I love the idea of the risk and reward of a low hp gameplay. I can confidently play malice with lackluster/low lvl team and heresy with a ok team. But still feel it’s too weak compared to the other keystones. So I would like to see fatshark do one of two things. 1. Buff the base keystone with +50 toughness & hp, to help that fact that if you want to maximize it you are forces to take +wounds on your curios. Or 2. (This is the one I want to see, over 1) add a new perk under the other two mod perks for martyrdom and only would be unlocked if you took both other mods. (New perk) Permanently lock player hp to 1, converting percentage of HP to toughness (this would need testing to not be too OP/underwhelming) & a fully resistance to anything that does direct hp damage, now will damage toughness before hp
Feel free to let me know what you guys think, agree or disagree. If anyone out there that play auric level difficulty with martyrdom build, your opinion would be greatly appreciated!
I’d say martydom is in a good spot among the other keystones, it is a high risk high reward playstyle, the damage output that brings is amazing and keystones modifiers are really good too, soo i say is fine.
The only thing that bothers me (“bothers me” not that it is a real problem) about martydom is not being able to reach the 7 stack of it, so my solution would be just make martydom reach a max of 6 stack, and maybe put idk +1% to all of the stats that martydom can bring, but im really not sure about this last part, martydom is really competent by itself.
I once suggested making Martyrdom based on lost Health instead of lost Wounds so that you can actually reach the max stacks on higher difficulties, but then a bunch sweaty Wound build players were like “no that idea sucks” so…
I have think that too, but one problem comes to my mind with “based on health martydom”.
How u don’t longer need more wound curios or the +2 wound skill (never have try the other skill from the tree that give reduction % on ult) before martydom, u could go with 3 toughness curios instead, making this reach up to +60% toughness, this with the keystone modifier that already gives u toughness damage reduction plus all of the other damage reduction/toughness damage reduction skills that zealot can have, i think it could make zealots a little op.
To be fair to them even though I agree with you the wound curios are meant to be a tax on what is an insane DPS steroid.
The way I figure it though is that Zealot is the best class in the game, and making them the besterer (that’s a word don’t look it up) won’t really hurt game health anyways.
Mainly though I want to be able to say wounds are invariably garbage without having to always add an addendum.
Only thing I agree on is the problem with reaching higher stacks on lower difficulty - making it even more easy to play there … but imho it’s minor issue…
Martyrdom feels like pretty outdated design to me.
It encourages players that have no business doing it to purposefully get hit, while being a boring, permanently active offensive buff to those that can deal with the lack of durability.
Which in turn can be a crutch to make weapons work that should probably have a broader range of applications.
It doesn’t really feel that thematic, either. I’d prefer if it was somehow more team-serving.
I like having reasons to get extra wounds (besides maybe getting to 3 to have a buffer), but this being the only reason, and then such a strong one, is grating in its contrast.
Most players have 0 or 1 would curio, and then there’s a few Zealots with 2-3 and an extra wound talent.
Martyrdom is in a good place atm, it just has to be built into in the tree, which is unlike the other two keystones that pretty much just function on their own/with a blessing (Blazing Piety needing shred/other crit buffs on your weapons to feel good).
3 wound curios, Bleed for the Emperor, Restoring Faith, Holy Revenant, Benediction, Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude, you become a god tank with no equal that only becomes stronger as enemies force wounds away from you, (with Martyr’s Purpose procing continually to get you back to fully refreshing your toughness and the toughness of your team constantly).
Though, on any other build I’ll admit it feels pretty garbo. Fury of the Faithful/Shroudfield just really don’t synergies with enough of what it does to really make them work without serious point allocation, making it insanely difficult to work with over just taking the knife tree and functioning strictly off of Enduring Faith and stacking crits (either through Bloodthirsty or Blazing Piety + Shred/other crit Blessing). And trying to use it without at least having Bleed for the Emperor sounds like just a recipe for being the exact thing everybody complains about when it comes to Martyr Zealot (forcing yourself to stay at low HP and then just dying repeatedly to piercing and your team just staring at you with an exasperated expression).
I feel if they wanted to buff it, only thing they’d need to do is lower the amount of stacks required to reach maximum effectiveness. Lowering it to 5 for example would allow ‘dedicated stans’ to keep 2 wounds active even on the highest of difficulties without dropping effectiveness, and make it that much more effective when holy revenant keeps you at that 1-2 wound threshold. Allowing the Martyr to keep some health in reserve would be the greatest boon the Keystone could obtain, and still lean into the ‘keeping yourself low’ playstyle while not leaving you a walking ‘one hit insta kills me’ magnet.
(also, just to respond to the actual suggestion, as cool as that idea is, in every game I’ve ever seen ‘health converted to shields’, it’s just broken af and completely invalidates any difficulty the game tries to set, and in this game especially it would be no different. One of the major ‘difficulty check’ tools this game has besides bull shirt instant win buttons [trappers/hounds/lines of mutants etc] is piercing damage, making it so even the most tanky Vet with 274 toughness can still go down if they aren’t carefully managing the intake of hits coming at them. This would completely invalidate that and make you a walking god with no counter play, given one cast of Chorus gives you 45% of your full toughness on pulse, making you literally impervious to getting hit while it’s happening, so you literally will never have a point where you will ever need to worry about anything besides the said instant kill enemies. Which I think would just not be great at all game balance wise, as funny as it would be.)
Martyrdom is horrendous and shouldn’t exist in this game. The Zealot is not Saltzspire, toughness is not temporary hp, and shooters make the playstyle unplayable above basic Damnation. 0 Maelstrom players use this build. It should be reworked into something original to this game and not a copypasta team liability.
Did you have the skill tree set up for that build that you are referencing?
I do understand that that second option for the tweak could be too OP that why I said it would have to be tested. So it’s not too broken, but not pointless either.
Here’s hoping that works! I placed in the description a possible slight augmentation if you want to keep the attackspeed, but yeah, that’s the one I run and it carried me for many many many many a game (even on Auric/Damnation) until I could get proper toughness curios to make other ‘more fun’ builds. Still very much like it though, very supporty and very effective. (the DR’s on the curios are just what I happen to have on them, they can be whatever so long as you have 1 15%~ gunner and sniper so they don’t end you to quickly).
Yeah, just seems ‘un-salvageablely broken’ to me, but if you can think of a way to not just invalidate piercing mitigation with it sure XD.