Hey guys, I’ve played a tonne of Hive Scum since it launched and overall the class is great fun, particularly after the changes and fixes made in 1.10.2. However the class isn’t perfect and I’d like to make a few suggestions for stuff I’d like to see changed/added to the class once the team gets back from the Christmas break.
-The ability to reload while sprinting: I feel like this would be a huge improvement to the feel of the class, a large part of the class fantasy of ranged Scum is moving around at high speed while you rapid-fire your guns, having to constantly stop sprinting to reload really clashes with that fantasy and feels quite bad. This could be implemented in a few different ways such as a class passive, a new talent, or adding it to the run n’ gun blessing.
-Blackout grenade regeneration: Currently I think that the 20 kills need to get back a grenade is too high, especially on lower difficulties where there are less enemies. I think a good improvement would be to count specialist and elite kills as 2 or 3 of the 20 kills you need to get back a grenade, so a poxwalker or groaner would still only give you 1/20 but if you were to kill a rager, trapper, etc it would give you 2/20.
-Unique aura’s to replace ruffian and anarchist: At the moment they are just copies of Ogryn and Psyker auras, and really feel like placeholders. I would like to see them replaced with aura’s unique to Hive Scum. Some simple replacements could be effects like attack speed, rending, dodge distance, stamina regen, sprint speed, etc
-More Cartel Special effects: Currently the Cartel Special is a cool mechanic but a bit bland when it comes to the actual effects it can give you. I would keep the existing effects as they are, but I would add a few more small branches to the Stimm Tree that give strong effects but with downsides. Some simple examples could be dealing more damage but take more damage, improved dodges but weaker blocks and pushes, more rending but less cleave, etc.
-Change the Vulture’s Mark and Adrenaline Frenzy keystones so that they aren’t purely locked to ranged and melee respectively: It just feels bad to have Keystones that completely neglect a whole combat type, especially when both of them aren’t particularly interesting/fun keystones. My next two points will be my suggestions/ideas for fixing them:
-Vulture’s Mark: I would rework Vulture’s Mark to be about scavenging from the dead (like a vulture) with different buffs given for close range kills (melee and ranged) on different types of enemy. Basic horde enemies could just restore a small amount of toughness, Ragers could give attack or movement speed, Maulers and Crushers could give rending or damage resist, trappers and bombers could give slow or cc immunity, etc. These buffs would be small stack-able amounts that individually aren’t too powerful, but as you gather a lot of different types you grow in overall power.
-Adrenaline Frenzy: I would make this keystone focused around movement speed and rushing from enemy to enemy, with each close range kill (again melee and ranged) giving adrenaline stacks that boost movement speed, attack speed and maybe slide distance, when you finally proc adrenaline frenzy you would then gain a bigger increase in these buffs as you go into a frenzy for a few seconds. This would better fit the class fantasy and would help builds using rampage to move between enemies and keep their rampage going.
Finally just a few small things:
-Some of the unique Scum hairstyles should be made non-unique: The other human classes are dying for some more hairstyles, keep the deluxe hairstyle, the spikes and the crazier Mohawk unique, but let the other classes use the braids and whatnot, even if it would require you to own the dlc to access them.
-Buff the Crowbar: It feels really anemic and weak at the moment, the moveset and blessings are fine, it just needs to deal a bit more damage, it really under-performs when compared to most of the other melee weapons Scum can access.
-Fix a few of the Needle Pistol’s blessings: so that they activate off toxin kills and not just direct damage.
If you got this far thanks for reading, and I hope at least some of these ideas make it to the devs for consideration, thanks and Merry Christmas.