[SL/Chop] Fierceness/Even The Odds

[nebelwerfer]

[Slayer/choppa core ability buff]

I base this proposal on countless of hours of orvr and scenarios trying out a multitude of builds and gear equipments.

The issues:

1. [Fierceness]: this ability has a increase of 40 weaponskill at the loss of 40 initiative. It stacks up to three times, once for each ability used after the buff has been cast. It buffs/debuffs your entire group.
More often than not you find yourself in a group where the initiative loss of this ability is not worthwhile the ws, and you make your team take more crits which is not very great, especially for a slayer who is already extremely vaulnerable to crits. This is a 1 min CD and has a duration of 10 seconds.

2. [Even the odds]: This buffs the users toughness by 35ish for each enemy within 30 feet up until 6 enemies. Again 1 min CD and duration of 10 sec. This buff is great, it works both as an "oh sh*t" ability when you get bogged down and also strong buff for when you push into enemy lines and expect to take a lot of flak/focus. But for being a core defensive ability, it doesn't do much against casters as a dwarf or order rdps against choppas.


See the core abilities in the trollslayer and skavenslayer tree here
http://www.ror.builders/career/slayer


Proposal:
Buff [Fierceness] with 1% crit for each stack totaling at 3 crit.

Buff [Even the odds] with a bonus 7% disrupt and choppas "mirror" ability buffs 7% dodge.

(EDIT: Greenskins get dodge and dwarfs get disrupt, makes more sense because in lore slayers are strong against magic and choppas, well they're obviously fast and agile + I realized getting both was kind of OP)


Benefits:
[Fierceness] This will give this ability more use for the group, regardless if you could use the ws or not, making up for the loss of initiative. More appropriate risk/reward.

[Even the odds] giving this ability a bigger impact on your defence versus ranged making this ability much more useful and making slayer more viable in orvr creating more "windows" of combat where you can do your role on the frontlines.


Conclusion:

As many other careers your survivability is closely linked to your damage output and your offensive skills. For example shatter limbs require you to hit 9 targets to apply the debuff efficiently(and buys you time by prolonging their rotations), no escape can aoe snare, and rune of absorbtion requires you be in melee range to hit an appropraite target to survive. Slayer/choppa provide great offensive survivability for themselves and their wb, but their core abilities should to be enchanced for their roles to shine.

Spoiler:

Thanks for reading!

Edit: last thread i made after i got home from work, was bad work and poorly written to i made something slightly better with colors and stuff
Edit2: I changed my mind on mirroring the buffs so I changed it to something i think is much cooler

[Gerv]

Moved to discussions: please note the following:
In respect to the above, I wish to state that we will not consider the current power of a class when dealing with underpowered or useless abilities, and we will not allow discussions regarding underperforming aspects of a viable class to be blocked by players pointing out that the class is already viable.

Please post in agreeance with supporting reasoning or against with supporting reasoning and an alternative solution to the proposal.

Gerv.

[roadkillrobin]

I think giving Slayers/Choppas even more crit is kinda problematic.
Slayers, coz they can allready gain tons from Order crit stacking and Choppas for dealing 25% more crit dmg. I really wouldn't recomend this.

Remove the Intitiatve debuff portion from Fiercness/Bring Da Pain might be a better way to go with this and also increase the duration to something like 20 seconds.

As for Even the Odds/Come and Get it, I also think a duration increase would solve alot of the worth to use argument.

[Bowldancer]

I think even the odds is fine as it is.

Fierceness is absolutely suicidal and i never use it.
In full merc the ini debuff puts me from 19.3 % chance to be crit to 60.6% chance to be crit.
The drawback is too high for the returning benefit.

p.s. i test a bit with high initiative build and return later as i have no idea how to make it viable atm.

[Cimba]

Sounds like a reasonable proposal overall.

One needs something like 400 Initiative to break even between the increased chance of being critically hit and the proposed 3% crit increase. As probably no one stacks up to these values there is always a greater risk than reward in using this ability. If this is a criteria than one could probably consider the ability balanced.

The change to even the odds makes the ability certainly more situational. Useless against melee trains and in situations where you already profit from e.g. hold the line or defensive procs. Due to this I would argue that an increase in duration to e.g. 20 secs and increase of the radius to e.g. 60ft might be a better way to go.
Alternatively one could flat out remove the scaling with the people around and keep the 10 sec duration. Then it would also help against rdps.

I think giving Slayers/Choppas even more crit is kinda problematic.
Slayers, coz they can allready gain tons from Order crit stacking and Choppas for dealing 25% more crit dmg. I really wouldn't recomend this.

In small scale/SC's destro and order crit stacking are about equal when it comes to slayers/choppas.

[Bozzax]

I kinda like the fact that Fierceness is a no spam ability. You actually need to gear for it and think when to use it for it to be to your advantage. Having that said it is room for a buff

Adding more crits to the game is stupid especially as some casters get very good return on each crit point

So if it was up to me I'd consider one of these changes or multiple

A. reduce cd to 15s since it is a highly situational ability by itself at least when debuffing 140 ini

B consider lowering the ini self debuff to 26-27 for a pretty normal 78-81 ini debuff

C increase the ws buff 50% to 60 (180)

As mdps wo lack armor debuff removing ws (penetration) seems like an odd request.

From my choppa pov A+B would be a nice change and C posssibly over the top

[roadkillrobin]

In small scale/SC's destro and order crit stacking are about equal when it comes to slayers/choppas.

I opose to give both Choppas or Slayers more crit as i find crit stacking a problematic issue in the game in general, especially on classes that can increase their overall dmg by mechanics. TTK on RoR is much lower then on AoR due to a multitude of reasons. Adding more burst with crit to a class thats allready bursting very hard is imo problematic. Focus imo should be making sustained dps more viable and increasing the use of something weaponskill. However, the self Initive debuff is the main reason why this skill isn't worth spending a GCD on as it takes away much more then it gives. Just pure WS boost would be worth it but, lasting 10 seconds with 60sec CD is also in the realm of useless coz you probobly do more dmg by just using another attack rather then boosting your WS for 10 seconds. 20-30 seconds duration and only affects self and ini debuff removed would make for a usefull skill imo.

[Bozzax]

I think even the odds should get a shorter cd (10-20s) nothing more. Again it requires you to activly use it at the right moment to be effective and by itself is situational. A 10s duration also means you'll be spending a lot of gcds to have it on

Spoiler:

Retribution/Bring it on
Should get the increace in avoidance imo 15% dodge/disrupt and both it is a 40 ability that is beyond usless

[Bozzax]

Just pure WS boost would be worth it but, lasting 10 seconds with 60sec CD is also in the realm of useless coz you probobly do more dmg by just using another attack rather then boosting your WS for 10 seconds. 20-30 seconds duration and only affects self and ini debuff removed would make for a usefull skill imo.

I use it
A to help my group get a kill when hitting whatever in range

B second before moving in to get a tad more burst (duration is a bit on the short side tho). Having a longer duration feels dangerous as it is a blow me up button and often you'll be kiting out after 10s while being under ff from rdps

C 1v1 combined with crit debuff

[Cimba]

I opose to give both Choppas or Slayers more crit as i find crit stacking a problematic issue in the game in general, especially on classes that can increase their overall dmg by mechanics. TTK on RoR is much lower then on AoR due to a multitude of reasons. Adding more burst with crit to a class thats allready bursting very hard is imo problematic. Focus imo should be making sustained dps more viable and increasing the use of something weaponskill. However, the self Initive debuff is the main reason why this skill isn't worth spending a GCD on as it takes away much more then it gives. Just pure WS boost would be worth it but, lasting 10 seconds with 60sec CD is also in the realm of useless coz you probobly do more dmg by just using another attack rather then boosting your WS for 10 seconds. 20-30 seconds duration and only affects self and ini debuff removed would make for a usefull skill imo.

Maybe we should investigate if this would lead to additional crit stacking. If I'm not mistaken Press the Attack (10% more crit for order) is linked to an ability. Therefore it would be on the ability list and not stack with Fierceness. Making the entire ability even more situational. For destro the same would be true with Crimson Death.
This Fierceness change would only slighty increase the crit chance if the crimson death or press the attack is not available. But not increase the maximum crit stacking that is available on both realms.

That being said. It might indeed be better to leave it as a WS buff with increased duration/value. Both would be required IMO if the initiative debuff remains in place.

On a side note: The TTK is only low between unevenly matched opponents. That is true for 6on6 and from the phalanx video this seems to be also true for larger scale. But as you (or Hao?) pointed out on other occasions large scale is all about morale dumps which is only losely connected to crit.