Let’s talk about Slayer in Legend. I have a lot of hours with Slayer in Legend. Almost 100 apparently given that I started running Legend both with friends and solo almost as soon as I hit 30 and I’ve played this game for 160 hours. I’m decked out in reds. I’ve tried every build you’ve probably thought of and more, so I have a basis for these critiques. We’ll start with the obvious one.
Ranged:
Ranged still is king and dances all over your ability to do your job. You’ve got your horde clear (something that can be handled by an IB) and boss kill (something that can also be handled by IB) leaving your only real boon in your elite killing potential. Something that is only valid for Chaos Chosen. as everything else can be killed easily by every other career including IB and RV. A Pyro with beamstaff can defend an entire horde, can protect herself if things get too close (still with the beamstaff), can kill specials, interrupt rats, and rescue allies. A slayer can kill a horde and kill some elites. You’re certainly not the big damage dealing boss killer of your group as you have to deal with a bosses anti-melee moveset.
Boss:
The amount of bosses that aren’t the troll in this game with hardcore anti-melee attack patterns or pushback is staggering. Rat Ogre pushes you away when he’s pounding off of allies, storm fiend climbs into the stratosphere constantly. You can’t even land two charge attacks on the chaos spawn before he decided he wants to target you, allowing you one charged attack ever so often as you quite literally can’t attack otherwise. Just block and backstep as it smashes towards you. Attack twice when it tries to grab you, and repeat if you can force it into a grab, bash, grab loop. No part of this is engaging and it takes forever. Classes with ranged capabilities can shred this. In reference to other builds. A single shade with a concentration potion can kill these situations in seconds. RV can gruderaker in the general direction and put an end to the threat. Unchained still has access to an extremely powerful damaging option. Foot Knight and Mercenary can stagger. Slayer meanwhile has to dance all over the problem because his special without the talent no escape actually kind of sucks.
Damage:
Ranged does equivalent damage to a charged attack with 3 stacks. This is obscene. About the only thing you have is the ability to kill Chaos Chosen, a non issue in Legend games with actual good players. With 3 stacks and 10% to Chaos the 2H hammer should at least have the decency to be able to one shot something during a horde. I’m not going to undersell this though. Armor pen is really good, it’s in high value for two bosses (that being warcamp and Into the nest) and the ability to delete stormvermin and chaos chosen is great.However existing for no other reason than to keep things off of your ranged and 5 shot the occasional Chaos Chosen is not fun.
Stagger:
Why oh why do charge axe attacks not stagger. Anyways things like berserkers and plague monks should maintain their ability to be threatening. That’s why they exist. What is not cool is that your second weapon slot has to be a 2H weapon in order to deal with a swarm of them without spending large amounts of time (that you may not always have) back stepping. What is worse is that 2H attacks don’t just guarantee a stagger. And you have to hold this as a slayer. Nobody else is stuck to such a binary way of dealing with something like this. As RV you can go invisible and club them to death or simply grudge-raker the problem away. Can grudge-raker hordes away too. Hell if you’re really good you can grudge raker elites away as well. Anyways, I’m fine with having to depend on my allies for specials, but this is too much
Leap:
This ability as it it needs some major attention. Skipping into a horde. Being launched into an air. Having the AI of enemies attack with their fastest attacks if you try to jump over or into them. Being completely useless against gatling and gas rats, and not doing it’s knockback until you land. The stagger is good, yes. But this ability is nothing more than an attack speed steroid. You certainly aren’t using it to make up for the difference in not having a ranged weapon as I think was originally intended.
Talents:
In order;
Stunty Saviour sucks
See it Coming still isn’t significant enough to even consider
Crippling Wounds needs to be stronger
Unstoppable still has to compete against Moving Target (ability to have grey health actually matter) and Adrenaline Surge (ability to keep your AS steroid on) and thus still sucks
Crunch is too situational to use and exists only to knock a slave rat behind you, who will then stab you when he gets up. This ability either need to be something completely different or they need to change it so that your attacks do increased stagger for the duration of your AS steroid.
Unstoppable is only good in one single talent build (but it’s very good in said build)
No escape is the only one size fits all option because it allows you to actually melee a boss.
Slayers a blast in Champion. Can just turn your brain off and have a good time once you get used to the playstyle. But it sure could use some love for Legend to brink it up there with your other two allies. Especially when considering the increased number of specials that you won’t be able to deal with. Because I’m not sure they’re actually compensating enough for your inability to do ranged damage.
Solutions?
One of these abilities needs to be tweaked to give more boss killing potential
Leap needs to be fixed and debugged
Useless talents need to be purged
Needs a passive that either reduces damage, increase stagger, increase block strength, or increases cleave.
), but he is an absolute beast at killing elites and mowing through hordes.