Following my previous post, I want to touch on the THP/Stagger talent rows. This is something I’ve always thought about ever since 1.3 and felt needed to be said but never took the opportunity to do so. The fact that Huntsman was given a talent for THP from range reminded me of the issue, so I’m finally posting about it.
As it was and is right now, you can only choose up to two different THP talents and healshare in one row for all careers. I would really like to know what was the decision behind this (please, devs, if you read this, answer it), because it’s absurd and needs to be fixed. Yes, I see this as an issue - a game design issue.
The main problem is that they seem to be completely arbitrary and that, for some careers, their synergy is very poor with a lot of weapons or - and that’s even worse - with “meta” weapons. Let me explain: while I’m sure the devs would like to see the meta weapons get indirectly nerfed by that, it also hurts the career itself and make some other careers way better than others because of their synergy with the meta. For instance, the THP on ult talent for Pyro covers her lack of THP generation but BW doesn’t have any of that and still has very shitty THP choices as it is right now, which is further emphasized by the fact that Sienna, in general, is a ranged career and isn’t big on THP generation (which is fine considering how THP from range was broken before 1.3). This makes Pyro and UC preferred choices over Battle Wizard, even now that her talents have been changed for the better. Her niche has to stay, but THP is no niche at all and needs to be leveled out accross all careers very badly.
Here’s my suggestion: make the first row of talents, the THP/Healshare row, a special row. It should be a 5-talent row like that, for instance. Of course, as stagger talents are standardized accross all characters, they should benefit from that rework.
I think this makes total sense as I am seeing a will to encourage variety in playstyles, a will to make THP more accessible because of how important it actually is and that the Big Balance Beta that resulted in the 1.3 update proved to us that you guys wanted to make melee great again. This also means that once that change is done the THP on headshots talent for Huntsman should be removed because it’s really just bandages for how horrible the THP generation on Huntsman is (something a lot of have been complaining about).
Cheers, I hope this actually makes it to the game because this part of the talents is a design issue that I and many other feel very strongly about. It’s seriously ruining a part of career balance, as proved by what careers people tend to cater to.
I don’t care that it involves some UI changes, I don’t care if it doesn’t get to us that fast, what matters is that it happens in the not-too-far future and that it happens. At the very least, give us an answer on the matter if it’s a no and tell us why. We’d like to see a yes if it’s yes though!