Alright, so, in interest of discussion, is taking stagger power away from Enhanced Power and putting it on Bulwark a thing?
I don’t mind being in the minority on this, but I remember briefly wondering way back in the Before Times why the stagger talents never improved staggering or any other effect (besides Assassin, which increased crit/headshot damage).
Small rant, if we want shieldy boys to take Bulwark and give everyone else a net-increase in horde clearing, than it made no sense to lock all stagger breakpoints behind EP + Opportunist. Come to think of it, I’d take all the flat power boost off of EP and make it ranged power only, and then put the extra cleave power from EP on Mainstay.
Wait, I just advocated earlier not putting Assassin on a bunch of other classes and called it WHC’s stick. Does this mean giving Mainstay the extra cleave from Enhance Power is taking Merc’s stick?
WHC’s Killing Shot makes farming thp on kill too safe and leads to too much burst thp with Animosity, as well as having anti-synergy with Flense.
Handmaiden takes multiple quick headshot hits or crits to kill things in melee with the only exception afaik being the Glaive’s charged attacks, and Glaive already works with both cleave and stagger.
Cleave, kill, headshot – Shade
Shade will probably never pick or want stagger.
Stagger, kill, headshot – Slayer
The only attack in Bardin’s entire melee kit that wants cleave is the Greataxe’s push attack and possibly its charged attack afaik (which works well with kill anyway). Slayer with Dual Axes or the 1h Axe would work with both crit/headshot and kill.
I’m not sure about SoTT. I’m not sure if stagger, cleave, kill or if cleave, kill, headshot would be more useful/better for weapon variety. Some of these like Handmaiden I’m also unsure about.
I’ve been mulling it over a little, and what if instead of buffing Bulwark you’d nerf the alternatives a little? That also strikes a blow against powercreep. If it’d be up to me, I’d do something like:
Enhanced Power: Reduced to 5%.
Smiter: Reduced to 10%.
Assassin: Headshot only, bonus 20%.
And then have Smiter and Assassin be mutually exclusive. Smiter for Bardin / Krub / Sienna, Assassin for Ker / Saltz. (Zealot, Handmaiden, and maybe Huntsman and SottT could be exceptions.)
Then at least the Stagger-Damage system wouldn’t be made fully redundant by the talents, and it helps against power creep and the more overppwered classes as well, which would be affected the most by this nerf.
Aye, I think a lot of people like cleave just because it’s so reliable.
It works no matter what regardless of headshots, stagger or kills.
Using on hit thp, even capped at 1 target would work as a solid base for regrowth/vanguard/bloodlust.
This way weapon/playstyle dictates talent choice rather than the other way around like we see with a couple careers. More of a flavour thing y’know?
I think that’s maybe a bit far. The other thp talents would probably need to be brought down if you were gonna go that far with cleave, because I think it would start losing out to them in a lot of scenarios, though the decay pause idea is interesting. it would also be a bit too difficulty reliant like that I feel. I’d say change it incrementally and it can always be adjusted down further if it still feels too good.
I’ve had similar thoughts, though I do wonder if such a change would be asking the modders to endure a fair bit of flak from the general community were such changes ever to make it to live. Maybe a slightly less extreme nerf, like assassin: 30, smiter 15 would be a middle ground more likely to be accepted by the wider community? I am very much sympathetic to the general idea of ensuring the changes don’t end up as overall power creep.
Bleh, if nerfing stuff results in an overall better situation at the cost of internet whining, FS can just blame me and I’ll take the blame. Dawi hears ya, Dawi just doesn’t care.
As nice as it sounds that’s likely to cause too many options and niche builds to fall flat. Would have to run numbers to see how it plays out.
I also think the powercreep problem is a little more complicated than just taking a nerfbat to the game at random. Some things need nerfing but it’s severely overblown as to what and how
trust me, I’m used to it at this point. Being simultaneously blasted for nerfing things and powercreeping things and also other random stuff like not respecting HEMA is an experience lemme tell ya.
That’s a fair point. But then again, there is nothing consequential in fundamental mechanics that you can change without screwing over one build and / or making another crazy. And that includes your mod in its current state. As you guys are pretty much already doing with this thing: You need to get the fundamentals right before it makes sense to tweak more specific stuff.
Another good point, in general. But I’d say that nerfing the stagger-damage talents is not doing a nerf at random, but rather a very deliberate change based on the arguments in my first reply in this thread.
Yeah I think I like all of these except for maybe slayer. Cog hammer, war pick, g axe heavies, 1h hammer, and dual hammers all perform well with cleave. I’d probably do cleave/kill/HS. Stagger seems like it doesn’t fit given that he’s specifically not given access to shields.
Small Update:
-Fixed Vanguard to work properly in a hacky way. Hopefully it is the last time I have to fix this and FS would need to figure out a better way of doing it.
-EP is now on the right side so stop being angry about it
I’m guessing it’s for mixing with multi-shot ranged weapons like BoP, the idea being to quickly shoot multiple elites at range, then finish them off up close for hp.
