easy talking damping from stray mobs if the monster isn’t isolated,and the same goes for using (double ult) on patrols and mixed hordes.
I’m glad GK iss working out well for you, but it doesn’t mean his ult needs to be nerf. Especially since he shares plenty of the drawbacks that the other heavy hitters have, plus have melee only on top of that. Basically the only thing he excella at is melee versatility and good melee damage, which is fine in my book.
No worries - I genuinely haven’t spent much time with hagbane due to my low expectation of it.
Where do you get such high numbers of ammo replenishment from?
Ranged option usually means less damage overall.
Lemmi give you an example from my personal experience.
I was playing with Shade: Warprat boss appeared - I use ult, come up to boss, drink purple pot, attack boss, he turns around mid swing and kills me.
I was playing with GK (double hit ult): Warprat boss appeared - I come up to boss, use ult, drink purple pot, boss is stunned and knocked back, use ult again, boss dies.
These scenarios are why I think GK should be nerfed: sure other carers have ranged, but GK gains so much more by loosing almost nothing.
From her talent, Kurnous Reward of course. Every special and elite killed by Trueshot Volley gives you 30% ammo replenishment.
Well, exactly this is what i and others here are trying to convince you otherwise.
Have you ever played the SV one shot built (30% vs skaven/armoured + 7(.5)% power talent) with either crossbow ranger vet or BH? Try it with vanguard modifier on Into the Nest (legend), it’s absurd how easy a deed can be. This is also a pretty good built over all, being able to one shot SV.
You can do the same with BH’s ult, drink purple and stun him that way. And you can take the cooldown talent, this will trigger 20% cdr 2 times if you time it right (or use decanter on charm anyway). And yeah, like @baz1054 said, you have the option to withdraw safely from the engagement with the 5s invis after ult talent. Only fair to mention specific talents when compared to GK’s double hit ult.
I think you underestimate the power of ranged.
Let me give you a scenario: What do you do as GK against a ratling gunner, a warpfire thrower at max range or a blightstormer? (Let’s just say for the sake of the argument you can’t abuse the terrain to avoid line of sight) You walk, that is what you do. And against the first 2 you even have to hold your shield up while slowly crawling towards them, in the case of the ratling gunner you can’t even get close while he’s firing (stagger won’t let you get close).
The blightstorm itself is between you and the blightstormer? Tough luck, better run the other way.
What about ungor raiders outside of the map or some other inaccessible area? You can do absolutely nothing except trying to pull them to a place where you can hit them in melee.
So, what do you do as a (strong) ranged career?
You simply shoot them, story is over. No ‘gaping or gawking’, like Victor would say.
The difference of killed ranged specials between GK and all other careers using ranged weapons should be significant.
With this kind of argumentation, every career without ranged is at a disadvantage.
So, how can you balance that out? Giving the career the ability to move faster?
Good, done, he got 10% movement speed, but you can’t alter this to a degree at which it becomes uncanny.
What other options?
Maybe focus more on the stuff he can do, without throwing it out of proportion either, while still being unique?
Ok, heavy single target dmg through talents and ult, but no super atk speed like all the other melee-focused careers are able to get (namely Slayer, with up to a max of +77.5% atk speed and Zealot, with up to +75% atk speed).
I think they succeded with their idea of making him unique without being overpowered, to an extend, of course. But a lot are arguing that other careers are too strong too, like shade or BH. Of course you need headshot skills with BH and very good situational awareness and positioning with shade; but you also need to be able to do the frontline job of the GK without any dmg reduction or atk speed buffs to help you out.
That’s just Vermintide for you: skill trumps everything. All the heavy hitter careers are able to get absurd in dmg dealing in the right hands.
I really enjoy trying to utilise different weapons in at least one kind of build. Maybe you should actually give hagbane a few tries.
A tip for the Stormfriend in particular is that if you hit the controlling “baby” slaven on his back, he’ll go berserk and switch target. If you experience 180’s regularly you should try and backstab him while he’s using the warfire flamer and not when he’s idle/between animations.
It’s a good and correct notion. There’s one tiny issue with it. I got used to playing with either red or perfect orange items. I know they don’t affect that much. But there’s nothing i can do. Getting reds is still not that easy. After 800+ hours I got like 90% of them all. One problem: different builds require reforging and I’m too lazy to reforge stuff and all those excel tables to figure out breakpoints are just beyond me. So I just run generic “it won’t hurt to have more hp/stamina/as/crit chance” build on most careers, which I all play regularly. IMO trading ult cd+longbow for Hagbane seems a bit weak but that’s just me.
Your examples are great - I’ve experienced all of them while I was learning the ropes with GK. I can also add that I wasn’t using shield, so no turtling. I still believe that even in those situations GK seems to be too OP. Mostly ranged enemies out of your immediate reach are more like nuisance than a real problem. Most of the time you just ignore them and push forward: all maps got places where you can lure rangers to. Of course some wipes happened to due to me being too slow or unaware of something - but mostly because bots seem to love to facetank warpfire/hail of bullets or stand in gas/twister or run from the cliffs/after a special right into a horde.
Still I believe that by playing Slayer (another (almost) no melee) or other career I would be in more trouble than by playing GK.
You don’t need a red hagbane to make it strong and the build Jay suggested is for crossbow.
I would say it’s the opposite actually. This too takes some getting used to, but Slayer can reliably deal with all ranged specials, except long range blightstormers, without taking damage. That would be a Slayer without throwing axes. GK to me always struggle with leeches and blightstormers, and is forced to play very defensively or use elevation to deal with ratlings and flamers.
Exactly, a slayer has a mobility ult (with added 25% movement speed talent if you want, highly recommend this one for 2-handed weapons); he can close the gap so much quicker than a GK could ever hope to.
Well, frankly I consider other 2 alternatives utter garbage - ms trait has absolutely no challenge.
I’ve run a couple of games with 2h slayer and I think he’s been improved.
Since after the patch where they nerfed his ability to quickswap attack with mauls imo he’s been a bit weak. Now he’s much better. Still - he cannot 1 shot CW and 1 shot/stunlock bosses - i guess that’s why he seem fair. He’s got cool and effective defensive mechanisms, however if you don’t block during leap you might get a troll club mid flight and go down in flames.
GK on the other hand would kill the boss while while Slayer is landing^^
I think a lot depends on difficulty, at least on Cata slayer and GK have about the same time to kill on bosses, assuming they both have good loadouts for it.
I was getting about 45 seconds to kill a cata chaos spawn with exe sword, power on charged attack, and double ult on GK.
Slayer with double 2-handed hammer was around 50 seconds, with double 2 handed axes and Q swapping I was getting 40 seconds. I don’t even know if that’s the ideal boss dps loadout for slayer, and my q swapping was a little sloppy, so someone with more knowledge might be even faster.
This was in the keep with AI off, so if you have the boss running around chasing other players, or if the double ult pushed the boss out of range of the second hit, I could see slayer being consistently better boss dps in actual game scenarios.
I can’t really tell if you got what i was saying, by mobility ult i mean an ult that moves you, unaltered by talents. I’m not arguing that the 25% ms is the best pick, i’m on the same page, but Slayer can use his ult like FK, HM, BW and Zealot to close the gap.
Like @TheWalrus has said, don’t underestimate the ability to move close to the target you want to get too.
Btw: if you really want to go for it, you can one shot (even body shot) CW on Cata. Of course you need dawi drop, but you don’t even need skull-splitter for it, only 30% vs CW and smiter. Headshots will always be a kill with only dawi drop on cata, no matter the stagger talent and without any extra power (Trophy hunter is always on 1 on the first hit).
On legend only 30% vs CW and smiter is required (or skull-splitter, 10% vs CW and smiter).
The problem with this is: you need to build your character around it: I guess bonus vs armour/chaos, some suitable weapon and that trait. You loose so much as/ms, crit % that I wouldn’t consider it a viable option.
Whereas, true grail knight cant leap or charge or hop or w/e. But do not forget his innate 10% ms buff which imho negates the traversal skill absence.
GK does not need to make any big changes to gear to be able to oneshot CW. He does not really have to use ult for it - usually a headshot or a crit would do it anyway.
Disclaimer: I haven’t done it on Cata, only talking from Legend experience.
Have you read the last sentence on my comment? It’s no problem to one shot CW on legend with the war pick.
Also, the GK needs the same amount of change to his loadout as the Slayer.
With exe you still need smiter (obvious pick on him ofc), virtue of heroism and 20% vs CW for legend one headshot kills. You still need 10% extra for crit bodyshots. That’s not really different than picking war pick on slayer, and you likely get more crits out of slayer due to his higher atk speed, even considering the innate crit chance of exe heavy attacks.
I don’t think that’s true when you compare it to movement speed of enemies (especially bosses, which your post is about), but i can accept that we won’t find common ground here.
having a dash has significantly more utility than 10% movespeed
10% movespeed won’t allow you to outrun enemies on its own, nor will it allow you to close the gap on specials, nor will it allow you to get out of bad spots/move through enemies
