every soldier attacking skill feels clunky and underpowered and their items are bad

[eralduspr]

obviously they are, they follow the forum… as to whether this really is all that vocal or just a few scattered posts is in the eye of the beholder though, I guess

Yeah, they obviously follow the forum, but my point was that it would be nice if they at least let us know their approach on Cadence and how they plan to work on it.

I don’t see the correlation, physical is the most frequent / widely supported damage type, so definitely not underpowered…

I’m talking about how other masteries have a mix of various damage types on their skills, while the Soldier has mostly Physical damage only on it’s skills, disregarding DoTs, and how adding Pierce damage to these skills could make them feel stronger.

[Imp]

Cadence is aweful, especially for 2h ranged. The good thing is that Crate is aware of it and changes are being made. The bad thing is that those changes have not made a difference, Cadence still sucks like it did before.

Forcewave, I would not comment on it as I haven’t used for a long time, I don’t think many people use it and for good reason.

Blade arc is not that bad. I would consider it balanced.

[Zantai]

I’ve seem a lot of threads and certain users bringing up Cadence and how undeperforming it is these past days/weeks which I agree BTW, but there is something else that bothers me:

Why hasn’t Medierra, Zantai, or any Crate employer commented on these threads, like, ever? :eek:

It’s pretty clear that there is a lot of disatisfaction with the the skill currently, and yet, I don’t think I ever saw any of them commenting or even asking why we think the skill is underwhelming, or if they ever plan on changing it later.

The quantity of shitposting that has only increased after release has generally soured the desire to have frequent discussions about balance. So we mostly stick to the shadows, observe and make changes as needed.

1.0.0.5 includes another balance pass on a variety of hot topics, including a hard look at the relative balance of the auto-attack replacers such as Cadence and Fire Strike. Forcewave has received another buff as well, both in its target area and damage.

[Marcus]

The quantity of shitposting that has only increased after release has generally soured the desire to have frequent discussions about balance. So we mostly stick to the shadows, observe and make changes as needed.

1.0.0.5 includes another balance pass on a variety of hot topics, including a hard look at the relative balance of the auto-attack replacers such as Cadence and Fire Strike. Forcewave has received another buff as well, both in its target area and damage.

While you’re at it can you please look at Forcewave’s use of Cast Speed versus Attack Speed? The itemization for purely physical non-shield builds is already terrible but trying to find Cast Speed amongst physical stats makes it that much harder and also the Mastery itself has boosts to Attack Speed.

[Zantai]

While you’re at it can you please look at Forcewave’s use of Cast Speed versus Attack Speed? The itemization for purely physical non-shield builds is already terrible but trying to find Cast Speed amongst physical stats makes it that much harder and also the Mastery itself has boosts to Attack Speed.

That is a technical limitation of the skill system that would have far-reaching consequences if changed, or would require clunky special cases to make forcewave unique. Would rather expand the cast speed options for physical builds.

[Nine]

Would rather expand the cast speed options for physical builds.

Yes please. Making it attack speed reliant would be a nerf to forcewave anyway due to the huge negative speed multipliers that 2handed weapons have. Expanding gearing options would be much more preferable. Increasing the animation speed of the skill itself like Most suggested would also help since forcewave is a somewhat slow skill even with very high casting speed.

[Martimus]

Am I the only one who thought the Defensive skill mastery on Titan Quest was just amazing?

Defense Mastery

The way the skills worked with Shields was just awesome. I LOVED autoattacking and hearing that bass booming over my speakers combined with the procs from using Batter and the Warfare mastery passives combined…

I miss that. A lot, and I wish the Soldier tree had that playstyle in it, and I think with a bit of tweaking, Cadence could work that way, too.

[mamba]

I’m talking about how other masteries have a mix of various damage types on their skills, while the Soldier has mostly Physical damage only on it’s skills, disregarding DoTs

yes, that is what I replied to

Dealing more damage types only makes you weaker as it is harder to buff them all. With physical being the predominant damage type, focusing on it is easy. That there is no other damage type certainly does not result in the Soldier being weaker, if anything it results in the reverse, as you can fully focus on one type.

and how adding Pierce damage to these skills could make them feel stronger.

chances are it makes them weaker unless it truly is an addition (in which case it probay hardly makes any difference) rather than taking a bit of physical damage and turning it into piercing…

With all the +% to physical you can have and focus on, dealing part of the damage as piercing will be detrimental as you lose the buffs for it.

[Marcus]

Yes please. Making it attack speed reliant would be a nerf to forcewave anyway due to the huge negative speed multipliers that 2handed weapons have. Expanding gearing options would be much more preferable. Increasing the animation speed of the skill itself like Most suggested would also help since forcewave is a somewhat slow skill even with very high casting speed.

I disagree, you can buff the skill to make up for the speed multiplier but what we don’t need is more physical damage gear that is useless for 95% of builds similar to the plethora of Shield-based gear since Forcewave is the ONLY cast speed based physical damage skill. Now if they want to put out a Forcewave-centric set with loads of cast-speed, that’s fine, I just mean a semi-generic legendary, epic or affix with awesome physical dps stats but then a cast speed stat that’s useless for a Blade Arc, Cadence, or non-cold BM build.

Right now there is a severe drought of physical legendaries that aren’t shield based or tied to some other magical damage type. I’m not making it up or whining, check out the legendary 2H offerings, the last purely physical/pierce/trauma/bleed one is level 50. Until they fix that I’d rather they’d not also add cast speed physical gear.

[Kaljurei]

The problem with Cadence is not damage, it’s design.

For ex.

1. Fire Strike, without Explosive Strike is decent single target, but the only reason any ranged player will take FS is to use ES to do AOE damage. For Melee it’s different because FS melee builds use other sources of damage to take care of AOE ex. WPS/Weapon procs/Devotion etc.

2. Thunderous Strike already has an AOE, and is further enhanced by Torrent.

Cadence is actually a single target ability with an added cleave, just like Fire Strike, however Fire Strike only has cleave/AOE when paired with Explosive Strike for Ranged, just like Cadence with FF(except it’s for both Melee and Ranged, albeit a worse form of AOE compared to Explosive Strike, or Brimstone for that matter). Its cleave portion is worse than Fire Strike especially because it only happens on the third hit, and only hits a fixed number of additional targets. If you look at Forcewave and Blade Arc, they are baseline AOE abilities that provide additional single target damage through Laceration and Rending Force/Internal Trauma.

So, either you remake Cadence in such a way as to reduce single target damage to increase cleave(You can do this via Fighting Form i.e reduces non-Cadence damage by a certain % while providing cleave) and make the AOE portion happen more frequently(by providing AS% bonuses through Deadly Momentum).

To make the ranged gameplay more fun, you can make the third hit do an actual AOE, and add piercing on each projectile to make it unique. You can simply reduce the chance to pierce and allow only for ultimate ranks to provide 100% pierce to balance it out.

You could also remake Cadence into a Brimstone esque modifier i.e each projectile splits into smaller projectiles on impact, and then work it into something unique from there.

Attack Speed for 2 Handers is always going to be a touchy subject. I don’t think 2H Cadence will ever be viable because it requires 3rd hit mechanics, whereas PS/FS never have that problem, unless you bring some new ability for Soldiers that provides a massive amount of AS for 2H Weapons.

As for Physical damage itemization, I feel I’ve written on that subject extensively enough as referenced by Most.

[Most]

The quantity of shitposting that has only increased after release has generally soured the desire to have frequent discussions about balance. So we mostly stick to the shadows, observe and make changes as needed.

1.0.0.5 includes another balance pass on a variety of hot topics, including a hard look at the relative balance of the auto-attack replacers such as Cadence and Fire Strike. Forcewave has received another buff as well, both in its target area and damage.

thanks for taking the time to reply, i’m really happy to know that this is being looked at

do you have any intention of looking at blade arc?

also, re: physical itemization, i finally found a leviathan blueprint for my blade arc character and was able to upgrade from a stonefist rebuke. my dps went up by 800, or about 2%. i also traded 7% physical resistance for 4% health, which is obviously not a good tradeoff. this is upgrading from a level 50 soldier legendary to a level 75 soldier legendary.

please do something about leviathan, or alternatively just make a better end game 2h physical weapon.

edit: also, another issue with blade arc, what is up with knockback as a mechanic? i don’t understand what purpose it’s supposed to serve. the skill would be significantly better if it had no knockback at all for the base skill, with knockback on the transmuter for people who are into stuff like that. knockback just slows down gameplay by forcing you to chase anything you knock over, and actually threatening enemies are immune to it.

[system]

I would like to add that there is not one decent one handed legendary in the game for phys damage.

My build and every other one hander soldier I have seen on the forums all uses the bone axe thing from trogs or the vendor since it’s Bis.

[eralduspr]

The quantity of shitposting that has only increased after release has generally soured the desire to have frequent discussions about balance. So we mostly stick to the shadows, observe and make changes as needed.

1.0.0.5 includes another balance pass on a variety of hot topics, including a hard look at the relative balance of the auto-attack replacers such as Cadence and Fire Strike. Forcewave has received another buff as well, both in its target area and damage.

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you mean about some of these guys throwing a tantrum instead of providing actual feedback…

I’m really looking foward for all these changes, and I hope that 1.0.0.5 will finally make Cadence great and being on par with Fire Strike, Savagery, etc.

[Marcus]

I would like to add that there is not one decent one handed legendary in the game for phys damage.

My build and every other one hander soldier I have seen on the forums all uses the bone axe thing from trogs or the vendor since it’s Bis.

Agreed, Reaver’s Claw and Earthsplitter are literally the only pure physical 1H’ers and I have trouble counting Earthsplitter since it is shield and forcewave-based and Reaver’s Claw has +1 to Soldier but then has a random Nightblade +3 Ring of Steel bonus. You’d think as popular as physical/pierce/trauma are in the masteries/devotions there’d be a couple more options, especially in Maces where there are none.

[craftman_21]

Agreed, Reaver’s Claw and Earthsplitter are literally the only pure physical 1H’ers and I have trouble counting Earthsplitter since it is shield and forcewave-based and Reaver’s Claw has +1 to Soldier but then has a random Nightblade +3 Ring of Steel bonus. You’d think as popular as physical/pierce/trauma are in the masteries/devotions there’d be a couple more options, especially in Maces where there are none.

+1 to this. I feel like there should be more options for those damage types than what we’ve currently got. I always wondered why Reaver’s claw was a soldier weapon but had Nightblade bonuses.

[Imp]

+1 to this. I feel like there should be more options for those damage types than what we’ve currently got. I always wondered why Reaver’s claw was a soldier weapon but had Nightblade bonuses.

Because it was a blademaster weapon, not a soldier one. Most of the legendaries provide dual support in terms of masteries.

[Marcus]

Because it was a blademaster weapon, not a soldier one. Most of the legendaries provide dual support in terms of masteries.

This is an overall negative with Legendaries IMO but that’s a different discussion. I know they intend it to be a BM weapon but why? The only Nightblade’y thing about it is the +3 to Circle of Slaughter. I really wish the weapon wouldn’t choose your 2nd mastery for you with only one stat. Either way the main point stands, there are only 2 purely physical 1H’ers none of which are even semi-generic to Soldiers and ZERO 2H’ers post level 50. For comparison, even a build containing Devouring Swarm (not a popular ability) has a 2H’er in this range.

[Kaljurei]

All such weapons have to be Blademaster weapons because Nightblade is the only mastery that allows dual wielding. If you want to DW otherwise you have to use a certain relic/item. You could argue that even Soldiers should be allowed to DW and it doesn’t make sense that only one mastery allows DW.

[Marcus]

All such weapons have to be Blademaster weapons because Nightblade is the only mastery that allows dual wielding. If you want to DW otherwise you have to use a certain relic/item. You could argue that even Soldiers should be allowed to DW and it doesn’t make sense that only one mastery allows DW.

Those DW relics are in the game for a reason, I see no reason why every non-shield based 1H’er needs to also have a Nightblade bonus especially when they’re so sparse as physical-based 1H’ers which was the main point.

[Kaljurei]

Those DW relics are in the game for a reason, I see no reason why every non-shield based 1H’er needs to also have a Nightblade bonus especially when they’re so sparse as physical-based 1H’ers which was the main point.

Those DW relics are in the game because people who want to go DW without going Nightblade can use those items, but it makes little sense for like every DW specific item to focus on pierce damage, or cold damage for that matter because they are exclusively tailored towards Blademasters, who btw don’t even majorly focus on Cold damage. The ones that do are Spellbreakers, and they have itemization comparably favorable as Lightning Shamans.

What I’m trying to say is - if you have relics that allow you to DW, then every item that’s focused on DW shouldn’t be exclusively focused or even have a reasonably major component that focuses on pierce/cold damage, because there are people who might want to play DW builds that don’t rely on Nightblade. For ex. If I wanted to play a Savagery lightning DW build, I shouldn’t be forced to go Nightblade, unfortunately I am because of WPS procs, or for that matter Saboteur builds. Why are WPS skills predominantly only available on Nightblade? Soldier has 2 but they either have slow animations or are focused on single target, or have bad itemization for physical damage. I get that WPS skills are required for Nightblade because they have relatively nothing else for DW to do damage with, but it seems weird that WPS synchronizes extraordinarily well with attack modifiers like Savagery or Fire Strike, but unfortunately not with Cadence.