The balance of the weapons in this game is actually a bit cooked, there is some stuff that works and some stuff that over works and some stuff that is left rotting.
Today ladies and gentlemen I intend to provide solutions to the broken parts of the weapons
First of all balance philosophy needs to change, the balance hammer has been swinging way to hard to crush the problem children and often misses the mark.
I will provide real solutions to balance problems.
Roots in general.
These have been causing problems and cause most the issues with desync and are just too powerful in general.
AGS needs to make a choice here, first of all they need to deactivate movement abilities or have some of the movement abilities act as a full cleanse.
Rapier
Objective - weaken its ability as side arm that requires no investment, embolden it’s power as a main weapon through the blood tree.
- Riposte now has a damage cap that increases through investment. With 5 dex a hit of 1,000 will crack riposte and you’ll eat the damage that remains and not trigger the stuns. Scaling on this would be heavy with investment into intel and dex and having enough will pretty much suck up most damage capping out at around 5k
- flèche CD increased to 25 second, hitting something with it will reduce the CD by 33%.
- Tondos damage increased to 100% weapon damage, 150% talented at 3 yards. Bleed damage slightly increased.
- flurry’s stagger effect will activate on the first strike
- flourish and finish no longer consumes bleeds, it’s damage of the second strike is increased by bleed stacks
- 12 point perk reworked to increase damage by 5% by bleed stacks.
- evade was never the problem, undo the 100% nerf you gave it
Fire staff
Objective - overall performing decently but a few abilities are underperforming.
- meteor shower reworked, cast time is now 3 seconds, damage increased by 50%, the final tick will drop a large strike down that will do 150% weapon damage.
- incinerate either decrease the wind up and after cast or increase the range. This ability is currently way to telegraphed and punishing to use.
- pillar of fires radius increased slightly, nerf the first strike damage down to 20% nerf the effectiveness of the item perk that reduces CDs by at least 50%
Bow
Objective - needs quality of life buffs as well as reductions to the perks that are limiting its power and overall buffing the rest of its kit
- projectile speed of light attacks is dramatically increased to that of its heavy attack, fully charged heavy attacks almost are hit scan. All buffs to first strike damage and heavy attacks are removed and replaced.
- heavy attacks now have stages of charge instead of just light attack into heavy.
- splinter shot is removed, replace it with anything other than splinter shot.
- evasive shot reworked - no longer makes you jump, you slide back and shoot and the animation time is reduced from what it is now.
- rain of arrows has a faster activation time
- rapid shot needs to actually be a rapid shot and have its cast time decreased or let us move whilst casting it or rework it that casting it lets us shoot of 3 arrows in quick succession.
Ice gauntlet
Objective - stop it causing massive issues and make the lesser used abilities not suck.
- Ice wall just straight up might need a rework at this point. It’s hit the point where it’s that powerful you just run it with a great axe because it’s CC is way too potent.
Make it a cast on area ability, 100% weapon damage if you land it on someone’s head and slow them by 50% and make the item perk baseline - chilling winds sucks, I don’t think I’ve seen a use for it. Just make it a knock back with a bit of upfront damage. It’s currently a crappy flame thrower and it also doesn’t even slow anything
- ice pylon - don’t even know what you can do with this ability. Make it that you can throw it at least. The animation it horrible. Also make it explode on death or recast or something.
- ice spikes reign of terror is over, might need slightly more range or something. It’s should be okay balance wise because it’s harder to hit the further things are away
Void gauntlet
Objective - fix up its insane cooldown reduction and improve some of the lesser used abilities.
- cap all perks that reduce cooldown times so you can’t just cycle through abilities.
- reduce the root time by .5 seconds and by .5 seconds on the target.
- rebuff the damage of the orb of decay
- increase the damage and make both the tether and life steal ability apply stacks of decay.
- increase stacks of decay to 4
- nerf oblivion’s ability to strip buffs.
Hatchet
Objective - boost the power of the throwing tree and give it synergy with the melee tree.
- projectile speed, range and damage increased for throwing
- social distancing now doesn’t make you go backwards, it makes you go the direction you’re facing.
- infecting throw animation is now similar to that of rending throw.
- perks get a second pass to see what they can apply to melee strikes as well as throwing.
- perma grit removed from zerking
- after cast of feral rush reduced.
Musket
Objective - (this ones going to trigger people) reduce the insane long range power of this dual scaling weapon and move it to the kit.
- fall off damage increased to 33%. The full 33% will be in effect from that bloody rock people sit on in OPR to the mid fort.
- sticky bombs cast time dramatically decreased, explosion is now 1.5 seconds after it sticks, will damage through dodge roll as well as increase projectile speed. We all love sticky bombs from halo, copy that.
- cast time of power burn and power shot reduced, movement whilst loading it
- trap throwing speed increased as well as activation time lowered, throwing it at someone and hitting them directly will just cause them to get rooted for the duration, only 1 charge. Perk added to add bleed on direct hit.
Sword and shield
Objective - make it not suck in PvP as much.
- cooldowns lowered in the offensive tree
- round shields weight reduced to nothing.
- all stat points moved to the sword.
- grit on leaping strike for the love of god.
The rest of the weapons I’m not as familiar with but I’ll make a few comments on them.
Great axe
Overall the weapon seems to be in a very good state as always, grav well 100% needs to have a debuff added to the player so they can’t be effected by a second grav well for at least 5 seconds.
I think grav well still needs to be looked at because it seems to be the thing propping the whole weapon up.
The rest of its kit seems to be fairly decent.
No comment on war hammer and life staff
Spear actually seems fine.
Then we also (sorry str users) need to gut the stupid 300 talent point for grit on every light and heavy and either move it to just on abilities or make it that you can knock down people with grit. That’s gotta be by far the best attribute perk in game by a long shot.
TLDR
Stop sledge hammer nerfing