Why? BH scales worse with difficulty than almost any other class in the game. Core rated him SAD tier along with engineer for DWONS content. Especially since he’s bound to have DS nerfed sooner or later, my boy could use some help.
To be clear not saying I agree with removing crit properties, currently unsure how I feel about that.
Because he is disgustingly overtuned for normal cata already with griffonfoot builds? Let alone legend which the game actually ought to be balanced around…
One important thing I’d wish to make a return is the snare a player was subjected to when his guard was broken in vt1. Never understood why they removed that, maybe because it was too opressive with introduction of CW and new SV running attacks?
Still I’d love to have it back so the enemies get a bit of powercreep themselves and though i don’t know how, running attacks should be revisioned anyway because they are wonky and ugly in their current state.
Edit: BCR and stamina reg should also be looked at in this context.
Is it really any stronger than Blunstman or Doom Ranger? I haven’t played it extensively yet but you are the first person I’ve seen to express this sentiment whatsoever.
I’d say the wider shot pattern and longer uptime without reloading makes griffonfoot the best of the shotguns for clearing cataclysm mobs. BH also makes up for the typical shotgun weaknesses with L&L and blessed shots.
I’d say it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage. It’s definitely the best shotgun at clearing spread out infantry, but it’s also easily the worst shotgun for killing single targets at mid range or armoured targets in general due to how close you need to be to get the majority of pellets to hit one enemy. No I do not think blessed shots or L&L do much to cover this deficiency in practice.
As I said though I haven’t played them extensively by any means so I’m open to the idea they’re overtuned, I just don’t find that argument convincing.
Because Fatshark decided to massively upend huge pillars of the combat system overnight. Vastly inflating mob HP & increasing their stagger resistance. These changes instantly made a whole bunch of previously decent weapons bad, as well as making the concept of breakpoints basically vanish.
Additionally, the original implementation of the system in the WoM beta was much, much more oppressive. The system got such a huge backlash that one of the very, very few changes Fatshark made during that beta was to nerf the living hell out of the stagger damage system. Which left us with the mostly meaningless version we have now.
But even now the system still doesn’t work in practice. The fact of the matter is that players almost never actually manage to hit a staggered enemy for various reasons. The proof is in the pudding, the only good stagger damage talents are the ones that sidestep that whole pesky “stagger” part of the system altogether: Assassin, Smiter, and Enhanced Power.
I most certainly did not forget this part because it is simply not true. Even if we completely removed Swift Slaying from existence we would NOT need massive reworks for weapons. No weapon on any career needs Swift Slaying. None. If you absolutely need a bit more speed you have two + 5 % Attack Speed properties. This is enough. And I will not discuss this particularly point because it is wasted time for everyone.
Um, yes? I wrote so in the OP. I explicitely said that I do not vouch for completeness. And especially for Tier 2 I said that it is personal issues. I am not seeking for agreement here. Tier 1 (MB, MWP, SotT) is the stuff I would think most people agree on. If you have other issues just post them here. That’s what the thread is about.
Just on two points. I actually forgot Hagbane 
I wanted to write about it because I think it can do many things very well. For Hagbane would could make the case though that you can only accomplish this with higher skill. Truth be told, even before MB hit the game I rarely saw people using Hagbane on public Cataclysm games. So I am not sure how I feel about that. I mean if we talk about adjusting Hagbane, I would start conservative. Remove stagger against superarmor (even if headshot) and poison damage against Globadiers.
And I don’t play much GK so I can’t give fair judgement on that (as written in the OP).
This is just a summary. Most of these topics I have already discussed in separate topics and are more though out on consequences and alternatives. Stagger Talents, Group THP talents, Traits/Properties rework, all done already. It would need playtesting and adjusting but the information is all there. What I have not touched in topics so far are career related things. But I “assume” that most people agree that Zealot, Pyromancer and Battle Wizard need some kind of rework. For one reason or another.
As said above, I do not seek for agreement and many things are personal issues which people see differently. I accept that. But at least for some changes I only see benefits (outside of the whining it will cause) in term of balances and actually keeping the game balanceable.
Actually, it would be reverse. Axes have inert crit chance which makes them more likely to trigger Swift Slaying relative to other weapons. In the overall list Axes would become more worthwhile than now.
My point is that any reduction in SS uptime and damage from crits proc’ing nerfs 1h axe more than most other weapons. While other weapons merely benefit from SS and the extra damage from crits, the 1h axe needs SS and the extra damage to stay competitive relative to other weapons. Most other weapons don’t need SS to be usable (zealot and slayer don’t need SS but it’s still the best option) but axe does.
And theyre only good because they give some more damage Numbers. Design wise they are as catastrophic as the other stagger talents.
Pls FS, I know you won’t replace those talents but pls at least remove them. This talent row is annoying and triggers my WoM PTSD.
“I dont wana argue so i´ll say that anything you can say is stupid”
Well now, how mature of you too x)
The first part is correct. I don’t wanna argue on this because we will not reach any agreement. We know this before hand. Why play out a scenario we know the result of? And frankly, there are people who are quite painful to discuss with because if they are getting cornered they start constructing unlikely to happen artificial scenarios.
The second part is wrong. I don’t say that anything you can say is stupid and nothing in my comment even implies this. But I don’t see the point of an endless back and for. I have done this with someone over Swift Slaying in the past and no matter how much I trashed his arguments he didn’t accept it. My focus is on the Tier 1 list here. Let’s concentrate on that. Please?
And I am saying that due to the 10 % inherent crit chance bonus on Axe light(?) attacks it would be one of the weapons where you could still proc Swift Slaying reliably so the removal of crit chance properties wouldn’t hurt Axes much.
This is so bad it’s not even wrong.
On top of my list is some honest to sigmar bugfixing. The list of broken things in the game is pretty massive and I’d start from there.
Regarding adjustments: group the THP talents and rein in moonfire bow and inherited radiance.
I advice reworking the concentration potion so it works like radiance, granting you a free use of ultimate during the duration (and only one). I think it would mitigate a lot of over the top interactions and make the game a bit more challenging.
Yeah. For example, the torpedo needs to be able to kill CWs with some investments, as it takes the place of the “ultimate” for the engineer. Remove that and its value against CWs in your face is lost. Plus I think the reload speed prevents it from being an OP spammy weapon. It does one thing and it does it well.
I see that as a problem too. But to be honest scrounger is rarely the culprit. The problem lies more with career perks, but then again only ranged careers have those. I’m more concerned about the spread availability of infinite ammo weapons, most noticeably MB and javelin.
Disagree. It scales very well with difficulty but remove it and you’re gimping WHC, which although a good career is not OP.
Agree. Morover uberspeed melee pyro doesn’t really fit with the career tematically. If anything this should be the Shade/BH equivalent for Sienna. I remember from the career descriptions (around VT2 release) pyromancer was presented like the single target destroyer.
Pyro is already in a pretty sad spot and I’d say needs a fair bit of attention and buffing. Already suffers a lot as a caster and only really shines when you get broken interactions like guaranteed crits. The Volans Doctrine is one of the few things that make the career worthwhile right now, which obviously isn’t good but I think a more thorough approach is needed there.
As for the infinite ammo bit, I guess it’s a non-problem at this point as well. You can run entire parties quite effectively with gear that simply doesn’t require restocking ammo the traditional way. You have ranged careers with some forms of traditional ammo sustain, and then you have other careers that need to work with a very limited supply (merc with a handgun for example). If you’re ever in a high intensity game, you learn very quickly that 16 rounds don’t really last a whole lot if you miss your headshots. So things being as they are, I guess they’re alright.
I’m saying that I fundamentally disagree that the axe’s inherent crit chance will give enough SS uptime to keep the axe viable compared to other weapons. I think that the option of “1/5 crits and 1/4 crits available through properties compared to the baseline ~1/6 crits” makes a bigger difference on axe’s performance than the option of “1/10 crits and ~1/6 crits compared to 1/20 crits” makes on other weapons.
I’m fine with whatever happens to the stagger system and its talents, but it might be more interesting if they were balanced and reworded instead. Like:
An example of rewording would be:
Sounds like a lot, but Smiter didn’t even get the stagger bonus on secondary enemies in its cleave at WoM’s launch. It was considered bad. The code’s already there. Again I’m not bothered particularly, but I do think it would be a missed opportunity for letting players have a row to customise their gameplay to their preference. E.g. Mainstay for the frontliner/player that prefers not to kite, Bulwark for, Smiter for those that want to chip away at a horde and Assassin for the precise single target killer.
Edit: It would seem I forgot to finish a sentence. Bulwark for being someone that the team always wants to be around, which differs from Mainstay because Mainstay would still be focused on damage. You may not want to be in the hell a Mainstay user is going to brave, but you would want to be near the Bulwark.
Overpowered, non-crit setups/weapons:
I understand a lot of crit-centric things are op, but most of the excessive crit damage comes from specific things like Assassin or other talents/passives, not the crit damage itself. For example, Assassin lets Rapier WHC bodyshot SV with a crit full charge when tagged. Without it, it’s 30% short. The crit damage itself for a lot of crit weapons is fine.
I agree, the disparity is too high. It’s fine for careers to specialise and for the damage difference to be great, but not for the gap to be as large as it is.
Insert parallel to wealth gap here.
I max out attack speed so I can use charged attacks while under high pressure. I find it more fun than light spamming because the reward is greater and because charged attacks can’t be cancelled at every point in their animations. I know most just spam lights, but I and others view attack speed as something that lets us take on more risk. Just nerfing attack speed by reducing SS uptime will result in players spamming light attacks even more.
WHC’s sustained single target dps with the Rapier is comparable to GK with the Exec before Killing Shot comes into play (when headshotting). WHC could be fine and more balanced without Killing Shot provided a few tweaks are made. Saltz’ other weapons do not benefit from WHC’s headshot damage bonuses as much, but imo the way headshot damage bonuses work with only a few select weapons is silly. A simple damage increase on headshot passive and talent would be better, because that would scale equally between weapons.
I don’t like how WHC’s thing is ‘I kill everything and land the last blow’. I think it would be better, more appropriate for the career and more team oriented if it was just damage. WHC is just as cool if they take off over half the health of an entire group of enemies. It would also mean WHC would have some risk when attacking, as the player would have to make use of charged attacks to deal good single target dps.
Even without Killing Shot WHC gives a team 20% increased damage on any enemy tagged, is quite good at frontlining, has very high technical and realistic dps vs all enemy types and has above average mobility and defense in the hands of a skilled player. WHC has similarities in these aspects to Merc, but WHC focuses more on damage avoidance and precision.
It could be as simple as making Killing Shot only proc on charged attacks. The only weapon that negatively effects on Saltz’ is the 1h Axe. Even the Falchion’s optimal single target dps vs armour is charged attacks. Not ideal, but better. That or remove Killing Shot, or make it into a simple damage increase on crit headshot.
tl;dr
Light spam bad. Charged spam good.
The 1/x are not helping your case. To get to my point: IF we want to make a comparison on a relative scale we need something which expresses relative changes. Percentage would be such a thing. Currently all careers have an inherent crit chance of at least 5 %. With properties of 15 %. So the Axe has 25 %. The relative chance to score a critical hit as such increases by (25 - 15)/15 = 66.6 %.
Now we take away the properties. Non-crit weapons have 5 %, Axe has 15 %. The relative chance to score a critical hit with Axe as such increases by (15 - 5)/5 = 200 %. 200 % > 66.6 %. The smaller the initial crit chance value is, the more valuable the increase of 10 % will be. This isn’t even opinion anymore. This is straight-out facts supported by simplest math. On a relative scale Axe will become more valuable (at least in terms of SS uptime, also probably in general).
Swift Slaying itself has an uptime of 5 seconds. With 15 % trigger chance you would need in average seven hits to be conducted in that timeframe. That should be reasonable possible with the average attack speed of the Axe.
In parts this is very similar to the post i made during the BBB and something I overall agree with (ignoring the finer details). People for to long said that something like Smiter ignores the Stagger system. So they should actually get a version which indeed does this. Although it needs finer balance because as you said we had this before and it was considered bad. But overall I would favour a design idea which i call “First Hit vs Second Hit”:
Meaning that some talents (Assassin Smiter) get front damage but loss subsequent damage while other talents (Mainstay) have no front damage but get higher subsequent damage while other talents (Enhanced Power) are there for range/special applications. It would be far more reasonable. At the moment with the current implementations of Smiter and Assassin you get all the front damage with nearly no loss on subsequent damage. Of course this isnt’t balanced. Same for Enhanced Power which also gets the normal bonus in addition to the 7.5 % for everything.
As for the rest, I don’t think we need to go over this. We have slightly different perspectives on Attack Speed. That is fine in my book. You are reasonable to argue with even when disagreeing. As for your short list, most of this is actually included in the OP already. UC is missing although I said in the past that I don’t like pushing power increasing with overcharge as passive. I just didn’t want to mention every little nitpick.
So you want boosts like Deathknell, Crit power, One in the Eye etc to function more like Assassin?
Headshots deal bonus damage rather than a finesse multiplier increase?
A flat additive finesse increase could also work
They wont nerf DS, its on par with all other high hiting burst damage, and if they wanted they would do it long time ago.