It’s not like slayer doesn’t need or doesn’t want headshots.
Elven spear loses out against armor and bosses to gain some horde clear. DnD is significantly better imo.
Outside of dual axes, halberd probably comes the closest to DnD. Halberd has nearly identical armor killing power and better horde clear (especially with the fanatic breakpoint), while gaining reach. Otherwise it has far less mobility and much much less boss power than DnD (scores about average by my tests). Halberd is also restricted to classes with no +dodge talents and no good +power talents.
The boss power of DnD could be a bug though. Most weapons were in the 50-70s rat ogre kill time (AI off), where DnD sits in the 35s range. Tune that down and I’m happier, even if I think it’s odd that elf gets such a strong anti-armor weapon. Thing does more damage than most 2h weapons.
Generally speaking, the dangerous targets are elites, specials, and bosses. DnD kills the elites and bosses in the shortest time with dual swords, SnD, and spear all coming up short.
WS hagbane and HM dash are both sufficiently strong at horde clear that the weaknesses of DnD aren’t really that important. On Shade the weaknesses of DnD come through the strongest, which is partly why I mention restricting DnD to shade. Then you’d have to make more of a trade-off to get the power of DnD.
There’s also a meta argument to be made that other classes can or will be bringing melee or ranged weapons that are decent or better against hordes, but most can’t bring a melee weapon so strong against armor. But to be fair, this is either random or depends on your group. Definitely easy to clutch with DnD imo.
Some folks don’t min max, every runs build, and while theirs a clear meta for what works “best”. Players often find that their own play style doesn’t work well with specific weaopns, roles, chars, levels, etc etc. or the meta itself.
Or it could be things like the party just needs more Crowd control for example because of a low skill player or party member leveling a toon.
One thing I have loved about VT, is that it offers a wide array of ways to play. 100% casual to super hardcore, and in the end ( at least IMHO ) the only things that matter are ( in this order ) are you and your friends having fun and is it working for you .
Eh. You’re not really taking into account the headshot damage talent on WS or the 15% HP on HM and Shade. Those talents make it possible to hit most/all of these breakpoints. If anything, it’s even easier on WS and HM than on Shade since they have 100% uptime on the boost.
Also, headshotting is super easy on SV and bosses with DD. You can just dagger dance ogre and spawn and charge attack them in the face over and over. Easy in horde with no wobble. You just set the cursor at the same level as their head… Typical to end runs with 200+ headshots.
Okay. So the issue is that elf (w/ DD) shouldn’t be seeing performance on par or better than slayer (w/ dual axes). That’s the problem right there. Dual axes are incredible – which is why they are restricted to slayer and he gives up a ranged weapon. In contrast, DD is not class restricted and none of the elf careers are giving up a ranged weapon. You can run WS DD and you have melee on par with slayer (or better) that also has incredible ranged…
Frankly, DD should be restricted to Shade – which is the closest elf version to slayer since it sacrifices ranged and aoe capability. Especially if FS wants to keep DD at the current performance level.
this is completely baffling to me. you want to restrict the daggers to shade only, and the reason is because you feel hagbane and HM dash has sufficient hordeclear?
what about other builds? WS and longbow? hagbane as just a boss weapon? swiftbow+ glaive builds?
you speak about the ‘dangerous’ targets that DnD kills the quickest. DnD is terrible at cleaving hordes and requires a lot of dancing. you speak as if there’s only one build for all elf players and that is to use dual daggers. there’s more than one way to play the game effectively. i can go glaive+longbow, spear+hagbane, SnD+xbow. but i disagree fully with you limiting the amount of choices in builds because you believe it’s ‘the best’ meta choice.
the spear’s strength is in it’s range and mobility. which you conveniently left out of the argument. pros and cons, weigh them please. it’s not always about which weapon does the most burst damage.
I’m not really sure where I fall on this issue, but I’d say that the Dual axes in my experience are better than the DD in most situations, and that most complaints seem to stem from players watching, as opposed to playing them, I don’t understand why you think they are on par? Bardin slayer also comes with considerable better speed, health and stagger abilities which make the axes even better, meaning there are very few horde situations that bother Slayer, there are a lot that scare the hell out of a DD Shade.
What I mean is I don’t think that comparing Dual axes and Dual daggers is a valid or viable comparison, the same can be said about the two careers. Slayer Bardin is a bouncing ball of belligerent bloody butchery, Shade Kerillian is a razor sharp and fragile.
(I like the Dual daggers on the shade but I will swap them out with Dual swords or the glaive if the party composition requires it, I have never even considered swapping out the Dual axes and I know several players who run with 2 sets of dual axes with different sets “% power vs X” on them.
I need to do more runs with the 2h sword and spear again now we’ve had the more recent patch, and I need to look at the 1h sword and S&D again in general. Personally I think the spear needs love, I also need to give Bardins 1h and 2h axe more investigation, I’ve not really used them much.)
The bar on DD skill requirements does seem to me to have been lowered somewhat from the first game, but I’m not sure that its a bad thing.
Nope. I mentioned restricting DnD because I think it’s power level warrants restrictions or nerfs. I chose shade specifically because hag spam is weaker and HM dash is unavailable, for as you say ‘DnD is terrible at cleaving hordes and requires a lot of dancing’.
That’s just one way I could see the problem being solved. I’m all ears if you have other ideas.
I don’t mention other builds because I’m not talking about general viability. Elf has tons of great weapons compared to the baseline weapons of other classes. That’s a whole discussion on it’s own.
Ultimately my intention is for DnD to remain viable and be brought down, in some way, to allow for other weapons to compete. In other words, I see it as increasing build diversity.
If you don’t agree, that’s fine. But I encourage you to boot up the modded realm, delete the bots, and solo a rat ogre with both WS DnD and Slayer dual axes. The WS should kill it quicker.
the thing is, i don’t see it as a problem. the daggers have glaring weaknesses which is somehow overlooked - it has terrible range, no cleave, low stamina, low block angle.
this is balanced by super quick and damaging heavy strikes, and poisoned light attacks (not sure if they removed the black poison visuals i don’t remember seeing it anymore)
it’s a style of playing which is high risk and high reward. what you are suggesting is that there is no other melee weapon that can compete - if you are talking about pure damage, sure, it’s probably the highest. but the reason why i’m arguing about this, is that all other factors are ignored.
daggers need a horde clearing weapon to balance it. which means you won’t be seeing many dagger/longbow/xbow pairings.
i’m not denying the potential damage of the daggers. i’m saying that other weapons already compete fine with them. if all you are talking about is boss damage, assuming that you can maintain melee range 100% of the time at the back of bosses with no interference, then of course daggers will win out against anything else.
I love the spear, I feel like all it really needs is the ability damage Shield Storm Vermin better. But I think that needs to be a Addressed by making their damn shield have a proper hit Box. It annoys me to no end when you slid arrows and melee attacks around the bloody thing but some how it hits a magic wall of force.
What I would kill for is if every career got one weapon that utilized the special attack function like Saltys rapier. The zoom the waystalker has is kinda meh, the long bow already zooms enough by default for sniping and the short bows and crossbows work better ( for me ) staying mobile.
For the Elf I would love to get a leg sweep that can knock down man sized targets, give it a cooldown that makes it a viable attack but isn’t spamable.
I feel like it was a huge over sight in both games to have this function that is only really used on one char.
This. I mean, the whole game basically gives you incentive to pick a loadout that synergizes well. Using dagger on HM and then relying on the dash for horde clearing and repositioning isn’t a problem, it is smart and using intended mechanics to balance out the weakness of weapons in the same way it does for any other hero. I mean, the 2h sword on Kruber can be an absolute beast of a weapon if you manage to overcome the rather slow attack speed. So you put it on merc with swift slaying and all of a sudden it becomes an absolute power house because you use your available tools to counteract its biggest weakness. On Footknight, since he doesn’t get good crits, you put attack speed on it and it performs well. But you sacrifice damage bonuses and can’t hit break points easily? So you take Glory Hound and boom, after you charge and you get 25% more power, you cleave like a sonofabeach and can one-body-shot fanatics with light attacks for ten seconds.
EVERY carreer and EVERY weapon works like that. You figure out where a certain setups strengths and weaknesses are and then decide what you want to do: counter the weaknesses or build on the strengths. Most of the time, you can’t do both. That is the whole beauty of this game, this mixing and matching and experimenting with different builds.
Dual Daggers are very strong weapons but require a high-energy, high-mobility and super-aggressive playstyle. I like my dagger-maide and my dagger-shade, but I need that swift slaying to counter its sub-par horde clearing. Restricting DD to shade is not only cheap, it accomplishes nothing. With SS, the horde clear becomes good, you don’t need RC for faster cooldown since killing armoured targets outside of active ability works like a charm and you can use your active ability defensively often enough if things get too tough to drop aggro and reposition.
Closest version to the slayer is HM, she also has gap closer ult, also has lots of mobility with +dodge distance baseline and tallent, it hasn’t 25% MS with ult but has a few seconds of invis what is somehow comrarable. Still Slayer is a lot more durable due to Obvious to Pain tallent, but it’s another part of the story. I want to remind you that in so-called 4-Axe build Slayer relies on his ult to clear trash. When horde starts to ovewhelm you, or you face hyperdensity you just use ult in the place to knock them on the ground and break momentum, just the same as you use hagbane on Shade, you shot one charged attack from time to time and then finish off staggered creeps with your daggers.
I use a different metric to measure durability I think. I look at all the ways a char has to mitigate damage when I think about over all durability. For me the HM out classes the Slayer in that regard. Invisibility ( though limited ), 100% bonus stamina regeneration, dash that can be used in the air, and ranged attacks ( with all most as much ammo as the waystalker ) for me makes her more durable for my play style. But once again that’s the great thing about this game what works for me may not work well for others.
You aren’t using another metric. It’s just durability =/= evasiveness. And even here HM doesn’t outclass Slayer that much, The only one thing she’s a lot better is ease of execution, it’s a lot harder to master Slayer, meanwhile as HM you can just dash around and have a lot of impact not realy commiting in a dangerous sitiations.
It’s easy to run a test. Just load up modded and check damage vs. various enemy types. DD kill speed is equal to or better than dual axes. That was what Fuzzy did before posting.
Sure. Slayer has a more melee-friendly talent tree and ult. It doesn’t change the fact that the weapons are easily competitive with each other. A skilled elf/DD can perform just as well as slayer/dual axes. Honestly, I don’t get hit much anyway.
Yes, because Shade has poor aoe. Her ranged is limited by ammo and her ult doesn’t give her a good aoe clear. This is why I was proposing limiting DD to Shade only. It’s a really strong weapon, but it comes with a tradeoff on Shade since she can’t compensate for the poor aoe as easily. In contrast, WS and HM both have easy ways to deal with aoe/ranged. So giving them dual daggers is overkill.
Yeah but it’s not just evasion, 100% stamina regeneration for the whole party is a serious buff to durability for the entire team. The spear has a massive frontal block zone that can be expanded x3 if you really want to go defensively in your build. And I mean it can’t be under valued how much a ranged attack adds to your survivalability the leap is useful and powerful but it’s not always going to be in range to kill what ever is killing you or your team from a distance.
Just on a base level I think it’s kinda silly to compare the durability of what was developed to be a tanking class. VS the slayer who was developed to be a melee focused DPS class.
Though it is also true that each class can be tweaked by the player to better fill different roles. And that ultimately your personal surviabity is based heavily on your own skill, the skill of your teammates and the level of teamwork from the party as a whole.
Especially for those RDPS hwo never commit melee, or for a Zealot who’s fighting “somwhere far beyond™”. You know range of the “auras” in this game right?
Looks like you have another missconception about so-called tanks and dps. You says that bardin is melee focused DPS, but he has lots of choices in tallents that buffs his defence, on lvl 5 you have 25 HP or 20% dodge tallent, lvl 10 has prety OP Obvious to Pain, lvl 15 has rather -damage taken with your Trophy Hunter stacks or ridiculous reduction of Leap’s cooldown when on 3 stacks of Trophy Hunter, wich buffs your mobility, offence and olso defence via lot more often Leap’s stagger.
Daggers do have weaknesses. But they are the same weaknesses as dual axes.
The argument is still that DD perform as well or better than dual axes – which are a class restricted weapon for a reason. And slayer gives up a lot for that weapon.
I’m not sure I see the logic of making DD available on every elf career. It often feels like WS is a slayer but also with awesome ranged/aoe/special clear.
Roughly the first 20 minutes or so are the main relevant bits. Also keep in mind they are considering legend play and deathwish, a custom difficulty higher than legend that isn’t relevant to most others. Edit: Starts around 8 minutes.
Except even with specific attack speed builds, you cannot make up for the 2h sword having both poor mobility and poor armor clear.
As another example, slayer doesn’t have ranged attacks. No matter what loadout slayer takes, it still has issues killing specials at range.
With DnD the main weakness is horde clear, so take HM for the dash and the weakness is gone.
Except for the block/push angle, this is all true of dual axes. The weapon that has a meta build where you take two sets.
DnD has normal range actually. Has normal cleave (hits two targets on lights) but is made up with a very fast attack speed. The stamina is irrelevant imo due to dodging>blocking, the parry trait, and the push stab being poor. I don’t notice the low push angle after the push buffs, but as far as the low block angle, the same logic as above for stamina.
Dual axes and DD are extremely similar in their attack set and pros/cons. Dual axes is an incredibly strong weapon and slayer has a penalty for having them (no ranged).
However, testing clearly shows that the performance of DD is equal to dual axes or better against the same unit types. Yet the elf classes (besides Shade) have none of the restrictions of slayer.
