The state of Slayer: An unbalanced mess.

[Breakfings]

Hey everyone, I'm posting this because I'm fairly burnt out from the current state of the game, and I'd like to give feedback on Slayers after the most recent updates from the Balance Team.

For context, I'm Red on Order, a long-time Slayer and Choppa Main.


Since the last patch, I've finally had time to play Slayer more extensively again, and it was quite disappointing.

Slayer can't get Rampage and Doom Seeker Morale 4 from the right tree in the standard single-target build. This change came after several nerfs: Retribution, No Escape, and Wild Swing were weakened, Inevitable Doom became cleansable, and Rampage was reworked to only counter the 25% parry buffs classes receive. Now, as a single-target Slayer, you lose Morale 4 and either Flanking or Push for More (50% auto-attack speed when fully enraged). The Short Temper build loses Rampage, or Shatter Limbs, and both builds lost 20% auto-attack damage.

For the Slayer, it loses two tactics and two abilities with no workaround because there is no weapon skill buff on Order that can be maintained for Slayer to run 6-piece Sovereign. So, it has to sacrifice something. Even with the 6-piece Sovereign, it loses Flanking at best, which is not ideal for single-target.

In contrast, Choppa has a complete bypass for these issues. It can use a 6-piece Sovereign set and run the same build. If a Black Orc and Chosen are in the group, the Black Orc can use WAAAAGH to increase the Choppa's auto-attack damage by 25%. It can also buff its weapon skill by 120, removing the need for the triumphant 4-piece set. The Chosen's toughness aura and Black Orc's weapon skill buff replace the triumphant proc, and WAAAAGH removes the auto-attack damage reduction from the tactic. So, the Choppa loses the ability to run Jagged Edge or Wounds buff but maintains critical damage and essentially retains the triumphant bonuses while running KD M4 for AOE and DPS M4 for the left tree. Therefore, nothing changed for the Choppa except for losing wounds, flanking, or jagged edge. These changes still negatively affect Choppa in Small-Scale, but not nearly as much as Slayer.

Additionally, Black Orc and Chosen can morale pump on block for themselves, and there's no counter to that since Numbing Strike is easy to cleanse, allowing them to return to spamming morales as tanks. On top of being ostensibly weaker in melee, Slayers are still hard countered by ranged DPS.



Initially I didn't think much about these changes other than them being a panicked rush set of changes to hinder Slayer in Small-Scale since it was already addressed in RVR after Rampage was reworked, Retribution lost its scaling damage, Wild Swing was reverted to AOE scaling from ST scaling, ID became cleansable, and the snare on No Escape was reduced. In order for Slayer to be changed you needed to target Shatter Limbs, not inevitable doom or tactic slots. These changes significantly reduce class viability and its application as a whole within the game through inconsistencies when addressing its design as a whole. I agreed for the most part to the initial changes to rampage because while this muddied Slayers' identity in RVR it still remained a viable option for warbands, and group play and saw a slight increase in power against certain compositions in small-scale because it put more control in the Slayers damage about how and when they were going to actuate some of their damage. I think a deeper look into class balance needs to be taken into consideration before heavy handed changes like this are made. I'm not trying to complain that my class was changed or nerfed, but I can see clearly why less, and less people are playing the class and why it's not performing as well as virtually anything else across the board.


That is all from me now - take it as you wish, but as a Slayer Main playing Slayer is no longer fun at the current state of the game and half arsed changes shouldn't be applied to careers unless a full rework is ready to be released, as it only damages the game and insults players who main a specific career.

Thanks for reading,

Red.

[Lion1986]

Not to be bad, I still recall the days where rampage was a 1 button win skill
On a side note for the timelines there is a dps rework by devs so my suggestion is to wait and see.

[CyunUnderis]

Slayer can't get Rampage and Doom Seeker Morale 4 from the right tree in the standard single-target build. This change came after several nerfs: Retribution, No Escape, and Wild Swing were weakened, Inevitable Doom became cleansable, and Rampage was reworked to only counter the 25% parry buffs classes receive. Now, as a single-target Slayer, you lose Morale 4 and either Flanking or Push for More (50% auto-attack speed when fully enraged). The Short Temper build loses Rampage, or Shatter Limbs, and both builds lost 20% auto-attack damage.

Some Slayers/Choppa players seem to have forgotten that their classes were the only two classes that could do AoE and ST with a single build, without constraints. This oversight is so obvious, that you are even talking about taking a M4 AoE in a ST build.

You can still get Rampage/Deep Wound/Inevitable Doom/Accuracy/Doom Seeker as a R70 Slayer. So I don't understand your point. Of course you'll have to make choice, you can't get everything, like at the moment every other class in the game, otherwise it will not be fair.

For the -20% AA damage, as you said with the combo Choppa/BO, SL/IB can do the same with the skill Blood of Grimnir (25% AA Damage for 20sc), so it should be fine for the "ST build".

Also, you have to have some nerve to call a "nerf", an anomaly correction on the ability Inevitable Doom.The skill was bugged for so long, it's a good thing that it was fixed to become an ailment (as indicated in the tooltip) and therefore cleansable.

Anyway, the nerf for SL/Choppa was needed. Maybe not at the best moment (Rework Healers soon so DPS will be in some months), but still appreciable.

[Speedyluck]

the rampage nerf was enough, now this class is totally dead.

[Dackjanielz]

When GTDC was nerfed the choppa then received about 5 buffs to compensate.

Slayer got the boot kicked into him once, twice, 3 times - no buffs what so ever.

Its funny.

Ive given up on melee on order in general, its horrible. Not worth the paper its printed on.

[Rotgut]

Slayers are just boring now imo.

The old mini-game of "Survive till you can set up WWs into Double ID into Channel while Rampaged" was fun. Bonkers, but fun, and it gave both Order and Destro a clear battle plan to play around. Nerf was needed, but it could've been done while giving SLs another sort of mini-game to play. Rage not increasing procs nerf, ID dmg nerf, Wild Swing nerf, WWs nerf, all on top of Rampage nerf was just too much - Onslaught + Shatter Limbs buff didn't balance those out.

In oRvR i need to play a brain dead build and have a BW in my party for my BiS Slayer to do 90% of the dmg of a BiS WL who doesn't have BW procs.

Wild Gambit, Accuracy, Flanking and Jagged Edge - which means i'll Shatter Limbs and Onslaught every 10s, spend the rest of the time spamming Flurry, and drop one ID before Channeling - does more dmg, is more reliable and costs less AP in oRvR fights than slotting in Short Temper and trying to do the old mini-game of stacking IDs.

They do have two builds for smallscale now, not cuz the ST one got buffed but because the ID one is A LOT weaker, and that is nice. For sure better then the old version where the two "Builds" was just changing one tactic.

[CyunUnderis]

Some non Slayers/Choppas seem to forget that these classes already have ST speccs. 2h Speccs. Which are broken and terrible. So your lack of understanding seems to be ignorance. Instead of fixing those speccs, they rather nerf things randomly and unnecessarily.

I can't wait for the DPS rebalance. Wait six months more and get another not so "elegant" fix, after they worked hard for two years for faster iterations on balance changes and ease of implementation. But, by all means, do not touch the issue of ST speccs being bad and broken.

I don't understand why I'm ignorant. I never said that the 2H spec was not terrible or broken. I totally agree on that.

In what way the nerf is random or unnecessarily ? They were the only classes able to do good ST AND good AoE with one build, for years. It's not for nothing that Slayer/Choppa are still very strong in 6v6/12v12 and that 2xSlayers compositions have always been meta in 6v6.

What I mean is that the Slayer or Choppa could spec mainly in AoE, without losing their ability to have a very good ST. And, before this patch, these were the only classes capable of doing this. We could very well have 2xSlayers compositions with Brute Force/Wild Gambit/Flanking/Push For More and have AoE AND ST pressure without problem. As it stands, the nerf requires you to take a tactic and play with an IB/BO if the Slayer/Choppa want to stay at a similar level before patch.

Once again, the solution applied may not be ideal or at the best time, since the root of the problem, from my point of view, lies in several things such as:
- A ST 2H spec not viable because it is very complicated to set up (forced to play red)
- The mechanics of the class which are totally ignored (namely the use of exhaustive blows)

[Breakfings]

Some non Slayers/Choppas seem to forget that these classes already have ST speccs. 2h Speccs. Which are broken and terrible. So your lack of understanding seems to be ignorance. Instead of fixing those speccs, they rather nerf things randomly and unnecessarily.

I can't wait for the DPS rebalance. Wait six months more and get another not so "elegant" fix, after they worked hard for two years for faster iterations on balance changes and ease of implementation. But, by all means, do not touch the issue of ST speccs being bad and broken.

I don't understand why I'm ignorant. I never said that the 2H spec was not terrible or broken. I totally agree on that.

In what way the nerf is random or unnecessarily ? They were the only classes able to do good ST AND good AoE with one build, for years. It's not for nothing that Slayer/Choppa are still very strong in 6v6/12v12 and that 2xSlayers compositions have always been meta in 6v6.

What I mean is that the Slayer or Choppa could spec mainly in AoE, without losing their ability to have a very good ST. And, before this patch, these were the only classes capable of doing this. We could very well have 2xSlayers compositions with Brute Force/Wild Gambit/Flanking/Push For More and have AoE AND ST pressure without problem. As it stands, the nerf requires you to take a tactic and play with an IB/BO if the Slayer/Choppa want to stay at a similar level before patch.

Once again, the solution applied may not be ideal or at the best time, since the root of the problem, from my point of view, lies in several things such as:
- A ST 2H spec not viable because it is very complicated to set up (forced to play red)
- The mechanics of the class which are totally ignored (namely the use of exhaustive blows)

You're just objectively wrong though. And you're only focusing on Slayer which is a clear indicator you didn't even read the entire post. Please don't quote random bits of my post to try and serve your purpose, that's cringe. As it stands nothing has changed for choppa except that it loses a tactic. It runs 6 sov and plays with BO+Chosen to replace triumphant and completely bypass the 20% AA damage debuff. This is not even getting into the rest of what I posted and talked about and why these changes are 1) not good 2) unnecessary and 3) out of place in a meta where these classes already weren't considered meta. Most people had already stopped playing Slayer just before these changes happened and started to play WL comps again.

I think you're blindly defending these changes for some unknown reason, but you don't actually comprehend or understand the nuance of the classes to know how terrible these are specifically for Slayer. Not trying to be rude but I'm just saying your responses are very fragmented and just focused on dumping on a single class, similar to the recent horrendous changes that have been made to it.

[Breakfings]

So here's a list of the Slayer and Choppa changes so people can get a clear view of the focus points:

Slayer

OG Rampage change: Now bypasses guard mitigation and Morales. This was a bit ridiculous. Standard Rampage was fine as it served to counter morale pump in RVR and in small-scale gave away the Slayers go and allowed players to plan around the incoming damage window. It didn't make sense to buff this to the strength that they did.



Rampage 2.0: No longer bypasses Parry and Block at 100%, instead no longer removes rage, bypasses 20% of block and parry, no longer ignores guard mitigation or morales.

This was actually a good change overall and something I very much enjoyed playing with in small-scale. This shifted the capabilities of Slayer to having more on demand tempo and gave ways for you to actively time your rampage to counter specific buffs and setups in small-scale with well-timed use of the ability. It actually made the class kind of insane in small-scale and much worse in RVR, which felt weird. What I didn't quite understand here is why Chosen and Black Orc then proceeded to get to keep morale pump on block. But I guess it was so that they wouldn't kill 3 classes in RVR with one bullet.

Inevitable Doom: Cleansable

Another good change that I thought was fair, although nerfing whispering winds on top of this was actually insanely heavy handed. I honestly thought this and of itself should have sufficed along with the Rampage rework, but I guess we're into performing brain surgery while watching a video on how to perform brain surgery during the operation here. Oh well.

Wild Swing: No longer does AOE damage and has been reverted back to AOE coefficients.

Alright, fair enough. A slight nerf to the strength of power through build in RVR but I guess this was fine. Didn't quite understand why this got clipped alongside the ID rework, but sure.

No Escape: Now snares at 30% instead of ranging up to 50% This got changed alongside every other snare in the game so there's nothing really to complain about honestly. The damage on it also got lowered for some reason.

Retribution: No longer increases damage up to 65% based on how many times you're attacked during the channel. I think this one hurt Choppa+Slayer the most simply because these abilities were mandatory for the comps, they played in both in RVR and Small-Scale. But sure whatever, didn't really complain.

Shatter Limbs: Now always increases targets cooldowns by 3 seconds instead of scaling up to 5 seconds. This was a good change. It actually ended up being a buff, so you could argue it shouldn't have been reworked, but I think 5 second CD increaser is too much so sure, this was fine.
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Choppa

Wild Choppin': Damage reverted from single target coefficient to AOE. Mirrored the Slayer change, sure whatever why not.

Bring it on!: No longer scales up to an additional 65% damage based on how many times you are attacked during the channel. Same as the Retribution change, didn't think this was needed but alright.

Chop fasta: Removed and replaced with Furious Stompin' Actually simultaneously a good and bad change. It was something Choppa needed after the reductions to their AOE damage both in RVR and Small-Scale, but it made the class more viable in both in the end, overall, it was good and bad, but more good than bad.

Git To Da Choppa!: Range reduced, damage reduced, pull rate reduced. Mirrored to match the change to Rampage, I didn't feel as though this made too much sense because it necessitated the introduction of Furious Stompin', and later on saw a damage and slight range increase because the initial change was too heavy handed.

Furious Stompin': Damage reduced by 13% I didn't think this was a good change. Choppa was finally matched with Slayer and everything felt good for a short time. Didn't make sense this got nerfed, honestly.
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So now that we're caught up on what's changed most recently, why it's changed, and where we are, we can understand now that the most recent changes needed much, much more thought put into them. On the topic of classes having AOE pressure in their single target builds it's what made them stand apart from other classes in the game. Choppa still has the strongest ability in the game with its M4 and Slayer didn't have to channel as much. To say that these recent changes are good is an insult to the design philosophy of the game. Slayer and Choppa didn't lose AOE, they just run the same builds, except for Slayer it loses more than Choppa, at least currently. There isn't currently a way to replace triumphant proc on Slayer to bypass the recent hard nerf, putting the class in the literal last spot overall for both small-scale and RVR.

For those that are thinking that a single target class should only use single target abilities you should bear in mind that a 2H rework would constitute that, not tying bring it in/ret channel damage into a tactic that makes you AOE harder. These changes don't serve to separate ST from AOE, you're still just AOE spamming on both specs because there's no reason to play with a 15 second ID cooldown and no damage on retribution. Legitimately, lol, there's 0 point. The 20% nerf to AA damage hurts both classes, choppa still gets 35% AA speed on demand, doesn't need triumphant and can run its standard builds in both the lake and small scale etc..

At some point I'll be submitting a post with recommendations for class overhauls targeting 2H builds in the near future, and while I hope it's well received, I don't anticipate that everyone will agree with the recommendations. I'm just hoping we as a community can come together and help the balance team attain some clarity of purpose when it comes to making changes, rather than applying heavy reductions across the board over and over.

Anyway thanks for reading.

[Sulorie]

You wouldn't want invite IB to group to get WS buff?