There have been some hints that balance tweaks of some kind may be coming over the course of this year. I’ve already touched on some talents that I’d like to see spiced up in a previous thread focused on Mercenary, but there, the issue wasn’t so much about straight up weak talents, and more about a lack of interesting buildarounds. I could do the same for each career and highlight some examples (a lot of the movement speed talents, for instance, such as on BH, Huntsman, Waystalker or Ranger Vet).
But I’m curious, what talents do you folks feel are in the most desparate need of an overhaul. The ones that you would never touch with a ten foot pole, because they aren’t really even a remotely worthwhile option, no matter the build. To hit the two biggest outliers that come to my mind: Hungry Wind on Shade and Indiscriminate Blast on Bounty Hunter.
Hungry Wind actively nerfs the Shade’s damage output for a short-lived, mediocre buff. If it traded burst damage but turned the Shade into a real meatgrinder for a decent period of time, it would be a worthy option. Transform the sneaky backstabber shade into a frontliner, with high damage and strong damage reduction, or a horde clearer, with melee attack splash, for instance. But 15 % power and 10 % movespeed + phasing ain’t that. It takes away the ability to melt monsters or clear entire patrols on your own, and gives essentially nothing in return.
Indiscriminate Blast. What is there to say. If you get a good one on a horde, after you’ve precharged it before, maybe you get like two Monk kills, and kill another 18 or so skavenslaves. If you get a real nice, thick horde, coming at you through a narrow corridor, there’s no armor in the way, and there’s the Monks in there you can kill. Best case scenario, with a lot of ifs, after some preparation earlier in the map. You could have done that with two or three shots of a Griffonfoot. In turn, you lose the ability to nuke armored enemies, burst monsters, snipe at long range when your ranged weapon isn’t loaded (or isn’t a sniping weapon, like Repeater Pistol or Griffonfoot). Why would you take this? Let’s say, in a hypothetical scenario, you have a fairly unsafe melee weapon, and you take Indiscriminate Blast in the hopes it will help you out when you’re surrounded. You even commit your melee and ranged weapon traits to get the 5 % cooldown reduction like a maniac, to truly get the most out of your talent investment. Indiscriminate Blast will still suck. Because it doesn’t fire in a big, wide arc in front of you, killing everything that got close, like the Grail Knight slash but for hordes. It fires in a narrow cone, that goes deep into the horde like a Grudgeraker. So it won’t even solve the melee safety issue. There is NO merit to this talent. If its cooldown got reduced based on how many enemies it hit, maybe it could be a decent anti-horde assist tool. Or maybe if it just had a lot lower cooldown, so at least it gets to do the shitty job it does a bit more often. Maybe if the arc was a lot wider, it could actually be an ok solution against soft targets. But in its current iteration it’s there just to mess around with, be disappointed with, and switch back to one of the other options the next game.
