I think it would be okay for Smiter and Assassin to be considered bad in the direct dps sense. They still benefit from not relying on stagger at all to deal damage, and stay relevant because of how much better they are when kiting and because the damage is immediate. A tradeoff. Less total sustained dps in exchange for never being tied to any enemy, which is a big advantage in its own right.
Regardless, I think we agree on the overall idea of Smiter and Assassin not getting the large default stagger bonus. I would love to see Fatshark do a well-thought out rebalance for the stagger talents.
Thatâs fair. Likewise.
That wasnât meant as a criticism of your post, I just wanted to highlight that the base critical damage values of finesse weapons arenât that high (theyâre higher than other weapons, but that makes sense), but that itâs the large modifiers from talents like Assassin that do crazy things to them, just as UCâs stagger power does crazy things with the Flaming Flail.
Yeah. With appropriate number tweaks (a 50% flat increase in damage from Deathknell would probably be too much, something like 30% would give Rapier the same damage it has now with DK, but DK would scale with all of Saltzâ weapons much more equally). I think it would increase weapon diversity on WHC.
I donât expect a change like this from Fatshark but I think it would be cool if it did happen.
Youâre treading a very fine line between pyro being quite balanced as it is right now and being too micro managey and potentially down right worse than both unchained and battle wizard even if BW does get nerfed.
Regardless whether you play pyro melee, ranged or hybrid the problem with pyro is that bar afew talents your build hardly changes.
The ult is tedious to use but can work sometimes just needs a little tweak
At the moment pyroâs melee damage is somewhat comparable to unchained and its ranged damage somewhat comparable to bw if youâre comfortable with pyro.
So by taking away volanâs doctrine aswell as the changes to crit youâre making pyro worse at both melee and ranged yet pyro has no safety besides volanâs and the ult generating temp hp.
So not only will you do less damage than both in their respective fields than you already do now. She has no way to clear space, no way to get out of a bad situation besides damage.
Youâd need to make many changes to how pyro plays and how she does her damage before changing crit or volanâs doctrine.
I.E give her volcanic force or reckless haste or any other edge over the other classes like she somewhat has currently.
As I said before, most people would agree that Pyromancer needs some kind of rework anyway to adress different stuff, mainly build diversity. I singled out Volaneâs Doctrine because I consider it a Design Failure. Pyromancer has such an insane bonus at max overcharge but zero penalty. This kind of bonus should not come unconditionally. It also damages build diversity because independent from focussing on melee or range you will mostly chose Volaneâs Doctrine. This is why I would favour a condition like âKill an elite in melee, be freed 6 seconds from overcharge.â In the same row you would add something which enhances ranged damage. You could create builds upon this foundation with one build a nimble high crit melee fighter OR a ranged powerhouse which has to take care of the overcharge slowdown. You would have to chose, not like now. That would make her interesting, not like now. As for the crit changes. Pyromancer is among the careers which would be the least impacted by these changes. Similar to Axes she would benefit on a relative power scale.
But again, she needs a general rework anyway. I just donât like the idea of this unconditioned talent. It goes against the core idea of her original design.
Looking at just Salts, swift slaying is more important to 1h axe than it is to his other weapons. Consider a group of 20 clan rats. You kill them in groups of 4 with each weapon. How long does it take every weapon to kill all 20 clan rats? With no properties, no crits, max hero power, assuming you cleave every possible rat with your swings, use only light attacks and go through the entire attack chain of each weapon; it takes each weapon around 11-13 secs to kill all 20 clan rats.
Greatsword: 5 swings to kill 4 rats, so (0.53+0.58)*2 + 0.53; for 20 clan rats 13.75 secs
Flail: 4 swings to kill 4 rats, so (0.65+0.60+0.58+0.57); for 20 clan rats 12 secs
Axe: 4 swings to kill 4 rats, so (0.53+.48+.72)+.53; for 20 clan rats 11.3 secs
Falchion: 5 swings to kill 4 rats, so (0.55+0.51)2 + 0.55; for 20 clan rats 13.35 secs
Axe and Falchion: 5 swings to kill 4 clan rats, so (.41+0.49+0.40+0.49)+0.41; for 20 clan rats 11 secs
Billhook: 6 swings to kill 4 rats, so 0.56; for 20 clan rats 12 secs
Rapier: 7 swings for the rapier, so (0.36+0.33+0.54)*2 + 0.36; for 20 clan rats 14.1 secs
I was using assassian for the stagger talent on all the weapons and did this on cata1 in the keep with AI disabled. I also didnât attempt to headshot any of the rats except when using the 1h axe and when using the axe swing on the Axe and Falchion. The bit about headshots is the most important as I believe it gets to why swift slaying and attack speed is so important for the 1h axe. Due to the breakpoints on cata it is not possible for the 1h axe to oneshot body shot a clan rat with Smiter and 30% power versus, so unless the first swing against the target is a headshot you must take another swing to kill the target. This suddenly drastically affects the 1h Axeâs time from above as it has no cleave on clan rats. With a 50% headshot, the first 10 rats are killed fairly fast at 5.53 secs but the last 10 rats take11.3 secs to kill. The axe went from being the second fastest to the slowest by a wide margin. Itâs hard to tell what the headshot per hits are for the general player base is but 50% seems really high to me. The other way to mitigate the horrible time to kill 1h axe has is instead increasing damage, you decrease attack animation times. With 100% SS uptime the 1h axeâs attack chain length becomes (0.45+.40+.60); Assuming 50% headshot rate we get a time of 13.98 secs, this is still on the lower end but it is no longer behind by a large margin.
A similar method as above can be applied to the other infantry trash, slave rats and ungors are the best for the axe comparision since it can reach the bodyshot breakpoint but the other trash it really begins to struggle when compared to other weapons. On legend the story is a defiantly better as itâs only the Gors and Raiders that the axe canât reach the bodyshot breakpoint for, clan ratsâ and fanaticsâ breakpoint requires 30% power vs and either EP or Smiter. Any reduction to SS up time is going to hit the 1h axe harder than other weapons since it has such low cleave and bad bodyshot breakpoints; unless you are mechanically gifted it will be almost impossible to make the 1h axe viable compared to other weapons without also stacking attack speed somehow.
tbh, could just rework overcharge, itâs a little dated and sluggish.
Maybe copy Deepwood staffs homework with some tweaks.
(Bumping the overheat damage to 50% or a flat 60 damage.)
No Overcharge Slowdown or overheat flailing
Overheating deals 40% of max HP as damage in a single blow.
Overheating locks you out of your staff until it has vented to 25% (Aprox 12 seconds)
It would make Unchained more reasonable, sheâd get more use out of her high HP pool and could do away with Abandon, Bomb Balm and possibly tweak Living Bomb.
Taking 40% of max HP as damage, getting locked out of ranged gameplay for at least 10 seconds while slowly losing your biggest DPS source critical mass/unstable strength would still be quite punishing.
Overcharge slow is definitely an outdated mechanic. No better evidence of that than looking at all of the ways Fatshark has put in that just bypass the slow altogether; except for the new elf staff just straight up not caring.
Only BW and engi are even affected by it these days. It should just go away.
Ditch the whole THP generating talents. Thats what i want. Lets see how many people playing Cata currently would lose significantly on legend because they cant generate THP and have to rely on either health items or health regen.
Seriously though, the THP generation is too much and way too many players are focusing on it to the point where they actually see it as inherent part of the game to use THP generation. These people are hating on everything that can efficiently deal with hordes, only because they need hordes for THP generation. Yet why would they need THP in the first place if they were good enough to just not get downed? THP is a noob trap and even âmessed upâ a whole career.
Hey, wanna have a tanky guy who gets stronger the less HP he has? Here you go and you get an extra mechanic that completely negates the supposed disadvantage you need to get the buff.
Thatâs all nice and cool. But as shown above: 10 % crit chance bonus on Axes makes it very very likely that you still have high Swift Slaying uptime on it in comparison to other weapons. The removal of crit chance would not hit Axe that hard if uptime of Swift Slaying is your issue.
Sorry, I will disagree with this. I find it a very interesting balance tool especially for Pyromancer/Drake Weapons and to a lesser degree for Battle Wizard although it rarely takes place there. I am against removal of this mechanic and vouch for removal of unconditioned Volaneâs (see bla bla above). Also Unchained certainly does not need to be even more âreasonableâ. Even withOUT Abandon she is very safe to play.
Theoretically, you can also argue for the different overheat mechanics (SotT, UC, Pyromancer) from a Lore perspective. But I will skip over this because it is less important for some and arbitrary for some others.
I think that the overcharge slowdown is not only a very effective but also very interesting balance tool because how much it hinders you is player skill dependent. So, letâs simply disagree.
EDIT: Added and OUT which was actually contextual important -_-
Like I said, removal of Abandon and Bomb Balm.
Trading coaxed picks and band aids for a more reasonable & thought out mechanic.
Sheâd lose 60+ health, her unstable strength stacks and be locked out of ranged.
I think thatâs quite fair/reasonable compared to straight up dying or using an ult because of a little tick damage.
While I agree with the replacement of Abandon and Bomb Balm, I will also say that i still disagree.
If a player really wants to play at max stacks and get 60 % more melee power (or 30 % more crit chance for Pyromancer) he should explode if he makes a mistake and not getting away with a slap on the wrist.
Aye I agree with you.
I just donât think taking a few ticks of damage is a âmistakeâ worthy of death.
Iâd rather see Overcharge reworked in a similar way to Deepwood staff but with tweaks.
e.g
Bump up the damage chunk from 40% of max HP to something a lot higher like 150 flat damage
Change the damage chunk to damage over time
Remove Abandon & Bomb Balm
Blowing up would feel more like a race against the clock to try and outheal it, mitigate it with Living Bomb or pre-emptively use a health consumable to avoid going down.
Tier 1:
a) Masterwork pistol: here is another idea. How about increase the reload time based on the number of missing bullets? Reloading with 1-2 bullets missing would be as quick as now, 3-4 would take twice as long and the 5-6 would take four times as long.
b) The MB - and the throwing axes and javelins, although not nearly as much - feel really cheesy because of the infinite ammo. In addition, the MB has no negative sides, it is, as you described it, very powerful. I would like to see all three weapons nerfed by at least doubling the time to reload. The MB dots would be OK to generate the same damage, but I like your idea to stretch it over a longer period.
c) The Sister - I think it would be enough if taking the inheritance meant that the Radiance would take twice as long to charge. However, I would also like to see the damage - just the damage - by her staff reduced. I like how it feels, but its precision and speed are so good that it is way too poweful for a support role.
Tier 2: I can agree only that the Zealot power buff should not apply to the ranged. As far as the rest goes, itâs mostly fine. The infinite ammo depends on a lot of factors, and the weapons mentioned next to the MB are the main culprits why the game can feel so cheap when considering the ammo-based weapons.
The moonbow definitely needs nerfing. The javelins debatable. The cleave is certainly too much but everything else seems fine to me.
But nerf the throwing axes?! Are you high? Who on earth would place throwing axes in a category of problematic or overpowered ranged weapons. Theyâre outperformed by just about every ranged weapon in the game, while being the clunkiest to use by a mile. If anything they could use a buff to be worth a damn. Every ranged weapon RV has is preferable, and throwing axes prevent Slayer using two of his best talents. They are currently a weapon that is more weakness than strength.
Yeah they hurt my soul when I see their FF at the end of a match. Only thing they truly excel at. Though now moonbow and javelins have come to steal their team griefing niche! Truly they have lost all purpose now.
I went ahead spending time running some crude tests. Had an auto clicker hit the dummy for ~20 mins then looked at each frame of the video to see if the SS buff icon was active. I only checked to see if a small portion of the screen had the icon so there is some under-counting as there are a few frames that the SS icon is out of the search area as it is reactivated due to my UI setup. There is also some undercounting from the start and end portion of the video. The other thing to consider is that this is basically assuming you are constantly hitting a target, which is a fairly reasonable assumption against non-shield hordes.
Anyways with no crit property SS had an uptime of ~79%, with 5% crit property SS had an uptime of ~86%, and with 10% crit property SS had an uptime of ~91%.
The only thing I have to add with my opinion is that I can personally feel the difference in SS uptime between running with the extra 10% crit and not, and still would be against removing it. But itâs definately true that SS uptime against a naked horde is still good without the extra crit chance.
If I understood correctly, your test compares the Axe to in a situation with only Clanrats, and without Swift Slaying across the board. So what you demonstrated is how the Axe is bad against Clanrats, but nothing else. Run the same test against - for example - 10 Stormvermin and weâd get a completely different picture. Run the test with no crit chance bonus on any equipment and Swift Slaying on all the weapons, and youâll find the difference between Axe and everything else becoming smaller because Axe has SS up more, which was the entire point Adelion was making about removing crit chance on equipment relativeely favoring the Axe.
EDIT:
Ah, now I see Adelion already replied and you ran another test as well. Nevermind then.
But contrary to V1 this game is from its roots out designed and balanced around THP, though. If youâd just remove it, maybe a good part of the kind of players who are on this forum could still do Legend, but the vast majority of current active players would now start to really struggle in Champion adventure maps⌠Just removing that talent row will pretty much kill the game, no exaggerationâŚ
