Slayer trade off is big he dont have range, gutter runners or hook rats can be his worst enemies (or even stupid gatlinger) in that way he is balanced, not sure how its gonna be after WoM
This is the first thing you hear when talking slayer, is what big sacrifices he makes… but ranged really is overrated, Slayer is proof of that. The amount of strengths he brings puts almost everyone else to shame, a career easily competing as one of the top careers.
No, he isn’t balanced simply because he doesn’t have ranged weapons. If the claim is that zealot is so insanely overpowered, well then slayer sure is too.
I’ve no issue fighting ratlings, warpfire, or gutters and hooks, the latter any career can handle with practice. Leap stagger takes care of it all though, and if not - movement and positioning will. (Which slayer can through talent increase by 25%) I’ve not even mentioned the attack speed increase that lasts for 10 seconds. Slayer doesn’t make a trade off, other than him simply becoming the ranged weapon as a flying ball of death.
Don’t get me wrong though, slayer is one of my favorite things to play. Its brutal, efficient and fast, but also insanely strong. Insanely. Leap is up almost constantly with Adrenaline Surge.
Specifically, Adrenaline Surge needs to be looked at. Ideally, reworked into something different entirely - chain leaping makes legend & heroic deeds a walk in the park. Maybe it could still reduce cooldown of leap, but remove the stagger and/or attack speed bonus from the ability entirely.
Then why even use that leap ?
The leap is so powerful and up so often I play often with people who do a tiny hop on the spot and rip everything to shreds. I think zealot is a bit more broken than slayer, as I can survive with zealot after enough beer to float a long ship. Slayer at least has a tiny degree of self preservation involved.
How are or which of the elf weapons aside from spear overpowered compared to the other classes, even disregarding A&F?
I see a lot of weapons on both kruber and Sienna underperforming while Bardin, Saltzpyre and elf have multiple options to choose from. However i wouldnt say that there is anything too strong aside from Spear, A&F, Dual axex&hammers.
And its not even that obvious at all times, spear for instance is a bit too good at safety with its blockpush disengages letting one stay safe, and for the dwarf its his passives on ironbreaker and slayer making things too strong.
How does huntsman kruber F damage compare to shade? It should be a fair bit higher given the increased risk of …well the shade style.
Doesnt elf get to have the crit bonus on her dual weapons at the expense of losing things like damage and cleave compared to the others per hit when not critting?
Mobility i wont argue about though, however given how fragile the elf is doesnt she need this? Compared to ironbreaker, zealot, slayer or even merc kruber Kerillian pops in an instant on all her careers if hit by pretty much anything.
How does the Shade ult damage compare to huntsman kruber? It should be a fair bit higher given the additional risk given her playstyle, otherwise people just pick kruber for safety.
I just don’t see how.
A well played slayer will easily outperform a well played zealot. Its night and day.
- Leap has incredible stagger, and is up practically constantly, providing slayer with 30% attack speed increase for 10 seconds. Twice as long as zealots attack speed increase, in addition to giving more.
- Slayer has a more reliable damage increase, that is going to be present as long as he is fighting, with no need for grimoires or taking damage to pack a punch. It is also easier to get consistently higher percentage.
- Slayer has not one, but three incredible, strong talents compared to zealots one:
- Oblivious To Pain(Shared with zealot, damage reduction/damage cut in half)
- See It Coming(20% more dodge range, adding more mobility to an already incredibly mobile career)
- Adrenaline Surge(Reduced cooldown on leap@max stacks)
I think a lot of the bad taste zealot leaves people with, comes from the playstyle - which probably reminds of someone banging their head against a door until it breaks. Sure, zealot is easy to do well with, sure, zealot can survive some outrageous stuff…
But with a slayer who consistently uses leap to stagger hordes, elites & specials, is barely going to get into any of these bad situations and likely carry an entire legend game or deed. The 10 second attack speed, the movement you can gain through talent (…or increased stagger. 
)and AoE stagger is just outrageous. Who else can continuously stagger everything except for bosses?
If zealot is considered overpowered, then slayer is broken.
Shade can oneshot bosses@legend with the right setup, which is unacceptable and way too strong.(In my opinion?) Every other career that did serious damage to bosses through their actives had it nerfed by what, 50%+? (After the initial nerfs where damage on lords and bosses was bloated, kinda like shade is now. :|)
I don’t find shade to be risky at all, you’ve time to both plan and position yourself given you are invisible for the duration of the active until you attack.
Immediately deleting bosses who have their own music, with health bars shouldn’t be shut down in seconds or die before a horde is even over because of one player. It is a classic case of everyone getting balanced, but the elf get to keep the ludicrous damage. It is difficult to not see favoritism for Keri’s shade career simply because of just how much damage infiltrate does. It makes bosses a non-threat if a shade is around. (BH&Huntsman active when compared specifically, since they had their damage output vs bosses nerfed)
Sure, you could argue that they’re ranged - but the damage against bosses for both BH&Huntsman when compared to shade is nothing. Especially with a conc potion and proper potion traits.
The only way to do close to what shade can easily do by pressing F in terms of damage against bosses,(what I’ve found anyway, and not compared directly mind you) is huntsman/handgun with reload talents on headshot, and spam hipfire with ult. And Bounty Hunter’s active… is kinda of a joke when compared. At least it sometimes might maybe kill more than one chaos warrior in one shot. :^)
Very important, FK need balance his face. Delete his creepy moustache and add a beard. Looks like a 80s porn actor.
Well zealot have ranged weapon and saltz ranged weapons are very good, bops on max stack is amazing. And ofc you down played that he have crit boosting talent that is quite more powerfull than anything slayer can offer, because its work constantly not like practically constantly leap 
Didn’t they changedthat there is max damage cap ?
FK pornstache is best feature of FK
They did, but slayer I would say still far more reliably reaches 30% increased damage from stacking passive alone. Where as zealot’s power increase when you pick up grimoires or take damage, purposely or not, slayer just needs to fight. I’ve not even mentioned temporary health (which is its own can of pandora) generation with dual hammers, which as of right now seems to me as good as zealots talent that gave him health points during his active prenerf. It is crazy good.
Don’t be silly. Leap recharge, dodge range are both incredible talents on a career that already is a powerhouse through stacking damage increase, mobility and stagger, the two latter zealot could only dream of. If you think crit power is better than anything slayer has to offer, then I’m honestly baffled. He is one of the top performing careers, if not the best. Ranged is good, but when you pack as heavy a punch and stagger as much as slayer, you don’t need it.
Actually, it only works when zealot crits. Sure, he can get a high crit chance, but is he critting every attack? No. That’s objectively wrong. Is it a good talent? For sure. But slayer leap is a 10 second duration, and in a fight, it’ll be ready to use again before those 10 seconds have passed with Adrenaline Surge. And again, grimoires and damage taken purposely or not, is also needed for it to activate.
Also, downplaying it? No. I’ve not once said zealot is weak, but if zealot is overpowered - then slayer is most certainly too. Most of my playtime is with Victor, but zealot is one of my least played careers. I simply don’t enjoy his aesthetic as much.
I actually think raw stacks of % increase in power are a problem all around, on slayer, unchained and zealot simply because it ends up being so much. At least mercenary has a duration or requirement to be met, (which admittedly is often…) which is hitting three targets, assuming you take more power for yourself over attack speed for your team.
Slayer is a strong Career, too. But he has a significant drawback in the lack of a ranged weapon, and needs to be very active (not that it’s that hard) to stay alive. Zealot has, in addition to his Temp Health generation and a certain Talent, high health and a Passive that adds a huge safety net. In addition, he has a perk that generates huge amounts of extra damage (in both melee and at range) with a drawback that’s easy to mitigate, as you can fill up his health bar with Temp HP and still retain the bonuses - so no additional danger. So (as usual) while I don’t think the difference between the balance of different Careers is quite as bad as some people make it, I do think that Zealot has too much strength without significant drawbacks. Slayer has similar offensive strength, with some requirements to his defensive strength, with another drawback. So while a well-played Slayer can indeed keep up with Zealot, and even exceed his capabilities, Zealot has less skill requirements for that kind of performance.
I don’t think Kerillian’s weapons are overpowered by themselves, but the feeling of such comes from them (and Kerillian’s basic style, too, regardless of he Career) fitting the effective approaches to the game very well. She and her weapons are innately mobile, when mobility and dodging are the most effective defenses. They mostly attack fast, when high attack speed gets good results and adds to your safety to boot (or rather, slower attack speed can give openings to enemies to strike you). I feel she and her weapons would be in a good place if the gameplay (at least originally unintentionally, I think) didn’t emphasize exactly the things she’s good at.
As for A&F, now that I got started, it has a lot of trappings of a good weapon: high mobility (including dodge distance and count), high damage, high attack speed, armor-piercing attacks even on lights, good patterns and even good Stamina. No other weapon has this kind of combination, as all others give up at least some of this. While they still don’t make other options completely obsolete, they can still handle pretty much anything Victor’s other weapons can without giving up anything else. Some of these aspects need to be reduced to bring them down to other weapons’ level. My favorite would be to reduce their mobility first, then look at other options, as that’s even better than either of the components.
Did i actually write that i think about one thing or anothe when discussing the shade ult? I simply wrote that it should be notably higher than the ranged equivalent of huntsman kruber but nothing more if i recall.
If that still ends up wrecking bosses then so be it, there is no point in picking shade otherwise .
And it is risky when you arent spamming the ult, just using it once nets you like.-…200-400 damage which grabs boss aggro instantly.
That and when going after elites, specials or even bosses in the middle of hordes means you need to have a ample reward for pulling it off neatly.
BH ult cant be allowed to do much damage for two reasons, partly because its ranged but also because it staggers the boss.
With a conc potion you can actually stun the boss like, 3-4 times? Its incredibly powerful as well when you cant kill it and its very safe to boot.
Huntsman, as mentioned, is ranged, and he doesnt have to go behind his targets to get his main damage buffs online.
Favoritism? No its called risk and reward.
Shade is melee, squishy and has to go behind her targets to get her main damage, ontop of using one of the worst weapons for dealing with more than 1 enemy to deal max damage (daggers) .
Trivializes bosses? Just like so many of the others like bardin, sienna, waystalker keri or zealot all trivialize multiple things? Special music? You know what else has special sounds? Hordes and patrols.
Both which have their own nemeses, examples being flamethrowers, AOE poison, characters who can solokill multiple waves, fellows who kill chaos warriors in 2-3 hits …etc.
And what “especially with a conc pot and proper potion traits”? Have you actually played shade at all?
The best anti boss (not anti lord) setup possible is to use the trinket that lets you get all 3 potion buffs from drinking any potion. The combo of shade backstab x2-3+strength potion is by far the fastest way to wreck a boss.
For lords …and trolls i suppose, the best way is to have the trinket trait that extends the effect of a potion and a conc pot.
I cant say i know exactly how much kruber does anymore, or which setup is his best for killing bosses.
What i do know is, he used to oneshot bosses, literally, lords too, and Shade has to go into melee with daggers and go behind her target to do what he did from 50 steps away.
So if kruber still has some insane boss damage on a weapon no one uses then its still fair, shade trades everything else for boss damage when using daggers so why should kruber not have to do the same?
The point being, as long as krubers anti boss setup isnt too far behind the shade one then its fine, if Shade is really far ahead and does too much it can be nerfed but only so much that its not close to krubers.
Really though, trivializes bosses?
As everything else wasnt trivial already, you´d have to wipe out all the anti horde weapons, all the “kill chaos warrior in a second” and all the “wreck patrols as you please” setups to even have a shot at a fair argument for removing shade´s anti boss specialty.
Backstab buffs only apply to your base dmg (base dmg x 1.5 + crit (shade ult, headshots)), your ult is not buffed you should actually go for the head since the headshot does amplify it.
It’s strange and wrong, that’s why I listed:
Now I agree that there are quite quite weapons that are a bit to good at boss killing but shade is far far far out of their league even if you only bring Daggers, Dual swords, S&D or Spear.
I don’t agree that bosses are just the equivalent of a horde in terms of adding difficulty, as bosses too have a health bar. They’re meant to have an impactful entry, less so to experienced players sure.
Walking invisible up to a boss or lord, phasing through enemies, approaching from the angle you prefer and chunking off huge chunks of their health is risky? 
It really isn’t that big a risk. Besides, there’s no point comparing shade now to former huntsman and bounty hunter. Of course killing lords and bosses from 50yrds away in seconds wasn’t okay, but its suddenly okay when you’re close? Nah.
I’ll look into it. Keep in mind, I know of only one way with a specific weapon&talent to even hope to compete with anything shade dishes out even remotely, with lots of differing weapons.
I think temp health itself has problems, allowing careers like zealot to shine. But have you used dual weapons on slayer with temp health generation? It is as close to as pre-nerf zealot talent/active was, hammers of course in particular.
Temp health generation is not something zealot only can utilize extremely well.
Not keep up with, outperform. More movement, three outstanding talents, lots of great weapon choices for both absurd temp health generation(10seconds of 30% more attackspeed + swift slaying) or high damage, unbelievably powerful stagger that can be used up to several times under one horde alone and of course look awesome while doing it. 
Temp health generation is not something zealot only can utilize extremely well, attributing that whole set of problems to just zealot isn’t fair I think. Instead, flat % bonuses to power through passives is more at the root of the issue.
Unchained ins’t mentioned as much because of course she can explode, which is great - but slayer and zealot do not have any limitations, if we can call overcharge that. Its just more damage you get just for fighting (slayer) or losing health/picking grim(zealot).
So you do not believe the sight of multiple waves each containing 40-60 enemies going in from multiple directions to charge down on 4 people is noteworthy at all? My point on how trivial hordes are exactly x)
Normally facing multiple opponents should be a hurdle and a predicament? Now? A heap of targets&scarecrows waiting to be knocked over by whoever gets to them first.
Of course the ability to kill off a boss entirely is most likely a problem, if it only was a single large hit doing like 30% it wouldnt really feel like such a big deal…but because potions let you surpass those 30% and hit as much as 100% it becomes a different case’
But if huntsman kruber can do 20% with his ability then shade has to be able to do 30% or she is entirely pointless, i simply dont wish for that to happen 
Bosses I think should be the layer on top of what you describe, with specials and lots of elites armored and otherwise. Hordes seems these days more to serve more as temporary health pools than being actual threats. Opinion, but ideally bosses should be one of the biggest threats you face, not on their own as you say, but enough of a threat that the choice of one career that can nullify it seems to just take everything from them as a disruptive force.
As for damage yeah, I don’t disagree she should be able to do solid damage, in fact, I’d like to see her damage from behind be increased. @Haxorzist mentioned shade’s infiltrate doing more damage with headshots than actual backstabs, which seems backwards. Backstabbery was my favorite weapon trait in V1, and while its sad to see a rewarding melee weapon trait be used as someone’s passive; shade should still be encouraged and reward backstabs over headshots with movement&positioning, but the current damage numbers doesn’t agree. Even with talent I think?
Cooldown could use a tweak as well, its too quick right now. Somewhere along BH’s would be good, and it would make 30% CDR talent more on par with its rivals in its tier. (inb4 its alrdy the same and its bias :D)
Depending what class you play, hordes can be the biggest threat - of course this is because you are possibly playing a sub optimal class, but hordes have their own risk.
BH, HS and BW all have a lot higher respect for hordes than HM, Zealot, UC, Slayer or Merc. Playing RV with 2H KO and hordes are suddenly a big problem and ramp up the level of concentration.
The key issue with Shade Boss damage is that it feels disproportionate to the other classes. You can talk about Huntsman Ult and Handgun hip-spam and BoP on Zealot, or Unchained fireball + str pot spam but Shade does a significant level of higher damage than anything else with one single hit. To do the same damage other classes need to repeatedly nail headshots. I think that BH is more damage dealing with Pots+BoP than his own ult, and his ult should be a minor thing to be simply used to delete CW or stop a boss from walloping you. BH can actually do close to the same damage with BoP as Shade, but it takes continuous successful headshots to make similar kind of damage rather than a single well aimed strike.
There are several long-term players here who can remember when Troll as a clutch was virtually impossible to defeat on your own with many classes. The state of balance we are in now is such that it is possible to one-man a spawn or troll without needing some superhuman method of killing these bosses.
As an observation of the wide-spread balance of things, clutching a troll should still be possible with a FK with a sword and shield ( o.0 ) but not laughable as a shade.
So, HOW TF do we balance that?
I would love to meet this slayer that can out preform me on Zealot 
It’s not happening… 30% damage buff with BoP is just too strong. You can chuck 50% or more of a bosses HP before the shade can even get in range to back stab it lol. Then your dishing out 5k per hit with spamable heavies on A&F. Was playing with a 300 ping yesterday and did 18k damage, next closest person was at 8k I think, I saved the screen shot because of how insane it was. I’ve never seen a slayer do 2x the damage of the next best player. And these guys were not dead or joined in mid game, they were there the whole time.
One common misconception is to assume the exclusive thing that makes slayer so insanely strong is damage. Zealot has no stagger with his active, it lasts for half the duration, it gives less increase in attack speed, leap is up two, maybe three times as quickly, he has access to fewer incredible talents.
Outperforming a zealot is a isn’t a problem, unless of course you conclude with…
“I do more damage on bosses therefore slayer is inferior.”
Sorry, but this is completely irrelevant. I’ve done 20k damage with several careers in one run.
Temp health generation, stagger no other career has anything close to, high damage attacks, not to mention the attack speed that is up constantly. We’re talking 30% for 10 seconds, its outrageously strong. I outperform zealots all the time, on boss damage? Less so. But it happens, there isn’t always ammo around. Everything else? Steamrolling it. Besides, there’s a few set of talents that are broken, Adrenaline Surge specifically. It needs to change, chain leaping slayers are too good. Too much stagger, too much damage, too much movement, its insane stuff.
A problem also lies at the raw % in increased power at no risk. Unchained has the best mechanics for it right now, where as both slayer and zealot just get too much raw damage. I’ve never argued against zealot being strong, but if the standard is that he is overpowered - then slayer is too. He isn’t the only one with access to 30% more damage.