ideas to make stagger talent selection more meaningful: basically add a jewelry affix to the talent.
crit/headshot - 5% crit
smiter - 5% attack speed
bulwark - 10% damage reduction
mainstay - 2 stamina (1 shield)
enhanced power - increase to 10%
They need to do the opposite - stagger and THP talents need to be more generic. We need the same 3 stagger talents available on all classes. Right now, Unchained, Ranger Veteran, and Footknight only have Bulwark, Mainstay and Enhanced Power. It really makes a Ranger Vet struggle with 1H axe compared to Slayer/IB and Unchained suck with dagger in comparison to Battle Wizard/Pyromancer which all have access to Smiter (and THP on Kill). The stupid distribution of level 5 THP and level 15 stagger talents just limits build variety needlessly - if a class has access to a weapon it should have access to the level 5/15 talents that allow you to maximize your effectiveness with that weapon. Honestly, the level 5 and 15 talents shouldn’t even be built into classes- they should just be incorporated into weapons because in the majority of cases there is a clear choice of which talents to take for each weapon. What we have now are the remnants of a stagger system that was largely abandoned just to give the illusion of choice and class diversity.
The only thing that really differentiates classes is the passives and ults. Everything else is basically the same with a slight tweak, e.g., damage reduction on headshot/elite kill/charged attack…or increased attack speed on push/ult/wielding two 1H weapons/dodging…or power on etc…or cooldown reduction on etc. It’s mostly the same effects with slightly different triggers. IMO, it would be far more interesting and allow far more build diversity if we had no classes, just 5 characters that have access to all passives for their careers (Kruber can get Merc, FK, GK,or Huntsman passives) and all ult variants, and then all the less meaningful stuff like attack speed on X, increased dodge distance etc all organized in a tiered system so you can only get one ult and 1 or 2 passives on the same character, but you can mix-and-match talents from the different tiers so that you can make hybrid classes like a Merc-Hunstman or a Footknight-Merc build. This kinda stuff has been done in tabletop RPGs for years and it really adds to the variety and would eliminate alot of basically redundant variations on the same talent. You would also throw restricted weapons into the talent tree so that you could get essentially a Ranger Vet build with Drakefire pistols.
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Have to agree with @Mike137.
I would fuse Smiter with Assassin and Bulwark with Mainstay (they’d need to be rebalanced in doing so, Assassin is by far the best stagger talent right now if you have a good headshot rate (especially on weapons with easy headshot angles)) - perhaps Assassin even needs to be ditched or at least toned down with how good it is and keep the Smiter parts alone. Mainstay-Bulwark could keep the 10% for teammates buff but not have it apply to the user and have the user benefit solely from the Mainstay part, they are weaker overall atm - especially Bulwark when you don’t have much melee on the team.
They might need a buff and/or rebalancing after that but it’d be a start - it’d leave us with a universal Smiter - Mainstay - Enhanced Power stagger talent row. Enhanced Power can stay as it is since the 7% overall Power increase is deceptively good.
thp-wise I’d do the same. Shift healshare to a necklace trait or something (perhaps readjusted a bit for balance reasons) and have everyone get access to thp on cleave, thp on stagger and thp on kill. thp on crit/headshot went from brokenly OP to brokenly garbage vs the others (especially on cleave which fills a similar niche), I’m not really sure how to balance that one and I’m not really sure it is worth doing so. It and thp on cleave often fulfill a similar niche anyway playstyle-wise, both can generate thp on bosses too. Crits already tie into so much more in the game than damage alone (Swift Slaying → movement speed tech, many other traits → ammo sustain) it’d be nice to decouple this one here.
The stagger talents being Smiter, Mainstay and Enhanced Power, along with first row talents being thp on cleave, thp on stagger and thp on kill would open up all careers to take the weapons available to them as they please without worrying about sustain. Build diversity would be much improved.
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