Slayer Issues: The reason he should (perhaps) get Dual 1H Hammers and a buff to leap

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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TLDR: Slayer has no ranged, and should be the best melee as a result. He should get Dual 1 Hammers and an invincibility buff to leap so that he is the best at what he does, while still retaining the weaknesses of having no ranged.

Premise: Slayer is the only career/hero in both games to have NO ranged weapon. Because of this, he should objectively be the best melee DPS in the game. It isn’t a compromise with him, not a middle ground, not a balance. He needs to be, by any measures, the best career in a melee scenario. If you agree with that premise, then the real question is: Is slayer the best/highest damage melee career? I would say he isn’t.

Problem: Slayers are encouraged, by the class description and associated weapons/talents, to be aggressive. They are encouraged by the lore of the Warhammer universe. Yet, when a slayer actually plays like a slayer, they end up on the floor and annoying their team. The slayer gets unique Dual 1H Axes, which are an amazing single target/armour/elite/boss weapon. However, they aren’t good at all for hordes on anything above Recruit. Low cleave, short reach. Slayers tend to use these axes during waves and taking chip damage because of the lack of crowd control they offer.

The solution to this problem right now? “Git Gud” nonsense, and the use of a 1H/2H hammer in the second melee slot (my preference, 2H hammer). As a result, the slayer is forced to spend at least half of the match, if not more, doing charged sweeps with a 2H hammer. With any other career (Ex: Mercenary Kruber) this would be perfectly fine, charged attacks followed by blocks and back-dodging are a good skill to learn for higher difficulties. However, the slayer has passives that encourage FAST uninterrupted attacking that has to stack for damage. Your stacks don’t persist between charged swings of the 2H hammer (too slow) and you end up not feeling like a slayer, but like a Mercenary Kruber without any of the actual benefits of playing that career.

In summary, in order to survive a match the slayer is forced to play in a very un-slayerly (yup) fashion. He spends at least half the match doing charged 2H Hammer swings, not taking advantage of his career skills or the actual fun of dual wielding as a slayer. People end up doing 1 of 3 things.

1: Play the meta and use the hammer just to survive (why even bother playing slayer?)
2: Decide to have fun, use the Dual 1H Axes, get chipped by crowds, annoy team.
3: Simply not play slayer

Solution: Dual 1H Hammers for your second slot. Garbage against armor, as amazing as you’d expect against crowds, good stamina. Takes advantage of the attack speed buffs as well as stacking damage of the career, while allowing the slayer to actually take care of crowds in a way that makes him fun to play AND effective. No more using axes for crowds and dying, no more using charged hammer the entire round like a Mercenary. On any other career, access to both of these kinds of weapons at the same time would be OP since they are capable of handling anything. This is not the case for a character that doesn’t have any ranged weapon, and thus is justified for slayer. The community seems to agree that ranged is very strong in this game. If that is the case (and it is), then the exclusion of ranged from a career must then be a severe handicap, and must be compensated with something equally powerful. Can’t have it both ways.

An almost necessary addition to this would be invincibility frames during leap and for perhaps a second or 2 after he lands. As of now, most people leap roughly at their own feet because it’s too dangerous and risky to actually use the skill offensively. I know this one has been mentioned to death, but I figured I’d throw it in for good measure.

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Best way they could fix slayer is by giving him more HP.

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I know the “Git Gud” stuff is frustrating, but there is a grain of truth to it. I have a friend who mains Slayer and can hold his own against a huge horde with just the dual axes. I think the key to it is probably +temp health on kill to balance things out, and lots of sliding/dodging, with a side order of stacking attack speed buff to keep slicing and dicing. I think at high power level with the right talents you get some additional cleave on the axes too? Anyway, he consistently holds his own and racks up the most kills on Champion without using a 2h hammer, so it can be done.

With that said… I’d absolutely LOVE to see dual 1h hammers as an alternate weapon for Slayer. It would be super badass.

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That is why slayer mainly use 1h hammer as secondary weapon, it is faster and allow you to keep your mobility.
Which solve all the problems you mentioned, except being badass looking dual weapon, lets be honest 1h hammer on a slayer looks pathetic.
1h hammer push attack is an awesome horizontal cleave, 2 stam on it + neck and you got plenty shields to spam it if not too many, against horde it works like a charm.

I play shade with dual dagger on legend which is probably worse than slayer dual axe in term of cleave. You end up kiting, circling around horde and it is definitively not easy compared to halberd but it is doable so you can play dual axe in horde as long as you can move around.

Shade and slayer are more elite and boss killer than horde clearer. Slayer better for elite specially Chaos warrior while shade better for bosses.

Melee oriented class are the most difficult to play, it should stay that way imo but they should maybe increase slayer damage a bit to make it more worth the risk.

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This game is all backwards. dual axes should be great against hordes and big axes should be great against single target.
I want the same animations as the pick for a 2h axe, and i want leap to give x3 damage or guaranteed critical hit or whatever, if you land a shot WHILE jumping. Jumping while preparing an heavy attack feels epic but it’s pointless and can get you killed if there’s a single clanrat in between you and your target.
I like the dual hammers idea, i wish you could mixed them as you liked.
1 slot = axe 2 slot = hammer means axe in left hand and hammer in the right, you get to keep both traits and stats. The ultimate melee class.

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I agree slayer should be the best melee class no question. He should absolutely really shine against bosses in melee using the 2h axe or 2h hammer. The dual axes need to have just a tiny bit of a wider hit/kill range on their sweep to allow the slayer to hit in just a little bit of a wider arc and prevent the sideways-slide-slayer that is necessary to slide around the edges of hordes. Landing the Leap should have the same impact as the Kruber Foot Knight Charge - everything ends up on its arse. It doesn’t feel like that.

Finally I think the Slayer should be able to continue fighting while they’re “downed” like in L4D2, the slayer should actually go down fighting! This might prevent the resentment some parties feel when the slayer is down more than usual.

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I agree with you. My intention with this post wasn’t to say that slayer sucks or that he isn’t viable, but that he isn’t as good as he should be considering the drawbacks of having no ranged. He is really fun to play, and can handle most situations well. However, he should be the one stop shop for anything within melee range, while at the same time being able to dual wield constantly to make him feel like a slayer.

Yes, the job can get done with 1H/2H hammers in the second slot, but it doesn’t feel like it takes advantage of the career.

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You hit the rat on the head with this one. When I realized they were putting Slayer in the game with dual axes all I could think of was becoming a whirling storm of drunken battle songs and steel. Unfortunately, as you excellently put it, dual axes aren’t good for hordes.

Horde combat leads to a lot of damage when you can’t mitigate the onslaught with mighty shoves and huge, cleaving blows. I like the idea of dual maces, but perhaps a different approach could work in the implementation of a unique attack for dual axes.

Much like Salt’s rapier has the unique pistol shot give Slayer the ability to perform a wide sweep while using twin axes with M3. This would require less work all around to implement (two hammers would be cool but… you know sending limbs flying is dope) and allow for all existing Slayers to immediately have access to a solid answer to being swarmed. Give it damn near unlimited cleave and Bardin would be good to go. Leap in, big swing, chop up a straggler or two, big swing, done.

A slight period of invincibility upon landing (1-2 seconds max) would be helpful for Slayer survivability as well, but I think giving the centerpiece weapons a huge cleave on command would help with horde pressure, which seems to be the biggest drawback of the subclass.

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Much like Salt’s rapier has the unique pistol shot give Slayer the ability to perform a wide sweep while using twin axes with M3. This would require less work all around to implement (two hammers would be cool but… you know sending limbs flying is dope) and allow for all existing Slayers to immediately have access to a solid answer to being swarmed. Give it damn near unlimited cleave and Bardin would be good to go. Leap in, big swing, chop up a straggler or two, big swing, done.

This is a good but unfortunately also bad idea. On the one hand, Slayer is an incredibly fun class and it is indeed awful that you can’t use your class specific weapons especially on champ and legend most of the time (unlike say the IB’s drakeguns) due to them having essentially zero cleave and hordes being such a big issue. Adding a specific ability that allows for cleaving into hordes (perhaps making is a slower skill so you still have that frantic bob-and-weave gameplay, or only damage a set number of enemies but stagger the rest if it’s unlimited cleave) would be a welcome change and make slayer more attractive at high difficulty play. It would certainly be a nice trade for have no ranged tools, a “jack of all trades” weapon akin in utility to the halberd and falcian/rapier.

Unfortunately, it’s also a bad idea because it invalidates the entire point of having no ranged weapon and instead a second melee weapon. Having such a universal tool would mean there’d be almost no point in taking a second melee weapon, which begs the question why even have the “option” then if there’s really no point in picking anything? It’s just a drawback with no compensation at that point to having no range.

I think part of the issue with slayer is as @Anointedone said, slayer is too fragile for a class the has some rather short range and is sticking in the danger of melee longer then anyone else. Even his survivability talents don’t do much at all to help him get by.

I think to make slayer more fun and using his dual axes more, but not overpowering, fatshark should give em a cleave buff. Even cleaving 2 enemies and a third with reduced damage with his attack speed would be a non insignificant improvement, and it wouldn’t crazily change the game play. A hammer would still be preferable to CC hordes but now dual axes would be capable of eliminating hordes too, which sadly they aren’t right now.