I didn’t get a chance to submit some thoughts I had when Sir Aggrend of SoD put out the call, so I’ll post here instead. In his tweet, he specifically called out the survival tree, and I think there’s some interesting ideas there, but the impression I get from that tree is that the original vanilla developers intended for that tree to be a Solo/Survivability spec.
Ironically, it’s not even as good as BM for solo, because you don’t have the health regen and pet survivability of the BM tree! So a lot of my feedback is just going to be about the melee playstyle, some of which may intersect with survival tree or not.
Note
Don’t pay too much attention to the numbers, I’m sure all of these are ridiculously overpowered, and probably will never be implemented as-is. Then again, if they do go ahead and “diminish” melee playstyle like they threatened they were going to do with the last balance, maybe this is what it will take to retain melee’s viability if they DO nerf the one button we have right now.
Melee Specialist “mega rune”
Similar to how warlock’s Metamorphosis rune gives you a new form which unlocks a whole slew of abilities and changes, make melee specialist rune unlock a series of changes. Some ideas:
- All traps are now grenades, can be used in combat with a reduced cooldown. All grenades benefit from talents that affect traps (survival tree tie-in).
- All stings are now melee “strike” abilities and benefit from talents that affect “stings”. Eg, Serpent strike benefits from Serpent strike effects, Viper Strike, Scorpid strike, stc.
- Grants Hookshot ability: Fires a chain to a target within 30 yards dealing 80% weapon damage and pulling the hunter to the target’s location. 10 second cooldown. Usable in combat.
- Your dodge chance adds to your hit chance and your parry chance adds to your crit chance (survival tree tie-in).
Note: 5/5 Deflection becomes 5% parry and 5% crit.
Note: Deterrence gives 25% dodge, 25% hit, 25% parry and 25% crit for 10 seconds every 5 minutes.
Note: 5/5 Imp Aspect of the Monkey becomes 5% dodge and 5% hit. - Aspect of the Beast should give melee AP and/or Haste.
Incentivize 2H playstyle
Maybe this can be rolled into melee specialist above, or maybe DW spec rune can be changed to Melee “Expert”:
When using two one-handed weapons, raptor strike attacks with both weapons and offhand weapon deals 50% additional damage (Existing DW rune effect is unchanged).
When using a two handed weapon (polearm, 2h axe, 2h sword or staff), deal 20% additional weapon damage and +5% melee crit.
This would make both weapon styles viable, but DW is for faster/more attacks, while 2H is for big number dopamine.
Buff Cleave
Cleave should be the go-to filler between raptor/flanking if you have it slotted, so it should do 100% of weapon damage to the primary target and 80% weapon damage to nearby targets.
Uber Copium Section
These are probably even less likely to be considered, let alone implemented, given that the SoD team is a part time job of the classic team, but I can imagine in my head what I might like from this class/build…
- A new ranged weapon type that is a javelin/glaive style of weapon. Having bows be proc-based trinkets seems kind of like a waste, similar to how melee classes use ranged slot for a stat stick. Maybe there can be a tie-in with certain melee abilities, like the hookshot ability above could use the glaive’s damage.
- Volley becomes an instant cast artillery barrage, not channeled, to make AoE feel beefier.
- Give a bunch of engineering recipes for crafted things to make engineering feel like a more natural fit. There’s already a basis there with things like crafted ammo, maybe some more ammo types like explosive ammo or poison ammo for ranged could round it out for the entire class, but here’s some additional ideas:
Buzz Saw Attachment
Creates a buzzsaw attachment for your gloves. When hitting an enemy with a melee attack, has a chance to cause the target to bleed for X damage over Y seconds.
Rocket Turret
Creates a rocket turret attachment for your shoulder armor. When hitting an enemy with a melee attack, has a chance to fire a rocket at that enemy hitting them for 50% weapon damage as fire damage, and 30% weapon damage as fire damage to enemies within 5 yards.
Cluster Grenade Bandolier
Attaches a bandolier to your cloak. When using an explosive grenade (see above), also throw out 2 additional explosive grenades to the sides, dealing 50% of your explosive grenade’s damage.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I just want to blow things up…