Sawbutcher rare mobs...Skirmisher 2.0

[Effigy]

The damage from Sawbutcher talents scales too high on enemies right now. I've noticed that the rare+ mobs that give me the most trouble almost invariably have Sawbutcher talents. On my last Insane run, a Sawbutcher tiger killed me in 1 turn through 1.5k life, 5/5 Second Life, 5/5 Retribution, and fairly high armor/resists. Most characters just don't stand a chance against that kind of damage. I think either the talent scaling at high levels should be nerfed or the class should just be disabled for NPCs. For the time being, I'll just have to disable Embers so I don't constantly get wrecked by these things.

[Coldbringer]

Yeah some of the stuff introduced with EOR is broken.

Adding to your example on Nightmare I got my level 50 Orc Gunslinger one shotted by an Anorithil patrol. They did 1700 damge in one spell. Through full steam armor set with it's damage reduction ability, plus the other sustain damage reduction ability, resists, and over 1,500 hps. One turn in the Ambush, and dead, immediately. Without resists or passives that one spell would have done over 2,000 damage. Even if I'd activated a 200 light resist torque I still would have been dead. At 75% light resist I might have barely survived. Is that working as intended, Darkgod?

Could stand to be toned down a bit. On the lower difficulties, I've been able to handle the EOR classes on enemies, with significant struggle. But I can definitely see how it can get out of control at higher difficulty levels.

[Razakai]

Anorithil patrols (and the patrols in base game for that matter) should be removed or heavily reworked. Currently it adds nothing to the game, they just make exploring the world map tedious as if you screw up you're likely dead. Can't outplay spawning next to 3 mobs with no way to break LoS all of which can 1 shot you.

[Micbran]

I often find myself disabling EoR... Sawbutcher Rares seem all sorts of OP.

[Coldbringer]

Anorithil patrols (and the patrols in base game for that matter) should be removed or heavily reworked. Currently it adds nothing to the game, they just make exploring the world map tedious as if you screw up you're likely dead. Can't outplay spawning next to 3 mobs with no way to break LoS all of which can 1 shot you.

I Like the challenge, but I play normal and nightmare so far. In higher difficulties I imagine their deadliness is so great it's not worth risking it.

In regular campaign it's a great way to farm gear or test how strong your character is. In EOR its that plus high level reagents for crafting which are desperately needed

[breadsmith]

I have yet to have a problem with Sawbutchers. Gunslingers, on the other hand, just sort of explode me in one round.

[Zizzo]

Anorithil patrols (and the patrols in base game for that matter) should be removed or heavily reworked. Currently it adds nothing to the game, they just make exploring the world map tedious as if you screw up you're likely dead. Can't outplay spawning next to 3 mobs with no way to break LoS all of which can 1 shot you.

Opt-in Adventurers Parties covers those as of release 3.0.0. As for sawbutcher/gunslinger rares, the solution to that, as I keep saying, is No Rare Monsters (and yes, turning off EoR for non-EoR characters, as I learned on my first encounter with a saw horror…

[Zeyphor]

sawbutchers and gunslingers are both so strong that it isn't even funny

you see

sawbutchers and gunslingers are both classes who are designed to do alot of damage with bump attacks

one can tell because all of their abilities that deal %weapon damage deal low % weapon damage

the hardest hitting move gunslingers get aside from awesome toss is double shot, which does 77% damage twice, for 154% damage total

the hardest hitting move sawbutchers get besides saw wheels(which wasn't like that to begin with) and punishment(with some debuffs), is spinal break, which only does 162% weapon damage at max rank

both classes are not designed to be balanced if having abilities that do over 250% weapon damage, which makes them absurdly overpowered as randbosses

furthermore, both classes already do ridiculous amount of damage even as rares and even as player characters

each and every shoot talent that comes from a gunslinger hits twice as hard as every shoot talent that comes from a skirmisher

skirmishers weren't really that OP before they were disabled for npcs; its just that sling sniper and kill shot are too strong

but gunslingers do 200% weapon damage every time they use shoot because they do 100% weapon damage twice, and the procs hit twice too

and then sawbutchers are even worse

i have a player character sawbutcher right now, who won embers

by simply using saw wheels(5 movements) and then deactivating it by using you shall by my weapon, he can do over 20000 damage in 1 turn to a single enemy; thats more hp than the final boss in embers has not adding up all that he has from his forms

otherwise he can do over 6000 damage per turn by just bumping

even though hes a whitehoof with arcane might icctw and razorlock, my other point still stands; gunslingers and sawbutchers are not designed to be balanced if they have abilities that do a high% of weapon damage

an npc sawbutcher at a really high level could probably do 700 damage per turn if not more by just bumping in normal slumbering caves, and then you can add in whatever other melee abilities the enemy already innately has, such as maybe stunning blow or shadowstep and the damage per turn goes up and up

furthermore, I think that the embers campaign was not designed to be played successfully by most non-tinker classes

suggested solutions: completely remove the damage multiplier for the weapon mastery talents for both gunslingers and sawbutchers(but not psyshots), AND change saw wheels back to the embers of rage 1.0.0 version of the talent, then remove the %weapon damage dealt when moving past an enemy with saw wheels and make it instead do physical damage based on physical power when you move past an enemy with saw wheels; this way it won't trigger tempest of metal and won't be OP for NPCs or player characters

then unban saw wheels from NPCs
then, change sling sniper so that it gives no bonus to physical resistance penetration and ~2/5ths of the bonus to critmult for the called shot moves, then nerf kill shot's range multiplier from 250% to maybe 175% at the max, and unban the skirmisher class from NPCs

as a guy who won insane rl with a solipsist who cleaned out all the enemies in high peak WITH NO POINTS IN ARMOR TRAINING while skirmisher rares were still around, I can tell you that there were more dangerous rares and randbosses than skirmishers, even back then
I think that I was actually more afraid of melee rares that had really high listed weapon damage on their character sheets; especially doombringers and mindslayers
but with the existence of sawbutchers and gunslingers I'm not sure if I could clear insane rougelike again unless I used a class with really high armor and armor hardiness


however I heard that a weapon damage revamp is being done so all of this might be unnecessary if it is true and coming out any time soon

[Coldbringer]

how do you expect them to revamp weapon damage?

[Razakai]

It's kinda complex to explain, but basically weapon damage scales in a bit more of a linear fashion rather than going completely insane on high level mobs.

[Coldbringer]

You know, the Gunslingers and Sawbutchers I run into in the infinite dungeon tend to still have Iron or Steel weapons even in the mid to high teen levels. I wonder if this is intentional design to tone them down a bit. Despite that they still put up a great fight due to their abilities. If they actually had some Stralite or Voratun weapons, or god forbid uniques, we'd be totally screwed. Maybe I'll run into that eventually, my level 20 summoner has broken through the challenge barrier and destroys all the vaults now. Next Sawbutcher rare with dual Stormcutters and full Steam Armor set.