The problem about Swift Slaying, is that it invalidates other trait choices. It’s always viable to build just around crit chance and attack speed, even if weapon is slow or doesn’t have much innate attack speed. The thing about attack speed buff, is that it’s both offensive and defensive tool. For example, having high attack speed on dual daggers or axe will make you react more quickly and stagger enemies in horde.
However, I’m not saying it should be straightly nerfed. Having high attack speed is fun. And it’s a challenging to keep your aim and headshot rate when you are performing at much higher speed. Since swift slaying is meta atm, game will feel much slower, if it’ll be straightly nerfed.
Buffing all other traits to level of SS feels unnecessary. They could use some work, but generally they are in same niche level. I bet nobody knows how does Heroic Intervention work (neither do I), but it feels okay on paper. Parry is god and I miss times where I was picking it almost at every weapon, but SS is still much more effective in both protecting player and attacking enemies. Off-balance is potentially great tool for increasing boss damage more consistently.
SOLUTION
Rework SS to completely different defensive trait, potentially nothing to do with crit chance. Buff attack speed on all weapons globally, like 15% boost, that would work all the time.
That would make all choices more valuable to pick, while keeping combat flow fresh and fast, and also less based on crit strikes RNG.
Potential problem:
Resourceful Combatant will be picked all the time with the same crit builds.
The problem isn’t Swift Slaying alone (although it is overly strong), it’s also that the other options are pretty lackluster. Opportunist has some use nowadays, and Parry and Off Balance are occasionally useful, but Heroic Intervention and Resourceful Combatant are questionable at best. To balance them, I think they need to be approached from both directions, both reducing the effectiveness of SS and increasing it for the rest.
I don’t think a complete rework for SS would be the right solution, especially combined with your proposed global attack speed boost - the latter part would break the balance of the game (even more than it is broken now), and completely reworking aspects of the game, be it even one Trait, is significant work and potentially a lot of frustration to players as they both try to make use of the new one and reroll their weapons.
In my opinion, one significant problem with SS is a more global one - tying it (and other Traits) to crits. Crit chance can be manipulated pretty well, and can get very high (up to ~30% constantly, and 45% in bursts). Crits are also a quite powerful force on their own. Adding a powerful Trait like SS to them makes both hard to balance, especially as SS (among other advantages) lets you get more hits in during its duration, and thus more crits, sustaining itself. This one point could be solved by not allowing SS to refresh, but that’d make it unreliable and disorienting - a sudden 20% change in attack speed is very noticeable.
Thus, I still think that Swift Slaying (and Resourceful Combatant/Sharpshooter, maybe even Scrounger) should be separated from crits and given another trigger. It would allow balancing each separately and using crit chance as a balancing tool on its own, instead of another thing that needs balancing. After that, the actual effectiveness of the Traits could be looked at individually, and adjusted with less worry about their abuse on high-Crit setups.
Problem is enemies gained attack speed in 2.0 and you either need long reach or insane attack speed to fight em consistently. Or you pick shield and deal 10k damage
To balance “broken” things developers in other online games often just add “skill dependent” element.
So for swift slaying it could be something like:
“Every 5 second your heavy attack grants you 20% attack speed for five seconds”
But hey, you know how it works, right? FS will just nerf good stuff and do nothing to useless traits, so they remains useless. If everything goes “right” SS will just be nerfed to 10-15% aspd and will still remains #1 choice for the majority of the builds, or it will just be nerfed to the ground and noone will be using it.
This. They made the CDR traits bad. Heroic Intervention is hot garbage. Off-balance doesn’t stack with other 20% dmg bonus talents/passives, which there are a lot of. Plus enemies have to hit you to proc it which means you have to just stand there holding block. Most of the time you aren’t going to be given good opportunities to really utilize this trait. There are just so many horrible traits. Both for melee and ranged. Swift slaying shouldn’t be touched(or nerfed, at least). Can you imagine the backlash if they touched it? I shiver at the thought.
What would be incredible is seeing most of those traits reworked to being good and competitive. Then adding new traits to give players more options. While Vermintide 2 has a whole talent tree and stuff that Vermintide 1 didn’t have, Vermintide 1 did have weapons with 3 traits. Some of those have been worked into VT2 in some fashion or another. However, there are still some great ones that would be cool to see in VT2. But why bother with only taking from the old game? Seeing entirely new traits would be great. For everything. Weapons, trinkets, etc. And making traits for trinkets and stuff a little better too.
That’s why I wanted to include attack speed buffed across all weapons to compensate, that’s my main point. High attack speed is comfortable and shouldn’t be really taken from high level play. And I think players will be only happy to not rely on crits to get it.
If all trait options will be equally mediocre, it’s still sort of equality, which is good. Reworking all traits all together - is (of course) needed and desirable. I just find it easier to suggest a smaller step to balance, which may be easier to implement as part of season 2 rebalance, for example.
We already have enemies with unpredictable attacks, a crazy tracking and an incredible fast response time; we can be already hit while dodging and pushing from enemies concealed into hyperdensity.
Swift Slaying is the last tool for who still wants an aggressive play.
And honestly I haven’t understood. That some traits are just trash, it’s a fact. Bringing down SS to their level… doesn’t it mean to make it trash too?
We should start to ask buff, not nerf.
Off balance? It should apply the debuff also pushing;
Opportunist? It should buff push always, and not only while enemies are attacking;
Resourceful Combatant? It should increase the cooldown reduction when we hit an enemy (for who doesn’t know: fighting let to charge the ult faster);
Heroic Intervention? It should emit an aura that protecs a downed player for some seconds;
Parry? Maybe could we have a larger window?
These are just some little buff (written without thinking them too much) the would improve the situation without great changes and without break nothing.
P.S: anyway I would appreciate a SS detached from crits.
Its time to revamp crafting, traits and properties - its one of the worst systems in any game ever.
Not only does it restrict players simply because some traits (and indeed properties) are garbage, but it wastes so much time given the heavily RNG reliance and it is just insulting how much time players waste getting the only traits worthwhile.
I would strongly advise to re-read my suggestion and possible solution. Basically what I want - to make attack speed bonus from SS to be auto-included in all weapons, with slight reduction to its value, while removing SS all together, to open up other possibilities. It’s very huge buff, but it opens up more diversity in builds.
Allow me to third this sentiment, although with a bit of a caveat.
Resourceful Combatant can be really useful on a character with a long cooldown, but high tier ability. Mercenary comes to mind, as you wanted instant pickups and temp health available as much as possible. Of course, while some classes got no benefit from this (Handmaiden, Slayer), it was still at least a passable option for a few.
Ironbreakers and other tanks could possibly consider Off Balance, but again, its very class and playstyle specific, whereas Swift Slaying us useful to everyone in a general sense.
Outside of that – Heroic Intervention is absolutely useless; Parry too is so situational as to also be useless; and Opportunist may actually be a negative depending on how you’re trying to position and herd enemies.
So, of all choices, only Swift Slaying is viable to all classes and non-situationally useful; hence, why I’d expect the vast majority to take it.
Easiest solution. Buff other traits and reduce the attack speed bonus of Swift Slaying from 20% to 10%, but also increase the base attack speed of ALL MELEE WEAPONS by 10%. This would make SS less mandatory and make other traits more viable.
I also made a list of potential new traits that could be added a while back. These would diversify builds even further.
It’s not a bad idea… it would require some testing though. Something like 10% swift slaying being universal on crit and freeing up a weapon trait I could get behind, even if it’s a 10% reduction.
As for heroic intervention, is that the one that gives thp for helping a player in trouble? I’d rather see it changed to something random, like everytime you kill an elite or special, you can get a random party wide buff. 5% crit chance, 10% attack speed for 5 seconds, 2% CDR or 2 thp for everyone. It’d be random but interesting.
Indeed, swiftslaying has been an issue for a while. It kinda makes all other choices obsolete outside of very specific builds. Such as a crit less BW burn build, where you stack BCR on weapon and neck with stamina recovery on trinket.
Dependent on your build, but yes, this is very often the case.
So in best case scenario, we’re talking about a trait thats useful for only a few classes in particular builds vs. a trail that’s useful across the board, and constantly active.
(At the end of the day, traits need a complete rework. Each one should feel useful and give you a unique playstyle, as you only get one per weapon. This is clearly not the case currently).
Mh i dont know… the only thing unbalanced about SS for me is the possibility to do crit when it is on.
That can make an insane extension of it. For me a balance way to make SS less OP is to deactivate crit hit when SS is on.
