Problematic Talents and Talent Rows

[Rebel]

Big thread that I want to make about all the issues with current talents in the game, but I’ll start off small and update as time goes on.

• Talent Rows:

Why would I ever take anything but The More the Merrier? It’s a straight 25% power boost when fighting against 5 or more enemies (basically permanent uptime, except against monsters and ambient stuff like Chaos Warriors or special breakpoints). Power meaning damage, cleave and stagger (which, by the way, really damn strong talents, that’s like 5 Zealot stacks). In comparison, Limb-Splitter is a straight 50% cleave power. By taking Limb-Splitter, you’re trading 25% damage and stagger for 25% cleave. When is that ever worth it? It’d be a tough choice if TMtM was just 15% power.

And Helborg’s Tutelage is a meme. That’s effectively just 20% crit chance, which you can already achieve by having 5% base, 5% passive, and 10% from equipment. Why is this talent on Mercenary? I guess you can make some cute ranged builds with it, like using blunderbuss or repeater, but I’d rather have talents that are actually competitive.

Similar situation here. Smite is a joke (you can make a cool volley build with it, I guess), Castigate is 20% permanent attack speed, and Unbending Purpose is…5% power? That’s it? That’s the whole talent?

30% Movement Speed vs 10% more damage vs 300% faster cooldown regeneration. Again, just, when do you ever take anything but Adrenaline Surge? The talent is by far the strongest one in the row, and is actually quite an insane talent overall (imagine this talent on like any other career). The 30% movement speed isn’t even bad, and it’s pretty fun. How do you make this row competitive without nerfing Adrenaline Surge?

This talent row enforces a meta on Slayer by incentivising taking either only 2h or 1h weapons, instead of actually mixing and matching for more varied and interesting loadouts. Bad talent row.

Yes, let me turn myself into a budget Slayer by discarding all my ammo, also known as the literal whole point of my ranged career. That or 5% attack speed. That is…1 property on a weapon/charm. Talents like that should not exist.

• Talents:

5% attack speed is not worthy of being called an entire talent.

Neither is 5% crit chance.

What exactly does 10% movement speed do for you? And is it worth trading 30% or 40% DR for it?

This one is honestly baffling to me. How on earth is 5% power a talent? That is an extremely small boost, I can’t imagine what it could possibly achieve. More than that, it’s competing with 20% attack speed. Seriously?

Way too much micromanagement for only a medium-sized boost. You can’t pair this with Volans Doctrine, so without losing a large amount of attack/charge speed you have to keep venting to stay inside a small zone of overheat. Pretty sure you’re better off just ignoring the whole thing and spamming ranged normally.

Cool effect, but without the ability to generate bombs, or reliably dupe them like Ranger, this talent is worthless. You’ll get like, what, 3 bombs in an average QP match?

[darewa]

Good thread.

The whole Pyromancer class revolves around high Overcharge->crit. At high overcharge Volans Doctrine is objectively better than Fleetflame since it gives more movement speed and more attack speed back that you would have lost due the Overcharge slow. Absolutely no-brainer that you need to take to use your primary class feature. Would be better off moved into the base pyromancer repertoire.

Experimental Steam Capacitors description should just be changed to “Makes the Engineer gun usable”, in the same way that Volans Doctrine makes the whole Pyromancer class usable. The only use for the other talents is in Chaos Wastes where you get them as boons and Gaskets means that you never lose pressure ever and get them as permanent buffs. Just make the ESC mechanic part of the inherent gun.

“let’s not take double shotted” said literally no one ever.

[ClaymoreRoomba]

@Rebel

That’s effectively just 20% crit chance

Dude, “just 20%”??? Nope, it is not. It is garanteed Swift Slaying procs at all times.

Agreed with all the other tho. But have to say, that you do not touch on the real problem - idiotic “basic percs”, like all the 3d level 5 perk or the dumb “u get 7% power”. These ones should not really exist.

[Perteks]

@Rebel

By taking Limb-Splitter, you’re trading 25% damage and stagger for 25% cleave. When is that ever worth it? It’d be a tough choice if TMtM was just 15% power.

Actually, cleave works little different, more cleave means more damage, its not how much targets you cleaved but how much of % of cleave you left that will lower your damage

[Radina.Shevu]

Merc has 5% crit passive. That plus the 5% base crit everyone hast builds up to 20% crit when sloted. On any career that has a 5% crit passive you never had a problem with Swift Slaying turning into Swift Betrayal.

How much of a difference those extra 5%, from 15% to 20%, make, everyone knows who plays in a party with a WHC running Fervour. If Merc was one of those no passive crit careers, Tutelage would be somewhat reasonable. But he isn’t. Taking that talent is just a waste.

The biggest problem I have with Limb-Splitter is those 50%. I don’t know how it stacks with his passive. I don’t know how many more targets 50% are. I don’t intend to test it when I can get 5% to 25% flat damage and cleave in the same row.

@darewa

“let’s not take double shotted” said literally no one ever.

Just Reward is not bad. Requires no aiming and reduces the cooldown by half, while still killing a Cata CW with a crit to the belly. When you are host, and double shotted doesnt double proc on targets, because they die before the second bullet counts, Just Reward is flat better than double shotted.

[alsozara]

@darewa

“let’s not take double shotted” said literally no one ever.

Depends if you’re host or client. I’ve probably spent the most hours with BH and I frequently take Just Rewards as host. Indiscriminate just needs a significant cooldown reduction and double shotted needs its cheese removed and that row is fine. Not really an example of a seriously out of whack row IMO

[warget]

@Radina.Shevu

Just Reward is not bad.

I support this notion. It also allow you to spam your ult more leasurely in general.
But there is still Indiscriminate Blast (shotgun ult).
I wonder if it could be sort of fixed, if the additional pellet stacks were granted not by killing enemies with the ult itself, but insted by just killing elites/specials with whatever? Would it possibly make it a more reasonable pick (although still really niche)?

[alsozara]

@warget

I wonder if it could be sort of fixed, if the additional pellet stacks were granted not by killing enemies with the ult itself, but insted by just killing elites/specials with whatever? Would it possibly make it a more reasonable pick (although still really niche)?

I still think the Icelator balance mod did it best for that talent. Changed it so everytime you use indiscriminate blast you get +1 pellet and -5% cooldown permanently up to a max of like +20 pellets and 60-70% cooldown reduction. Those numbers are probably a bit off but the core mechanics is what matters. It made it a very solid choice that grows more powerful and spammable as you go further into a run.

[Radina.Shevu]

Might aswell just put the CDR to 60+% and be done with it, like the Tourney Rebalance did. Icelators solution sounds fun until you join as BH midgame via QP, which is the most used method to play the game.

Anyway. As already mentioned, Blast itself is fine and powerful. Just the Cooldown on it is unjustified.

[alsozara]

@Radina.Shevu

Might aswell just put the CDR to 60+% and be done with it, like the Tourney Rebalance did. Icelators solution sounds fun until you join as BH midgame via QP, which is the most used method to play the game.

Yeah my only problem with that is I’m not a fan of the way it builds pellets my default. Encourages you to sit in it looking for a dense enough group, or sit on it because you have a lot of bonus pellets ready and don’t want to waste them. At least having the pellets build with use would be nice IMO.

[darewa]

@Radina.Shevu

Just Reward is not bad. Requires no aiming and reduces the cooldown by half, while still killing a Cata CW with a crit to the belly. When you are host, and double shotted doesnt double proc on targets, because they die before the second bullet counts, Just Reward is flat better than double shotted.

@alsozara

Depends if you’re host or client. I’ve probably spent the most hours with BH and I frequently take Just Rewards as host. Indiscriminate just needs a significant cooldown reduction and double shotted needs its cheese removed and that row is fine. Not really an example of a seriously out of whack row IMO

It seems pretty clear to me that the intent is for it to have 80% cooldown since it works that way on monsters, so I’m not convinced it can be called cheesy. It’s also in line with other ults like Piercing Shot or Blazing Echo, of which both refunds are 100% and can work on anything and everything. So I’m not convinced that this is anything other than bug which by design should be resolved in favor of host being able to get 80% refund on all headshots like the other 75% of players already do.

I’d say the main reason you bring double shotted all the time is for monsters. Whether it presently works for you on lower enemies doesn’t really change this. Most BHs I’ve seen fail pretty quickly trying to get headshots on a CW patrol anyway since its much harder to do so than on a monster (multiple targets moving around rather than a single one you can stun-lock and force to face you).

In any case it’s certainly not a very interesting level 30 selection, compared to other classes that add completely new effects the BH just gets slightly different flavors of shot and cooldown refund. If double shotted was nerfed to 40% max refund then people would only take just reward.

[Velsix]

@darewa

it works that way on monsters, so I’m not convinced it can be called cheesy.

I won’t debate its status as a bug, but as for the gameplay, a lot of us (on the forums, I haven’t seen a survey for the general playerbase) dislike how a single Bounty Hunter can trivialise a boss at range without potions.

If it gave max 60% cdr for a single headshot, it would be less one trick and memey. I’d even be fine with a cleave buff at that point since iirc it can only cleave two or four Cata Marauders; it looks kind of wrong for how powerful the shot is meant to be. I think it should always be able to hit an assassin through the infantry of a horde. Crossbow, longbow, and handgun hit two Marauders.

It’s bonkers compared to Huntsman’s Prowl and Piercing Stalker’s boss killing; neither of which stagger bosses, and the latter of which has trash non-crit body damage, while DS’ (Double Shotted) body damage is good according to damage calc. These are non-crit body hits without talents, traits, and properties:

• Piercing is 32 on monster body and 17 on superarmour,
• DS is 257 on monster body and 286 on superarmour (both sniper bullets).

Both increase significantly on crit but only BH has reliable ult crits.

@darewa

I’m not convinced that this is anything other than bug which by design should be resolved in favor of host being able to get 80% refund on all headshots like the other 75% of players already do.

Imo, 80% cdr for one headshot would be too much, all things considered. I agree it shouldn’t be different on host though.

[darewa]

I don’t disagree that all of the boss slaughtering careers should be nerfed heavily. Monster kill times being under 30s for a full group should not happen even on legend IMO. Indeed the whole reason I listed Double Shot was because it was a no-brainer pick that trivializes one of the biggest threats of the game. Though it should also be taken into consideration that BH is arguably the most fragile anti-melee career in the game and should be stronger with his ranged ult than much more balanced classes.

[Drakonhammer]

Some talents like Unbending Purpose would be more appealing if they instead increased the max amount of passive stacks by one, that way they would at least synergise with the career’s other talents. Some talents on Pyromancer imo would be more interesting this way too, e.g. On the Precipice (15% increased ranged power at or above critical OC) would be much better if it scaled with Critical Mass instead of only kicking in at Critical OC. On the Precipice would perhaps be better scaled to CM instead of HP too, not that THP is hard to come by on Pyro. Pyro in general needs a talent rework and reshuffle, BW has nice, mostly themed tiers, Pyro’s are a jumbled mess thematically.

Adrenaline Surge is amazing but you’d have to do a reshuffle or a complete rework to give other talents in that tier a fair chance. The level 10 tier on Slayer I don’t like at all and didn’t from the start. Either at a minimum each talent should provide half effect if one weapon equipped meets that criteria and double if both do, or better yet they should change the tier like others have suggested on here to have a talent focused around light attacks, a talent focused around heavy attacks and a third focused on something else (pushes?).

imo Double Shotted is fine killing two Chaos Warriors but 80% CDR is too much and on bosses some ults need some sort of diminishing returns as far as damage goes. Right now in campaign bosses get bullied hard. With conc and 80% CDR BH deletes bosses, GK can delete them very easily as well on demand with his potion talent. Even with just 80% CDR and no pot BH trivialises bosses.

[dannylew8299]

@Drakonhammer

The level 10 tier on Slayer I don’t like at all and didn’t from the start. Either at a minimum each talent should provide half effect if one weapon equipped meets that criteria and double if both do, or better yet they should change the tier like others have suggested on here to have a talent focused around light attacks, a talent focused around heavy attacks and a third focused on something else (pushes?).

A smarter and better looking person than me said Thousand Cuts and Skull-Splitter could be combined into one talent.

Hack and Slash could be changed into a cleave talent. First man-sized target hit has no mass, now all axes have cleave (and hopefully doesn’t overtune hammers, if that’s possible).

Now you got a whole free talent space, I’ll just go ahead and suggest uninterruptible attacks and push/knockback immunity.

5% crit chance really isn’t that important to Slayer anyway.

[darewa]

@dannylew8299

5% crit chance really isn’t that important to Slayer anyway.

Well I won’t say it’s important because it’s the worst talent right now, but it is useful. It’s reasonable to have 1 weapon swift slayer and 1 weapon opportunist, and being able to switch to the SS, get your crit quickly, then switch back to the opportunist is useful. In this instance 20% crit rate is noticeably better than 15%.

@dannylew8299

A smarter and better looking person than me said Thousand Cuts and Skull-Splitter could be combined into one talent.

Hack and Slash could be changed into a cleave talent. First man-sized target hit has no mass, now all axes have cleave (and hopefully doesn’t overtune hammers, if that’s possible).

Don’t think it would imbalance hammers at all, they’d probably always prefer +15% damage/cleave/stagger compared to going through 1 more target. Unless you made it something like “the largest man-sized target hit does not inhibit cleave”, allowing strikes to go right through an armored/shielded enemy that would normally stop them.

[dannylew8299]

Chaos warriors, bosses, monsters, and wargors are not considered man-sized enemies, so yes.

[alsozara]

@dannylew8299

Hack and Slash could be changed into a cleave talent. First man-sized target hit has no mass, now all axes have cleave (and hopefully doesn’t overtune hammers, if that’s possible).

That’s a really good idea for a talent and I like it a lot. I think people get caught up on talents being effective on every weapon but niche stuff is great as long as it facilitates unique builds.

[Perteks]

There should be combined into one and another talent for 2 different weapons, AND FOR FUK SAKE make throwing axes count as 1 hd weapon because right now they are in really bad spot

[MarxistDictator]

I don’t mind the structured crits, they are great for giving you opportunities to pop shots like a bounty hunter with your ranged or go for broke on an attacking elite because you know you’ve got a bell ringer loaded up. Obviously doesn’t make sense with executioner sword since the heavy is very likely at max chance, but on weapons with ehh damage but awesome crit damage like the Tuskor Spear me likely a lot.

Going to have to once again puke at how build limited GK is, but also how a lot of talents he has are not worthwhile. Like Stoicisim, which overwrites any healing with the last instance of damage. Could they not just make it work like the Comet’s Gift? Put a cooldown on it.

Confidence could copy the SoTT wall positioning and let you switch the direction of the slash. And increase the cleave, you should be able to kill more non CW elites with this than the double stab.

Ideal needs to be cut down to like 5 seconds or boost damage only, it’s like an upgraded version of Trophy Hunter that’s up basically all game (and if it isn’t up you aren’t in a situation you need it anyway).

The parrying talent needs to go, competing with 2 passive damage increases is just not happening.

Impetuous Knight I’d also axe but some people who like kiting with it would probably get mad. It’s just so niche.