Traits and Properties Ideas + A Thematic Talent Change

[Velsix]

This is not a comprehensive rework, just some of my (edit: and now other’s) ideas.

Traits

• Melee
  • Swift Slaying – Reduced to 15%. This is still a lot, still good and fun feeling.
  • Off Balance – Now you deal 20% more damage to enemies that are attacking (stacks).
  • Parry – Additional effect of parrying increasing your attack speed by 25% for 3 seconds.

• Necklace/Charm/Trinket
  • Healer’s Touch – Healing items no longer heal you immediately, but over time and heal for 25% more total health than normal.
  • Home Brewer – You can use a potion twice but the duration of each use is reduced by 50%. Credit to @hgjw for the idea found here.
  • Grenadier – Your bomb has a second delayed smaller explosion. There would be a UI indicator for the 2nd explosion where the bomb landed so other players could see it.

Properties

• Necklace
  • Push/Block Angle – Now additionally affects push radius.
  • Damage reduction vs – Replaced by 15% dodge range as it’s just health in another form.

• Trinket
  • Movement Speed – Increased to 7.5%.
  • Revive Speed & Respawn Speed – Merged with each other.

• Charm
  • Crit Power – Increases total damage instead of scaling off of crit modifier. Affects stagger.

Reply with extended reasoning

Talent Change — Riposte
“Blocking just as an enemy attack is about to hit costs no stamina and for the next 3 seconds causes your pushes and attacks to flinch elites and your next attack to be a critical hit.”

Parrying not costing stamina makes Riposte better on non-Rapier weapons, which is needed as it’s currently dangerous on other ones.

Flinching makes it so that the WHC can land more risky ripostes, (as otherwise they’d simply get hit for trying) makes Riposte less reliant on attack speed stacking, and makes actually landing ripostes more reliable (the flinch animation keeps an elite in place, while the normal recoil animation that they do after hitting the player’s block sends them back too far a lot of the time for the riposte to reach them).
This flinching would stagger elites out of non-overhead/non-berserker flurry attacks. Increasing the timer to 3 seconds makes it reasonable for low attack speed builds to land ripostes.

Once the crit has been used (when it hits something, pushes/misses don’t use up Riposte) or when the 3s timer runs out, pushes and attacks stop flinching elites. It could be made so that the flinch effect persists for the full 3 seconds even if the crit is used, any thoughts on this?

This gives Riposte a unique identity as a mixed defense and offense talent that enables WHC to frontline against mixed threats at the cost of a high skill floor and ceiling and less raw dps than the other options. This would not necessarily make Riposte competitive as a dps talent, but as a fun, rewarding talent which is the more important aspect.

Bonus idea: Add a secret synergy where if using both the Parry trait on your weapon and the Riposte talent, it lets you parry boss overheads.

[BongoSkaggs]

I’m not certain why you’ve combining a talent change request with a bunch of trait adjustment ideas. Seems to muddle whatever points you’re trying to make. I’m not even sure what point you’re trying to make about properties or traits. Your post provides little to no rationale for why you believe they need adjustment nor why your changes are for the best. Even the ones I kinda like and/or agree with.

As for your Riposte suggestion, I would say that one of the very last things WHC needs right now is more stagger potential on top of what is granted by his ultimate and his increased crit chance. He definitely doesn’t need a way to absorb boss overheads.

[Velsix]

@BongoSkaggs

I’m not certain why you’ve combining a talent change request with a bunch of trait adjustment ideas. Seems to muddle whatever points you’re trying to make. I’m not even sure what point you’re trying to make about properties or traits. Your post provides little to no rationale for why you believe they need adjustment nor why your changes are for the best.

I just added the Riposte idea in the hopes a few individuals would see it before/if Fatshark does another BBB. Fair enough though. Here’s the reasoning:

Traits

• Melee
  • Swift Slaying at 20% results in it exceeding Resourceful Combatant for the purposes of cooldown in most cases/coming close too often. A small reduction to 15% should tip the balance back to RS for pure cooldown purposes on medium to long cooldowns. It’s also just difficult to make other traits match a trait that is more powerful than most talents, so a small nerf is called for.
  • Off Balance is terrible. The problem is the effect is tied to the specific enemies that hit your block, making it trash if you have to move away from those enemies. Add in the fact that it doesn’t stack and it’s basically a meme. Dealing 20% more damage to enemies that are attacking creates a powerful alternative to Swift Slaying that is less safe, but can reach several strong breakpoints.
  • Parry is very bad in a game where 60% BCR will protect you from almost anything. Making it increase attack speed by 30% for 3 seconds makes it good in high pressure contexts/on backfoot/clutch situations, which is inline with the original purpose of the talent - defense, just with a bit of offense in it with a focus on reacting dealing with a bad scenario. It could be less or for a fixed number of attacks, I’d have to hear the thoughts of others on it.

• Necklace/Charm/Trinket
  • Healer’s Touch/Home Brewer/Grenadier are rng traits that don’t belong in their current form. Every third use is consistent and has more potential as a competitive trait without just bumping the % chance to an unreasonably high amount.

Properties

• Necklace
  • Push block angle increasing push radius would make it an effective choice for things like a high stagger strength FK with the Greatsword, as it would make landing the push attack safer (currently it’s a very bad property that does little to nothing in practice).
  • Damage reduction is essentially just more health and will always compete with it as such. Since health already successfully fills the position of increasing the player’s direct defense, and BCR/Stamina already do so for blocking, dodge range would be inline with other necklace properties as a defensive property.

• Trinket
  • Movement speed is bad outside of stacking it, and even on the careers that can stack it 5% is usually not important. At 7.5% it should feel better without breaking balance.
  • Revive Speed is mediocre outside of Handmaiden, and Respawn Speed is trash. Combining the two makes an at least very team friendly talent.

• Charm
  • Most weapons don’t have high enough crit modifiers to make crit power increase their crit damage more than just a power property would. Changing it to be a simple damage increase of 20% will make it more useful on more weapons. It affecting stagger strength of crits, just as the other power properties do for all attacks already, lets it weave it’s way into more careers like WHC, without making it overpowered.

@BongoSkaggs

As for your Riposte suggestion, I would say that one of the very last things WHC needs right now is more stagger potential on top of what is granted by his ultimate and his increased crit chance.

For most part criticals are unimportant or at least unreliable for stagger. WHC has no unique source of raw power, so stamina recovery from Cast Away is mostly for staggering chaff mobs. Unending Hunt is the only real strong source of stagger that’s unique to WHC (WHC’s aoe stagger is good, but it’s also weaker than Merc’s due to Merc’s power and even UC’s right now). That would only work vs boss overheads on parry with both the talent and the trait. Need is irrelevant as no one really needs anything, after all WHC doesn’t need Deathknell and Flense either to deal damage, but that doesn’t mean they should be different on that basis alone. The idea is to make Riposte a fun talent that can be used when under pressure. This makes it do something that is unique from just more damage.

Basically this is like how Riposte was before crit flinching was removed. It was pretty fun. WHC could handle a lot of things and clutch well but only if they parried frequently.

[DameArstor]

@Velsix

Necklace/Charm/Trinket

• Healer’s Touch/Home Brewer/Grenadier are rng traits that don’t belong in their current form. Every third use is consistent and has more potential as a competitive trait without just bumping the % chance to an unreasonably high amount.

I agree with everything except for Grenadier.With Homebrewer,you get less effectiveness from running it compared to just plain old Decanter/Proxy(even Concoction) and that is if you even managed to dupe it.Healer’s Touch is just eh compared to Boon of Shallya,all it provides is just a chance for you to get two heals out of it(also,Hand of Shallya is sort of a much worse trait now that healing someone with a medkit while you’re wounded clears your wound).As for Grenadier,the only other traits it’s competing with is Shrapnel(which is good if your team can focus on a single target/a pat) and Explosive Ordnance(with the fixed round bomb damage on Cata,can end up killing people more than helping them when str potted).I much prefer running Grenadier just because the potential bomb getting duped could either help with ledging a boss,keep a pat staggered(and kill) or get myself out of sticky situations and also because usually there’s atleast one person in the team running Shrapnel.

[Throne_of_Rats]

@DameArstor

As for Grenadier,the only other traits it’s competing with is Shrapnel(which is good if your team can focus on a single target/a pat) and Explosive Ordnance(with the fixed round bomb damage on Cata,can end up killing people more than helping them when str potted).I much prefer running Grenadier just because the potential bomb getting duped could either help with ledging a boss,keep a pat staggered(and kill) or get myself out of sticky situations and also because usually there’s atleast one person in the team running Shrapnel.

I don’t think I’ve spent 1 minute in Verm2 without grenadier, once I had trait options available for the trinket. The chance for a god-proc completely outweighs the other options in most practical situations. People usually do more than enough damage already to anything that moves, and increased radius is just an extra hazard for your team since you can’t disable grenade FF.

[Velsix]

What I’ve gathered from you and DameArstor is that it’s the other traits are somewhat lacking, not Grenadier. I think this is because bombs are used as more of a stagger utility rather than a form of dps, and Grenadier contributes to their utility while Ordinance and Shrapnel are just damage increases most of the time. Do you think Grenadier should be left as is and the other traits changed, or should all of the Trinket traits stay as they are?

[Adelion]

I am sorry. But I don’t think I can get behind many of these ideas:

@Velsix

Swift Slaying – Reduced to 15%. This is still a lot, still good and fun feeling.

Swift Slaying (and relation Crit Chance and Attack Speed) have so many problems that simply reducing it to 15 % will not solve anything. This needs a far more drastic change and there are several measures which could be taken and it still being a good but not broken trait anymore.

@Velsix

Off Balance – Now you deal 20% more damage to enemies that are attacking (stacks).

With very very few exceptions enemies are in a constant state of attacking something (an exception would be a Stormfiend dicking around). So this would translate to a more or less permanent 20 % damage bonus … which is not something I would support consider how much we one-shot already.

@Velsix

Parry – Additional effect of parrying increasing your attack speed by 30% for 3 seconds.

I think that could work. Although I am against the stacking of drooling attack speed. 30 % even if just for three seconds is to much if you consider how many attack speed talents we already have.

@Velsix

Healer’s Touch/Home Brewer/Grenadier – Each one activates on the third use of their specific item instead of a chance on use. This is to make them consistent and more useful.

Consistency is a point, however, I am not sure how fixated I personally am for this. I don’t think I would mind much. But there is a certain tendency of players to have total control over everything. Give them some random stuff to let them get out of the comfort zone.

@Velsix

Damage reduction vs – Replaced by 15% dodge range as it’s just health in another form.

The actually more interesting idea is to remove the health bonus and to increase the damage reduction vs traits to levels above 20 %. So that you can customize where you need the damage reduction the most.

@Velsix

Movement Speed – Increased to 7.5%.

We don’t need more movement speed. Really. This is already fast enough. Considering that there are idiots air slashing just to speed in front of everyone I wouldnt introduce stuff to widen this gap. Actually, I would add a stamina limitation to attacks which boost movement speed.

@Velsix

Revive Speed & Respawn Speed – Merged with each other.

Would be okay with that.

@Velsix

Crit Power – Increases total damage instead of scaling off of crit modifier. Affects stagger.

Another damage increase in addition to the off-balance change. And even for both melee and range. Introducing even more one-shot possibilities. If you are upset with the crit modifier maybe let it affect the crit modifier itself instead of the crit power. Although this would have to be balanced carefully in regard to the broken crit/attack speed combination.

[Velsix]

@Adelion

Swift Slaying (and relation Crit Chance and Attack Speed) have so many problems that simply reducing it to 15 % will not solve anything. This needs a far more drastic change and there are several measures which could be taken and it still being a good but not broken trait anymore.

Gl with that. You’ll need it.

@Adelion

With very very few exceptions enemies are in a constant state of attacking something (an exception would be a Stormfiend dicking around). So this would translate to a more or less permanent 20 % damage bonus … which is not something I would support consider how much we one-shot already.

Whenever an enemy is staggered they are no longer attacking. It wouldn’t be impossible to make monsters immune to this effect, which would be fine as it would mostly be used for breakpoints which would not be relevant on monsters. It would still be useful, as enemies are at their most dangerous when not staggered, but it contributes little to the dps vomit most teams do on hordes. I’m also interested in seeing players carefully pick out targets to kill them rather than spamming light attacks 24/7.

@Adelion

I think that could work. Although I am against the stacking of drooling attack speed. 30 % even if just for three seconds is to much if you consider how many attack speed talents we already have.

That’s fair. I was more focused on the direction of the change rather than the exact numbers. I’d personally drop it to 20%. 3 seconds was to make it match a changed Riposte. I was also thinking an alternative could be parried enemies go into a longer lasting stagger animation instead of the current recoil one, but I was worried that would overlap with Opportunist too much.

@Adelion

Consistency is a point, however, I am not sure how fixated I personally am for this. I don’t think I would mind much. But there is a certain tendency of players to have total control over everything. Give them some random stuff to let them get out of the comfort zone.

I dislike it when someone on my team throws 5 bombs in a row and melts a pat on their own, but each to their own I suppose.

@Adelion

The actually more interesting idea is to remove the health bonus and to increase the damage reduction vs traits to levels above 20 %. So that you can customize where you need the damage reduction the most.

If vs specials is an option it will always be picked at the meta level, even if it’s 5% less from specials vs 20% less from horde enemies, specials will always be picked, simply because specials kill runs the most out of any enemy.

@Adelion

We don’t need more movement speed. Really. This is already fast enough. Considering that there are idiots air slashing just to speed in front of everyone I wouldnt introduce stuff to widen this gap. Actually, I would add a stamina limitation to attacks which boost movement speed.

People slashing air in front of them aren’t ‘idiots’ because they play differently from you, whether you approve of it or not. As it stands it’s a bad property. I’m not a fan of using attacks to move quickly around the map but I’d still like to this property become a competitive option even if it wouldn’t be for me. I’m also a fan of having 40% attack speed on WHC but I still think SS is too strong.

@Adelion

Another damage increase in addition to the off-balance change. And even for both melee and range. Introducing even more one-shot possibilities. If you are upset with the crit modifier maybe let it affect the crit modifier itself instead of the crit power. Although this would have to be balanced carefully in regard to the broken crit/attack speed combination.

It’s a pretty bad property. Unless you’re advocating for power vs to be nerfed, it’s going to stay incredibly niche unless it affects breakpoints. If a power or crit power property isn’t giving more stagger or breakpoints, then what use is it? Even on Cata 3 on modded where enemies have more health, collective dps increases over time matter little. Letting it affect stagger has interesting potential applications for builds that have a source of guaranteed crits.

[Adelion]

@Velsix

Gl with that. You’ll need it.

I don’t care it is an uphill battle. The combination of attack speed to crit chance was and still is a mistake as well as the endless stackibility of attack speed. It doesnt need removal but a balance mechanism to give it a soft cap. There are several measures which can be taken. But I doubt we get a trait rework anyway. At least not before we get a crafting rework. If they are doing that (and depending on how the crafting rework looks like) they can make a server-wide erasure of all traits and start from the beginning again. They would just have to communicate it before hand. I would support starting from scratch again, even if I had to sacrifice Opportunist.

@Velsix

I’m also interested in seeing players carefully pick out targets to kill them rather than spamming light attacks 24/7.

I don’t understand that part? I mean the damage bonus is applied to all attacking enemies. So as a horde is permanently attacking you can still spam light attacks on them. That enemies dont get more damage while staggered isnt important if they are felt by the first hit.

@Velsix

If vs specials is an option it will always be picked at the meta level, even if it’s 5% less from specials vs 20% less from horde enemies, specials will always be picked, simply because specials kill runs the most out of any enemy.

But you can balance them individually. You could get a +20 % vs Skaven or + 40 % against AoE or +30 % against specials. The numbers could tinkered endlessy until they fit. And it is not the special damage that kills the run but their disabling effect or that the team gets separated. What does reduced damage against Blightstormers or Packmasters help? Nothing.

@Velsix

People slashing air in front of them aren’t ‘idiots’ because they play differently from you, whether you approve of it or not. As it stands it’s a bad property. I’m not a fan of using attacks to move quickly around the map but I’d still like to this property become a competitive option even if it wouldn’t be for me. I’m also a fan of having 40% attack speed on WHC but I still think SS is too strong.

In a world where people consistently complain about immersion and why Beastmen should be removed from xyz but the same people jumping around like gummibears and are slashing the air just to move faster or to farm kills before the rest of the team, then they are idiots. I use the movement speed on several characters and it fulfills its function and it is good enough as it is.

@Velsix

It’s a pretty bad property. Unless you’re advocating for power vs to be nerfed, it’s going to stay incredibly niche unless it affects breakpoints. If a power or crit power property isn’t giving more stagger or breakpoints, then what use is it? Even on Cata 3 on modded where enemies have more health, collective dps increases over time matter little. Letting it affect stagger has interesting potential applications for builds that have a source of guaranteed crits.

If it is bad just remove it and replace it with something completely different. I’m personally against traits which are just more dps in any form may it be attack speed or poison or bleed effect or direct damage increase. We have more than enough dps in the game and removing more breakpoints is actually preferable instead of introducing new ones.

Anyway, traits are out of whack as we have some to niche and some far far far to powerful which should never remain in that state. There needs to be a major rework why I am suggesting to concentrate on them in their own BBB even if they have obvious synergies with talents. Personally, as written above, I would start from zero. In my eyes, the general power level of them should be below talents but above properties. This is the case for some of them but not all.

[Velsix]

@Adelion

In a world where people consistently complain about immersion and why Beastmen should be removed from xyz but the same people jumping around like gummibears and are slashing the air just to move faster or to farm kills before the rest of the team, then they are idiots. I use the movement speed on several characters and it fulfills its function and it is good enough as it is.

It’s almost like it’s a video game. All of the vets that have several thousands of hours in both V1 and V2 are idiots then. Jsat is an idiot. Core is an idiot. I’m an idiot. I’m not going to make any further replies to you, goodbye.

[Adelion]

People can’t complain about immersion and then do stuff which breaks immersion. Obviously, it is contradictory.

[Throne_of_Rats]

@Adelion

People can’t complain about immersion and then do stuff which breaks immersion. Obviously, it is contradictory.

These are two different groups of players though. The ones you see using movement tech generally care more-so about gameplay and don’t really mind fluff or flavor.

[hgjw]

@Velsix

Necklace/Charm/Trinket

• Healer’s Touch/Home Brewer/Grenadier are rng traits that don’t belong in their current form. Every third use is consistent and has more potential as a competitive trait without just bumping the % chance to an unreasonably high amount.

I’d personally just rework these entirely by giving them some other effect. The current RNG natured one is bit idiotic in some situations(patrol deletion is decent example) but keeping tabs on who has the potential 3rd use coming up is also just annoying in my opinion and wont for that reason see much use.

Rest of your ideas I’m more ok/neutral with so i won’t delve too much on those.

[Adelion]

If they are different people it is halfway okay. But I have seen people using immersion as argument once for removing stuff they don’t like and the same people doing then stuff which is immersion breaking.

Anyway, I think unlimited movement boost is a bad mechanic for a cooperative game and it is something which can be discussed elsewhere to not derail from the original topic.

[Velsix]

@hgjw

but keeping tabs on who has the potential 3rd use

Good point, that would be tedious. How about:

• Healer’s Touch – Healing items no longer heal you immediately, but over time and heal for 50% more health in total than normal.
• Can’t think of anything for Home Brewer atm sorry. Something like ‘Your potions are 25% stronger, but take away half of your health once the duration of their effect ends’ would be cool but way too strong on any career with half decent thp generation.
• Grenadier – Your bomb has a second delayed smaller explosion. There would be a UI indicator for the 2nd explosion where the bomb landed so other players could see it.

[alsozara]

Mostly agreed and not much to add about your suggestions that hasn’t already been said in this thread.

The discussion of Explosive Ordinance made me wonder though, would it be too much to make explosive ordinance also remove/heavily reduce bomb FF? I really like the trait personally but it doing more harm than good seems to be the opinion of just about everyone I’ve talked to about it.

[hgjw]

Well without going into numbers arguments (Healers touch sounds really powerful) those are some solid ideas.

Brewer could easily be something like getting 1-2 extra uses on potions but reduced duration or some other penalty. Not personally fan of anything relating to health since those usually are extremely easy to bypass.

Grenadier one sounds fun yet simple. Nothing much to add here.

[Incandescent]

@Adelion

In a world where people consistently complain about immersion and why Beastmen should be removed from xyz but the same people jumping around like gummibears and are slashing the air just to move faster or to farm kills before the rest of the team, then they are idiots.

are you just like…making up types of people to get mad at? In any case that’s nothing to really do with the balance of movetech or movement properties/talents

[MeleeSlaaneshFnE]

I agree with most of part about your idea.

@Velsix

Each one activates on the third use of their specific item instead of a chance on use.

I think both chance(%) and “granted when ?th time” should be exist together, of course the number and “how it works” should has to be different then, though.

[Adelion]

@Incandescent

are you just like…making up types of people to get mad at? In any case that’s nothing to really do with the balance of movetech or movement properties/talents

Unfortunately not. And

@Adelion

Anyway, I think unlimited movement boost is a bad mechanic for a cooperative game and it is something which can be discussed elsewhere to not derail from the original topic.