Today we’re putting out Update #2 for the Big Balance Beta - our ongoing test bed for shaking up the meta. You’ll find the notes for this update below.
Please provide your feedback in our forums and social channels, else feel free to use our private feedback form if you prefer to fire and forget your thoughts!
Weapons
Kerillian
Spear
Reduced the armor penetration modifier for critical strikes from 0.5 to 0.4 on light stabs
2h Sword
Increased heavy attack base armor penetration modifier from 0.3 to 0.65, reduced headshot modifier from 2 to 1.5.
Markus Kruber
Halberd
Reduced the armor penetration modifier for critical strikes from 0.5 to 0.4 on light stab
Sword and Shield
Reduced the armor penetration modifier for critical strikes from 0.5 to 0.4 on light stab(push attack)
Victor Saltzpyre
Repeating Pistol
Increased base damage and stagger (short range damage 0.22 to 0.3 stagger 0.075 to 0.175) (long range damage 0.075 to 0.175 stagger 0.05 to 0.075)
Increased critical hit modifier for damage and stagger vs armor (0.5 to 0.75)
Increased the base delay of stamina regeneration from 0.5 seconds to 1 second. This should put it at the same regeneration rate as it was before the beta.
Increased the delay of stamina regeneration after pushing from 1 second to 1.5 seconds. This should put it at the same delay rate as was before the beta.
This change was made with the change to stamina generation on health gain in mind. After studying feedback and alot of internal testing we want to try and go back to the stamina regeneration rate we had before launching the beta. Experiment and see how this affects your performance and leave feedback. Thank you for your participation.
Talents
Fixed an issue where Waystalkers talent Lifebloom Arrows returned 20 temporary health instead of intended 50.
Waystalker Lifebloom Arrows, Pyromancer Bonded Flame and Ranger Veterans Catch a Breath were changed at the start of the beta to increase temporary health gained when the Career Skill was activated from 20 to 50. This was however not reflected in the patch notes.
Additional tweaks to the temporary health gained from Heal on Kill, Heal on Cleave and Heal on Stagger talents. Health gained should be more normalized across the talents.
Bardin
Ranger Veteran
Ranger’s Ambush - Reworked: Moving outside of the Smoke Bombs area does not break invisibility. No longer increases the duration of Disengage.
Traits
Scrounger - Reworked: Now restores 5% of your maximum ammunition on a critical hit. Can only trigger once per shot.
Resourceful Combatant - Reworked: Melee critical strikes reduces the cooldown of your Career Skill by 5%. Effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.
Resourceful Sharpshooter - Reworked: Ranged critical hits reduces the cooldown of your Career Skill by 5%. Effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.
Natural Bond - Reworked: Provides health regen, healing from healing draughts and first aid kits become temporary health. Still clears any wounds.
Barkskin - Reworked: Taking damage reduces the damage you take from subsequent hits by 30% for 2 seconds. This effect can only trigger once every 2 seconds. This damage reduction is calculated after other effects such as career perks.
This heavily reduces the effectiveness of crit builds that spected into it for trait procs. I think specting for crits is now something you do for dmg and to proc WHC and Shade’s passives.
increased stamina delay penalizes too much short range weapons… especially this, with no temp health on ranged kills and new scrounger, makes ranged careers too much squishy; but the main problem rimain the short range weapons too much penalized; at least you could leave the faster stamina regen on one handed weapons.
once again, scrounger nerf hits mainly huntsman… if you want slow down ranged meta I could agree, but at least give him more boss damage (I remember you that he has passive and talents thought to do more damage against huge targets);
Could you explain the new temp health balance? Because, if you want give more importance to melee careers, the new lv20 talents are ridicolous and wrong… they give us so few temp health. But I will make another thread to explain well this.
Can you not kill these traits please with the trigger limits?
Leave it at 2sec, and let it activate once on every crit swing(not once on every target), OR even better: bring back the old one: 2% cd reduction on crit/hit)? This way its tuned down, but not killed, to make even that assist trait that noone uses nor knows its name more preferable.
Buffing repeater pistol’s damage is appreciated, but it doesn’t solve the problem that it’s simply unsustainable even on Bounty Hunter. Scrounger now gives 5% of max ammo back on crit which amounts to 3 rounds on this weapon for BH. This, I will grant you, is a buff from the previous 1 round, but still not nearly enough to sustain this weapon without the talent Prize Bounty. So we’re still stuck with one volley every 10 seconds, and that still sucks. Meanwhile, crossbow is happily situated square in the meta completely unaffected by this change (which is actually a buff for the BH).
How so? I assume Scrounger won’t give back less than 1 ammo, so at worst it’s the same as before. For Empire Longbow it’s even better now.
Is that not the point and desrired effect of this balance push? to make all ranged unsustainable and back to being the valuable resource it was meant to be?
The trait changes are massive. That will certainly be interesting.
I think it might be overdoing it a bit, because I sure liked the possibility of a build that focuses on cooldown reduction instead of just raising their base combat capability, but it was a bit easy to achieve too much.
Is it actually a percentage now, and not flat seconds?
If so, the trigger limit would almost not be necessary on the shorter cooldown abilities, but it would be a buff to characters with long cooldown abilities.
i dont think they did intend to make any “ranged class” i think the perma ranged was not intended and brokenly OP , its shocking they have taken this long to address it.
sure some careers lean into range more but i think it was always meant to be a rare valuable resource you had to choose when to use.
I´m fine with that. What i don´t get are your thoughts behind the whole “endless - ammunition” - meta. This change won´t effect such range - career´s at all.
Ranger Veteran: Nothing will change, but as a “support - class” the ammo - packs are pretty cool and should stay as a “special design”.
Huntsman: You still have to aim a lil bit. But overall he can´t really run out of ammunition, especially with some aim and triple - ammunition on headshot´s. I think it´s ok to not run around and bodyshotting everything with endless arrow´s, but it should be limited too. You can still shot though a horde and run max. ammuntion.
Bounty - Hunter: He isn´t really able to run out of ammunition on x - bow / volley. The passiv here is still the “problem”. It´s not about skill or anything. Just run around and one - shot everything (except CW´s if you got no ultimate up). While we´re able to choose the passiv trait to not lose any ammunition, his crit´s on his passiv may shouldn´t work on scrounger? Something more skill - depended would be better, than waiting some seconds or being lucky with crits.
Premium:
Waystalker: Stay afk and gain ammunition back. Press F and gain ammunition back… Ok… with the temp - health changes, a lot of ppl probably run 50THP on F, but overall it´s even more ridiculous than working with a BH passiv. This is definately no form of skill. I don´t even know, why here ammunition - regen proccs, if she is not under 50% life. That´s how her passiv works and getting some ammunition back is just an adaption isn´t it? I don´t know… it feels wrong and is still the 100% choice on her.
So just an idea:
Remove the WS - ammunition regen trait for a new one like 15% dmg - red. under 50% health. Just something which is comparable to the 2 others and give us a choice.
Remove the “1 - ammunition on backsteps” trait from the shade and give her “backstep´s causes bleed” or “backsabbing will grant everyoe 10% more dmg on the target for 5s” or “backstabbing will cause that the target to 10% less dmg for 5s.” Something which will help the grp a bit more.
We´re coming to the bow´s now:
While i still hope you´ll fix “Gift of Landrielle” and increase the cooldown of the HM - ultimate, give EVERY elf-career a new passiv. “Elven - Magic”… This one causes additional effects, based on the bow you choose.
The Longbow: While i like the Huntsman - passiv and the Longbow is perfect for it, it should recover 1 ammunition on headshots for the first target. It could have a 5s cd.
The Swiftbow: While this one got already a lot of ammunition and is just a waveclear tool. You´ll get 5% hero - power and 5% movement - speed if your ammunition is below 35% of its maximum.
The Hagbane: Only sneaky assassins or girls work with poison, so this one should recover 1 ammunition on backsteps. (5s cd in case of permanent boss - backstabbing) Give the Hagbane 5 arrows on top maximum ammunition.
So the Waystalker is a lil bit premium and is still able to get ammunition with her ultimate back. The rest lies on skill / gameplay. With this perk even the swiftbow should get enough ammunition back, so that´s why i would just buff the career´s with low ammunition to compensate build´s without it. On the other hand… i don´t have any idea to restore swiftbow - ammunition.
Overall every elven career is able to work with all 3 bows better than before and the “WS - ridiculous - regen” is fixed. I don´t really know what to do with the volley in this case. It´s shade - specific so… just find a way to balance it. (More ammunition / faster reload - speed?)
I would like to see more weapon - related traits overall in this game. This is just again an idea to break that easy/ lazy WS ammunition - problem. YES ELF - MAINS… i call it a problem to gain ammunition for nothing. So learn to aim, use melee - backstabbing or run low ammunition to be special!
I think once you realise what you’ve done Fatshark you will have to rework scrounger again. You have done this in such a way that the change most negatively affect the characters who use ranged the least and have the least ammo pool. I don’t know how this wasn’t painfully obvious at the time the idea was floated.
Also it’s an ugly way of doing it as it makes extra ammo talents mandatory and will depend on how you round the calculation up or down. With 19 ammo on longbow shade for example you would get back 0.95 of an arrow. I assume this rounds up. With a pool of 29 ammo you would get back 1.45 arrows, does this round up?
Regardless of the rounding mess this is a backwards way of dealing with scrounger nerfing the biggest ranged meta characters the least. 4 arrows back on a swiftbow crit is ridiculous and you will very quickly realise this.
It seems like you have some personal grudge against the elf carreers. Let me tell you something.
You cant change certain playstyles and people with patches.
Spammers will spam regardless you like it or not, and ammo is, and will be part of the game…
As an elf main my meele kills goes like 95%/90%/66% on HM/SH/WS respectively, and your suggested changes would only f.ck up a character that feels good to play… On BH 66% meele… On IB i can go from 80%meele kills to 20% with flamethrower… It seems IB(or any siena) is not a problem then in your eye with even more spam capabilities… But that 6 ammo/minute must go, its ridicolous.
“stay afk and gain ammo back” wow 6 ammo/minute. While i can top the whole group as a ranger veteran with ammo/bombs/potions with the amount of specials that come at the group on legend…
No i just care about lazy design´s like time - based ammunition.
I wrote enough about Sienna in the past and they finally did something. It´s not that hard, but it goes in the right direction.
The IB needs to vent a lil bit more and the flamethrower is just good at waveclear. He just need a nerf in his tankyness, which is a no-brainer with his gromril - passiv.
He actually needs some specials to get it back and it´s a huge overall grp - buff. Should i argue about that too? I know the endless grudgebreaker - boys or bomb - festivals. I know it´s quite often a lil bit too much, but it´s still not for free. I would redesign or nerf i too, but you´ve to fix the career´s on it´s own first, before you take care about “grp - perks”.
I don´t even see the problem. You got aim? So you probably would have more ammunition than before on ALL 3 careers with the longbow. You are good at melee and backstabbing? Should be quite easy to get with shade + handmaiden. Even with the WS if you want and you´ve the ammunition on her ultimate. And the swiftbow grants you some extra buffs, when you run out of ammunition. Sounds really like bull…t. For real?
It´s about ridiculous / lazyness like a beamstaff on the live - patch. This regeneration isn´t even depended on enemies, health, skill… nothing… It´s for free and a 100% choice. Think a lil about it, before you cry about a touch on your lovely elf pls.
Specials ARE granted, and you just said, its a GROUP buff, which is on a bit different level whey you bomb and pop potions left right and center, since you WILL get those back in the next minute. But F@ck that one guy who gets 6ammo/minute…
So kill the tanks class of the dorf… siena, slayer, zealot, ~merc 50%dmge reduction… but THE supposed tank class with 30% reduction and gromril every 13sec is too much…
The current system works just fine. If you spam on WS you WILL run out of ammo. (also swiftbow is shiet and if i see one in legend i cry everytime…Also buffs on no ammo, then whats the point of the weapon, and also this exists as a talent on bh and dorf, and i dont think anyone ever used them) On shade you need to backstab already to get ammo, and HM as the most meele focused carrer on elf has no means to regenerate ammo besides traits…
But its just f.ckin insignificant compared to other spammers… And it depends on a TALENT that you need to pick over increased survivability for you or your group… Same with the ult…
I agree with you lets delete every carreers, they are too unique. Lets make 15 generic characters, give them sticks, and rename the game to Stickmantide…
Oh she feels good to play alright, especially handmaiden. I can attest to that.
Part of that though is that she is disgustingly overpowered and I’m surprised very little of handmaiden has even been touched in this balance pass so far.
I can understand why though. Fatshark have always favoured the elf, they main the elf because they’re not very good at the game and have said in the past she is designed to be the best multirole.
