I meant that Shade is the closest version to slayer in terms of limitations.
Slayer doesn’t get ranged, but his ult gives him the ability to handle aoe/horde. Shade has a low ammo pool (especially w/ hag) and her ult is single target – making her aoe/horde and sniping abilities more restrictive.
DD has the same general attack patterns and pros/cons as dual axes and they perform as well or better. They are both incredibly powerful weapons.
Yet slayer has trade offs for access to dual axes. In contrast, WS and HM don’t really have any trade offs for access to DD. They can see the same level of melee performance as slayer – with no real weaknesses. That seems wrong.
Well on your first point. We may Run our squads different. I don’t run with pugs very much a have a large group of friends to play with. I run as squad leader most of the time and pretty much unless their a good reason to split up we as a rule just don’t. So the ranged DPS are all inside the Aura. And yes I do get that most the auras have a short range and it seems like it’s that way to encourage people to stay close. And yes I think it can still make a huge difference, when say a Mauler or Stormvermin drop down behind someone along with some field trash and they only warning they get is the audio “wossh” sound to raise their block that 100% regeneration lets them block the follow up attacks with out any damage getting through.
As to your second ponint I feel like I already addressed that directly when I said that it’s also true that each class can be tweaked to fill different roles better.
And to me, damage reduction is sub par to full damage avoidance, I never run out of block with the HM and thus taken next to no damage in most runs from melee attacks. Leap cooldown also to me falls under DPS focus yes it stubs but it’s a attack not a defense, just a powerful attack that has a stun, just like it’s cool down providing a even more realiable gap closer so that you can do DPS.
For me what I kinda look at is how is a char play style going to benefit my self and my team. The teams not going to get much out of me playing my slayer in a defensive stance they need me in their swinging my Hammer or Axes as fast as can causing as much havoc as possible. But with the HM I see huge benefits when my team needs someone to focus on defense and I take one that role it’s extremely entertaining to me to stand on top of a BH or Mage and let my 360 blocks and pushes keep us both safe while they dump damage.
But the biggest take away I’d like to impart is that I’m not saying your views are wrong and mine are right. VT is all about what works for you and your party. I truly don’t believe in a right way to play, only a right way for each of us. That’s why I try to give context to my opinions by making it clear that it’s how “I feel” rather than this is how it is.
Slayer can take another melee weapon to counter dual axes’ detriments (being that they have no cleave) and arguably has one of the stronges melee CC and horde clear setups in the game. He can be easily geared towards both melee CC and melee elite killing and his dual axes have the distinct advantage of having light attack AP (which is a small advantage, admittedly, but it is there nontheless). Daggers do have poison on light attacks and I think dual axes would benefit from getting a similar effect (bleeding, that is), but I don’t think Slayer not having a ranged option severely hampers how deveasting he can be.
But yes, I do think Slayer needs some tweaking. He definitely should have 125 base health for starters and his overall talent choice is limited because to make him work efficiently, you need that oblivious to pain and also the CDR on trophy hunter stack. I would also like to see some kind of death-blow ability on him and while he is definitely the closes you can get on bardin towards having a boss killer, I think the Boss damage on dual axes is still sub-par compaired to DD.
I think slayer plays fine. I’m not arguing that he is a bad or weak class.
I am arguing that slayer gives up something important for access to dual axes. Not being able to use ranged is a big detriment – even if you can compensate for it with skilled play.
The differences between DD and dual axes are minor. They perform either equally or with DD having a slight performance advantage. For this purpose, we can just assume they are equal.
Neither of them are as tanky as Slayer can potentially be and his ability does allow to squeeze more out of his dual axes than, say, it is the case for handmaiden. CC and horde clear is still sub-par on them when compared to other weapons available to Keri. Shade’s ammo regen is dependent on backstabs, by and large, which isn’t as easy as with, say, dual swords or SnD and while HM dash is good for horde clearing, damge over time is still not as fast or efficient as just hitting stuff and killing it.
I definitely agree that HM has an amazing kit, which is largely owed to her power bonus and her invisibility. Dual daggers just synergize well with it. But it is still risky since you have to get so close to everything and don’t have that high health and no DR whatsoever.
Damage is effectively equal on WS/HM as compared to slayer. Both WS/HM can hit all relevant breakpoints with talents. So they aren’t sacrificing melee damage. That was the entire premise of the thread.
Both WS/HM are both good at ranged/specials, infantry, armored, boss, and AOE/horde considering their whole kit (DD/ranged/ults). In contrast, slayer is bad ranged/specials and good at everything else considering his whole kit.
Really it boils down to DR. Although, I wouldn’t say this is a weakness specific to HM or WS that they accept for being able to use DD. This is something that applies to practically every subclass and all elf classes.
I think the problem is players are funneled to use it. We have sword and dagger, double sword, sword, two-handed sword… They are all clunky compared to double daggers. Then we have glaive and spear as well. I like the smoothness of double dagger and it’s emphasis on agility - the trademark of Kerillian. It should probably not kill a CW with a basic attack in shadow form (a charged attack imo would be fairer). And it could probably do some more consistent damage between different bosses. Monsters seem to just get shredded a tad too fast.
It’s hard to compare to slayer without leap because that’s what really drives dual axes. Slayer is inherently better at killing hordes than bosses and the vice versa with WS. I think it’s reasonable for daggers to be restricted to Shade. But then, might need to give spear or some of the other weapons a little boost.
disagree. completely different weapon type to me. dual axes have AP on every swing, be it light attacks or heavy attacks. dual axes push-attack is extremely deadly. the usage of both weapons is different in combat as well. DD needs space and time to charge heavy strikes, slayer has way more options when it comes to fighting armor.
as i have pointed out before, arguments are wholly centered around the heaviest strike of both weapons, which kinda ignores everything else about them. this isn’t a balanced view.
the slayer is also the only class with 2 melee weapon options. that’s the positive tradeoff. the shade already has the xbow as a class locked weapon.
lol, what happened to those posts about glaive being the most OP weapon in the elf’s arsenal… it’s totally flavour of the month here
Potential damage of the base weapon does not equate damage done in game. Nor does it take into account mixed enemy types in groups, we’re also not seeing the stacking talents of each career on the other weapon type. We don’t see how much being hit affects play, I’ve no idea what the push effect differences are between DD and DA. The ability to use a strong push weapon and then switch to a different weapon entirely. The Ult up time and damage boost.
These things all affect damage output.
I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. What you mean by competitive, or if your referring to shade vs slayer survivability, I’m not even sure which career you don’t get hit much with, or you just don’t get hit much at all, do you feel most players don’t get hit. which would be a good argument for buffing the enemies.
I think any comparison of the Dual daggers to the Dual axes is intrinsically misleading and devoid of usable facts. The more I play this game the more I think that cross career weapon comparisons are useless.
Fatsharks needs to stop nerfing weapons that are effective, and buff weapons that are ineffective. Kerillian players lost the Glaive as effective anti-armor, and Bardin players lost the Drakegun due to stupid redditor bitching. STOP CRYING FOR NERFS AND START ASKING FOR BUFFS, before every fun weapon in the game is dicked over by fatshark’s dev team.
This is something I would like to put stress on this fact as, apparently, alot of people have stopped playing the game in the conventional sense and reverted to just hitting dummies in the keep and crunching numbers from tables. I find that to be a very peculiar and curious way to argue about how powerful weapons are and how they compare. I mean, I only use tables and the keep to see what breakpoints to hit with what weapon and how much sense it makes to do so. I don’t find it to be a very reasonable way to judge a weapon’s performance in the game. Dual axes and dual daggers sorta fall into the same category but are not really that comparable.
Like @mookanana pointed out, the dual axes bread and butter are the push attacks. They deal heavy attack damage in such a rapid succession that even the DD has trouble keeping up with that and their neat little lunge further increases mobility and allows for very easy boss-locking. These are all meta-aspects that make it hard to just point at numbers and say “this one is better”.
While I would certainly agree that especially HM has a very well-rounded kit that doesn’t seem to be giving up as much, hordeclearing with dual axes is, imho, alot easier since you can either bring another weapon or if you do the good ol 4 axes, you can still specialize both weapons for a different role and you still have your rather infinite leap ability that gives dual axes the needed speed boost to effectively horde-clear. With both HM and shade, you are rather squishy and still have to get very close and personal. Using ranged exclusively for CC and horde clear is out of the question since neither of them has a reliable way to sustain their ammo (and dual daggers do not synergize as well with bloodfletcher because of the very limitied cleave. With DS or SnD, doing an infiltrate backstab heavy into a horde can very rapidly refill your ammo) and even HM’s dash isn’t always on cooldown and again, RC doesn’t work as well as it does on other weapons to get it up and while it pretty much instakills skavenmobs, you won’t have that luxury with chaos.
I think taking Slayer as a comparison is not too sensible, but I can see why it seems obvious, mainly because what he has to give up is pretty graspable, being ranged weapons. That is very noticable and yet most people seem to entertain that Slayer is very well balanced as he is an absolute melee-murder-machine. But the clinical confines of the keep and a table are not how to make a true comparison imho and while I think DA need yet a slight boost in boss damage, people who play a good Slayer don’t get outperformed by anyone else, on the contrary, a super-aggressively played Slayer gives teammates a hard time to keep up with his slaying.
I main handmaiden and slayer. on balance I think dual axes is a better melee weapon due to the push attack lunge the slayer gets.
HOWEVER, dual daggers on balance is more powerful because you have the kill-everything-shotgun that is the hagbane that can pretty much delete an entire horde waterfalling / climbing a ledge in 1 shot.
Also the handmaiden has a horde delete button in the form of dash
i just wanted to say though, that HEAVY DUAL CRIT STABBING a stupid looking stormvermin in the face and watching it kneel and crumble to the floor, is one of the best experiences to ever have in a game.
i wish there was a physical ‘kick’ button in the game, just to shove the carcass away from my blades and then wipe the daggers on that red cloth.
I think a good start would be to actually increase the heavy attack damage from dual axes to the same level as dual daggers. You can roll +10% against SV’s on WS and HM, due to their talents and can one shot them from the beginning (+20% for Shade from map start) on. On slayer you would have to roll +30%! Sure, you can always use your damage increase talent on hits to one shot SV’s, but that just brings you back to 2 hits needed (Or chain hits with other enemies).
R u sure about that? R u rly sure?
6.44%vs skaven/armoured to kill with 2 axes of charged/push stab headshot
28.67%vs skaven/armoured to kill with 1 axe of charged/push stab headshot and another axe bodyshot.
And this amount of pwr you need to kill them if you start 0 stacks of Trophy Hunter.
P.S. I’m loving such ppl so much, you don’t understand the topic u r talking about, but wanna help so badly.
I guess u was using DA not on a Slayer, am I right? It’s the only explanation of your prety strange expirience. Indeed DA deals 16 damage with each axe hit on heavy/push stab headshot while DD deals 17. But there is a difference- Trophy Huner stacks buff applies before actual hit, so 1st hit already get 10% buff and 2nd one get 20% . So in fact Slayer deals not 16+16 damage with heavy headshot, he deals 17.5+19 damage w/o any pwr vs and 600 pwr.
The difference is, I’m talking about actual breakpoints with DA on Slayer, and you are talking about breakpoints some other careers would have if they could equip DA, what is just unrealistic atm.
You jump to some sort of conclusion using wrong/unrealistic data. Ofc I’ll try 2 b ironic at the best. Sorry if I was 2 salty.
10% vs. armour buff is enough on DA. Heavy attack headshot deals 19,25 and 21,00 damage. Trophy hunter makes it actually very easy to hit almost all relevant break points with one infantry, one armour and one chaos stack.