Here to ask more about the community’s opinions. Instead of a whole class, let’s talk about once keystone.
What’s y’alls opinion on Terminus Warrent as a keystone, as well as it’s modifiers? How would you compare it to other keystones that Arbities has? And how does it feel generally in gameplay, power, flexibility, and it’s contribution to a strong build or team synergy? How do you all feel about it’s penances? Maybe any ideas to buff it or rework it? Maybe even some comparison on Weapon Specialist?
I started playing with this keystone specifically just so I can get the penances. My opinion: We have two very strong keystones with amazing modifiers, and this is the best they can think of for the third endpoint keystone? Really? Yeah the speed buff can be great with 20 stacks but it doesn’t compare to erasing an entire monstrosity health pool with a few shots and a dog with Marked, or absolutely decimating enemies with Forceful stacks, or anything else really with these keystones.
If you got any positive or negative opinions, share them and why you feel that way towards the keystone. I’m curious.
Note: I love that the penances are stupid easy to get. That’s probobly the only positive I have for this keystone is that it’s easy to get the penances for and you aren’t stuck suffering. Playing the game normally and getting kills to get your penances done is something that’s boring, sure, but way better than having to throw a grenade box four times in a row five separate times without missing or hitting an enemy that isn’t an elite. God that’s hell.
Its the least successful of the hybrid keystones. I can forgive IJ’s mid ranged and so so melee buffs for the dodge shenanigans but this has very little. Writ of Judgment and Obstinate should both scale on spent stacks instead of the 20 spent only for starters, it feels worse than weapon specialist by miles when you try to incorporate those…the other keystones have very strong modifier nodes while this forces a huge gameyness on you to get anything at all. While the other side stuff just happens all game long. Its also pretty middling TDR, could it not be general DR? That’s what makes arbs builds feel so samey to me, gotta hit up those DRs to live.
It’s a lot higher execution than the other two keystones for maybe a little less reward. It’s like a worse version of Veteran’s Weapon Specialist, which is already awkward enough to play around that I don’t take it.
If they want to keep it how it’s currently functioning I’d have the cops start with 15 stacks of each side and only have them decrement on kill. This way you don’t run out of steam when fighting tankier enemies and it doesn’t punish rapid fire weapons as hard, while keeping that shifting balance between melee and ranged.
Oh yeah. Compared to weapon’s specialist which isn’t too hard to proc, especially for melee builds, god is Terminus so awkward to use. Like… beyond awkward. I hate using it atm and I just tend to ignore it. I’m only using it for the penances then I’ll drop it and make an actual build around the current set-up I have going.
As a havoc player where there’s limited ammo I can’t use it since it encourages you to use ammo to gain stacks which is an extremely finite resource in havoc specially without vet and ammo hogging builds on your team. Maybe you can make use of it with shredder auto pistol? But even then can’t see the worth unless it had some ammo-use-reducing skills. It would be cool to get a whole new skill tree for that one but I would understand if people like it I’m fine with executioner tree.
The base keystone effects are extremely easy to proc, but numbers wise it’s unimpressive. Even the 50% ranged cleave isn’t that impressive with all of the other cleave bonuses arby has. TW’s also very confusingly designed. Why do all of the stacks exist on the main keystone when they do absolutely nothing without the modifier talents? Also trying to get value out of the modifiers requires so much faff, watching your buffs, and general babying that is just not fun.
I say just replace it. The main conceit of the keystone is just kinda eh. Weapon Specialist is significantly more valuable than TW across almost every metric and it’s still kind of annoying and prone to faffing around. So it’s no wonder that almost nobody likes TW. Especially when Forceful and ExO are both really good, even more passive, and much stronger.
As for what to replace it with? Idk. Maybe it’d be cool to have like a mutually exclusive double keystone where one of them is for the dog and the other is for lone wolf, but they share some modifiers? Perhaps a keystone that lets you temporarily get the benefit of the dog with lone wolf or lone wolf when you have the dog? Or double down on nuncio and make a team support keystone.
My super, ultra radical idea would be to replace TW with arby vet’s Focus Target keystone and then give vet a different middle keystone so that FT isn’t constantly stepping on MMF’s toes. But of course that’d never happen.
WS is better just 3 kills and you have 100% crit on next shot and ranged kill gives more attack speed that inexorable judjment on zealot, 30% attack speed if you also take talent that gives 10% melee attack speed, it’s basically martyrmom lvl.
I used to use it with Crusher, using special in the crowd will pretty much instantly give you max stats, but bonuses overall are very bad.
It’s like this keystone to be replaced alltogether and be something that focuses on debuffing enemies, maybe allowing certain elites and specials to be supressed, etc
I was excited after they sort of reworked TW and tried to use it, but it still felt pretty bad to use. It’s high maintenance and required me to restrict weapon switching or risk wasting the buff, which generally just reduced fun.
I think that they need to make TW significantly more powerful if they intend to keep it as-is. But I’d prefer that they do something to make it less restrictive/high maintenance, or just replace it with some kind of keystone that focuses more on ranged play and is more friendly to Lone Wolf than Execution Order. I don’t think they should even try to make it compete with Forceful for melee builds.
I do love the idea of mutual exclusive keystones depending on if you go lone wolf or bring your dog. I do however prefer a more team support build option that doubles down on nucio, and gives Arbities more aspects to his synergy with other classes. Bringing a full support build would be really cool for a space cop.
Terminus Warrent lost me a clutch round I could have won if I had the capability of Marked or Forceful. I am very angry rn. If it wasn’t for me trying to get penances I would never have picked this.
Yay my opinion changed from mildly confused and disliking to actually hateful towards this awful keystone.
15% melee strength and 15% DR, with +10% ranged crit chance and I’d maybe use it over a keystoneless arbites (actually one of the only characters besides vet where this still makes some sense given how broadly powerful and active the blue nodes are). Also 1.65% ability cooldown on the one modifier node per stack spent, and 0.5% crit chance/attack speed on the other and they’d actually feel like not wasted nodes 65% of the game.
