Current Perk Balance

[NewAgeOfPower]

With the Dev Team adjusting Perks on May 6th, several ‘OP’ and ‘UP’ perks have been rebalanced. Here are the problem perks, in my opinion.

-Head Hunter
In this game, hits to the head are critical hits, and do extra damage. So why do I claim Head Hunter is bad?

Often, opponents are wearing more head armor than body armor. Even when this is not the case, %CTH to hit body significantly exceeds %to hit the head, I am very annoyed after multiple turns of chewing through tough body armor, my mercenaries decide to try to chew through the head armor too!

Right now, this skill is only useful on Bludgeoning Weapons + Push the Advantage builds.

-Debilitate
The effect amplifies all damage to the target by 30% of your melee skill, which is alot, right? But not only does it eat up 4 AP, it drains a huge amount of stamina as well. Even worse, this is a melee-skill.

Builds that can afford to waste stamina, survive in melee, and still do other things are very rare. Building around Debilitate is debilitatingly constraining.

-Nimble
Both the Stat-Per-Level nerf and the Dodge bugfix have been indirect Nimble nerfs. With less total stats per level, there is less total stats to multiply to get to a very high Nimble bonus. Right now a 1H Nimble build is only viable in Swordmasters and Disowned Nobles.

That being said, it’s still possible for a Nimble build to exceed 100 Melee Defense. Still awesome, just much harder to build around now.

-Fortified Mind
Opponents that use effects which Fortified Mind counters are extremely rare. It could use a secondary bonus, like Hold Out has.

-Return Favor
Return Favor is simply poorly designed right now.

When my Tank is ready to Taunt, I also want to Shieldwall as well. There is simply no space for Return Favor, Shieldwall, AND taunt. Although one could claim the same about Indomitable, Indomitable grants a massive Tankiness bonus that is in some ways better than Shieldwall.

Plus, both the Offensive and Utility Trees have a choice between 1 passive and 1 active Perk at the T3 level. Why is it different for the Defense Tree?

-Shield Bash
The skill is somewhat useful. But why is this not in the Defense tree? It requires the character to be wielding a shield, after all.

If a character is an 2H offensive carry build, they definitely do not want to take Shield Bash. Since only tank builds want to take Taunt, the 2H Carry is forced to pick between Student, Bags/Belts, and Quick hands in addition to Pathfinder. Quite constraining, especially with the Quick Hands nerfs.

-Quick Hands
With the recent Bags and Belts rework and Fatigue penalty for items without the Perk, I felt Quick Hands was reasonably balanced.

However, it was nerfed again, directly this time. Now that it costs 2 AP to swap items even with Quick Hands, both Bags and Belts and Quick Hands have been devalued significantly.

While allowing players to fire off 3-4 crossbow shots in a single turn is mildly overpowered, the player cannot reload his crossbows in a timely manner, and thus that combo is a mere one-time wonder. A bigger problem is allowing players to have the benefits of shields while bypassing their downsides.

Both of the above concerns can be mitigated by making Quick Hands a One Time per turn free item swap, thus, a player can swap from, say, bow to shield once, but not back again (without spending AP or waiting until next turn).

My suggestions:
A Nimble Nerf
Student Buff
Quest Stacking, Increased Rewards
Quick Hands Rework Thanks, Dev Team!

[Sky]

Yeah, why post in the perk tree topics, that would be too convenient.

I only hope you realise that a 100 melee defense is way way more than you actually need.

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[NewAgeOfPower]

Sky wrote:

Yeah, why post in the perk tree topics, that would be too convenient.

Why so passive aggressive? Why don’t you just say what you mean?

The perk tree topics are to discuss each perk tree, overall. This topic is to discuss what perks you feel are underpowered- a subtle but significant difference.

Sky wrote:

I only hope you realise that a 100 melee defense is way way more than you actually need.

Nonsense. I had a 117 Melee Defense Swordmaster get killed by an Orc Boss. Admittedly, he was surrounded by 6 Orcs, and the Boss was on higher ground, so the Overwhelmed penalty must have been enormous.

Also, the minimum % hit chance is 5%, I think. Which isn’t a huge deal, unlike the minimum 1% to-hit in Vanilla JA2, due to the lack of rapid fire in this game.

My suggestions:
A Nimble Nerf
Student Buff
Quest Stacking, Increased Rewards
Quick Hands Rework Thanks, Dev Team!

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