The next BBB - List of Balance Concerns: Shade, Gk, Bw, Ranged Classes and More - Feedback and Suggestions

[Rapax]

Fair point, I thought about opening half a dozen threads but ultimately decided against it.

@Rapax

Ultimately, this post is more of a summary of several balance concerns.
It is intended to prevent balance from focusing too much on one issue while forgetting the rest, thus leading to an overall balance that is still skewed due to one aspect having been balanced, but the others not so much.

It might not have quite turned out the way I intended it to to be fair. Might have been a better choice to divide it into several threads.

Still, I deem it crucial to keep an overview of all changes instead of losing sight of the overall balance by going into too much detail for every individual change - because, if this thread has shown anything, then that there are a lot of aspects that could/should see changes.

Concerning the thread as a whole, at least it has sparked some discussion and has hopefully made FS more aware of potential aspects that could be changed.

Other dev teams like to post updates such as “What the team is working on” that contain a similar list of acknowledged concerns and the dev’s ideas on what to do with them.
Since FS do not really do that, I figured it might as well be be me or anyone else that throws their ideas out there and brings some attention to balance
The last BBB was in part motivated by the Weapon Rebalance Mod and while my thread is far from the level of work of that mod, it had the same motivation: to cause people to think about balance.

@BongoSkaggs

Many of the ‘problems’ mentioned exist due to the nature of the games design.

I understand where you are coming from even though the effort required to change the core game principles would likely be monunmental compared to changing some values for current talents.

I’m with you on the topic of making the underlying design better, that would be the best option.

My post was aimed at working with what we got at the moment, tweaking small things to fit the existing game instead of coming up with a full rework of basically almost every concept.
Generally, it is easier to fix a thousand tiny things than it is to redo the full package.
Compare it to changing the roof of the house instead of rebuilding it from scratch - as unstable as the whole house might currently be.

@Velsix

Would it still stagger elites and monsters with the reduced stagger?

On base cata, base Slayer ult staggers some elites. Crunch enables it to stagger almost every elite. So no boss stagger and less potent stagger versus some elites if going with base Slayer jump aeo stagger level.
Exact details can be determined as seen fit, e.g. no stagger vs CW overheads, or vs CWs in general and so on.

[Velsix]

On base cata, base Slayer ult staggers most elites afaik. Crunch enables it to stagger every elite I think. So no boss stagger and less potent stagger versus some elites if going with base Slayer jump aeo stagger level.
Exact details can be determined as seen fit, e.g. no stagger vs CW overheads, or vs CWs in general and so on.

I’m not sure if Fervency is better than Unending Hunt. Even in Cata true solos there’s usually not enough elites in a horde to justify Fervency, so Fervency’s main uses are vs patrols and monsters. Without boss stagger, WHC won’t be able to get boss aggro with it and will have to position to headshot the boss and hope they do enough damage to get aggro or that whoever has aggro kites with them. It would also perform poorly on lower attack speed builds/Saltz’ slower weapons. I Shall Judge You All definitely needs some changes for it to compete.

I think reducing its stagger strength to no longer stagger elites out of their overheads while keeping its ability to stagger bosses as a good compromise. This would be like how it is on Deathwish.

[MeleeSlaaneshFnE]

@James

You could build extremely ranged heavy in V1, potentially more so than V2.

And I loved it

[James]

Overall Unending Hunt is better, Psuedo crit distribution kinda ensures a high reliable crit rate during Animosity anyway.

Boss level stagger, 40% reduced cooldown and a reliable high crit rate for the whole party

Any career can reach a 24.93% psuedo crit constant assuming 5.0% crit chance on weapon & trinket and Animosity + Wild Fervour is active.

Fervency is quite selfish but very satisfying, WHC has to carry Animosity himself though.

[Frostysir]

@jiyakelma

Trash careers should get buff instead.

The thing is, there are no trash careers except possibly Huntsman and bounty hunter and mostly due to their weapons/melee being nerfed because the other career options for both characters got nerfed via their weapons.

(The stagger system and all that didnt help either)

Unless you are talking high level DWONS or such at which point you gotta take a step back and realize that anything that feels “strong” or at least “good” there is very likely overpowered in Cataclysm. Which is the official max level and thus the balance center.

[Incandescent]

@Frostysir

The thing is, there are no trash careers except possibly Huntsman and bounty hunter and mostly due to their weapons being nerfed becuase the other career options for both characters got nerfed via their weapons.

In the BBB everything on Kruber barring Executioner got buffed and everything on Saltz barring Billhook was also buffed so idk if that really follows

[MeleeSlaaneshFnE]

@Incandescent

lingering is a meme that probably shouldn’t exist as it does currently

How about make it into a Passive Ability? Or give it to Unchained, so it can be synergize with her Talent: Chain Reaction.

[Incandescent]

I’d prefer it simply stops existing tbh.

[ImNotARatSienna]

V2 just suffers from severe WoW Syndrome where a very vocal 1% minority of the playerbase from a shoddily designed game takes it as hobby to minmax the content, cheesing as much as possible and eventually breaking the gameplay sooner or later, demanding changes to be made just to start over with the minmaxing as soon as it happens and so on and so on.
This constant meta balance loop then leads to a horrible power creep, streamlining of gameplay elements and most importantly a game that gets balanced around a environment that doesn’t really exist like that for the remaining 99%.

[MeleeSlaaneshFnE]

I agree in most of part.

@FrivolousWizard

Healshare sucks, it’s on every hero, and it eats valuable temp HP talent space. Giving the healshare talent the same rarity as on kill talent would balance it out. Players like agency.

You mean Tier 3 / Level 15 talents, right? Then I agree.

[MeleeSlaaneshFnE]

Poor Chain Reaction

[SlashKex]

@Frostysir

The thing is, there are no trash careers except possibly Huntsman and bounty hunter and mostly due to their weapons being nerfed becuase the other career options for both characters got nerfed via their weapons.

Those careers are very far from trash. What does trash even mean to you? Weak? Not fun?

[Incandescent]

@ImNotARatSienna

This constant meta balance loop then leads to a horrible power creep, streamlining of gameplay elements and most importantly a game that gets balanced around a environment that doesn’t really exist like that for the remaining 99%.

None of the power creep we’ve seen has come from feedback from the “top” level though. Literally zero.

[James]

@ImNotARatSienna

This constant meta balance loop then leads to a horrible power creep, streamlining of gameplay elements and most importantly a game that gets balanced around a environment that doesn’t really exist like that for the remaining 99%.

If anything, that 1% have been trying to reduce power creep and only suggesting buffs to the things that really need it, typically weapons.
Some peeps like Iceolator have even went as far as creating mods to remove such things like Shade’s Vanish.

Most of them clearly differentiate between modded and offical realm.

[Incandescent]

Considering the BBB came mostly from us I’d like to think we’d not have to keep going around this bizarre cycle of people thinking modded realm players never play official or stick purely to meta-slaving

There’s multiple of us who upload or stream official realm content and a lot of us meme around a ton. The vast majority of my hours are on official

a lot of the inspiration for the weapon re-balance came from playing official realm and feeling like any time we used weapons such as falchion or swiftbow it was purely for memes rather than actually making meaningful choices. It felt stale so we tried to shake it up a little by bringing the top down a touch and the base up a touch.

But whatever I guess people will go off and assume we’re trying to balance for DWONSC3++deeds500%twitch or something despite the end results of our product very clearly proving otherwise.

All the major powercreep we’ve seen (cloak of mist, masterwork pistol, Unchained’s stagger changes, Famished Flames etc.) have come from Fatshark’s end and most certainly not from anything we provided in the mod or in feedback from our end of the community.

[Frostysir]

@Incandescent

In the BBB everything on Kruber barring Executioner got buffed and everything on Saltz barring Billhook was also buffed so idk if that really follows

Wasnt it all nerfed a lot before that though? I cant say i tracked the numbers but i seem to recall a lot of their weapons being hit pretty hard. Which was made worse by some weapons not meshing all that well with the new stagger system plus the two careers lacking really good THP sources.

Even if they got buffed back up a bit their melee was never quite the same.

[Frostysir]

Honestly i think they are decent enough but their melee suffers a lot in the present system if i am not mistaken.

I dont play either myself regularly but i chatted with a guy who plays BH almost exclusively and he stated that anytime BH gets locked into a melee then he´s already messed up badly since he´s so weak there.

Compare that to waystalker who still does alright there with at least a few of her weapons and BH does indeed look bad, even if he beats her in a ranged competiton.

[Incandescent]

Halberd and Falchion were nerfed quite hard long long before WoM dropped and then tuskgor spear got nerfed a touch after WoM had been out for a while. I forget if Axe & Falchion was nerfed with WoM or before. Repeater Pistol and Volley Xbow also received significant nerfs before WoM.

Otherwise everything remained pretty static/stagnant up until the BBB. Most of what nerfed BH in melee is talent/stagger system related rather than weaponry related. in Huntsman’s case he’s just pigeonholed into stagger weapons such as spear or mace but his melee feels rather solid comparatively.

[Frostysir]

You like the hammer on huntsman?

I tried it a couple of times but it somehow feels so lacking after having used it on merc and slayer…maybe cause it felt so great on them

[Incandescent]

ooo not the hammer lol, too slow for me

1h mace is an old school and very solid pick though