Traits need to be rework

some are just too bad.

Melee

Heroic Intervention -> Sharpened Edge:

increase the damage inflict by 10% against unarmored units. armored units will take 10% less damage however.

Off Balance -> Blade to Blade:

resist none-melee damage by 20%, will take 10% more from melee however.

Opportunist -> Unreal Pose:

cant be damaged while counter-attacking, will cost additional stamina however.

Resourceful Combatant -> Gift of Violence:

grant 5% damage increase per cleaving through enemies for 5 seconds, each stack will decrease crit chance by 2.5% however.

Ranged

Inspirational Shot -> Bull’s Eye:

each successful shot grant 50% reload speed for 5 seconds, velocity will be lowered by 20% however.

Hunter -> Shooting Spree:

each shot double its count, accuracy will be lowered by 20% however.

Necklace

Bloodthirsty:

constantly lose a health every 5 seconds whilst vital is above 10%. will boost the temporary health gain by 100% however.

Wild within Vein:

temporary health no longer faded and overflow will turn into normal vitality. stacking normal vitality above 70% of max health will clear any wound.

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We’re looking to do a trait rework, or what we’d call a ‘pass’ on all the traits in the game. Good thread, drop your ideas or feedback on the traits here collectively for ease of parsing :slight_smile:

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Replace inspirational shot with a melee trait that restores one stamina shield on headshot. You still need to make a headshot and horde\overhead can break through several shields anyway, so it’s not going to be infinite stamina, but with stamina on kill gone this would help for weapons reliant on pushstrike\plain pushing.
Cleave related trait? Trait for increasing your damage on secondary targets\increasing amount of targets cleaved on the weapon.
Reload related ranged trait would be nice, but knowing that reload stacks additively, I’m worrying for Huntsman (it could become meta for him and punish his talent\this trait).

Okay, long post coming, because Hedge asked for it.

First off, I do agree that a lot of the Traits need rebalancing (possibly even most of them) but I’m not fond of OP’s ideas. Both changing existing things to completely different stuff, and built-in tradeoffs (i. e. you get bonus on this, but a penalty on that) are something I dislike. Most Traits already have the potential to be useful, but either compared to other stuff or even on their own they’re unbalanced; there also is already a native tradeoff in Trait choices in that you can only choose one per item. Of course, the current balance is such that in many cases there is only one useful option, so the tradeoff isn’t really there, but as the rest are balanced, it will become apparent.

I also still think that it might be a good idea to separate the Trait procs from crits, but that might be a too major change now. The variance in crit chance is huge: From the 5% base (afaik) to I think 45% momentarily, or up to 25% on some setups constantly. The crits by themselves are also already a powerful tool, and worth stacking on several Careers and weapons; the crit-based Traits only add to that. Balancing those Traits while taking the huge variance on Crit Chance into account is a huge chore, if not (nearly) impossible.

As for any particular Traits:

On Melee weapons, Swift Slaying seems to be the ruler now. It’s the primary reason crit builds appear to be the most popular stuff right now, and might be too strong on its own. In addition to its sheer strength (20% Attack Speed helps a lot at everything except single heavy hits), it also helps to keep itself up all the time, especially on already fast weapons. Putting a cooldown on its proccing could help, but that could easily make its use too inconstant and unreliable to feel good. Limiting its bonus would likely be a better direction.
Parry is the one Melee Trait I feel is where it’s supposed to be. It’s useful, but not on every weapon or setup; it gives a significant advantage, but that’s only momentary and still requires skill to use. The Dodge changes from the Big Balance Patch did (indirectly) reduce its effectiveness somewhat, but that might well have been warranted. If its parameters were to be tweaked, I think its activation window is the only thing possible, but it’d probably end up being either negligible, too strong or too weak.
Resourceful Combatant is near-useless now, even with high-crit setups. Limiting its procs to one every few seconds put a too big damper on it. As it is, the return on cooldown is negligible, and can be surpassed by the innate CDR effects with Swift Slaying, in addition to “wasting” several crits in the meantime. The reasons it used to be too strong was, again, the high proc rate some setups could reach (on Kerillian especially, with fast weapons and extra Crit Chance on them) and that it applied a static 2 second advancement to the skill cooldown (which made it way more effective on the already short cooldowns). I think its original design (or at least how it was meant to be) would’ve been the best: The reduction being a proportional part of the remaining cooldown, so that it’d be useful on every Career, somewhat more effective on the high-cooldown ones that actually need any reduction they can get. It would still make sense to limit the procs to one per strike, however, but not to several-second cooldown.
Off Balance’s biggest problem is probably that it doesn’t stack with other similar effects. It’s already limited in scope, mostly useful on Ironbreaker and certain other setups that block constantly (be it just for defense or as part of a push- or push-attack routine), so if there’s a WHC in the group, it goes near-useless, and having a bomber with Shrapnel reduces its effectiveness too. Getting these bonuses to stack would be strong, but I don’t think that situation would come up too often to be a significant issue, especially without a well-coordinated team. It would still leave Off Balance as a somewhat niche Trait, but one that could be used effectively.
Heroic Intervention is the one Trait I think could use a total rework, as I think it’s pretty much unsalvageable. Its effect is lifted pretty much directly from VT1, but the assist mechanic that made it moderately useful there got dropped out at some point during development of VT2. Unless someone feels like programming back the old assist mechanic (you get an “assist” whenever you kill an enemy that was about to hit your ally), it activates so rarely that it’s useless. And frankly, I think that getting in an extra mechanic for the sake of a single Trait is wasted work.
Opportunist seems too weak. So weak, in fact, that I’m not sure if it works as it should. Its effect should be strong enough to allow at least most weapons that normally cannot interrupt significant enemy attacks, to do just that. Those significant attacks are primarily any attack done by Elites; trash gets interrupted (and downright killed) easily enough, and their attacks are weak compared to Elites too. It also should have enough effect that it’s apparent that it works; as it is, it’s hard to track whether any attacks at all get interrupted with and without the Trait.

On the Ranged side, Resourceful Sharpshooter bumps into the same problems as its melee counterpart. Add in that ranged weapons aren’t generally used against hordes, and they have a consistent enough a tradeoff between penetration and firing speed, so the overly frequent procs aren’t even that problematic. Same thoughts about balancing as in melee side apply here too.
Heat Sink is the heat version of the former, and runs into similar troubles. In addition, its effect is way too limited now, even with Pyro’s heaps of Crit Chance, and doesn’t even work at all with the few weapons that could still effectively otherwise use it. In its former form, it also was the single worst offender (I think) about getting overly good with being bound to crit chance, with even Ironbreaker (who has no innate Crit Chance bonuses) using a Drakegun being capable of losing more heat than the big burst cost him. In all honesty, this might be another unfixable Trait without changing something fundamental. The best taht could probably be done would be to change its reward to a more limited form of the earlier (wit 1 heat lost per proc), and tying its proccing to headshots instead of crits (and probably, again, limited to one proc per attack or per a time unit), but even that probably would open it up for abuse.
Conservative Shooter is in a pretty good place, I think. In general, it allows only ammo sustain, but on certain weapons and situations (and with skill and a bit of luck involved), can be still used to gain a limited amount. A player with good aim can use it consistently to keep their ammo up, but it’s hard enough that not many even attempt it all the time. Its potential ammo gain could be limited (although I don’t think it needs to, as setting up multiple headshots on a single ammo isn’t easy) by limiting its procs to two or even one per shot, I guess.
Barrage and Hunter are both mostly good. I think their only problem is the effective selection of applicable weapons for each one, as any slow-firing weapon is effectively pretty much excluded on most Careers; they generally don’t get enough shots out either to utilize Barrage effectively, or to generate enough crits to use Hunter. There are effective builds to use both, though.
Inspirational Shot is a problematic one. In theory, it sounds kind of nice, and certain Careers can really use some additional Stamina regen. But in practice, getting enough headshots in to be effective with the Trait usually cannot be done in situations where the extra stamina is needed, and the whole team needs to have coordinated builds to get any real use out of it (as the selection of both weapons that can get enough headshots out to use the effect, and weapons that can take advantage of the extra stamina well are limited). Just for fun, I’ve also tried this out - and my friends had a hard time even saying if the build was effective. I really cannot figure out how this could made better, as its problems are quite fundamental, but I like the idea, so I have to reluctantly recommend a complete change or removal of the Trait.
Scrounger is good. Its interactions on certain weapons (Repeater Pistol) and attacks (Shotgun bash) could use some looking into, but otherwise, I have no complaints now.
With Thermal Equalizer my only complaint is that it’s a boring, passive bonus. It works fine, but doesn’t require any kind of activity to be effective; it just allows shooting more. Boring, but practical.

Necklaces are mostly good now, after the Big Balance. I haven’t used Barkskin significantly, but a friend has, and it’s been an effective enough backup, so it seems to have found its place for now. I’m not completely convinced it’s still worth picking up instead of the other Traits, but there you go.
Hand of Shallya is the only one I’m kind of worried about for now. It’s still only effective on (approximately) half the healing we find, and only if you heal someone else. Of course, the latter is mitigated by the Trait encouraging you to always use those Supplies on someone else, but that still leaves the problem of only half the healing items being applicable. All other Traits affect both items equally, and possibly other things too. Changing numbers alone isn’t likely to bring this in balance either, as I think if that “half the items only” is attempted to balance through effectiveness, it will end up being too strong on that half. I guess the best way would be to bring in an additional effect, applicable to Draughts, but I don’t know what it could be.

Charm Traits are pretty fine balance-wise (I guess Concoction is a bit too rarely useful, but even it has its place), but they have another problem: Grimoires. Grimoires replacing your potion means that at the end of most runs (at least on Legend) two people end up not being able to use their Charm Traits at all. This is compounded on some tough Careers, who end carrying the Grims nearly every time - and the first Grim is quite early in some maps (and in Skittergate, it’s both). So either a new Trait applicable to Grim carriers or a way to use Potions (likely immediately using a Potion you try to pick up) while carrying one would be hugely appreciated. The latter would also give more value to RV’s Master Brewer.

Trinkets have two issues, I think. The first one is simply the lack of options: There are only three Traits to choose from. This gets worse as Explosive Ordinance, useful as it might be, requires some retraining every time you change to or from it if you want to avoid friendly fire and still be effective. I also think that the AoE on grenades is already large enough for nearly all situations, especially as you can usually manipulate the enemies’ spread to some extent, so Ordinance loses on that account too. That leaves just two options to choose from.

For completely new Traits, I’d like to see something headshot-related in melee, but I don’t have any particular ideas.

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You said everything I was going to say, Yzneftamz, and more.

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there’re limited setup for items properties (speaking of witch, 33% grimoire resistance and 5% crit chance for trinket and so on) and i found its very boring, typical. you might dislike my trade-off but this will allow players to build their own, unique setup that fits for their playstyle even more (not saying my ideas is the only way though). getting advantages only are too typical arent they? as that being said myself even wants more properties.

i see these will be a hard time when quick-look, but am sure theyll get used to it as time passed.

further more not the traits are the only problem but the talents and weapons.

Sienna is pretty under powered right now.
heat slow down her attacks and the movement. will knock down herself when overheated.
must sacrifice own vital to keep the phase. damaging multiple enemies will increase the heat cost.
most importantly, her magic dealt too less compare to others. think about bardin’s heat weapon. he dont even have slow down for god sake.

Kerillian’s hagbane is pretty meh. in damage-wise its great but the ammo pouch is too small, even with waystalker. longbow need quite a time to fully charge, but it dealt less than victor’s instant x-bow shot / bardin’s shotgun / kruber’s handgun.

and so on.
the current state of balance forces limited options for players. think about weapons, they have strength in one side but weakness on other side. its the same i guess.

Sienna is underpowered?
WAT?
Let’s just say I don’t agree with your idea of balance.

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TBH I didn’t read all of the OP or the comments so sorry if this was already said:

Off Balance:

Change it so enemies take more damage (20% I think the current values is) when staggered by a push. Or even when just hit by and not staggered by a push. Or when staggered by anything while that weapon is equipped.

The thought is to get good team value out of being more active (pushing instead of holding block) on high control weapons like shields.

Side note: if this was implemented the strength and duration would have to be reevaluated.

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Doing me a sad :frowning: Seriously though, SS is of course the king now, but not for the wrong reasons but the right: It rewards offensive melee play and this is just easily the biggest fun in the game. I think SS should remain untouched and serve as a blueprint of what the other traits need to be comparable to in usefulness and power. I agree that putting it on a cooldown would make it too unreliable and simply less fun. Getting that SS slaying train going is what makes the melee so intense and fun.
But of course I agree that it heavily favours two things: High crit chance and already fast weapons since once it procs, you can be sure it will sustain itself until you stop slaying. It’s in the name, though, you slay swiftly.
What we do need imho are a.) traits that heavily reward defensive and “utility” play in form of focusing on CC and setting up enemies for your teammates to dispatch as well as offensive traits that do not rely on crits. I could imagine a trait that increases your attack speed similar to what barrage does on ranged weapons with power, meaning hitting the same target multiple times in a row to get a slowly increasing attack speed bonus (maybe 2,5% each time) that doesn’t last as long as SS and reaches a lower bonus (10%).
Inspirational headshots could be a welcome source to give ranged heroes a way to generate temp health (might put it on cooldown and/or make it dependent on damage inflicted).

I also agree that RC nerf has been overtuned. It was already a questionable choice but a close second behind SS, but now it’s just too little in return and simply unreliable, since not only you have to crit for it but it also has to be cooled down. I would also like to so a version that doesn’t rely on crits but on cleave, but has lower return.

The rest I also agree with 100%! Very nice work and thank you for going through the effort and deliberating these thoughts so elaborate!

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its pretty rare to see sienna these days. been great though. i recommend you to compare every aspect of her with others. dont be blind folded. avert thine eyes.

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Any trait, talent or item attribute that does not revolve around directly dealing damage as fast as possible will be considered a poor pick as long as dodging and mobility are as abusable as they are right now.

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That’s actually a really good idea. It would be a toss up, do you want temp HP or ammo sustainability? Interesting… it would be the go to trait for Sienna tho.

@anon31175957 I still see lots of Sienna players. Especially UC with that crowbill, people are actually engaging in melee with her now which is great. I see a lot of BW as well, but not so many Pyros.

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Riffing off your observation that it would be nice to have a charm whose traits were not negated by the carrying of a grim (in the same way that barkskin and natural bond can still help someone carrying a tome), I’d like to advance a handful of possible traits for both charms and trinkets… I think necklaces are pretty on point.

Charms:
What if proxy were inverted? What if the trait prevents you from using a potion, but always grants you the benefits of a potion that was consumed near you.

What if curse resistance was inverted? You have a trait that suppresses 33% of the curse of any grim you are carrying (thus protecting the party). This would be interesting because it would open up a property that has been historically locked down.

Going in a new direction, what about a charm trait that reduced the amount of damage you took when you were knocked down; this would be actively useful for grim carriers, or anyone for that matter.

Trinkets:

On the trinket side, it might be interesting to have a trait specifically for boss/monster hunting with bombs: increased power, decreased area, increased stagger on a direct hit.

Trinkets and Charms:

I think “substitution” might be an interesting trait for both trinkets and charms.
The trinket trait, “substitution” would allow you to carry an additional potion in place of your bomb;
the charm trait, “substitution” would allow you to carry an additional bomb in place of your potion.

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I noticed the same, while Sienna has become alot rarer these days, I still see her plenty and in the same distrubution. Unchained is the most common - no doubt because it is not only Sienna’s strongest carreer but one of the strongest currently in the game imho - followed by BW (whou could still use some tweaking when it comes to temp health). Pyro has indeed become a rather rare sight these days.

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speaking of which other char could do better in melee.
their melee is no match for all. i know its all about preference yet still.
what sienna intended to be is flaming wind that control the whole battlefield - at least it was.
theres no excuse for current sienna’s ranged. its dead.

Me like, that’s a damn good idea. And even pub groups would have to communicate a bit to make sure at least two guys have CR.

Dead? Her ranged is on point. Beam staff can still let her run right into hordes and shotgun blast everything to death. Fireball pumps out amazing damage. Conflag has that stagger and crowd control. Don’t really use the other ones that much, so I can’t comment. Either way, most Seinna players don’t have any issue getting the most ranged kills in a game. Unless there’s an annoying Bardin flamethrower, which should should be removed. Worst weapon in the game. Destroys everyone’s sight, knocks back elites we’re trying to head shot and takes everyone’s temp HP.

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correct. her magic can cantrol the hordes, only for ‘few’ seconds. youll have to vent otherwise cant keep the phase. which brings another problem - why must players sacrifice own vital to keep shooting meanwhile melee doing better performance. none of staff can slay quicker than other such snipe focused ranged.
fireball is the only one that can be ‘used’ in the battlefield. overall her weapon dealt too less considering the time and heat problem. its not only about phase but also the slow down though. and as i mentioned before you can play as sienna if you desire to, but could do better with other chars. every weapons and talents has its own usage. the only matter is, is it worth comparing others. as that being said elven axe with shade have no problem too. eventually it could manage to slay a monster someday, yet the reason why people dont perfer it (with a shade) she’ve such other options that could do better. same for sienna i might say. although her melee is well-balanced.

I think a decent change to Heat Sink would be instead of refunding Overcharge it provides a buff that prevents venting damage for 2 seconds or something. Makes it interactive, something you need to be aware of, and you need to stop the fire spam to get rid of the overcharge.

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This right here, this is phenomenal for those carreers designated grimoire-mules. Can’t drink potions yourself, but spread potion effects to you whenever a potion is consumed. Could even allow the wearer to give them a choice. Gain 15 true health whenever potion is consumed. Get effect of strength/speed/con potion whenever a potion is consumed but cannot drink potion yourself.

Or how about this: Ranged critical hits reduce overcharge generated by 50% (or 75% or maybe even 100%) for x seconds, can only proc every x seconds.