Fair enough, the point is also to make ammo sustain on melee classes less effective.
Consequently, ammo sustain on ranged classes would still be superior to that of melee classes.
The exact details of the changes to ammo sustain are also up to debate, such as @James suggesting still keeping the no ammo consumption during Huntsman ult and adding melee ammo sustain as a replacement.
GK certainly does need some changes, but just taking a hammer and bashing it on his head is about as fruitful as nerfing weapons based on their pickrate. The absolutely no choice part and the focus on stacking power are then issues.
The whole second row is lunacy.
Heroism does not increase stagger. Knightly Temper has ZERO synergies with anything. It doesnt even grant THP on Kill. Virtue of the Ideal is the only choice right now and one I dont enjoy, nor that has a place on GK. You shouldt be able to deal with trash easier than Merc.
Line four is also a mess.
I never liked the RNG part about GKs passive. 10%, or 15% more Power dont do anything for you if you cant bank on getting it every time. The CD regen seems pointless and the combination of 10%DR and passive hp regen for the whole group to strong.
Further putting points into an RNG system is pointless. The only real choice is Strength Potions.
Everyone levels with Grims in their hands and alot of people dont use, or learn to use Potions until they are far into cata. At that point having on demand Potions is taking the difficulty out of every difficult situation. The amount of Patrols and Monsters is limited during normal runs. Your Pots are not.
Line five is the biggest mess.
Joust is incredible and there is no point taking anything else. Discipline is overkill, does not eat the only defensive Talent spot GK has and is hard and finiky to activate. Stoicism is just bad. It doesnt help at all with GKs weaknesses, which are dot damage from specials and getting stuck via lack of movement.
The last line also doesnt offer much choice.
Impetuous Knight is a gimmick. If you wouldnt need to kill something with your Blade first for the speed to activate, it would still be a gimmick, but a more useful one. Audacity and Confidence both make me shake my head.
Both attacks offer far too much stagger and CC. At this point its easier to gravity kill monsters with GK than with FK, whose main purpose is to be a Battering Ram.
Ontop or that one enables you to take a dump on CW Patrols and Monsters, while the other one Ruins Zerker waves and SVs. Then there is also the absolute randomness of Confidence. You might kill what you want to kill, but most of the time you gonna catch some slaves, kill an SV and just toss Zerkers all over the place because your skill is not allowed to do damage after a certain cleave number. You utterly lose the ability to control whats getting killed.
His Talent tree is a complete disaster compared to most other careers. But that is not even the end. What is a GK worth without the Mace&Sword and Executioners? Nothing. Absolutely and utterly nothing. Slayers you can find running around with 2hHammer, DualHammer, DualAxes, 1hAxe, Coghammer, 2hAxe and everything will do its job because Slayers Talent/Passive/Ability combination makes that possible and promotes all those weapons. GK already has a limited weapon pool and further eliminates most of them by design.
The whole ājust slab more power on himā Idea is working, but its also promoting a single playstyle with no wiggle room whatsoever. A more diverse Talent tree would be much appreciated, especially since its a ānewā career.
Honestly I think conservative shooter and scrounger should just be changed out for a reworked VT1 scavenger type of trait.
Heat Sink could also be replaced with a reworked earthing rune
(by āreworkā I mean changed up sufficiently so it actually fits VT2 in a way thatās healthy/reasonable)
Oh also I guess Iāll make a more general statement re: nerfs vs buffs and balancing philosophy
I think if youāre gonna take something away you should also be trying to give something back. Not always something that needs to be followed to the letter depending on context (cloak of mist) but a general rule of thumb. For example, if I were to nerf GKās damage Iād give him some durability or just general QoL in exchange somewhere.
This. When I think about the top tier careers of this game, I think Shade, BW, WHC, IB, Merc, and maybe GK. With the exception of BW, who doesnāt use ammo to begin with, there isnāt a single ranged career up there, at least on cata anyways. On most characters, ranged careers arenāt even their 2nd best careers either (because you have handmaiden, zealot, etc taking that spot). Unilaterally nerfing ranged careers and their ability to sustain ammo would simply remove them from the cata meta entirely.
Scrounger is essentially Scavenger from V1, the only differences being:
You could build extremely ranged heavy in V1, potentially more so than V2.
ah I meant melee scavenger but you donāt need to roll the trait on your melee for it
though maybe it should be on melee so thereās actually a choice between ranged or melee (swift slaying)
Iād like to see more trait diversity yeah.
Melee Scrounger could just turn melee careers into semi ranged careers, especially Shade and WHC.
Zealot could easily give up SS for ammo recovery, maybe Merc too with the right weapons.
I mean theyāre all already semi-snipers with conservative shooterā¦this is possibly a problem that simply isnāt entirely solvable lol
I suppose, could be a bad or good thing depending on who you ask.
Melee Scrounger + extra crit chance and ammo capacity could easily serve as groundwork for a ranged career like Waystalker or Bounty Hunter replacing their current ammo sustain methods.
Note: @Incandescent the semi-sniper/conservative shooter āproblemā is purely a career pickrate thing anyway. Offering more melee buff talents to ranged careers and Scrounger as a melee trait could be a shout. Essentially blurring the lines between melee and ranged careers, careers would purely be flavours than ārolesā as some say.
Oh also on the nerf ideas for careers:
Iād be careful nerfing too many things at once. Best to do things piecemeal until it feels about right, moving in order of how problematic the target talents/passives are
A good start to fixing BH/scrounger problem is to remove crits from Blessed Shots and make it a power boost. Make it something you donāt even talent into (or change some other subpar talent to increase crit chance). Just up and kill all of the crit power builds so we can actually fix the f*cking repeater pistol instead of leaving it broken because of the 1-shot CW meme.
Another elitist here. I only agree on 1s internal cooldown bloodfletcher and disagree all of other statement.
Do you know what would happen if vanish has internal cooldown? You always kill 2 enemies and wonāt get vanish effect after all. What do you want eventually? Everyone cannot get any talent effect and play as well as without them? Just play back to basic with your friend. Why do you force other to play like that.
I always only play the most powerful careers. Iām slave of power. Do you know what iām playing nowadays? Itās jesus handmaiden. How HM became so powerful like this? Itās not powerful. However, it doesnāt got nerf for long. HM didnāt got stronger but stayed at least. I donāt even use 30% AS talent because itās not that good.
Do you think I like playing HM? Hell, no. I donāt want to play HM. The only reason I play HM is itās better than other career. Other careers are gone to bottom.
Everything I played got neft and not viable on difficult things. Itās not fun. This game losing every single fun aspect as time goes because of fanboys like you.
I play this game for fun. Why do you play this game? It seems to get other fanboys agreement on nerfing something and feels that you are too good on this game, other non-elitists donāt see how powerful this career is and their skill is bad. You didnāt mention it really though, you donāt have to because i can see.
People can feel fun getting something, not losing it. By patching according to your opinion, can this game get more fun? Can attract more users to buy this game? I donāt think so.
And your deep thought small tweaks wonāt work. A bit of change doesnāt make greatsword or axe good. Itās off meta weapon. Meta should change not weapon.
I think nothing need to be nerfed right now because HM is the best career for me and no one think HM is that powerful one.
Trash careers should get buff instead.
Hi slave of power, Iām Incan
I agree that Flense needs a nerf. Iāve thought about Fervency some more since that post. Iām not sure if Fervency would ever be picked if it provided no stagger. For regular Cata WHC can still kill all/most of the elites in a waves with Unending Hunt, which is already the safer option. Fervency is on 1:30 cooldown and relies on headshots to be efficient. Without the stagger (if reduced to Slayer levels it wouldnāt stagger monsters), I donāt think Fervency would even be higher dps than default Animosity vs a monster or Chaos Warrior patrol. Perhaps reducing the duration of Fervency to 5 seconds to make it less forgiving might be better?
Imo:
AoE game-saving stagger shout that gives you and allies 25% crit chance for both melee and range for 6s > Kill 6 elites in 6s. Fervency is good for the scoreboard, and I use it because I value consistency, but Animosityās default effect is good enough and requires less input from the WHC to be effective.
Thereās also the option of making Killing Shot simply double the damage dealt (or whatever amount would be most balanced) on critical headshots. That way itās mostly reliant on charged attacks for 1 shots (so no Rapier light spam into elites). It would also give Deathknell value over Flense and lessen the light spam Killing Shot currently encourages. The strength of the double damage crit headshots could be reduced vs CWs/monsters/lords if itās too much.
Edit: Hereās an idea I like a lot - What if instead of giving crits, Fervency made your melee headshots count as critical headshots for its duration? That would mean no bonus damage on bodyshot.
With Cruelty, Assassin and 10% Chaos DD heavy will 1 shot bodyshot SV and Bestigors while being one of the fastest heavy attacks in the game. I just did a Cata true solo with Cloak of Mist (no Vanish). I ran max movement speed, Exquisite Huntress, max attack speed and crit chance and during hordes just ran around spamming light attacks at the heads of enemies (not running away from enemies, just around them). It was pretty effective dps. Shade doesnāt need Vanish to kill elites, and tbh Shade doesnāt need to kill multiple elites instantly to be effective. Reducing the hp of every elite on the board to 1/2 with light attacks in 4s with a stealth ult on a 33s cooldown is already insane without Vanish. Even with Shadeās low hp and ult return on getting hit, the ult cooldown is so low that Shade can basically hit trade to get ult back. The run hasnāt finished processing but here it is: https://youtu.be/HJhZ79xFyAI
I main WHC and have far more struggle doing true solos as WHC than I did with this one as Shade. Afaik I donāt have a noteworthy headshot % but still get by just fine through this run.
Surely you at least agree the 45% CDR on Cloak of Mists is too much? We canāt buff other careers to this level. What would be the point of having multiple difficulties if all 4 heroes in a team are so powerful that they outright ignore gameplay mechanics? Theyād be little more than gear and hero power checks.
While I do agree with this somewhat,BH has to have a much more consistent way of getting back ammo other than the rather lackluster Salvaged Ammunition proc condition.His ammo only really becomes infinite with certain setups and ranged choice.Melee kill crit reset gives Volley practically infinite ammo while Cruel Fortune(6s cd) makes Xbow a braindead spammable weapon.If you try any of those on BoP and Repeater however,youād be starved for ammo.
Iād love the removal of invis in general. Itās way too cheesy.
Agreed with most of your points. Donāt disagree with any of your post enough to argue. Wanna expand on this point a bit though:
Firstly, I think every second headshot as well as restricting it to 1 proc per shot is too much at once. Pick one to start with then see how it goes from there. Personally Iād go with every second headshot and leave multiple procs per shot alone for now.
Secondly, I wonder how you feel about Scrounger similarly granting very strong ammo sustain for some melee classes. Prime examples being WHC with unending hunt and BoP, HM with Shortbow, crit chance talent and extra ammo talent. To a lesser extent Merc with Rep Handgun and extra ammo talent, maybe even Shade with short bow. To be fair Iām not saying all these cases are problematic, but they can certainly get A LOT of ammo without even needing to hit headshots.
I think itās quite reasonable for Conservative Shooter to return one single projectile for the first successful headshot (regardless if the shot itself ruptures through more heads subsequently), but I donāt really understand why it shouldnāt reward the player for the first headshot of every successful shot. At that point you might as well have an invisible rat who runs around the group and randomly steals x% of their current ammo supply just to make it āchallengingā.
I agree with this, though itās very unlikely to see it drastically changed since itās so fundamental to specific careers. But I will never able able to understand how Kruber manages to poof away in broad daylight while surrounded by enemies, even with suspension of disbelief, magic and all. I also wouldnāt mind seeing most forms of group healing going away. I think those abilities are too powerful and donāt really belong in a game like this.
I donāt know what to say first. Is this game all about clearing true solo with self nerfed career?
Nerfing itās cooldown makes this game fun?
I donāt think so and I want everything got buff to shade level. I personally play HM over shade. Not meaning HM is OP. Iām saying shade is not that powerful. Just proper career.
So you mean, you can play without vanish. Meaning vanish can be disappeared. Then why donāt you play back to basic cata all the time? Sounds like you donāt need anything at all.
And what are you talking about gameplay mechanism? Playing shade is cheese? Shade plays normally. If you feel game is too easy, you can always increase difficulty. On official realm, you can play 3/3 no blessing 300% twitch with deed.
Playing more difficult thing with buffed things are more fun than playing same thing with nerfed things.
Everything that you are talking about is ruining fun of this game like WOM with stagger mechanism.