I personally think, this weapon, even if designed to fit “slayer style”, shouldnt be allowed to him. He is currently insanely strong. He is god of melee at the moment, I feel like. Higher difficulties, modded obviously, which require a good amount of teamplay, not like default legend, proved it for me.
First : Insane amount of crowd control. Two melee weapons to adapt to situation. One of the strongest survivabilities and tHP generations. Mobility. Good monster damage (depends on weapons obviously). Good damage overall. The only weak side of Slayer is, ranged special killing (really ranged, where you cant jump on rooftop to kill blightstormer or leap on assassin), but not really, cause if you act like a tank for your team, you are one, who creates space for your ranged teammate to pull his weapon, aim, and not being hit/killed by that time.
Second : He dont really need it. If you want “your slayer” to be able to snipe specials/whatever at range, just take FK. FK has his downsides, however, that is what it cost to have ranged options?
clunky ult (wind up ultimate animation)
no attack speed passive
no infinite attack speed from ultimate, while you are attacking
no guaranteed ammo regen
and all that while not being as tanky as slayer is. Effective helath pool for Slayer is 120x2=240. For FK, its 180x1.3=234 or 225x1.3=292.5, second is kinda suicidal tho, as this 5% AS is no brain pick in my opinion. Thats cool, but tHP generation is heavily on Slayers side with all attack speed and high mass limit weapons he have.
And no, this is not class comparison by any means. This is just argument, about how is cool to have class, which differs from others by not having ANY ranged options, are they flying axes, mobile cannons, laser beam from a$$, or domesticated raven
I dont think throwing axes gonna one up any other ranged weapons, and around 3 axes its actually quite small amount counting how fast slayer can reach any reachable special.
0 throwing axes is a good number to start with
slayer wont suffer much even if you close one of his two melee slots and he will be forced to use only one weapon at all times
I think this was an opportunity for FS to give something people wished for, while covering “giving a new weapon” too. HC slayers will probably keep to the melee only aspect of the game, while some might use it for fun. I don’t see a problem anywhere.
Personally, I’m happy that Slayer is likely going to get the throwing axes too, but their balance is going to be very important there. It’ll be very easy to make them overly strong (either through their range, power, number of projectiles or something else), so that they end up nearly mandatory, or too weak so that they stay a curiosity that ends up being tried once and for any possible Challenges, and then forgotten. I can’t say for certain what those balance points should be, as I haven’t used the weapon. From what I saw on the stream, though: The ammo count seems pretty good at three, still giving a couple of chances but a miss is significant; and the arc looks like it needs to be still steeper and shorter to work well, particularly on Slayer. Can’t say much about their damage; as others said, the video was done in a testing environment and likely a lower difficulty. Hitting a Mauler 1-shot breakpoint with Property investment (and likely counting at least some Slayer stacks too) could be a good one, but that isn’t in a vacuum, and depends on other factors also. Berserkers might provide another good target for a one-shot breakpoint.