Slayer in 1.8

Slayer needs to be looked at. After many starts and stops at 400+ hours I think I’ve done pretty much all I need to do for the sake of testing builds in general and slayer in particular. I want to talk about weapons, about talents, about gameplay, and the reality of the career that exists in the current climate of the game. And oh boy is this one going to be a mouthful. We’ll start out with the basic stuff, for those not too familiar or who don’t have that many games, and we’ll get down to the specifics.

So why do this? Realistically it’s the hope that some of this feedback will shape slayer to the point that I can enjoy being able to play him into any team composition. With the changes to Ranger Veteran it’s pretty clear theirs a lopsided nature in the balance of the careers right now. I started playing slayer at around hour 20. I’ve solo’d my fair share of maps as slayer (and you won’t believe how hard it is to kill your bots off with no ranged weapon) and have tried almost every build I can think of. So believe me when I say I’m pretty intimate with how Slayer works in the current gaming climate.

Weapons
There’s a lot to be said about every single weapon you can use as a Slayer, and I’ll touch on the ones that bug me.

  1. 1H axe is not good
    Yes I know you have dual axes. This does not change that fact. I’m not even sure it’s purpose in the game right now. Less attack speed on both it’s left click and charge attacks than the 1H hammer as well as a large delay at the end of it’s 3 hit combo. It’s push attack is bad. It’s charge attack is bad. It’s cleave is bad. Imagine my surprise when I found out it’s damage was equivalent to the 1H hammer in all situations despite being slower in all situations. And for an added kick in the teeth it even has less stamina for reasons that make sense to nobody I know.

  2. 2H axe
    I can’t believe I’m typing this. I can’t believe I’m reading this. I can’t believe it when I discovered it, and I can’t for the life of me believe that the changes it got were all the changes it was going to get. Less crowd control than the 2H hammer, an equally bad push attack, laughable boss damage, a terrible swing arc which makes multiple in row headshots require constant positioning. It’s a wonder that this thing even exists in this game at all in its current state.

  3. Pickaxe
    Neat that they buffed the speed. It needed that. It’s overhead charge attack is still in need of some work for a few reasons. Enemies sliding through each other can push you away from your intended target. It’s hard to even headshot with this thing, which for an overhead weapon this should NOT be the case. It’s push attack is bad. It’s stamina is bad. And all it has is stagger resistance whilst spamming left click. A good left click, with a problem I can’t wait to explore later. A special mention is that a level 2 charge attack has every indication of going through a shield, but deals next to no damage. And even if it does connect, compare that to just about any other weapon in the game. Contrast with the flail.

  4. Dual Axes
    Great damage to elites. Really unwieldy in everything but the most specialist of builds when it comes to mowing down hordes, which yes I know is not the point. The point i’m making, however, is that the dual axes could be better, especially for weapons with 0 cleave and 2 stamina. High damage against elites on it’s charge shots. A shame then that for all it’s single target damage it’s actually not that useful on a large number of bosses in this game. And for a weapon that has the “shield breaking” description it sure does jack all for your shield breaking endeavours that other weapons can’t also do in the same amount of strikes. More on this later

There are other weapons. 2H hammer is used because of it’s high stagger cleave. 1H hammer was used because of it’s high cleave. They’re fine in their functions as far as i’m concerned. I mention weapons first because to understand some of the more flavorful issues, you have to learn what brings us to this point.

Talents
A really short topic of discussion really. This is where comparisons will start and they won’t stop until this is finished. Slayer needs a survivability feature imprinted in his passive.

Zealot is a melee focused damage dealer and gets survivability in his passive.
Unchained is melee focused damage dealer and gets survivability in her passive.

Both of these have ranged options for dealing with specials. Both have options better suited for dealing with shields. Both can do higher boss damage. Both have built in survivability BEFORE talents. Hell, it needs any passive other than it’s rather lackluster attack speed buff and okay Trophy Hunter (and we will talk at length about Trophy Hunter and it’s entire line later).

Both Zealot and Slayer share a 50% damage reduction while Unchained gets it’s 50% damage reduction in the form of a new mechanic it must be mindful of. The difference is that Zealot gets 150 health. Unchained gets 150 health. Slayer gets 100 health.
Slayer is unquestionably squisher than both of them without a talent setup that provides tankability in return for gutting your damage potential. This WOULD be acceptable if any other melee focused career that to make this tradeoff. All of them have built in survivability OR built in damage right into their kit. Slayer get’s trophy hunter, a buff that’s not that good when weighed against other abilities (talents or otherwise) and factoring in it’s upkeep, especially against bosses. And again this is on a job that has no ranged options.

MIND YOU with good playthings like ability to sustain a hit are a non factor. In situations where the host has more than a quarter of a sec delay to you, incidental hits from holding off a horde are as inevitable as they are unavoidable. Making chip damage a very real issue for a career that only has 100 hp. Contrast this with RV. Who has great wave clear, good elite killing potential, and better boss damage. He also has 100hp but he doesn’t have to risk his life constantly in melee range for every encounter forever. Bosses are a different topic altogether. Slayer really should have 125 health or a built in damage reducing passive that you don’t have to talent for.

Afterall, Talents should be boons that you pick that provide bonuses on top of your careers existing capabilities. It should not something that can kneecap with talents that are seemingly mandatory in order to function in the game climate. Now to talk about things in particular;

Talents

  • Trophy Hunter
    10% per stack. 3 stacks total 30% extra damage 2s duration.
    Pretty alright. Not really that stellar. Really at it’s best during hordes. And if ranged didn’t exist in this game it’d be damn good. As it stands, even an ally cleaving your same puddle can cause your stacks to fall off. It’s pretty decent. However:

  • Unstoppable
    This ability is bad. It’s very bad. It’s existence only serves to increase the potency of 2H weapons against single targets. 2H weapons themselves not being in a place that they’re useful against single targets for reasons explained above. It’d be useful against bosses if adrenaline surge wasn’t better in every situation. This thing needs to either give you more stacks, give you crit, or further increase the time of your buff. Taking unstoppable is giving up more damage and more survivability for essentially nothing in return. It’s useless in hordes. It’s not good on stray targets. And it doesn’t last enough between even idle mobs given that those generally attack in clusters. It’s a poorly planned, executed, and implemented idea that wouldn’t need to exist if the already good Leap was slightly better.

  • Moving Target
    This and/or Oblivious to Pain feel mandatory. If you want to take Crippling Wounds. You have to take Moving target. However, unlike Oblivious to pain, moving target goes away when you get pounced or otherwise incapacitated. Hell, if anything pushes you, an action that you must take with a smile, your stacks will likely drop off during your stagger.

  • Crippling Wounds
    Contrast this ability and it’s entire tree to Huntsman’s level 10 line. A line that’s practically exclusively for damage. Meanwhile, as Slayer you choose between ‘don’t die from chip damage’, ‘die from specials if your team dies’ or ‘you have to take moving target’. An ability that’s already hampered by the fact that it needs your dual axes, a property on those, a talent, and a trinket property all used to take advantage and guarantee upkeep. All of it for 20% damage. None of it worth dying over.

and now for the elephant(s) in the room

Bosses
Slayers boss kill was nothing special to begin with. Every single enemy in this game has strong anti-melee properties. From the stormfiend that can outright kill you if you fail one sidestep, to the chaos spawn which gives you 1 hit every blue moon when it’s agroed and refuses to be tanked in place.

Your melee damage is low, even with the most focused build I could get for killing bosses, Slayer boss kill remains subpar. Ranger veteran is higher. Ironbreaker is safer. Bosses move too much and require too much movement in turn to be able to attack them. There are two bosses that outright teleport all over the damn place. Bosses that charge. And every boss has adds which you must respect. Yes including the 4 random bosses which will likely come on the coattails of a horde or escorted with an entourage of specials that you, as a slayer, lack the ability to deal with.

Often, when you leap that leap will see, in the best conditions, maybe half of it’s duration useful for attacks. However, it doesn’t even give you two attacks in the space of one because of how often you must dodge. And it’s night impossible to attack freely because you rip agro off immediately when you DO get hits in. For how unfriendly melee is in a melee focused game, the dual axes should do twice the boss damage they do now to balance how rarely you get to land boss damaging attacks. Especially on a career with no ranged alternatives.

Ranger Veterans career skill now gives him 100% crit and it’s extremely easy to game two of them out in a boss fight even assuming said boss could last that long. Hell, with the right build you can have disengage up for nearly every horde and every patrol. Why can’t leap have that. Or failing that, why can’t trophy hunter have crit. Or failing that, why can’t crit be talented into anything other than the level 1 tree. Or hell, failing that, why can’t Slayer’s leap max out Trophy Hunter for it’s duration. Sheesh.

Specials
Imagine for a moment a team with a Foot Knight using handgun, a Shade or Handmaiden, a Slayer, and a Zealot. Specials target the first thing they see. A max range blight stormer could be stopped by me if I was IB because I can shoot it as I’m the first to spot it before it tornados. A slayer, however, can not do that. In situations where ammo boxes are scarce, team ammo is almost as important as team hp or black and white status. As people run out of shots, the effectivity of the team severely diminishes as it takes only one bad special placement to wipe the group.

If somebody gets hooked into a horde, as IB or RV I can shoot it and have my guard up in time for a parry. As Slayer I have to now risk both our lives in situations where my allies can’t react. In short. As Slayer your inability to deal with specials are a direct detriment to the team and the ability to succeed in a Legend run. Given that, by nature of being a relatively squishy melee unit in a game with amazing range crowd clearing options, this really makes taking Slayer a much higher risk than taking Ranger Veteran with less of a reward.

Berserkers
You can’t attack into them. Your most effective weapons don’t have special modifiers towards them. And you don’t have the stamina to block them. Fighting those 8-12 Berserker clusters in the beta is miserable. Watch, my friends as I leap with crunch and effect nothing. Behold as I use my attack speed steroid to back away as while 1 berserker is easy to melee, the multiples that ALL berserkers spawn in are not easy to melee and aren’t even advised to melee due to their high damage.

TL;DR

  • Many weapon choices for Slayer aren’t all that good.
  • Boss damage is relatively low and non existant when compared to every ranged career and even a few melee ones.
  • Some talents need to be changed or reworked
  • Durability needs to be baked into the career
  • There needs to be a bigger compensation for not being able to kill specials or an ability to kill specials. *Why is the one career that’s more prone to being hooked, unable to get a talent or passive that reduces grab damage.
  • One of your weapons need to handle your melee based weakness given that, unlike Zealot, you can’t just shoot them and be done with it.

I like Slayer. A lot. But dag nab it some of these issues just grind my gears. And this isn’t isolated. My results (and ease of soloing) as literally anything but modest. I absolutely crush games as RV, any sienna, elf, saltz, or kruber. If nothing else, just please fix the 2H axe.

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I think people are fundamentally misinterpreting the 2H axe’s role tbh. While I definitely agree it’s not for Slayer, it really shines on IB when paired with pistols. Pistols CC and horde clear so well you only switch to melee to lmb spam heavies and the axe really excels in this category on IB thanks to its quicker attacks and that IB’s kit compensates for how aggro you have to be with the thing. It also gives IB a boost in an area where Bardin had been dead last even in VT1: boss damage. With pistols combined with 2h axe, a tanky, CC-heavy bardin can now bring a respectable amount of pain to a boss.

As with any character, most weapons are just better on certain classes than others.

I’d argue you could use the 2h hammer in the same role as IB and it works better in every instance.

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It doesn’t. I’ve used 2H hammer for hundreds of hours in V1 and hundreds more in V2 and, paired with pistols, the 2H axe is vastly superior. 2h axe is strong where pistols is weak and vice versa. I felt the same as you and only tried it because it’s the only red I’ve gotten on Bardin. I hated it initially and switching over from 2h hammer feels awkward until you realize the 2h axe is just way more aggro. Pistols means you effectively never need the charged attacks and 2H axe lmb spam is faster, better AP, still easy headshots, and good boss damage. It really balances him out and gives him more of a leg up.

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And here I thought I was the only one who ran 2h axe on IB. Once I found out that it works really well on him, I never bothered with 2h hammer on him again. The lack of stagger and mediocre cleave can be covered by your ranged weapon, and when you need to watch your ff, you can handle hordes pretty well with axe if other people cover you. Axe may not stagger or cleave as much as hammer, but it does kill mooks alot better and consistently. I run it with attack speed and swift slaying and it is maybe the only set-up for IB I personally consider running Natural Bond with.

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im a slayer main and i dont need anythig changed. but i must say all the weapons beside twin axes & 1h hammer sucks

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I’ve used the 2H axe quite a bit on IB. I’ve also used it on RV. And while I like the boss damage it brings over pickaxe or 2h hammer, I dislike it’s ability to deal with hyper stacking. I like the pistols even less in dealing with ambushes in particular and open areas such as what you get in Athel specifically. Hitting 3 targets and touching meaty is rough. And while, like the pickaxe, it’s capable of attracting boss agro, unlike the pickaxe, it’s inability to serve as an emergency horde clearing weapon due (from factors either due to heat or positioning) to it’s subpar push attack and interruptible charge attack leave it a lot to be desired.

Red Axe is pretty nice to look at, however. So I still pull it out from time to time just for the awe value.

Pre-nerf falchion
Glaive
Halberd
Sienna’s Mace
Pre-power change 1h hammer

Could and should have been used with everything. But no I’m splitting hairs.

I should note that if FS had no intention for 2H axe to be used with slayer, one would wonder why the 2H axe is being used by the Slayer in the career preview. And this is without getting all uncomfortable mentioning how many Slayers actually use great weapons in other instances.

Have you ever run unstoppable?

In a way i can agree, it’s single target could definitely be considered better than the 2h hammers due to speed, but i would say it’s awful block delay diminishes that. I find it a lot better on slayer for it’s sweep to deal with hordes, as you have the mobility to avoid hits (and thus don’t need stagger) and only ever use it’s single target to quickly take out shields.

It’s damage isn’t equivalent to the 1h hammers “in all situations”, it’s lights do far more and actually pierce armor, while the 1h hammer needs charged for that.

  1. 2H axe
    I can’t believe I’m typing this. I can’t believe I’m reading this. I can’t believe it when I discovered it, and I can’t for the life of me believe that the changes it got were all the changes it was going to get. Less crowd control than the 2H hammer, an equally bad push attack, laughable boss damage, a terrible swing arc which makes multiple in row headshots require constant positioning. It’s a wonder that this thing even exists in this game at all in its current state.

The 2h axe has one of the better boss damages out there, it’s heavy hits like a truck vs them.
I’m not too certain what exactly your problem with the swing arc is, it’s rather flat compared to some other weapons out there. Sure not enough to get multiple headshots, but that’s a rare trait anyway (and usually actually not that useful in dealing damage beyond the first 1 or 2 targets).
Really the only things i have an issue with is it’s stupid inability to block the moment you start a swing and the cleave on the heavy could use some improvement. Outside of that i find it to be one of the better weapons for slayer, if only for the competitions lack of horde-damage.

Both [Zealot&Unchained] have options better suited for dealing with shields. Both can do higher boss damage.

I’m not sure what they have that’s supposed to be better in dealing with shields.
Outside of zealots flail, what weapon is really that good?
Unchained’s weapon, the mace, only breaks shields with it’s heavy strike, which isn’t exactly the most spammable or quick attack for it.
The slayer gets some of the strongest anti-shield weapons in the form of the 2h axe, 2h hammer and 1h hammer. The 2h require just one light strike, the 1h requires one of heavy, but it’s heavy is ridiculously fast so as to not really be at a disadvantage.

Boss damage, i don’t really see what the zealot has over the slayer here, unless you take repeater crossbow and unload all your ammo into him. Slayer has higher movement speed and dodges bosses attack more easily, i find i can keep up my offense far more easily with him.

[RV] has great wave clear, good elite killing potential, and better boss damage.

His boss damage is highly dependant on the weapon, crossbow is fairly good when you crit, but grudge is awful even then.

  • Trophy Hunter
    10% per stack. 3 stacks total 30% extra damage 2s duration.
    Pretty alright. Not really that stellar. Really at it’s best during hordes. And if ranged didn’t exist in this game it’d be damn good. As it stands, even an ally cleaving your same puddle can cause your stacks to fall off. It’s pretty decent. However:

Isn’t it supposed to be 5%? There seems to be a bug going around doubling the effect of this stuff as host. I personally think it’s a decent buff, it could be stronger, but it’s easy to get going and isn’t bad. If it is indeed 30% (and not so because of bugs), that’s one of the best ones out there.

Your melee damage is low, even with the most focused build I could get for killing bosses, Slayer boss kill remains subpar. Ranger veteran is higher. Ironbreaker is safer.

Of all the melee classes, i honestly don’t think i’d prefer any over slayer. You do quite good damage with the attack speed buffs, your dodge range is so high that you can safely tank any boss from hugging distance and you have the movement speed to run after them when they go for teammates.

Ranger Veterans career skill now gives him 100% crit and it’s extremely easy to game two of them out in a boss fight even assuming said boss could last that long. Hell, with the right build you can have disengage up for nearly every horde and every patrol. Why can’t leap have that. Or failing that, why can’t trophy hunter have crit. Or failing that, why can’t crit be talented into anything other than the level 1 tree. Or hell, failing that, why can’t Slayer’s leap max out Trophy Hunter for it’s duration. Sheesh.

Maxing out trophy hunter would conflict with adrenaline surge.
I personally really don’t think slayer needs much of an improvement here, i find that his leap is one of the better skills there is. You do need to either pair it with cdr on crits or adrenaline surge, but then you can have it up almost all the time, provide stagger on hordes which then allows you to start swinging. It’s a good panic button to free yourself and a strong attack speed buff for a fairly lengthy amount of time.

Specials
[…] A max range blight stormer could be stopped by me if I was IB because I can shoot it as I’m the first to spot it before it tornados. […]

You will need really good aim to hit that headshot though and you need either the crossbow or handgun.

If somebody gets hooked into a horde, as IB or RV I can shoot it and have my guard up in time for a parry.

I don’t find that any of the dwarfs weapons can reliable take out hookrats hiding inside a horde, you do need to be really good to hit that headshot and hope you have brought a handgun and hat the hookrat isn’t too deep to penetrate and then you actually do have some delay in switching back, if you get interrupted you are basically dead.

Berserkers
[…]

I find the dual axes to be quite a decent counter, their push-stab in particular. Your dodge and movement allows you to generally avoid having to block-tank them, then just push-stab them until they go down.

Poorly. Even on the axe it’s lights do roughly half the damage of it’s charge attacks with next to no cleave at a speed that renders less damage in the same time frame. Never you mind using it on chaos warriors. An action that renders little damage on top of removing the ability to more easily score headshots. No, you use the charge attack for anti armor. Unless spending more time killing stormvermin is a good time.

In what way. In similar time dual axes do similar damage. You get one swing per dodge on roger and chaos spawn. One or two swings per teleport for halescourge. Less free damage on troll, stormfiend, ribspreader, and spinemanglr. Less damage on elites than twin axes. Less damage on ambiants. A lower crit rate than dual axes. And less cleave than 1H hammer, 2H hammer, and pickaxe. It has severe damage fall off after the first target, it’s left clicks are not recommended for hordes, it has no additional stagger cleave, doesn’t even have good stagger limits, and it lacks the forward movement necessary to deal with elites in the middle of a horde. I guess if you like to one shot one minor enemy at a time. An action that dual axes can still do. And this is before comparing the abilities of both to handle patrols.

This is not a horde weapon. And it’s single target damage should be higher to compensate for that fact. But it is not. As for headshots, the reasons this matters is because elites matter. And for deeds in particular, there’s absolutely no reason to bring this thing over dual axes. Which means there’s no reason to bring it at all in average situations aside from flavor. And being able to at least compete with the dual axe push attack should be a given. The 2H axe needs to be better. There’s an entire topic given why the things not that good.

I’ve run this thing with 20% monster damage for the specific purpose of pumping out more damage and a 10% chaos besides to maul the spawn of chaos and it’s still no more better than a dual axe push/charge, because that push attack has a higher chance of critting and will, on average, yield equal or slightly less damage while being safer due to your higher dodge range. And on bosses that love to do the teleport shuffle you’re better off just doing a level 2 pick axe charge and then quick swapping to a dual axe charge attack because you’ll get more damage in the short time you have to deliver it…

You don’t need a headshot. You can bodyshot blightstormers with the handgun no matter where they cast from.

Crossbow and handgun both can kill hookrats inside a horde. On top of that, IB and RV both have career skills that can outright dislodge a hookrat. If only Crunch! could do that. But since we’re on that topic. Enemy attacks are different when you press leap in their general direction. Causing block damage and requiring shields to even think of knocking off a crowd. And even with crunch it’s knockback is not severe enough to give any sort of breathing room necessary to kill a priority target. Pretty useful when needing to pick up a mate, however.

In order. Not being able to kill specials will always be an issue.
Your attack speed buff is great for mowing down hordes and elites at melee range in a game where 5 careers can one shot them. Tanking bosses can be done by any career and is not slayer exclusive. Tanking bosses reduces the effectivity of leap because it does not render more attacks per dodge. The movement speed buff has to be talented into. As well as taking adrenaline surge so you can keep it up for the time it takes to kill a boss. And STILL that is not enough to deal with 3 of the bosses movement arcs, 2 of which teleport. 1 of which uses attacks that are extremely difficult to dodge at close range due to it being a tracking 3 shot body-shapedprojectile.

As i mentioned at length. A single berserker is not a problem. A cluster of berserkers is a problem. Most berserker spawns, spawn 2-4. Some maps like War Camp will just shove 8 of them in your face. And combined with any delay at all makes trying to melee into a cluster an issue. There’s a reason that people will burn bombs and “waste” ammo to kill berserker clusters rather than risking large damage from stray hits.

And again Slayer is completely functional as it is. It’s not bad. It needs improvement. And with the massive increase in lethality of RV on top of its ability to mow down hordes, kill bosses, one shot elites, and provide ammo and bombs it’s pretty hard to make fair comparisons between the two because RV can do all of this at range and Slayer has to do this at melee.

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Roughly half? It’s more around 70% than 50.
Chaos warriors receive no less damage than SV do when attacked by the 1h axes lights.
I’m not sure about doing less damage over time, according to my calculations, the light attacks have a very slight dps advantage (and that is not taking into account that they have better burst, as the last attacks after-hit delay drags the dps down quite a bit). In fact on slayer, with the right +power properties, you can even 2 shot SV, making the lights superior.

In what way. In similar time dual axes do similar damage [to bosses].

Similar damage sure, but the 2h axe does more damage per swing and gets more swings out per second (both utilizing charged which are considerably better in dps).

And less cleave than 1H hammer, 2H hammer, and pickaxe. It has severe damage fall off after the first target,

The damage fall off is severe on all of them.
As for cleave: The only one that is capable of damaging more targets is the pick. They are only able to stagger more. And on each enemy damaged, the 2h axe has the highest damage by a fair margin.

I guess if you like to one shot one minor enemy at a time. An action that dual axes can still do.

There’s pretty much no way for dual axes to one-shot fanatics (that is assuming the trophy hunter is 15%, not 30) and by the time the dual axes one-shot one, the 2h axe would get down 2 in 1 swing (which is actually achievable).
Unless you are suggesting one should use the dual axes heavies against hordes.

This is not a horde weapon.

It is like the 2h hammer, a weapon with AP single target lights and an anti-horde charged attack. It has the best horde clear out of all of the dwarven melee weapons.

And for deeds in particular, there’s absolutely no reason to bring this thing over dual axes. Which means there’s no reason to bring it at all in average situations aside from flavor.

Reasons to bring it over dual axes:
Much better horde clear
Can easily remove shields
Better boss damage

I’ve run this thing with 20% monster damage for the specific purpose of pumping out more damage and a 10% chaos besides to maul the spawn of chaos and it’s still no more better than a dual axe push/charge, because that push attack has a higher chance of critting and will, on average, yield equal or slightly less damage while being safer due to your higher dodge range.

The way i run it is if i am being attacked, dual axes, if my teammate is, great axe. Can’t really sustain push-stabs for too long.

You don’t need a headshot. You can bodyshot blightstormers with the handgun no matter where they cast from.

The only way for a handgun to one-shot blightstormers at max range would be to stack your power vs them above 30%.
At close range you already need ~18% to one-shot them.

Crossbow and handgun both can kill hookrats inside a horde.

Handgun needs a headshot, which can be rather difficult to pull of when you are being attacked by a horde.
Crossbow to my knowledge even needs a crit, which is certainly not reliable.

Causing block damage and requiring shields to even think of knocking off a crowd. And even with crunch it’s knockback is not severe enough to give any sort of breathing room necessary to kill a priority target. Pretty useful when needing to pick up a mate, however.

I find it fairly useful to get you breathing room to start wittling down the crowd if you are surrounded with 2h axe or hammers charged attacks. That is without crunch, i prefer the movement speed (especially useful for teammates that kite the bosses away).

Not being able to kill specials will always be an issue.
Your attack speed buff is great for mowing down hordes and elites at melee range in a game where 5 careers can one shot them.

You over-generalized my statement, i was exclusively talking about fighting bosses.

Tanking bosses can be done by any career and is not slayer exclusive.

Definitely not. When you run something like kruber+halberd, you need a combination of really good ping, reaction time and keeping a safe distance. His dodge is laughably bad, the slightest mess-up will have you eat the hit and lose a ton of HP. With slayer, i can stay face-hugging and still dodge far enough away to not get hit by any of their strikes.

A single berserker is not a problem. A cluster of berserkers is a problem.

That changes nothing about the fact that i would rather carry dual axes than most other weapons there, since they can dish out massive damage in a short amount of time from relative safety, while retaining movement to not have to block too many hits.

They do not. Lights have a harder time at landing headshots. Furthermore you’re not two shotting a stormvermin unless you take some damage v skaven with or without some sprinkling of armor and only if you go for headshots, something charge attacks do better. But sure, if you can land headshots reliably during storm vermin clusters, storm patrols, or in storm vermins in a horde, scenarios I mentioned in my first reply, my opening statement, and again in this reply because that’s the only time this even matters, then you get to contend with how much easier it is to land those with a 1H hammer OR, you get to face the reality of just one shotting the damn things with dual axes and moving on. It’s so painfully easy to to push attack into a horde storm vermins general direction and flat out ends its life while riding the wave of your passive.

Not for charge attack, no. The time of charge to attack is similar. The damage is similar. And since we’re going in circles I will explain in detail at the end of this post why the damage is similar and how (in numerous ways) dual axes yield higher boss damage in almost every situation.

2H hammer has better CC and pickaxe does more damage to a larger amount of target resulting in higher overall damage on hordes. We’re not going to write off the 2H hammer stagger cleave because it’s stagger cleave is the exact reason people bring it. Horde control with the main focus being that Slayer can hold an entire wave off no matter how stacked it gets without needing to reposition. Thus creating a stable front line even without the use of Leap (if, for example, you take moving target because you take crippling wounds and thus do not have adrenaline surge) As for the 1H hammer, it’s by far faster, it has a great swing arc, and it’s safer. This is why every Bardin used it before the power level fix and why many Bardin’s still use it.

This is ambient targets. Which is why I specifically mentioned “one minor enemy at a time” And speaking of, with only 10% infantry and a knowledge on how to sidestep, dual axes can easily cleave through rat hordes. Not really all that useful or overall effective but it adds flavor

With a worse swing arc on it’s charge attack. Which effects far less enemies. Can’t deal with hyper stacking. And can suffer hitstop when holding chokepoints when it hits meaty on the horde. Delaying your next sweeping swing and requiring a push from your laughable 2.5-3.5 stamina to fix. A push being an action that will still likely catch a stray hit thus reducing overall stamina for further pushes on a way that has a narrow effective push radius. It is not his best horde weapon and does not have his best horde control. Even when going from charge, charge, to left click (aiming down to hit as my enemies as possible as the attack is quick

Marginally better boss damage at cost of being ineffective at tanking a boss and just as ineffective at chasing the 3 high mobility bosses.

No. And feel free to go try it on your own.

As I mentioned in the previous post, both careers have abilities that already dislodge hookrats. Furthermore, it’s extremely easy to land two shots as RV. Secondly this is still safer than meleeing after a hookrat into a horde and much smarter.

None of these things are difficult. Zealot has a similar bad dodge distance and equally bad shields for suffering blows from stragglers and it’s just as easy to take care of a chaos spawn with him because you can attack at max distance reducing the distance you need to move to avoid an overhead. Roger is equally easy for this reason on top of being able to STILL force him into a bad logic loop.

The only boss where dodging each individual attack becomes a thing only people with max dodge distance can handle is when fighting a troll, since on good reaction you can dodge right for the claw, dodge left for the swing, and dodge right for the overhead and stick to it like glue during all of this (until he pukes on the ground, requiring you to move him for your team). OR you could dodge diagonally backwards and dodge all of it. OR you could dodge through him which breaks the tracking on even his overhead and, with practice, is the most offensive option available to the dual axes.

Secondly (on this topic). The assumption of bad ping also discredits the 2H axe as a horde clearing weapon because it’s lack of ability to manage hyperstacked situations or stagger climbing enemies with leap makes it more susceptible to incendetal chip damage. So we either assume bad conditions or we don’t.

Lastly

Less horde clear than horde clear weapons on a melee weapon that’s vying for the horde kill spot
Dual axes need 1 attack and a push attack to break shields
Marginally better (in a vacuum) but in this idealistic situation I won’t split hairs. I plan on doing that later

And let’s state a few things to get this out of the way.
Dual axes on either their overheard or charge on bosses (attacks that you should be using on most bosses for very obvious reasons) give you two stacks of your passive. 10% taking effect immediately on a single axe of that attack. 2H axe get’s 1 attack at 10% on it’s follow up while dual axes can land a second charge attack on your way dodging out for 20% and 30%. 2H axe can’t land an exit attack charge attack on chaos spawn without dodge distance, lowering potential damage. Dual axes are more mobile on their movement during attacks (the left click gives you minor but noticeable speed and the push launches you in a bosses direction). Dual axes have a higher chance to crit, giving you a chance to trigger swift slaying, a buff which lets you land 3 major hits on roger and 2 on Chaos Spawn. Dual axes are far better at killing enemies like the troll because you can dodge into him and stick to him like glue. Dual axes work better with Crippling Wounds. (Which I mentioned in my first post). Dual axes work better with 20% dodge distance allowing you to flat out trivialize two bosses by just dodging to the right of them.

The only thing dual axes don’t do is chaos horde clear, which is what your second weapon is for.

The only boss conditions that 2H axe is good at is attacking bosses which are chasing other people, a situation that does not happen for long if you’re good at maximizing your damage, and landing 1-2 shots on teleporting bosses (which pickaxe can also do).

And on a final note

Open the beta
Go to the dummy. Attack it twice. Record numbers. Do math. This should not be called into question given how easy it is to go and confirm it.

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I specifically said “with the right +power properties”.

pickaxe does more damage to a larger amount of target resulting in higher overall damage on hordes.

Absolutely not. It does significantly less damage to slightly more targets.
2h axe: 23/13/6/5 with a cleave of 9.9
Pick: 11/6/4/3 with a cleave of 11.3
Basically, it will hit 1 more basic enemy, but deal a lot less damage to each hit

And speaking of, with only 10% infantry and a knowledge on how to sidestep, dual axes can easily cleave through rat hordes.

How is any +power going to be useful vs rat hordes?

With a worse swing arc on it’s charge attack. Which effects far less enemies. Can’t deal with hyper stacking. And can suffer hitstop when holding chokepoints when it hits meaty on the horde.

Trading stagger for damage.

No. And feel free to go try it on your own.

Yeah, i have, and they almost certainly survive it, unless you are playing on champ (hah). I have ~18% vs them, just enough to one-shot them at close range, but the moment damage dropoff kicks in, they survive.
I would say you should try it, because i don’t think you have.

As I mentioned in the previous post, both careers have abilities that already dislodge hookrats. Furthermore, it’s extremely easy to land two shots as RV. Secondly this is still safer than meleeing after a hookrat into a horde and much smarter.

I don’t think it’s particularly easy to land 2 consecutive shots with the handgun or 3 with the crossbow if you are being attacked by a horde.

None of these things are difficult.

That’s why no-one ever got hit by an overhead.

Less horde clear than horde clear weapons on a melee weapon that’s vying for the horde kill spot
Dual axes need 1 attack and a push attack to break shields
Marginally better (in a vacuum) but in this idealistic situation I won’t split hairs. I plan on doing that later

There is no melee weapon on the dwarf with better horde clear, only with better stagger.
1 attack+push attack, compared to 1 light attack to just remove the thing.

10% taking effect immediately on a single axe of that attack. 2H axe get’s 1 attack at 10% on it’s follow up while dual axes can land a second charge attack on your way dodging out for 20% and 30%.

Are you ignoring the part where this is likely a bug?

The only boss conditions that 2H axe is good at is attacking bosses which are chasing other people, a situation that does not happen for long if you’re good at maximizing your damage, and landing 1-2 shots on teleporting bosses (which pickaxe can also do).

Only if your team is completely useless, really. Aggro is very likely to switch if you have competent shade/huntsman/sienna/BH or really anyone who is wacking it while it’s focusing you. Not to mention bile trolls while on the ground or stormfiends in general.

Open the beta
Go to the dummy. Attack it twice. Record numbers. Do math. This should not be called into question given how easy it is to go and confirm it.

Are you not reading what i write?
Because i specifically said this:

Isn’t it supposed to be 5%? There seems to be a bug going around doubling the effect of this stuff as host.

Telling me to go in the exact situation where this bug is supposed to apply to confirm it doesn’t exist is silly.

And I mentioned dvS because of how undesirable it is on a career that can one shot them with the right weapon regardless.

You will hit 1-2 more basic enemies depending on horde type and kill them roughly on the third swing. On top of covering a larger angle. You will not suffer hitstop with the pick. Your swings are faster because of that and because they are faster in general. Furthermore pick has uninterruptible (to a limit) attacks allowing you to ignore stray blows. 2H axe does not have this. The pick can cleave through hyper stacked hordes like fine butter. The axe can not. The pick can attack even in situations with shield stormvermin and keep them and the horde back. The axe can not.

Left clicks suffer falloff and you can actually cleave through rat hordes with impunity unlike Chaos Hordes. So you tell me. What would the benefit be of guaranteeing 2-3 rats die after the first of your very fast attacks.

It’s not trading stagger for damage. The cleave of the 2H axe is 3-4
The cleave of the 2H hammer is 3
The stagger cleave of the 2H hammer hits 12 targets

It’s 2 with the crossbow. And I manage just fine.

Because they don’t know how to fight the boss. Do YOU get hit by a roger overhead?

These two things are the same thing. Unless you’re trying to take that kill 1 rat and stagger 3 is more important than killing 1 and staggering 12. Which would be silly. And on that topic, Managing hordes is just as important. In Legend everybody is expected to be able to handle a horde, a side, or a wave just as effectively as everybody else. This is because bosses chase waves, specials chase waves, and during situations with bosses, the intelligent way of handling that is having your team cover choke points while one person tanks the boss. In situations like this, being able to manage a horde without having to retreat or allowing for stragglers to get past or flank you is important. As important as being able to handle situations where hordes can and will stack into each other and the ability to continue your job if something unexpected winds up.

And I missed one:

Yes a hard interrupt will likely pull a rat ogre out of it’s bad logic loop so Sienna and BH can cause an agro shift until you snatch it back. A shade can 4 shot bosses and will be going between invisibilities while doing so. A huntsman can kill a boss in seconds. A battle mage or Unchained Sienna can not rip agro from you. So we’re working with, of the jobs you listed, two of them who can rip agro. And no, while any boss is focusing you, as long as it can’t teleport, if you’re good at fighting bosses, you should average 3 charge attacks, one of which will probably crit and apply your damage increase debuff. The argument “if you have a very specific team you can actually lose agro” comically silly as the inverse is also true. 8 Careers in this game put an end to that argument. Because of these things, the only thing that won’t outright delete the boss (depending on what it is) is BH and Pyro and they won’t be using their career skills if you’ve got a roger or chaos spawn in a bad logic loop because it’s easier and more damaging to just let a person tank it than to interrupt that loop and cause it to move.

  1. There’s nothing to support this being a bug
  2. Any changes not documented aren’t bugs.
    Else Ranger Veterans 100% crit chance would also be considered a bug. There’s no word from the devs and no plausible theory. And yes I’m aware of a bug that causes things like Pyro and Unchained to do more damage. Unchained can hit something like double its intended bonus which is obviously unintentional. But these things are easy to test and seperate. Meanwhile Slayer’s 10% bonus is active 100% of the time.

SO feel free to explain your reasoning for thinking this is a bug and not just an undocumented change like volley crossbows reduction in cleave.

If your entire statement rides on one of MANY undocumented changes being a bug, I don’t know what to say. Lastly,

Cute that you seem to imply that somebody with 400 hours and have more than a few true slayer solos would be basing his entire argument on Champion. Nice “hah” as well. Don’t expect another reply.

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No, it will never be more than 1. 0-1. The absolute weakest enemy has a hitmass of 2, the difference in cleave is <1.5.
Just want to remind you, you said:

pickaxe does more damage to a larger amount of target resulting in higher overall damage on hordes.

Do you concede on that point?

Left clicks suffer falloff and you can actually cleave through rat hordes with impunity unlike Chaos Hordes. So you tell me. What would the benefit be of guaranteeing 2-3 rats die after the first of your very fast attacks.

According to the stat sheet, you aren’t going to penetrate more than 1 either way, your cleave is barely enough to cleave through 1. And both die regardless of +power.

It’s not trading stagger for damage. The cleave of the 2H axe is 3-4
The cleave of the 2H hammer is 3
The stagger cleave of the 2H hammer hits 12 targets

How is having much higher damage to more targets, at the cost of staggering less, not trading stagger for damage?

It’s 2 with the crossbow. And I manage just fine.

2 bodyshots? Without +power vs skaven/monster?

These two things are the same thing. Unless you’re trying to take that kill 1 rat and stagger 3 is more important than killing 1 and staggering 12. Which would be silly. And on that topic, Managing hordes is just as important.

Horde clear is your ability to clear a horde, not how much you can stagger them.

  1. There’s nothing to support this being a bug
  2. Any changes not documented aren’t bugs.
    SO feel free to explain your reasoning for thinking this is a bug and not just an undocumented change like volley crossbows reduction in cleave.
    If your entire statement rides on one of MANY undocumented changes being a bug, I don’t know what to say.
  1. It applies to all buffs of this type, including unchained, which gets an absolutely ridiculous power boost of ~100%. And afaik zealot, where the buff specifically states 5% and not 10% (can’t test that right now).
  2. It only applies (at least as far as i am aware) when you are the host.

Cute that you seem to imply that somebody with 400 hours and have more than a few true slayer solos would be basing his entire argument on Champion. Nice “hah” as well. Don’t expect another reply.

If your argument only works in champ, that is a reasonable guess, wouldn’t you agree? Hey even the best players can make mistakes, real strength is in acknowledging that they do. Do you concede that the handgun requires +power to one-shot blightstormers at max range or not?

Just a sidething: The hah was because i was under the impression you’d agree that it’d be rather silly to discuss champ. Making fun of champion, not you.

yup mostly agree with Avar on great axe.

that s my tool since V1, so it would mean…maybe 800hours playing the great axe.
it s viable. maybe the hardest weapon to master. everything get boring when you use to it and get the groove. it s not great at anything but you can do everything with it, not tha case of all weapons; so it s the best choice for legend and quickplay, same with drake. the left clic speed and general dmg buff from last patch shows that Fs understand it smart…it was pure crap useless before.

Agreed with Avar that the main problem of the great axe at the moment is a kind of latency, if you clicked too much your in your swings, or 2nd 3rd attack and the block doesnt comes out. that s bad, it was not bad at that extend in V1. hope they fix that someday…
Agreed that it shines paired with Drake…
but (and i posted about it on weapon balance, tier discussion, build possibility) bu but but…but…i find it s a real design issue to have obligation to balance if not compensate a weapon with another (notice i dont suggest solution…). even IB is obligation for great axe player, too dangerous and tight to play on every but possible situation…

And as i come from V1, and that s what i wanted to add here, beside sharing my 800hours great axe exp in parallele with Avar, so it s not like we r isolated case…there s just nothing new under the sun…in the end…just IB as a normal dwarf with same great axe / drake duo.

and also this insulting 2.5 stam on the “great” axe…such a joke. i kind of like it though

cheers guys

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