I’ve seen some things that I’d say are false and so negatively impact the understanding of career balance, so here’s my two cents, having read the whole thread:
Footknight vs Ironbreaker melee DPS
Ironbreaker simply doesn’t have the melee output of a Footknight, as the former’s 2/3 melee buffs have mediocre uptime, while the latter’s buffs are constant against a typical cata horde
Blood of Grimnir - constant
Vengence - it’s a 10s buff that can be activated between:
8% atk speed every 27s (17s no buff)
40% atk speed every 55s (45s no buff)
every combat encounter can be started with 40% buff, but if fighting is continuous the buff is no longer so good.
Drengbarazi oath - 10s buff of 20% power on a 120s cooldown.
You can trade-hit (although not when building Vengence stacks) and use Rolling Mountain to cut the cooldown, but I seriously doubt that uptime will be anything more than poor.
Meanwhile, Footknight’s lvl 10 talents all have easy 100% uptime in combat at all times (unless there are no elites, but that usually means low-pressure situation, so counts for little)
Comrades in Arms is constant.
Bull of Ostland (30% atk speed) can also be (nearly) constant against cata hordes even without trade hitting.
I’m not sure how to incorporate potential DPS increase from the Battering Ram, but with either of those ult options, to say that FK gets 2/3rds of IB’s melee damage output is simply not true, as IB basically gets a bit of an advantage for first 10s after which he severly drops off.
For continuous combat, FK simply does better in melee by a long shot.
Now, sure he won’t compete for raw DPS against drakefire weapons, but if IB chooses that path he’s not constantly frontlining and can no longer snipe specials - this is perfectly fine if your team comp allows for it, but is a disadvantage for IB nonetheless.
Shortly, about comparison to WP - I’d hope WP has better melee DPS, considering that he doesn’t have access to a ranged weapon, which once again means no special sniping. His utility and DPS combined may be a bit overboard(?) but not enough to disrupt gameplay or completely invalidate other tanky frontliners.
Lastly, I’m not sure how valuable direct comparisons between tanks are, because let’s assume that IB is a superior tank and DPS to FK - what now?
Because if somebody is playing RV that means that there is no IB, and yet there still may be a need for a melee tank, and so the important question is if there is any reason to ever pick FK over alternatives or is he always inferior to something?
I’d say there is a reason, because not only can he put out very solid melee dps and crowd control or mass stagger, he has great utility with It’s Hero Time, which particularly shines for +specials deed and twitch mode (way less valuable for base cata), as he makes disablers obsolete - all of which combined no other Kruber offers, nor do other tank carreers. In comparison to IB, he’s better in melee and against WP and drakefire IB, he has special sniping and in general I’d say he ends up with better stagger.
Which isn’t to say other careers are worse, just that all of them offer different utility to the team.
Here is a twitch (no blessings) game from some time ago (no skull event), with (imo) equally competent players. Playing FK with GS, I was capable of putting out very solid crowd control and horde clear as a melee frontline for rapier WHC and two more backline-oriented builds. So, I’d say if the team needs a frontline tank and some horde DPS, FK does a very good job and doesn’t lag far behind other tanks (if at all).
RV Grudgeraker vs IB Drakeguns
I don’t doubt that drakes out DPS grudgeraker in total damage dealt.
However, how do they do against berserkers, maulers and specials on short to medium (~15m) range? And how does Gruderaker do?
Yes, IB with either Drake will (almost) certainly outdo RV Gruderaker on horde clear and crowd control, but Gruderaker has more versatile DPS. Both will need someone on the team to pick up the slack on the special sniping, but RV will be able to contribute to that as well, especially against disablers (meh against packmasters).
Additionally, if you end up fighting a patrol (or twitch spawn in), RV can drink a concoction and spam up to 3 bombs to obliterate it.
Sure, IB with Trollhammer can do that also, maybe even better. But RV can do that whilst running his horde clear ranged weapon, IB cannot.
Otherwise, RV should have lower DPS than other ranged careers, because he offers way more utility than WS, BH, Pyro or Hunstman, and is also way tankier than the first three. And whilst his DPS is unarguably lower, it’s still good enough, whether you run a more anti-elite+special or horde clear oriented build.
Lastly, I’d say the better you are at the game the less important tankiness is as agility and DPS can do the trick, however the more difficult the game mode (in relation to team’s skill), the more tankiness and utility of RV shine.
Here is another Twitch game of the same kind as the previous one, playing with Axe/shield + crossbow + lvl30bomb + potion spawning. The team needed extra special sniping and crowd control, and RV delivered (the team also made great use of potion + bomb spam), while I think alternatives wouldn’t - Hunstman can have crowd control but handgun and longbow are slower than crossbow and more difficult to use in a hectic situation, while repeater too inaccurate. Plus he won’t buff the team as much.
Assuming I could have picked other ranged careers (say we had IB instead of WP), BH could be even better against specials and elites, but I wouldn’t have matched the CC of a shield and incendiary bombs.
Regardless, there are thousands of different combinations, with what I was given, I’d say RV has his place due to the fact that he is a very safe CC ranged career which can be very good for rounding out the team when others bring enough DPS.
To sum up, I wouldn’t say that either really falls behind the others, both have good reasons to be used and I don’t think balance changes to them should be made from the premise that they are inferior and must be brought up to speed.
RV really doesn’t need extra hp as he’s tanky enough with a shield or even dual hammers and easy 30% dmg reduction, and while lower DPS, I don’t think effective range increase would do much, nor do I think he needs it to compete, due to the tankiness and utility.
FK whilst definitely a bit bland, doesn’t need any sort of burst damage to compete (he could get something cool and engaging to make him more fun maybe?), as his melee is already quite strong, crowd control options very good and his utility pretty good. The idea for an increased radius of auras would be a welcome addition and the only buff that he could really use.
Otherwise, buffs to very underutilised talents across all careers would be welcome and I support some ideas like cdr to Suprise Guest and rework of Chain Reaction, as those would encourage more builds that are sidegrades to meta, rather than something different to pick when bored (in some cases basically 100% worse than alternatives).
Also pls no more explosive weapons, don’t need any more trollhammers and pre-nerf mfbs…
