Excited to see some of the new talents hit the live branch. I really dig the vision of trying to make each career more unique and thematic to better support varying play styles and fantasies. This was my favorite part of the beta and the thing I was most excited about regarding the rebalance. That said, some of the careers feel like they got significantly more development focus and polish than others.
So far, it seems like the tanky careers are much better-aligned both thematically and with the new stagger-oriented balance. Foot Knight and Ironbreaker feel like proper party anchors, and Iâve enjoyed some good play experiences on both. Tried a few builds on both of those careers and felt rewarded for picking different talents in different situations. Did some testing to a lesser degree with Handmaiden and Unchained, and I felt pretty engaged with those careers as well. Woo!
On the other end of the spectrum, some careers have tiers with very clear âbest in slotâ options, restrictive options, badly outclassed options, or options that donât really contribute to the careerâs identity. Quick examples below.
Battle Wizardsâs level 35 tier include a 50% range increase for Fire Walk and an option to cast the ability a second time with 10s. The second option is a 100% range increase, you get to better control the trajectory/fire trail, and you get the ending explosion twice. The first option appears to be an objectively worse, less effective, âwrongâ choice.
Slayerâs level 10 tier includes options that provide you 15% power for using only two-handed weapons or 10% attack speed for only one-handed weapons alongside an option for 5% critical strike chance. The first two buffs are meaningfully more valuable than the 5% crit, but they restrict you to a far narrower range of weapon loadouts (a grand total of 4 possible loadouts to get the 15% power.) This forces the player to give up enjoyable loadouts and play styles for a better buff or settle with a lesser buff. It also feels totally at odds with Slayerâs unique melee prowess enabled by the diversity of two melee slots. It also makes me sad!
Would be stoked to see additional development effort put into talents. Can we hope to see further iterations on some of the careers in the near future?
Yea, this was brought up a bit. I really hoped that the generic 5% crit chance would be replaced with a talent for using a 1 handed and 2 handed weapon. Maybe a mix of the other two talents with reduced values for a middle ground, 5% attack speed and 7% power when wielding a 1 and 2 handed.
Thatâs present a problem with the Throwing Axes, though, which is counted as neither. Well, thatâs kind of problematic by itself - using them restricts you to a single choice on that tier.
In addition, I think that the bonuses mightâve worked better the other way around, compensating for each setupâs weaknesses instead of making them even stronger on their already strong points.
There are also a couple of other questionable choices - Ranger Veteranâs ammo Talents, for example. Do you want shared ammo, resulting in 20% ammo added altogether, shared between Bardin and another (and making Bardin somewhat reliant on others picking his pouches), or bigger pouches, giving 30% ammo altogether and better control of getting them where and when theyâre needed? And one of my personal âfavouritesâ, the flat 5% Power increase on Zealot - theoretically balanced, perhaps, but usually the far worse option, and whatâs worse, boring as a drill.
My personal thought is to just avoid the unnecessary restriction altogether. Maybe the bonuses could be something like X% power with heavy attacks, Y% attack speed with light attacks, Z% stagger force with push attacks? Would let you grab a meaningful buff for all sorts of loadouts and play styles and still focus on a particular element of play.
Oh, if only someone had mentioned these issues early, like during the beta two months ago, then there would have been a chance to fix them ahead of time! Even better if they were harped on and repeated dozens of times, all by different people with different perspectives yet still coming to the same conclusion!
Personally, Iâm a bit irritated by the lvl 30 Talent choices on BH.
All distinct choices, yes, but the one option I preferred before is not there anymore.
I mostly reserved it as a clutch tool (though I rarely played BH), so having a mixed load to be ready for anything was great - but it also helps that itâs actually recharging while I may be running away.
Which means I pick no Talent now. Which is ok, really, but I hope I never click on it, as I wouldnât be able to un-select it anymore.
Nevermind that Just Reward is clearly buggy in how it works with potions and is overall just poorly designed.
Oh sorry, itâs not buggy, itâs âworking as intendedâ. I think they just missed the sentences âConcentration potions now charge less ult and are functionally useless if you use them when the charge is near full. Concoction no longer recharges ult when drinking a speed or strength potion. Decanter is now useless for concentration potions.â as part of the talent description.
On top of that, itâs poorly designed because Bounty Hunter is a special/elite killer by nature, and the talent gives him the same ult for killing 10 slave rats as killing 10 Chaos Warriors. Itâs encouraging him to not fulfill his role in order to speed up his ult recharge. Damn I hate that talent.
Itâs my favorite talent to make fun of in this update, along with half of the Slayer talent tree. A good amount of the talent changes are pretty bad, but damn, I hate the changes in the Slayer tree and the ult talents for Bounty Hunter.
Wow, I didnât catch how rough this one was. Youâre forced to make the career skill less versatile or give up your skill recharge. This appears to be the only career in the game which doesnât offer some sort of buff with no downsides at the career skill tier.
My suggestion for the talent, since it was replacing a boring, but useful, talent like cooldown reduction was something along the lines of:
Just Reward - Blessed Shots that deal damage to an enemy reduce the cooldown of Locked and Loaded by 10%. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.
The talent needs to not mess with the damage profile of the shot and still allow it to recharge normally. It needs to be the âsafe pickâ if you donât want Double-Shotted or Buckshot. Kinda like how you want to go for a headshot with Double-Shotted, the talent would encourage for you to wait for Blessed Shots to be off cooldown so your ult would instantly get 10% cooldown back (and the bonus damage). Itâd basically be a cooldown reduction talent if youâre using Blessed Shots consistently.
People seemed to agree the talent sucked in the original thread while liking my idea, though I donât have access to say for sure, since it was on the beta forum. :S
I just realized the new double shot talent is (I assume) bugged and returns 40% cooldown for each shot instead of just 40%⌠so you can basically spam career skill throughout the map and fire it like an automatic weapon with a purple pot. So thatâs a thing. Kills bosses faster than pre-balance Shade.
