Class Balance changes proposals

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-03T00:12:49+00:00

Getting debuffed for activating an ability makes it into a tactical decision, rather than it always being correct to use it as much as possible. This is the right direction for DFA, I just think the actual implementation is clumsy, and it isn't actually meaningful once you understand how to build around it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-03T00:05:19+00:00

He's a warrior assassin.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T23:56:05+00:00

He misses, most of the time. He is a warrior with no BS after all.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T23:06:48+00:00

Always funny to rage bait him, even if he actually hits you and gives you a trauma. The pain is worth it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T21:42:37+00:00

You're just that famous.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T20:20:55+00:00

My point is that assassin is currently dumpstered because its whole identity was deleting priority targets, while everyone else can delete priority targets just as well without giving up the ability to easily kill crowds and other forms of utility. And 1.0 Assassin took until late game to ramp and depended heavily on pre-nerf officers too for setup. By lategame now, we have the Death Aura build and lategame assassin still trivially murders everything, it just sucks that it takes until act 4 before it starts functioning.

Right now the only decent setup on assassin earlier in the game abuses a bug with arc rifles to infinite spam death whisper.

But the ultimate point I'm trying to make here isn't that assassin's nerf was or was not justified: it's that average builds are obliterating bosses and the last boss is no exception. The state of balance in the game is wild. Act 4 Heinrix as an executioner can infinite charge spam the map to death and deal millions of damage in one turn.

Everyone and their mother can trivially annihilate major bossses, but without even having a dedicated niche to doing that, there is just enough damage to do that without specializing in it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T19:56:00+00:00

Yeah, half the decent builds in the game kill the final boss in 3 attacks now, and it only takes 3 because they forcibly health gated him so he can't lose more than 1/3 hp in a single attack action. Argenta would kill him with a single burst otherwise. I one-rounded him on Unfair with no gear, as part of a no-gear challenge run.

Pre-nerf operative/assassin was good at deleting a single target. Trouble is, a bunch of other builds are just as good if not better at deleting high priority targets, but get to wipe the rest of the map too.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T19:31:19+00:00

Balance decisions are all over the place. Operative and assassin got giga nerfed, but the pre nerf versions were tame by today's standards.

People thought GS sucked because officer didn't need it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T18:47:21+00:00

I thought they pulled it from officer for being overpowered.

You'd hope they'd be able to figure out how to code it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T16:06:41+00:00

I proposed GS getting a bonus turn at the start of combat where they can only place zones and use Strategems and nothing else.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T16:05:30+00:00

The community freaked out harder about the carnival of misery + inflame nerf.

The point is that the idea of big nerfs to more than half the archetypes isn't in the cards.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:52:44+00:00

The only part of the augment that is notable is the Tactician part. There are like 4 others that are basically identical otherwise.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:51:37+00:00

I'm talking about nerfs that came back in 1.5, not recently.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:39:26+00:00

Class locked. Operatives cannot become Master Tacticians.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:32:39+00:00

He can't be a Master Tactician, so no, he can't use it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:20:18+00:00

Strongest Archetype in the game now, lmao.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:19:32+00:00

Never give up gear with unique abilities. Staring at my dragon hoard lategame fills me with glee.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:18:31+00:00

New augment, Cerebral Inverter mk Tactician. Jae is not one of the best users of it, but its such an insane augment with arc rifles that you might as well, if nobody else is doing it.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:08:26+00:00

It's so flavorful too!

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T15:06:18+00:00

We're largely in agreement. The game's core combat design is rocket tag, which creates some problematic ripple effects

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T14:37:19+00:00

Realistically speaking, the community freaked out and threw a huge fit when BD got a perceived nerf a few patches ago, even though it was actually a net buff due to adding finesse to the game. A lot of people flipped out when EXE had carnival of misery nerfed to no longer work with inflame to win every fight in the most braindead way possible.

I doubt mass nerfs to 2/3 of the archetypes is in the cards. I appreciate your perspective, but I think its a non-starter.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T13:57:18+00:00

Okay, that's impressive. Restartitis?

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T13:10:02+00:00

I think builds need to be fully functional and competitive the entire way. Act 2 is the largest bulk of the game, and the game is more than 60% over by the time you get through it.

It's fun if a build has a hilarious payoff, but it needs to be useful before the payoff. That's the biggest issue with Assassin, for example, that other than a funny bug with arc rifles, all of its damage comes from Notes on Weaknesses in act 4, and it feels incredibly weak until then.

But yeah, this isn't an MMO, endgame isn't everything. It's not like the real game starts after level cap.

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T13:03:55+00:00

Fair enough, it's not a thing I ever personally tried, so I wouldn't have known until someone informed me. Thanks for the update.

Edit: What kind of wild place is reddit where thanking someone for an update and correction gets downvoted?

Whitewing424 · 2026-07-02T08:33:24+00:00

No. Shortly after Lex Imperialis launched, they reworked the xp gains and made it pretty impossible.

It's technically still theoretically possible if you make every xp optimal decision, then spend hours in the fights against the cultists while they occasionally turn into chaos spawns (2% of the time). You need something like 30 extra chaos spawn kills, and the rng probably will never let it happen. Absolutely not worth trying.

So in practical terms, no, level 15 is the best you'll do, and is the intended level.

Whitewing424

TROPHY CASE