If it's not too late to chime in on this...
The problem with melee Temporal Wardens is that they're pulled in way too many ways for too little payoff, too few options, and too few breaks. They're like Arcane Blades, if Arcane Blades traded in survivability for overkill mobility and damage for nothing. Let's go over their issues one by one.
A) Look at the stats they need: Strength to actually bring the pain, Dexterity to unlock their talents, Magic to gain access to talents that are absolute keystones to their survival, Constitution to not explode, and Willpower to alleviate the brutal MAD that plagues them. The end result is that no matter what you do, you just don't have points, and it hurts extremely bad. It's so bad, it's probably a more legitimate option to go with a two-hander TW than it is to go with a dual-wielding one. That way, at least you save yourself a billion class points and can dump Dexterity with abandon (so in the early game, you go down to three needed stats thanks to Strength of Purpose, which is an actually logical stat pull). When the best way to play half of the class is to ignore everything you're supposed to gun for, you know there's a problem.
B) TWs are fragile. This can't be overemphasized when you're looking at melee-only TWs. Archer TWs can dictate how a battle goes with the crazy amount of escapes TWs get (and one other thing...more on this later), but often, melee TWs have to burn half of their escapes to actually get into melee in time, and they can't actually DO much to dictate how a battle goes without a serious magic side-focus. This means that you have a class that is squishy (unless you go for the gimmick of maxing temporal resist and using Damage Smearing...but I'm none too sure it actually works that way, because it seems like the kind of thing that would for sure have a behind-the-scenes tweak to prevent only one resist from mattering for TWs) and has to suffer through that squishyness with no recourse but to grin and bear it. Displace Damage is a great talent, but it's unreliable, and the maxim in all Roguelikes is that if you have to rely on luck to save you, you're probably already dead. There's no reliable way to prevent damage for a melee TW except praying for a potent shield rune or a paladin escort, and it sucks.
C) Melee TWs don't get any extra game love, which is really blatant when you look at the enormous perk archers get at the Daikara. When was the last time you swapped out of the Epoch bow after getting it? That insanely fast attack speed is an enormous boon for archers and makes their damage crazily competitive, but there's no equivalent super dagger/super sword for the melee TW to earn. It's very disappointing to win that battle and get loot that is utterly worthless to you. Couldn't an Epoch Sword/Dagger be added to the game and a check ran to hand it/them out if you have more dual-wielding talents than archery ones? It'd be really helpful if you at least knew you'd have a guaranteed power spike awaiting you in the Daikara just in time for the ugly transition to the midgame.
D) Melee TWs are extremely starved for class points (and category points, for that matter). Look at what they need to buy to stay competitive: Strength of Purpose 5 (guaranteed max because otherwise, have fun with your completely crippling stat problems), Dual Mastery 5 (because you DO want to do damage, right?), Dual Strike 1-5 (it's a bonus stun and that's worth a lot - I'll concede it varies by build on how much though, but we can agree that it's at least easier to obtain early than Stop), Weapon Folding 1-5 (it's a trap to pick it up now, but the intent is pretty clearly that you should use it to buff your damage). We're talking a minimum of 10 points and a catpoint just to do your job passably, possibly up to 15 if you want to kick your damage up as far as it can go, and 20 for a reliable 1v1 kit. We haven't even gotten into buying Displace Damage, Damage Smearing, Haste, Stop, Celerity, or anything of the sort. This is JUST damage and a reliable opening move to control a singular enemy. Meanwhile an archer just maxes Bow Mastery and maybe Weapon Folding and calls it a day. When there's already the disadvantage of having a fighting style that has trouble making use of the biggest edge TWs have (mobility, of course), having to spend double or more class points on doing damage is just depressing. Something has to give somewhere.
E) Even beyond all this, there's the problem that TW talent selection is dull. You don't exactly have that much of a choice on what to pick, what with only three generic talent trees (nobody is unlocking the fourth one until very late in the game unless you have a burning need to force yourself to use all six stats in one character), an unlock tree that is just a slew of passive bonuses, and two basic dual-wielding techniques you mostly don't want to use (Sweep and Whirlwind) because of their brutal stamina costs and unimpressive effects. There just aren't that many options to building a melee TW, and what is there is unimpressive and lackluster.
I think those are the big problems with the melee TW right now. The absolute most pressing ones are A and B (something really has to give with stats - either melee TWs should be way better at cutting things down so their endgame is a blast of rapid kills, or they need a smoother start), but the other problems should probably be kept in mind as well, even if some aren't that big a deal at the moment.
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