With Patch 13 here, talent trees cover a lot of new modifiers that allow close to detailed control of players’ playstyles. Sadly, Curios still lack interesting variety and overall feel like a subset to gear that is largely ignored due to poor or useless options. This has been especially amplified by the design of the new talent trees.
While I would prefer an overhaul to Curios that makes them actually interesting, much akin to how Vermintide 2 has Traits that work similarly to Talents, this is a more immediate remedy that should largely benefit all sorts of interests, especially since Curios are meant to mitigate issues a player might run into.
The current Toughness/Health/Stamina/Wounds paradigm is boring, and out of all of those, Stamina has a few niche (but very excellent!) use cases; +1 Wounds is not that great for most operatives; and Health is lackluster to the current meta of Toughness being the overall best stat to increase.
Suggested values are also just subjective and sort of thrown together as examples. I don’t know how much 21% Ammo Reserve or +9% Movement Speed would unbalance the game, but I think compared to +51% Toughness (the current Curio meta), it would be an interesting choice.
I appreciate any additions one might have and will edit this post accordingly if they seem like they improve different playstyles without directly increasing damage (or being so strong that they’ll be the new meta pick).
New Curio Blessings
Additional Blessings should be available to make them more diverse and interesting, and cater to different builds and interests, including Critical Hit Chance as an “offensive” Curio Blessing. Since Blessings are the bulk of Curio offerings, they should be high value and interesting choices.
Some examples:
- +1-2% Critical Hit Chance
- +2-3% Movement Speed
- +3-7% Ammo Reserve
- +3-7% Coherency Radius
- +1 Dodge Limit
- +1% Additional Toughness on Kill
The argument here for an “offensive” stat on Curios is that you’re trading off a massive bonus to a defensive stat for something that isn’t necessarily just a raw damage increase. +6% Critical Hit Chance is also pretty fair if you want to commit all 3 Curios for that bonus in my mind.
New Curio Perks
Some new auxiliary stats should be available for improvements to various gameplay styles and interests.
Some examples:
- +2/3/4/5% Reload Speed
- +6/9/12/15% Impact Strength
- +1/2/3/4% Dodge Distance
Damage Resistance
My suggested change here is to change all current Damage Resistances. As a result of the much larger coverage, the Perks should only be +6% each instead of +20% (as +60% Damage Resistance to Flak Armoured would be ridiculous and too strong):
- +3/4/5/6% Damage Resistance (Unarmoured Enemies)
- +3/4/5/6% Damage Resistance (Infested Enemies)
- +3/4/5/6% Damage Resistance (Flak Armoured Enemies)
- +3/4/5/6% Damage Resistance (Maniac Enemies)
- +3/4/5/6% Damage Resistance (Unyielding Enemies)
- +3/4/5/6% Damage Resistance (Carapace Armoured Enemies)
The ideal situation here is that with the diversity of Elites and hopefully future improvements to Specialists to diversify their Typing (looking at you, Scab Flamer with Maniac), and with how much burst damage you can take, choices can matter much more for the types of enemies that players struggle with.
For example, a player that struggles with Scab Maulers and Shooters might take Flak Armoured, but players that might have problems dealing with Snipers or just surviving hordes of Dregs can take the Unarmoured Damage Resistance.
Combat Ability Regeneration
+4% is incredibly paltry. You only save 2.4 seconds off of a 60 second cooldown (7.2 seconds at 12%). My suggestion here is to make it a worthwhile pick:
- +2/4/6/8% Combat Ability Regeneration
With a total of +24% Combat Ability Regeneration, you can get 14.4 seconds off of your Combat Ability. I think any higher and the Perk would become too strong.
Stamina Regeneration
This should be updated much the same way Toughness Regeneration Speed was. I can’t give specific numbers because I don’t know much about Stamina under the hood, but it should allow for reducing the Stamina Regeneration Delay much the same way some Operative Modifiers do, but as a percentage to add onto the reductions that exist.
Revive Speed
This should be changed to cover Assisting as well, considering that they’re two different stats.
- +4/6/8/10% Assist and Revive Speed
Block Efficiency
Should be changed the same way as Revive Speed, in that it should also increase the efficiency of Pushing:
- +3/6/9/12% Block and Push Efficiency
Experience
Useless, and when you crunch the numbers, gives virtually nothing to players even with +30% Experience. You get this so late and the amount of XP you get across 30 levels is a literal pittance:
- Remove this, OR
- +10/20/30/40% Experience
With how little the leveling experience affects the overall gameplay, there’s really no reason for this stat to exist in the first place on Curios. We gain nothing from it, and unless we get prestige levels with rewards attached to them, this stat will never matter other than clogging the roll table.