After patch 1.3 I haven’t seen this trait aroud anymore, and SS seems to be the meta choice. Instead of nerfing that too I suggest to make this viable again. I don’t think it was op before, as most careers would skip this for SS or parry. But maybe allowing it to proc more than once on a swing OR removing the 5 seconds lockdown, instead of both, may be a good middle ground
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Parry is pointless. It would be great on weapons with low dodge count, only those can’t cancel attacks with blocks mid swing anyway.
Mmm… I don’t feel like it’s useless, but you have a point there. I suppose allowing 2h weapons to block cancel could be some secondary effect to add into that trait. But I’d like this to be about RC.
There’s not much to say - from a good swift-slaying alternative it went straight into “garbage” territory if you ask me…
This entirely. Had a fairly niche use that made it top tier on a few classes, but now, the increased damage you’d do with SS on anything out weights RC on even the heaviest crit builds. Things been neutered. Remove the cooldown and it’d be fine.
I’d generally would love to see new traits, both offensive and defensive. F.e. shield breaker for easier shieldvermin removal (everyone would love that) or master block (block cost of heavy attacks only reduced and you also take -60% dmg from blocked boss slams and similiar “unblockable” attacks if there are any :p)
While I agree that RC is too weak now, removing either one of the restrictions would make it quite prone to abuse again. A high crit rate is always needed for that, but letting it proc several times per swing would let high-cleave weapons abuse it (try Merc with a two-hander on for size), and similarly, removing the cooldown completely opens abuse on fast weapons (WHC and Rapier, for example). this makes the whole Trait very difficult to balance.
I’m not certain whether it works as the description tells us at the moment, as I’ve read some conflicting info about it and can’t really test it myself. I mean the proportional reduction in particular. If it does work proportionately, i. e. actually reducing cooldown by a percentage (and if we’re going by how it was originally apparently meant to be, reducing by a percentage of the remaining cooldown timer instead of full), it can be applied quite a lot more liberally than the current form, up to its former form without breaking that much. It would make it somewhat more useful on longer-cooldown Careers, and would never allow instant refill no matter how much crits you could squeeze out (at least in the amounts they come out without cheating).
If it instead works by absolute amounts, i. e. how it actually worked before, and how its description too was eventually changed, it gets easily broken. It works best on the short-cooldown skills, which already can be troublesome, and makes it nearly worthless on the Careers that actually could use it to counteract a weakness. It also enables strong abuse in the form of multiple activations in a short amount of time, shaving off even more from the cooldown and without diminishing returns, up to what was seen during the early stages of BBB on Dual Swords.
So yes, this Trait (and others, including Heat Sink) still needs more balancing, and possibly a new angle of approach. During the BBB, I put up the thought of detaching Trait activations from crits. Crits already give string bonuses to the attacks they activate on, making crit-focused builds on certain Careers strong on their own right. Making certain Traits activate on crits adds to those Careers’ power and without limitations allows abuse (as we have seen several times already), and often enough those Traits aren’t that much worth it on other Careers, depending too much on high crit rates. Separating Trait activations and crits would allow balancing both separately, giving an additional balancing tool instead of the two creating more balancing problems with their interactions. This would be a major change though, and should certainly not be done lightly or without testing.
It all depends on the build. Would I choose RC over SS on an attack speed Pyro build? No, but I would use RC over SS on a Pyro build where the Ultimate clears all overcharge. It’s honestly fine the way it is in my opinion.
Well, that’s whole 1 specific build for 1 class in the entire game. To be honest, I’ll take the “ult time reduction on hit” due to faster attacks via swift slaying over RC for almost any class anyway - because, well, it helps killing enemies fast more than maybe getting ult literally a few seconds earlier.
Any fast weapon doesn’t really need swift slaying. I gave one class example, but the same can be applied to Shade (DD,DS), Slayer Bardin (Dual Axe), regular dagger on Sienna. Those weapons really don’t need Swift Slaying unless you’re one of those guys that like to collect green circles. Also, those “few seconds” are usually around 10-20 seconds depending, which can make a huge difference in gameplay.
The faster you hit, the better. Slayer with SS will clear a horde way faster than without. Comes helpful when killing bosses and CWs too. Swift slaying on slayer also affects the other weapon. My typical modus operandi vs horde - jump, land a few axe hits, procc swift slaying, switch weapon to pick, start hitting at insane pace. This way I can have another trait on the pick and can just run +att speed + chaos on it (instead of +crit) for 1-shotting CWs with a headshot.
On IB drakefire pistols greatly benefit from swift slaying, it increases the ROF significantly, again, great vs bosses.
Of course you may get your ult a few seconds earlier, but using ult is often forced by dire circumstances. You’re going to need to use ult a lot less often if you are killing the enemy faster thus removing the source of "dire circumstances"way before they have a chance to occur.
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I don’t notice a significant difference between swift slaying and any other perk on my dual axes. I would argue that everything has a rate of decay, and with Slayer Bardin’s already crazy fast attack speed swift slayings effect is negligible. I would personally just run Swift Slaying on the Pick or Secondary weapon, which I really only need to use when SHTF or i’m in need of hoard control. Otherwise i’m using dual axes for most of my hoard clearing which is incredibly fast.
Well, I notice a huge difference between swift slaying and lack of it. A difference of 20 dead fanatics every 100 non-swift slaying swings. Slayer is good vs hordes. Swift slaying turns him into Grimnir’s fury made manifest.
And man, the boss damage is also really nice. It’s just simply 20% more boss dmg in the same timespan. That’s one hell of a trait. And it makes the ulti regen even faster, and swift slaying + ulti = whirlwind of axes.
I don’t use SS on pick, since it is just slower. Less attacks = less crits = lower chance of swift slaying getting enabled the very second I may need it. With SS on axes it’s simply on demand.
Resourceful Combatant still works on careers that have built-in crit chance like Witch Hunter Captain.
I put Parry on all of my bots’ weapons because they always block at the last second and actually make good use of it.
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