Kruber is the character we play in the intro, so he’s the first character every single new player is exposed to. Further, he’s the pre-selected, leftmost, default character once you actually start playing the game, so he’s a lot of players’ first choice. He’s also, across all three classes, extremely clunky at the best of times and is now the most underpowered character overall, even in the hands of skilled veterans, and he lacks the functional tankiness to make up for it. As such, a lot of ppls’ first exposure to multiplayer is going to be extremely lackluster.
Having any one class not be as smooth, polished, well thought out, or fun as it should be is a big deal. Having an entire character suffer from this is an even bigger deal. Having the default and poster-boy character have this many problems and such a prevalent identity crisis on all three classes is catastrophic. I have witnessed new players ragequit over how unfun and unbalanced Kruber is to play unless you know 100% exactly what you’re doing with him and play him flawlessly at all times. Almost everything about every Kruber class and weapon needs to be looked at.
I don’t know why but you’ve taken everything that made him remotely competitive with other classes and removed it. It’s time to pay him the attention he deserves.
Yeah Kruber needs some serious love. Let’s make a nice little list.
Now some of this is going to be anecdotal and my own opinion. Some of it is objective.
Mercenary
Support classes in general are wasted in VT2 because of how the matches actually play out. You will always have been better served to bring either more DPS or more tankiness. What tiny little support he gives would have been offset by taking another class and simply doing more DPS and removing threats faster on his own.
His support is to give 10% extra attack speed - during hordes, and only during hordes. That is, if he talents for it. This feels really good, to get that extra speed, but it is ultimtely almost useless. Hordes are the least dangerous thing in this game, and everyone does just fine without the extra speed.
His entire kit is based around one thing only. To kill hordes quickly in melee. To kill hordes quickly in melee is a fine thing, but it can’t be the only thing a class does, since, after all, hordes aren’t very dangerous at all. His passives and talents simply do not proc against anything that is actually dangerous. Shielders, SV, Maulers, Elites, Bosses. You’re not going to cleave 3 of any of those.
He also doesn’t have any inherent tankiness worth speaking of. He can get 35% damage reduction, when below 50% health. This is…not that useful. He can also, if giving up his actual support role, get 25% damage reduction during hordes. This is also not very useful, since…well…hordes are hardly the most dangerous things a Merc can get hit by. Essentially, he is missing any worthwhile tankiness, either in the form of damage reduction, increased dodge or increased movement speed.
His ultimate is truly, tryly abysmal. The increased temp HP is less than worthless, considering everyone creates their own. I suppose it could save someone in extreemely specific situations, but ultimates should never be designed to be held only for extremely specific situations. The same goes for the option to res teammates. Only in very, very few situations would it actually be a good idea to res someone that you can’t safely go to and res. Most of the time, if you can’t get to them, ressing them will just get them killed regardless. Having established that the temp HP and ressing of the ult are 99% of the time completely worthless, you’re left with an ult that does some knockdown, on an insanely long cooldown. Nothing about his ultimate is good.
Weapon selection. People always say “well but he has access to halberd” as a reason for why Merc/HS/Kruber is good despite being mediocre. It’s not as good as people think. There’s a reason people try to make exe sword and even 2H sword work. He lacks the fast dodgedance weapons of other classes. The 1H mace is OK, but it’s got nothing on DS, SnD, Falchion and more. I keep seeing Mercs go down to just a few enemies with the halberd. It’s not as slow as some weapons, but it is relatively slow, both in attack, move and dodge. Whenever enemies get “inside” the range of it, they tend to bypass blocks as well - and generally you can’t block as late as you can with for instance falchion, DS, SnD.
Now for my own experiences and anecdotes. I’ve actually never seen a halberd Merc rack up as many melee kills as say Zealot or Slayer. Mostly because the Merc is so squishy he’s usually down. Personally, I find it MUCH easier to melee with WS and with BH, two classes that are even more squishy and since everyone thinks they’re totes ranged, you’d think they would be worse at it. They have access to actually good, fast and mobile weapons, however. Speed and mobility make up for not having damage reduction. I find the falchion horde clear much better and safer than halberd. Equally, SnD are very good at horde clear once you master the dodge dance, and they have good AP. Heck, if you want to fully trash a horde and leave AP for other people, go with dual swords. You’ll melee like nothing else.
Where are these kinds of weapons for Merc, the dedicated melee hordeclearer?
Huntsman
Well really, just look at any of the many, many threads about him. I can’t be bothered to type up everything wrong with him all over again. Much like Merc though, he is missing good fast mobile weapons.
Footknight
His ultimate is pretty good, as long as you mostly cancel it so you don’t move. Rushing into the middle of a horde really isn’t what FK should be doing, but the knockback is good, and even somewhat reliable. It’s prone to be eaten by a single slaverat attack, but so are many other ultimates. It pales in comparison to the utility of Ironbreaker’s ult, however.
His damage reduction, if specced for, maxes out at 25%. Combined with high hitpoints, this does make him somewhat tanky. Unless there were other careers to compare him with, of course. Slayer and Zealot both have 50% damage reduction. Zealot can’t be killed for 10 seconds every 2 minutes or so, if he happens to get taken to 0 health. Ironbreaker has comparable hitpoints and damage reduction, and on top of it, can ignore hits pretty often - or if he ultimates. In short, Footknight is the worst tank of the tanks.
Ranged weapon selection is really, really abysmal compared to Ironbreaker. Ironbreaker has such a good selection of ranged kit that he can be specced as a super tanky ranged DPS. Zealot also has access to very, very good ranged options. He can pick brace of pistols if he wants to be able to quickly whip out ranged and delete whatever is coming, or crossbow for longer distance elite deletion, for instance.
DPS. The other tanks have more of it. Alot more. Both melee and ranged (sans slayer, but his melee is insane to make up for it.) FK’s ult could maybe be used as an excuse for having less DPS since it can stagger and disrupt and is up pretty often, but most of the time it’s still better to just kill things faster. Even with the halberd that everyone seems to think is the best weapon in the game, he just can’t keep up. Even if he specs into 10 seconds of 25% powerboost on his ult, it’s just not enough. Plus - when everything around you is lying on the floor anyway is when you least need more damage.
Melee weapons. See Merc notes. They are so, so bad. Exe sword needs to be faster and have more cleave. The shield weapons are truly atrocious, they stop you from dodging boss attacks, and barely does armor damage at all. The 2H sword is a short-range joke, with very limited use and limited AP. The 1H sword…eh…yeah it’s the same as Sienna’s. Go figure.
Please God fix Kruber so some people can let it go. It’s over, let go. Stop making threads about him. I’m fed up. I think FatShark get it - Several people think Kruber is busted.
While you’re at it remove the stupid screen effects, time wasting ducking and crappy quick switch on huntsman. Being a much worse waystalker doesn’t really sell him as a character, thanks.
Also as mentioned in another post, if ultis of merc and FK were swapped it would fit their playstyles better.
Also halberd is still so far ahead of his other weapons to the point of being weird and OP. Its light attacks are really fast and mostly has more AP than charged ones. Imo it should attack far slower with more damage and its charged attacks should be the ones with real ap. Thats a polearm after all.
Merc: add damage reduction to attack speed proc ad reduce enemies needed to two.
FK: increase range of passive and reduce the damage canceling charge
Huntsman: see other posts
In general buff his weapons or change them outright. He literally has 3 weapons I’d consider good at best. FK can’t even use shield and 1h because they are so atrocious…