I don’t know who thought it’d be a good idea to let that one Dev that plays GA/WH buff 300 STR Great Axe builds even more, but it will further frustrate anyone not playing the LMB simulator that GA is.
Basically all of these
Plagued Strikes - Heavy attacks against targets inflict disease for 8s, reducing healing effectiveness on the target by 10%-40%.
Thwarting Counter - Deal 10%-25% additional damage against targets with active grit.
Thwarting Strikes - Deal 3%-12% additional damage while you have active grit.
Trenchant Rend - Fully charged heavy attacks apply rend for 7s, reducing target’s absorption by 4%-15%. (12s cooldown).
Trenchant Recovery - Fully charged heavy attacks heals the player for 10%-30% of the damage dealt.
perks are a direct buff to the unfun GA gameplay we’ve seen since IG and FS have been nerfed.
I think these are a very unhealthy addition to the game and not well thought out.
I don’t think these perks are that bad if there were some magic/ranged perks being implemented. For example, the musket can’t benefit from these heavy attack perks because it doesn’t have a “heavy attack”. It would be beneficial to bring in a weapon haste perk for musket/bow to increase the speed you knock an arrow or chamber a bullet. However, to the OP’s PoV I do believe these are a bit biased toward a melee build - however I wouldn’t expect a hitscan from ranged to benefit with the same respective %'s as a melee user would attain from said perks.
Why would it be a counter to any other armor except heavy? Heavy armor is the only one that gives everybody a problem. Defense in light armor is nonexistent and medium armor barely scales up above light. It pretty much counters melee players since most of them run heavy and use grit on a few things.
They just need to remove the grit from heavy attacks. Both the 300 STR and the hammer/gaxe perks.
Grit on heavy allows gaxe/hammer users to have no counter, since they immediately break most blocks. And if there’s more than 1 person hitting the block, it’s immediately broken.
One entire tree is melee but it counts as magic damage. For example, the Rogue perk does not work on Void Gauntlet, even though Annihilation is built around crits and its backstabs are all crits. Just makes sense that Rogue should apply.