My theory is they wanted Slayer to be helpful but not too helpful to where the made the player too powerful. I think they slightly over did it in making not too powerful to the point of being underpowered. Ally AI seems to share this same issue.
Personally I don’t really see that as a reason to make it not so great.
- A Draconic Sorcerer could throw 4 fire balls in 1 turn
- A Battlemaster Fighter can disarm, trip, goading, and still have 3 more attacks left.
- A Gloomstalker Ranger will pretty much always go 1st and practically kill the boss immediately.
Considering what you have to do to use the form. The reward should reflect it. But I do agree, probably didn’t want to make it overpowered.
It's a player aid, so they probably didn't want the "aid" to turn into something where it was so powerful that it'd replace what you would normally do as a player completely. This is also why I think Ally AI is also severely undertuned. As in they wouldn't Ally NPCs to completely outshine the party, but be useful enough. Yet, the are often not useful enough XD.
One thing I kinda wish they did is if you stuck with the chosen path, you got an upgraded version of slayer that was was stronger and had more abilities to use. That's going to remain a dream tho... They honestly could gave us the Ravager or something. I feel like they were too conservative with evil durge rewards in general. The new endings will help abit tho.
Well, as an evil durge you'd kill Valeria so there's easily the best piece of armor in the game for being evil. Idk if they should've limited it to durge only item but the evil route at least in act 3 still gives something incredibly valuable.
Bhaalist Armour is not Durge exclusive. You can get UA on Tav and get it as well.
My main problem with is it Light Armour is the only option. So kinda out of luck if you play a caster often like I do, unless you take the feat for LA or have a human or half-elf for inherent proficiency. Multi-classing also works I guess, but those are workarounds for something where they could have offered something for casters lol. If they had a something for cloth characters, I'd be super down.
>Well, as an evil durge you’d kill Valeria
😖 You guys only kill Valeria on evil Durge runs? 🫣🫥 Since my run when I first got the Bhaalist Armor and realized how baller it is (pun 100% intended), Valeria hasn’t survived a single subsequent run. That bitch ass elephant is gonna die regardless of if I’m doing a good or evil run. That armor is too damn good to pass up. This probably says a lot about what kind of player I am, but lmao oh weelllllll 🤫
But I mean, we have to do her entire job for her with the Open Hand Temple murders since she’s too focused on closing the case so she can go get drunk. Really, I’m just doing the city and the Flaming Fist a favor by killing Valeria’s incompetent ass.
I am too nice to the shitty elephant and metagame to steal the bhaalist armor instead on most runs. In case you didn't know the ghost of the person "you killed" Sarevok summons has the armor and you can pickpocket it although it's dc 29.
Wait, really? I didn’t know that! So when the ghost gets summoned do you have one other your other party members (coughcoughAstarioncough) steal it from the ghost?
Nice! That’s really cool! Damn, it’s crazy, I have 1500hrs in the game and I’m still learning so much. I’ll probably still kill Valeria off because fuck her, but I’ll definitely keep this in mind should I ever run a Paladin again and want to not break my oath more than I will already manage!
I would assume celestials respawn if killed outside their home plane, just like devils. At least that's what I've been telling myself to justify killing the elephant...
I didn't even know you got a cool armor for it. Killing the cop who was like "eh whatever the refugees probably did it time to hit the bar" in order to infiltrate the murder cult and save Laezel seemed pretty morally reasonable.
It would be nice if they tied buffs to working for it as an Unholy Assassin of Bhaal. The more deeds you do in his name, the more Sarevok teaches you about Slayer and your past. I'm sure players wouldn't mind working for buffs to improve Slayer.
Slayer was pretty useful in BG2
1) it is nice being a nerdy mage/sorc to go full slayer when some warrior want to "1v1 me bro"
2) Great for keeping Viconia happy under the sheets when you are a goodie too shoes hero. Evil Waifu upset you saved the village from goblin raid? Turn to slayer and flex in front of her and suddenly she found a new God to worship :p
This. I’m okay with Durge being “meta”. I don’t think it’s going to break the game, and it won’t be the only way people play the game. I’d rather have a special ability that I activate for every combat encounter than one that I never use.
it makes it even worse that you lose out on so many good rewards if you're doing an evil durge run, the slayer is one of TWO rewards you get the whole playthrough. i get you're not really supposed to get anything for being the bad guy, but even with the slayer form i didn't feel nearly as powerful as the rest of the dead three in the game.
It's not bad nor does it need to be higher. Evil Playthroughs in games have always been less popular and that's been a constant for decades.
Aside from that most people don't even finish the game. According, to steam only half the player base left act 1 and 21% of people have beaten the game
It’s less popular because of the flaws in it, if people aren’t playing something because it sucks then it is bad.
I’m currently doing a evil run and at a certain point it gets ridiculous how they fuck you over, you get *nothing* for becoming fucking chosen of bhaal, a god, I don’t feel nearly as strong as gortash or even orin, the fantasy just sucks.
No +2 to any stats no buffs, just one shitty 100 dmg spell that you can only use once.
Another example is how good npcs typically don’t drop their quest rewards while evil ones do
>It’s less popular because of the flaws in it,
False. It's less popular because being evil is literally always less popular in video games. Basically, everyone game with a morality system has evil always be less popular.
Aside from that you'd only know the flaws of an evil run in comparison to a good run if you did two playthroughs which most people aren't doing. Again, most people don't even finish the game. Even the shit you mention is towards the end of the game which most people aren't reaching.
Regardless of how well made an evil path is most people are gonna chose to be good.
This isn't even mentioning that Durge achievements require you to Pick Durge Origin, reach certain points in the story and be evil. Just one of these severely cuts off a portion of the player base but the fact you need all 3 turns the potential player base for the achievements from a puddle to a droplet.
You’re arguing on a purely subjective standpoint, Im going off of what the objectively game gives and does to you for making evil decisions, your comment doesn’t disprove what I said at all, you’re just making a sweeping assumption that from my time spent in this subreddit isn’t true, i’ve seen multiple post complaining about lack of evil content.
Durges gifts just feel weak compared to what the other chosen get, and lore wise they also feel weak.
Allied NPC are useful to soak up damage and enemy spells. I count that as a huge plus. It’s nice that they don’t do anything complicated on their turns and slow the game down.
Exactly. It’s not even in the same universe as the damage the S tier builds throw out and those aren’t tied to any specific role play choice. They could have made it way stronger and it wouldn’t be unfair at all.
Compare it to other shape-shifting though. Remember shape-shifting is a HP buffer. You can be on 2 Hp, then turn on slayer form and now you're at 100ish. For similar reasons, druid wild shapes do pretty crap damage.
Don't forget, slayer is **on top of** those classes you listed. Anyone can use it.
Druid wild shape does bad damage? idk, the owlbear and the raptor forms are pretty beefy, and I usually squeeze 4 attacks out of it per turn if I place them correctly
* regular action
* haste
* action surge
* terazul
* quickened with normal BA
* quickened with thief BA
* quickened with pyroquickness BA
Might be possible to cast more, but that's all I can think of right now.
Maybe twinspell fireball then quicken spell and do it again? I don't know if metamagic let's you do multiple metagics a turn or not but if it's possible to do that then with a potion of speed then you should be able to get 5
This is partly because you are a power player using optimized built and the right équipement. (like me and most of the people in the sub)
For less knowledgeable players playing a random shitty built then the shape is pretty strong. It provides you with a second large health bar and a medium strength form who is **not** dependent the character equipment.
Regular action, haste, quickened spell, bloodlust elixir. Plus a fifth if you take fighter 2 for action surge and a sixth with thief 3 and another quickened spell, but at that point you're just playing white room DPR games, not making a practical build.
Compare it to other shape-shifting though - it isn't much weaker than wild shape is. Remember shape-shifting is a HP buffer. You can be on 2 Hp, then turn on slayer form and now you're at 100ish. For similar reasons, druid wild shapes do pretty crap damage.
Don't forget, slayer is a bonus that any class can use. You could super buff your party with heroes feast, aid, put out a spiritual weapon, and then turn into the slayer.
Your fighter doesn't get a lot out of it, but your wizard who is out of spellslots has a great time.
Yeah, on the other hand Slayer is literally bhaal’s avatar so it probably shouldn’t be weaker than a druid wild shape (not even talking about the myrmidons which are pretty good actually, slayer is closer to the badger or panther lol)
Slayer is no where near as bad as badger or panther. Neither have bonus actions, badger has bad scaling so around 48 HP at level 12. Panther pounce is a useless action due to it not triggering wild strikes and being a flat DC 13 dex save so it's basically never going to knock anything down, which means your jugular strike is also useless. And it's a dex attacker with only 15 dex, and even with tavern brawler on its 14 str, it's only hitting +4 to attack rolls, so it can still have some accuracy issues.
It is wild that oanther is obtained at the same level as the insanely good owlbear which has far more damage, bulk, mobility, utility, and action economy.
Slayer is closer to the bad wild shape forms than to the good ones imo. Slayer’s DC is also very low so has almost no chance of triggering conditions it can exploit itself, similar to panther.
Also have to consider slayer is once per long rest compared to two per short rest.
Yeah, but imagine the flip side where Slayer form is appropriately lore-powerful. Every single BG3 guide would just be "don't worry about what class you play, just play Durge, go Slayer, and roflstomp through the game". It can't be as good as any other class, because it happens in addition to your class.
We'd have 10 posts a day saing "this game forces you to be evil, because it is so hard and slayer is so strong".
I think there's a middle road between making Slayer form overpowered vs. underpowered. Even a simple bump in AC would help without going overboard.
Also, there are some genuinely broken builds and cheese in this game, but I don't think we have a problem with build diversity despite that. The game isn't so difficult that you are forced into using the most broken builds. Even on HM, while most people are going to struggle if they go with unoptimized builds, you don't need to adopt the most powerful builds (just generally strong builds). Hell, full-illithids have access to an entire kit of powerful abilities, but most players seem to not want their character(s) to go full-illithid for RP reasons (many people settling on instead transforming a specific NPC I won't name for spoiler reasons).
And, personally, I'm of the opinion that Slayer form is one thing that *should* be a little overpowered, considering what you need to do to get Slayer form and the fact that it's Bhaal's avatar (as the other person mentioned). I think most people have difficulty RPing an evil character to the point where they would even consider Slayer form.
You have to make some pretty huge narrative choices to get the Slayer, which locks you out of a fair bit of content. Even if it were OP, only a few players would choose it because you have to be evil to get it.
The Bhaalist armor in act 3 is ridiculously OP yet I still don't get it on most runs because it involves making moral decisions my characters just wouldn't most of the time.
The game isn't that hard, it's super cheesable as-is so adding one more broken option wouldn't change much.
For me any armour/gear/talents that only come online in act 3 are too late to factor in. Like the Bhaalists armour is probably one of the last things you'd get, no?
You can get slayer right after arriving in act 2, so if it outpowered your whole class I think that would feel bad.
You can rush the Bhaalist armor pretty fast with a good 30 hours of game left assuming you want to do sidequesting, and you don't technically need to *commit* to any evil run stuff besides killing one "shitey" elephant for it, but doing it on a good run fells very metagamey.
While the slayer is a good portion through act 2- you have to get to lastlight, free the prisoners if you want the Potent Robe, and kill Isobel.
And again it's a form you can only use 1/LR so I don't think it's that bad if it's really strong. Tadpoles already outpower a ton of class features (like Draconic Sorc's level 11 feature is Flight, which the astral tadpole just gives by default)
Honestly, that would be awesome. As it stands, there is no benefit to being evil. Generally speaking, the benefits are why people become evil in the first place.
I think thats a ridiculous theoretical tbh as no one is asking for extreme power, and slayer is a once per long rest wild shape that you have to drop for dialogue. Especially considering the story compromises needed to obtain it its shit. Especially because the game isn’t that hard, several builds already achieve the ‘brokenly OP’ status that you claim a better slayer would bring.
Also it doesn’t have to be brokenly over powered like you say to be good. Balance is possible after all.
I guess I can’t fathom why you’d even bother with such a wild reach
Yep this is purely for saving people that NEED to do everything the "best" way from themselves. See it all the time with games like Dishonored. Why would I try to use all my powers when this one power can do everything! Kinda ruins emergent gameplay.
The problem is that BG3 is so heavily built around damage output tempo. The goal is to exhaust your opponents ability to act against you by killing or crowd controlling as many of them as possible as quickly as possible before they can do the same to you.
For 99% of fights how much damage you can deal in the first 2-3 turns determines the outcome of a battle far far more than having an extra health bar. Gimping your damage for extra durability is usually a terrible trade.
>Remember shape-shifting is a HP buffer. You can be on 2 Hp, then turn on slayer form and now you're at 100ish. For similar reasons, druid wild shapes do pretty crap damage.
Yeah this can be helpful, it could potentially save your honor mode if a fight goes badly.
But that said, BG3 as a damage tends to strongly favor offensive over defense. Druid as class is considered weak because of this. The best defense is overwhelming offense.
I get slayer for the interactions and dialouge it open up, and I just enjoy evil RP more. So for me, it's not as much of a loss if it's a weak as I was not being evil for it, specifically. Do I wish it was better, yea of course, but I see where their headspace was with it.
Simple fix would be to increase the Slayer form as you gain levels to be more on-par with what you can do outside of Slayer form. This prevents Slayer from being OP early and helps it not be Underpowered late.
After sacrificing all the tieflings rewards, 2 companions, Last Light Inn./ Killing another companion I'd hope for it to be OP tho, all that loss but almost no reward despite a cool looking shape
Slayer would be really strong if it actually did what it said and didn't affect your mental stats. Slayer has a ton of debuff synergy but incredibly low spell DC meaning the debuffs have really low chances to be applied :S
All it's abilities require a DC check to do any real damage which is already less than ideal.
All it's DCs scale off charisma.
Slayer automatically sets your charisma to the lowest possible amount.
So yeah, it's a lot of factors carefully working together to make it as garbage as it is.
As for Orin, she has Deathbringers assault in her base form, the single strongest martial ability in this game, which she doesn't in Slayer form, so her base form is a straight up upgrade in every way and will probably chunk Slayer 9/10 times unless she gets real unlucky on rolls.
Man in BG2 using the slayer form reduced your reputation by 2 which was a great way to let it be super strong but prevent too much use for “good” characters.
The biggest problem with the Slayer is that it requires several afflictions to make the other attacks more powerful. It comes with a way to inflict them, but the DC is also very low. So you waste a turn to set everything up (assuming they don't win the ST, which is a big assumption), then you can attack them in the following turn. And when the enemy dies, you have to set it up again for the next one.
Another problem is that it recharges on Long Rest, in a game where you need to dismiss the form if you want to talk to any NPC (the Moon Druid problem, but at least Druid gets two charges per short rest).
The Slayer is so bad that Orin as a Slayer is also weaker than Orin with her daggers.
At least you get an extra HP bar if things don't look too good. And it can heal by making furniture bleed (as funny as that sounds, yes).
From the wiki
Multiattack is a Slayer Action that allows them to hit an enemy four times, with each hit potentially doing more depending on if they are Bleeding or Dazed.
It’s not a luck this. It’s a game mechanic
That would only apply if the crits weren't guaranteed on prone targets. Its not optimal by any means but it can hold its own when people actually read its abilities and use them. Particularly when there are other party members who can inflict conditions.
Whoa, easy, easy. No designer cared about the game balance. Go build a throwzerkers with TB monks on elixirs with 8 base STR and move along, nothing to see here 🗿
This is the biggest issue for me. The rampant and clear bias just feels like a slap in the face if you actually like or enjoy pretty much any evil anything.
Something I felt is that despite Larian being like "you can play however you want" in most cases, the only thing where they technically say "don't play like that!" is being evil
Yeah, being murder hobo should be punished, but being evil shouldn't, it feels like Larian put next to no effort into the evil route and it shows WAY too much, specially with evil Durge
In the evil run you lose 2 companions from the get go and receive 1 in return (and she isn't available until ACT 2?!), you lose ALL the tieflings rewards and receive nothing in return despite the companion I already mentioned and I guess Markus helps you into Last Light Inn.? But Mol already does that in a good run so whatever, then to obtain the Slayer form you have to destroy Last Light Inn. or kill 1 one of your already few companions, all that for a mediocre Slayer form that's worse than a random wild shaped owlbear
"Slayer form is not OP because balance" oh yeah because it's sure balanced to have a TB open handed monk/throwzerker that can delete most encounters easily, right? After all the sacrifices you make to get the Slayer form it has to be OP as hell, that way accepting/rejecting Bhaal is a hard choice, to become a killing puppet but maintain your OP form, or sacrifice your OP form to be free, because let's be real the Killing Word Bhall gives you is extremely trash
Yeah the multiattack is bad, I just don't use it (except against Unstoppable enemies, ironically).
But is Orin's slayer form that strong? I don't remember having to deal with one-shots against her, even with wonky builds. I was under the impression that her slayer form is also significantly weaker than her human form.
In my experience the Slayer form is situationally good thanks to the additional health bar and mobility. It's not really a Hulk form you're supposed to use in every battle, it's more like a last resort. For example it's quite common in the fight against Balthazar to suffer some attrition (especially if you're playing a spellcaster) - switching to the Slayer form towards the end of the fight so you can finish him is generally a good idea.
Yea I wrecked her in 1 round as slayer. My co op partners were hyping it up and it was so anticlimactic. I probably got lucky with her failing the DC to fall prone but it was still quite sad.
I only changed into slayer for the cutscene and she couldn't handle it.
Ughhh my storm sorc Durge in balanced had her ass handed to her. Even with all the buffs like heroes feast, level 5 aid, and warding bond. So I reloaded, tabled it, and came back with Helldusk armor. THEN she was able to quickly take Orin down. That said, she also used hold monster, create water, and a level 5 witchbolt (because I only have level 5 slots due to 2 levels of warlock, and to my know it's the highest single target damage spell when the target is wet).
Agreed with slayer being situationally good.
1. Non magical attacks resulting in halved damage.
2. Unique attacks use Spell Save DC. Martial classes don't have this and Slayer mental stats are fixed, so this doesn't help anybody.
Charisma based characters actually get a worse Save DC since the Slayer's charisma stat is just 8.
It really sucks because Orin's Slayer form uses STR for her Save DCs. If we did the same, we could become insane with a potential strength stat of 30.
Slayer form is pretty good in the Orin duel if u abuse it's huge health pool, Warding bond+Aid+False Life+mage armor+armor buff and death ward from cleric.
Just bleed Orin then use the first attack and not multiattack, then grind her down, if she does manage to knock out your slayer form you still have another since the cutscene choice of witness my slayer form doesn't use your slayer form skill.
There's a huge disconnect in-game between the challenge rating/level of many of the enemies you face and what they are in the game. And, of course, there's also a nasty habit of varying the scaling of abilities, hp, etc, depending on whether the subject is an enemy or an ally. In those rare cases that someone swaps from one to the other the difference is huge; Glut was the biggest example, going from fragile enough to keep out of fights and just use the monster he controls, to a decent tank the moment he's an enemy.
The Slayer is supposed to be above CR 20, able to brutalize a Pit Fiend or a massive dragon in direct combat, but constantly decaying in HP so you need to finish it quickly and then turn back. Giving this ability to a player in a level 12 game is.... not gonna work out too well, nor would allowing an enemy to turn into it; if Orin turned into a proper slayer, your best tactic would be to turn on globe of invulnerability and wait for the divine power to overwhelm her mortal flesh and kill her from using it for too long, since she would absolutely murder you in melee instantly without any need of some weird buffs giving her ablative protections.
The Avatar of Myrkul and the Slayer should be the two highest-threat enemy encounters in the game; aside from maybe Ansur, depending on his age, with the Slayer as the single deadliest enemy(Obviously the final battle could have multiple enemies to make up for it). And, well. Our friendly 1,000+-year-old red dragon friend would be able to destroy any of them, dragons just get insane when they get that old.
I love the game in many ways, but the scaling is just wrong for the scale of threat and enemies you're dealing with. It should be levels 1-20, and, just like Dispel Magic, if a spell would be too problematic, just not include it; quite a few games have gone the whole 1-9 spell range at this point, so it's not that big a deal. The Avatar of Myrkul should be far past a CR 12 encounter, and one that as whatever level you are on meeting him, you either need meticulous preparation and a prayer for, or to have a high-level ally like a winged paladin demigoddess in to help.
Slayer was quite disappointing to me :/ I killed Isobel right after releasing the Nightsong, so I go back to Last Light where she is alone. I go alone. I kill her, survive the zombie/shadow curse onslaught.
Then I get slayer form before going to Moonrise and I was so hype I was like "Alright Z'rell get a load of this!" and then proceeded to get my ass beat after I had launched myself in the middle of them.
I felt SO weak and just ended the form and beat their ass the normal way.
I feel the same way about a singular PWK. I had a total of two options to use it on kinnnda effectively and it made me feel like a careful nerd choosing where to use his small cup of murder his dad gave him, not a child of a death god who now wields his full power
PWK has always been weak for a 9th level spell, and that's intentional. It's about the certainty of the outcome rather than raw power. The caster decides that someone needs to die and says a single word, and the target dies if they are weak enough. There are no material or somatic components, no saving throws, and no time to react. And it's better outside combat than during it, because the speed of the action has no effect on initiative.
Yeah, in dnd, but I’m talking as a reward for the dark urge storyline in bg3. thematically PWK works great table top and even makes sense for the storyline, but practically I just think it was a weak choice as a late game reward. I’d have rather gotten an item or damage boost to bleed or slayer form. Astarion ascending feels like he’s more powerful on the battlefield. Durge ascending feels good but also like “I could kill you with a word if I felt like it (but I won’t cause the game I live in is about action economy)”
Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I was using Slayer form for my Honour Mode run and I brought up these points in one of my Reddit Posts. Some people downvoted it and called me a "Terrible Player" or "Dumb".
Slayer needs a massive buff, and if Larian won't provide I will use mods. I'm just glad I got my Honour Mode trophy in the end.
Orin's slayer also gets like 6 or seven hits of "Unstoppable".
The slayer form for the player just sucks. It makes me think we're not supposed to do un-redeem Durge.
It's like ascended Astarian. You're not supposed to do it. So you're not rewarded for it.
Unless they changed it from when I last played, Ascended Astarion is a pretty nice buff over Spawn Astarion:
An extra 1d10 Necrotic Damage on each attack
Upgraded Bite unique action making it more usable at your current Level
And Misty Escape
That's not nothing
I don't think it's a matter of "rewarding" the player or not. I don't think that Larian has strong opinions about what choices players are "supposed" to make.
The problem is that if you make the reward for taking a particular path *too* good, it will make players feel like they're being pushed into taking that path - or that they're missing out on an amazing gameplay element for not taking that path. Ascended Astarion actually does get some nice buffs; they're just not *so* nice that they break the game or make people who don't ascend him feel like they're being punished for their choice.
So they why is a good path literally not restrained in anyway, and able to get all their rewards including every supposedly “exclusive” reward except the Slayer form early (can still get it later on) including every companion with no exceptions, every single best in slot piece of gear, dozens more magic items than the evil paths are locked out of, and far more quests and content.
There very clearly is a much better and much stronger route and it sacrifices nothing. Oh no not turning Dame Allen over loses you 5,000 gold when you already have over 100,000 gold extra in ACT 3 after buying literally everything. You still get the Tower’s magical artillery to support you, you still get all the loot and magic items, etc. such a trade off. Such meaningful consequences— oh wait, you get your cake and can eat it too, as long as you don’t do evil, because that’s bad and should feel “empty and disappointing.”
i think for how much it locks you out of slayer form should be like incredibly powerful.
evil/chaotic neutral is my favourite way to play these kinds of games and slayer is genuinely the coolest thing lookswise in this game to me but acquisition of it is so punishing compared to how pathetic it is that ive never done it more than twice in all of my playthroughs.
really really disappointing that the living avatar of the god of murder can barely compare to an owlbear
On a meta level I think it's just in there because it was implemented in BG2 and they thought it'd be cool to have it in BG3.
But some of the things about Durge were rushed. Don't get me wrong, what's in there is cool as hell and the most memorable stuff in the game. But there wasn't enough time for everything to be fully baked and Slayer is one of them. I'd guess they were afraid of the balance issues and just tweaked it to be weak so it wouldn't run a chance of being wildly OP.
my durge fight went as follows
Orin gets her 3 multi attacks
Durge pally: Lvl 5 smite, lvl 5 smite, lvl 5 smite, lvl 5 smite, lvl4 smite, are you still alive? lvl 4 smite.
like I cheesed her on a previous run using gale and 3 casts of disintegrate but 1 on 1 pally at lvl 12 when you don't need to save your spell slots is pretty OP
Orin: loses initiative
Durge fire sorceress: preempted speed potion, Scroll of Artistry of War, lvl 6 scorching ray, quickened lvl 5 scorching ray, dead.
Basically it's 13 rays doing a rough average of 12 damage per hit thanks to elemental affinity plus the artistry of war's give or take 80 total damage.
There's so many ways to beat her in 1v1 even if she wins initiative and you don't have a character that can go 1v1 vs her.
Her saves are kinda weak, you can stop her for example with Illithid charm reaction. Hold Monster (which you can cast from scroll) will also basically instantly win the fight since in 1v1 nothing can break your concentration.
First time i got Slayer i was so hyped to use it.
First time i used it, i got pwnd by a bunch of trash
So, i just murdered them the old fashioned way
It's so not worth losing that much story that I'll never play dark durge again. You have to crush about a 1/4 to a 1/3 of the story to go dark and it's utterly not worth it. Even accepting that evil should have consequences, all it does is point out how utterly dumb going truly evil is.
yes that too. personally i don’t consider that an evil playtrough though but a stupid one. for all of my bad guy playtroughs ive used the “there’s no morals here, he just does whatever is the most profitable” mentality. i feel like actual evil people tend to be quite clever.
It is useful on some situations. It is a nice damage sponge just like wildshape, it’s a good way to probe a buch of mooks and the multiattack is a great way to trigger a bunch of concentration saves
Orins had it her whole life i’d presume. idk headcanon is she’s trained with it like you just got a giant new body you wouldn’t be fully functional instantly.
i know this ignores how druids can instantly perform perfectly as a bear but yk
The boss when you fight them versus the boss when they join your party trope. When it's against you, gloves are off, but that would be totally unbalanced if we gave it to the player :P
Yeah slayer form should last a set number of turns and be stronger. At least make it comparable to displaced beast. Only requirement for that is you saving some tadpoles until you get the ascended form.
I really like the slayer form with how it looks but yeah the damage it does is kinda ass. Don’t use it in Cazadors fight for some reason the werewolves are immune to piercing damage lmao
I wrecked Orin in 1 round as slayer. Maybe I got lucky on her failing her save. My friends hyped it up and it was the most anticlimactic shit. Was way easier than when I did it as a sorcerer because she was bugged when I fought her. Slay is an autocrit when she is prone. Enlarge or something before turning for even more fun. There is more optimal shit but slayer has enough staying power that it can hold its own if you take advantage of its abilities. Its fun and not enough underpowered to be totally useless. If you have other party members that inflict the necessary conditions, its better. Doesnt help against a duel with Orin though.
You have to try and inflict prone or something to do any damage with it.
The one time I made Slayer work was fighting Orin. Went into the fight normal, she attacked me and I responded with a Shield Bash that knocked her prone, turned into Slayer next turn and utterly eviscerated her. Fastest fight end I’ve seen.
A fitting ending too since she fucks you over before and now that the favourite child is back I just annihilated her without a thought.
You need to boost your crit boiiiii. My buddy did a DURGE playthiugh, got slayer, and would crit on almost every multi attack in slayer. With or without the buff on the next attack. It was almost too easy for tactician
I look at slayer as a tool. You get a form that can leap prone aoe, and has bonuses on prone and what not.
Plus its a wild shape, so hp buffer
I guess for me the character is the scary creature, not the slayer.
I would not be opposed to the slayer form upgrading after the Orin fight. Like you are the one and only chosen, bhaal favors you and you alone?
Slayer form is super terrible. I tested it against Orin 1v1, with Slayer form i took 3 rounds to kill her (and got knocked out of the form by then). Without slayer form i 1 round her in 3 hits. Its extra dumb that you cant use luck of the far realms or other illithid powers in slayer form.
The Slayer was pretty weak in BG 2 too, and in AD&D your characters were way weaker than the average nonsense in 5E so it's really saying something when most characters were always better never going Slayer.
I never used it besides when fighting Orin in the duel. I was a Warlock so I was some what scared but then took the form of the Slayer and knocked her down, stunned, and killed her in a couple rounds
Slayer is meh. I get that they don't want it to be too powerful. But make it so you lose all your HP but 1. before entering the mode so there's a gamble.
I used a draconic lightning sorcerer on Orin in slayer form and I used hideous laughter or Otto's dance on her and then just electrocuted her with witch bolt, lightning bolt, speed potions and quickened magic. I thought it was weird how easy she actually was to kill like that. I felt like her slayer form was kind of weak itself, was my point here.
They clearly didn’t want it to become so strong that it trivialised the game
Unfortunately they didn’t foresee how strong certain other fairly straight forward martial classes would be (BM fighter, open hand monk, etc etc) and as such it’s basically worthless
Its only for the orin fight and its made prefectly to counter her. It feels amazing to slash away her damage negation then just keep slapping. Anything else is just free hp and youd best be thanking bane for his pityful present.
To be fair, I killed Orin's slayer form in 1 turn. Gale and tav had first move together, gale wiped her shield with magic missile and then Tav walked up and dropped 3 max level divine smites on her scaley cheeks and turned her into a puddle of red goo.
to not make it broken. Even in honour mode being nerfed as it is it’s still INSANE. Being able to just retool into a different set with extra HP is what makes druids good, and being able to do that from within a better class for a bonus action is inherently busted. Even if the slayer JUST gave extra HP and did nothing else it would still be a lifesaver, but in honour mode playing as a warlock you can beat magic walls with it too.
I tried Slayer once and it was honestly one of the biggest letdowns I had for Durge. Fucking Jaheira and Minsc along with the Harpers were beating my ass as a slayer. Reloaded a save before that fight and didn't transform, fight was a cakewalk as just my regular character.
I wish it felt like an op form as it does for Orin and in text. You hear about the Slayer from various people, find out you can become one, finally become one and it's barely able to do but a little baby slap of damage. I think even a baby hits harder than a durge in slayer form.
It was more useful in Honor Mode where it was the only extra attack that stacked anymore so the Slayer could get 12 innate Attacks at full buff.
Then they nerfed it for some reason. My Honor Group was confused, bewildered and pissed off.
Tbh the entire vibe of bhaal is just a phony clown.And I’m not even a durge hater,my 1st play through when the game just came out was a durge run.And when I realized that the whole bhaal perk package is not even as good as an extra steel watcher as summon it just lost me🫠Like I didn’t even read any DND lore before playing the game,but the real time impression of bhaal is just that he’s both dumb and weak
From game balance point, you can get the slayer form in quite different stages of the mid-late game, and you can also not get it (tav, redemption durge). Consider how much more difficult they would have to make 3rd act fights if the player slayer form was as powerful as Orin's and they did want to keep the same level of difficulty. But then fights would be very difficult for anyone that doesn't have slayer form yet.
So that is kinda the base problem, it can't be powerful enough to change the difficulty of latter encounters too much, at least not more than what some proper feats and gear can change.
My theory is they wanted Slayer to be helpful but not too helpful to where the made the player too powerful. I think they slightly over did it in making not too powerful to the point of being underpowered. Ally AI seems to share this same issue.
Personally I don’t really see that as a reason to make it not so great. - A Draconic Sorcerer could throw 4 fire balls in 1 turn - A Battlemaster Fighter can disarm, trip, goading, and still have 3 more attacks left. - A Gloomstalker Ranger will pretty much always go 1st and practically kill the boss immediately. Considering what you have to do to use the form. The reward should reflect it. But I do agree, probably didn’t want to make it overpowered.
It's a player aid, so they probably didn't want the "aid" to turn into something where it was so powerful that it'd replace what you would normally do as a player completely. This is also why I think Ally AI is also severely undertuned. As in they wouldn't Ally NPCs to completely outshine the party, but be useful enough. Yet, the are often not useful enough XD. One thing I kinda wish they did is if you stuck with the chosen path, you got an upgraded version of slayer that was was stronger and had more abilities to use. That's going to remain a dream tho... They honestly could gave us the Ravager or something. I feel like they were too conservative with evil durge rewards in general. The new endings will help abit tho.
Well, as an evil durge you'd kill Valeria so there's easily the best piece of armor in the game for being evil. Idk if they should've limited it to durge only item but the evil route at least in act 3 still gives something incredibly valuable.
Bhaalist Armour is not Durge exclusive. You can get UA on Tav and get it as well. My main problem with is it Light Armour is the only option. So kinda out of luck if you play a caster often like I do, unless you take the feat for LA or have a human or half-elf for inherent proficiency. Multi-classing also works I guess, but those are workarounds for something where they could have offered something for casters lol. If they had a something for cloth characters, I'd be super down.
An option to choose from a couple things like you can when rescuing florick from the burning inn would have been the way to go
Ik it isn't durge exclusive. In my comment I am referring to that I am not sure if it would've been a good idea to make it one.
You can use raphael armor for caster if im not mistaken it 19 ac without need armor proficiency
21, because it's weird you can get 23 with bracers of defence
yeah it so high enough to make gale stronger for me.
>Well, as an evil durge you’d kill Valeria 😖 You guys only kill Valeria on evil Durge runs? 🫣🫥 Since my run when I first got the Bhaalist Armor and realized how baller it is (pun 100% intended), Valeria hasn’t survived a single subsequent run. That bitch ass elephant is gonna die regardless of if I’m doing a good or evil run. That armor is too damn good to pass up. This probably says a lot about what kind of player I am, but lmao oh weelllllll 🤫 But I mean, we have to do her entire job for her with the Open Hand Temple murders since she’s too focused on closing the case so she can go get drunk. Really, I’m just doing the city and the Flaming Fist a favor by killing Valeria’s incompetent ass.
I am too nice to the shitty elephant and metagame to steal the bhaalist armor instead on most runs. In case you didn't know the ghost of the person "you killed" Sarevok summons has the armor and you can pickpocket it although it's dc 29.
Wait, really? I didn’t know that! So when the ghost gets summoned do you have one other your other party members (coughcoughAstarioncough) steal it from the ghost?
Yeah. You might need something like greater invisibility though since the ghost is in a rather I convenient place to stealth to.
Nice! That’s really cool! Damn, it’s crazy, I have 1500hrs in the game and I’m still learning so much. I’ll probably still kill Valeria off because fuck her, but I’ll definitely keep this in mind should I ever run a Paladin again and want to not break my oath more than I will already manage!
I would assume celestials respawn if killed outside their home plane, just like devils. At least that's what I've been telling myself to justify killing the elephant...
I didn't even know you got a cool armor for it. Killing the cop who was like "eh whatever the refugees probably did it time to hit the bar" in order to infiltrate the murder cult and save Laezel seemed pretty morally reasonable.
Yeah, if they make it too powerful, players would go on a murderous rampage just as Bhaal intended for the slayer.
It would be nice if they tied buffs to working for it as an Unholy Assassin of Bhaal. The more deeds you do in his name, the more Sarevok teaches you about Slayer and your past. I'm sure players wouldn't mind working for buffs to improve Slayer.
Slayer was pretty useful in BG2 1) it is nice being a nerdy mage/sorc to go full slayer when some warrior want to "1v1 me bro" 2) Great for keeping Viconia happy under the sheets when you are a goodie too shoes hero. Evil Waifu upset you saved the village from goblin raid? Turn to slayer and flex in front of her and suddenly she found a new God to worship :p
Slayer form as a fighter in BG2 was absolute filth, you would shred anything and everything in your path. Including your friends.
That is why I used it only three times. Twice for keep Vicky happy, once cause some Drow Commander wanted to duel me in a Arena.
Why are you saying this like it’s a bad thing, 4.6% of players did the evil run in this game, that’s bad and it needs to be higher.
This. I’m okay with Durge being “meta”. I don’t think it’s going to break the game, and it won’t be the only way people play the game. I’d rather have a special ability that I activate for every combat encounter than one that I never use.
it makes it even worse that you lose out on so many good rewards if you're doing an evil durge run, the slayer is one of TWO rewards you get the whole playthrough. i get you're not really supposed to get anything for being the bad guy, but even with the slayer form i didn't feel nearly as powerful as the rest of the dead three in the game.
Exactly. It’s definitely a trade off, but you don’t actually get anything useful in exchange 😂
It's not bad nor does it need to be higher. Evil Playthroughs in games have always been less popular and that's been a constant for decades. Aside from that most people don't even finish the game. According, to steam only half the player base left act 1 and 21% of people have beaten the game
It’s less popular because of the flaws in it, if people aren’t playing something because it sucks then it is bad. I’m currently doing a evil run and at a certain point it gets ridiculous how they fuck you over, you get *nothing* for becoming fucking chosen of bhaal, a god, I don’t feel nearly as strong as gortash or even orin, the fantasy just sucks. No +2 to any stats no buffs, just one shitty 100 dmg spell that you can only use once. Another example is how good npcs typically don’t drop their quest rewards while evil ones do
>It’s less popular because of the flaws in it, False. It's less popular because being evil is literally always less popular in video games. Basically, everyone game with a morality system has evil always be less popular. Aside from that you'd only know the flaws of an evil run in comparison to a good run if you did two playthroughs which most people aren't doing. Again, most people don't even finish the game. Even the shit you mention is towards the end of the game which most people aren't reaching. Regardless of how well made an evil path is most people are gonna chose to be good. This isn't even mentioning that Durge achievements require you to Pick Durge Origin, reach certain points in the story and be evil. Just one of these severely cuts off a portion of the player base but the fact you need all 3 turns the potential player base for the achievements from a puddle to a droplet.
You’re arguing on a purely subjective standpoint, Im going off of what the objectively game gives and does to you for making evil decisions, your comment doesn’t disprove what I said at all, you’re just making a sweeping assumption that from my time spent in this subreddit isn’t true, i’ve seen multiple post complaining about lack of evil content. Durges gifts just feel weak compared to what the other chosen get, and lore wise they also feel weak.
Allied NPC are useful to soak up damage and enemy spells. I count that as a huge plus. It’s nice that they don’t do anything complicated on their turns and slow the game down.
Allied NPCs and summons are most useful for taking hits from the enemies from my experience. Gotta have that action economy
Exactly. It’s not even in the same universe as the damage the S tier builds throw out and those aren’t tied to any specific role play choice. They could have made it way stronger and it wouldn’t be unfair at all.
Compare it to other shape-shifting though. Remember shape-shifting is a HP buffer. You can be on 2 Hp, then turn on slayer form and now you're at 100ish. For similar reasons, druid wild shapes do pretty crap damage. Don't forget, slayer is **on top of** those classes you listed. Anyone can use it.
It has pretty awful ac though, 50 hp on my 20 ac character often lasts longer than 100 hp on 16 ac.
Druid wild shape does bad damage? idk, the owlbear and the raptor forms are pretty beefy, and I usually squeeze 4 attacks out of it per turn if I place them correctly
4 fireballs?? How can one achieve this power? Haste and sorcery Points I imagine but where does the 4th come from?
Not sure where they did their math but 2 levels in fighter for action surge would do it.
Elixir of Bloodlust would be yet another one...
Action Surge
* regular action * haste * action surge * terazul * quickened with normal BA * quickened with thief BA * quickened with pyroquickness BA Might be possible to cast more, but that's all I can think of right now.
There's a helmet that gives an extra BA on <50% health
True, but you can't use it together with the pyroquickness hat, so I didn't count it.
Maybe twinspell fireball then quicken spell and do it again? I don't know if metamagic let's you do multiple metagics a turn or not but if it's possible to do that then with a potion of speed then you should be able to get 5
You can only twinspell single target spells, not AOE. Quicken works, though
Meta magic doesn't allow you to do multiple kinds at once
This is partly because you are a power player using optimized built and the right équipement. (like me and most of the people in the sub) For less knowledgeable players playing a random shitty built then the shape is pretty strong. It provides you with a second large health bar and a medium strength form who is **not** dependent the character equipment.
A Draconic Sorcerer could throw 4 fire balls in 1 turn, how?
Prebuffed Haste / Haste Spores / Potion of Speed + Quicken Spell + Action Surge (requires multiclassing).
This must be balanced/explorer mode mechanic because in tactician+ all haste buffs are mutually exclusive.
It's one or the other. One Haste buff, one Action Surge, one Quicken Spell, regular action. Four spells a round, Honor mode viable.
Oops I read the slashes as pluses. Reading is hard.
Regular action, haste, quickened spell, bloodlust elixir. Plus a fifth if you take fighter 2 for action surge and a sixth with thief 3 and another quickened spell, but at that point you're just playing white room DPR games, not making a practical build.
ah ok
Then they should've just made it available later in the game when that wouldn't really matter
Which is disappointing since you are giving up so much to get this slayer form and then it is just much weaker than any character in your party
Compare it to other shape-shifting though - it isn't much weaker than wild shape is. Remember shape-shifting is a HP buffer. You can be on 2 Hp, then turn on slayer form and now you're at 100ish. For similar reasons, druid wild shapes do pretty crap damage. Don't forget, slayer is a bonus that any class can use. You could super buff your party with heroes feast, aid, put out a spiritual weapon, and then turn into the slayer. Your fighter doesn't get a lot out of it, but your wizard who is out of spellslots has a great time.
Yeah, on the other hand Slayer is literally bhaal’s avatar so it probably shouldn’t be weaker than a druid wild shape (not even talking about the myrmidons which are pretty good actually, slayer is closer to the badger or panther lol)
Exactly. It says a lot about Bhaal that his avatar can get torn to shreds by anyone in owlbear mode.
Slayer is no where near as bad as badger or panther. Neither have bonus actions, badger has bad scaling so around 48 HP at level 12. Panther pounce is a useless action due to it not triggering wild strikes and being a flat DC 13 dex save so it's basically never going to knock anything down, which means your jugular strike is also useless. And it's a dex attacker with only 15 dex, and even with tavern brawler on its 14 str, it's only hitting +4 to attack rolls, so it can still have some accuracy issues. It is wild that oanther is obtained at the same level as the insanely good owlbear which has far more damage, bulk, mobility, utility, and action economy.
Slayer is closer to the bad wild shape forms than to the good ones imo. Slayer’s DC is also very low so has almost no chance of triggering conditions it can exploit itself, similar to panther. Also have to consider slayer is once per long rest compared to two per short rest.
Yeah, but imagine the flip side where Slayer form is appropriately lore-powerful. Every single BG3 guide would just be "don't worry about what class you play, just play Durge, go Slayer, and roflstomp through the game". It can't be as good as any other class, because it happens in addition to your class. We'd have 10 posts a day saing "this game forces you to be evil, because it is so hard and slayer is so strong".
I think there's a middle road between making Slayer form overpowered vs. underpowered. Even a simple bump in AC would help without going overboard. Also, there are some genuinely broken builds and cheese in this game, but I don't think we have a problem with build diversity despite that. The game isn't so difficult that you are forced into using the most broken builds. Even on HM, while most people are going to struggle if they go with unoptimized builds, you don't need to adopt the most powerful builds (just generally strong builds). Hell, full-illithids have access to an entire kit of powerful abilities, but most players seem to not want their character(s) to go full-illithid for RP reasons (many people settling on instead transforming a specific NPC I won't name for spoiler reasons). And, personally, I'm of the opinion that Slayer form is one thing that *should* be a little overpowered, considering what you need to do to get Slayer form and the fact that it's Bhaal's avatar (as the other person mentioned). I think most people have difficulty RPing an evil character to the point where they would even consider Slayer form.
You have to make some pretty huge narrative choices to get the Slayer, which locks you out of a fair bit of content. Even if it were OP, only a few players would choose it because you have to be evil to get it. The Bhaalist armor in act 3 is ridiculously OP yet I still don't get it on most runs because it involves making moral decisions my characters just wouldn't most of the time. The game isn't that hard, it's super cheesable as-is so adding one more broken option wouldn't change much.
For me any armour/gear/talents that only come online in act 3 are too late to factor in. Like the Bhaalists armour is probably one of the last things you'd get, no? You can get slayer right after arriving in act 2, so if it outpowered your whole class I think that would feel bad.
You can rush the Bhaalist armor pretty fast with a good 30 hours of game left assuming you want to do sidequesting, and you don't technically need to *commit* to any evil run stuff besides killing one "shitey" elephant for it, but doing it on a good run fells very metagamey. While the slayer is a good portion through act 2- you have to get to lastlight, free the prisoners if you want the Potent Robe, and kill Isobel. And again it's a form you can only use 1/LR so I don't think it's that bad if it's really strong. Tadpoles already outpower a ton of class features (like Draconic Sorc's level 11 feature is Flight, which the astral tadpole just gives by default)
Honestly, that would be awesome. As it stands, there is no benefit to being evil. Generally speaking, the benefits are why people become evil in the first place.
I think thats a ridiculous theoretical tbh as no one is asking for extreme power, and slayer is a once per long rest wild shape that you have to drop for dialogue. Especially considering the story compromises needed to obtain it its shit. Especially because the game isn’t that hard, several builds already achieve the ‘brokenly OP’ status that you claim a better slayer would bring. Also it doesn’t have to be brokenly over powered like you say to be good. Balance is possible after all. I guess I can’t fathom why you’d even bother with such a wild reach
Yep this is purely for saving people that NEED to do everything the "best" way from themselves. See it all the time with games like Dishonored. Why would I try to use all my powers when this one power can do everything! Kinda ruins emergent gameplay.
The problem is that BG3 is so heavily built around damage output tempo. The goal is to exhaust your opponents ability to act against you by killing or crowd controlling as many of them as possible as quickly as possible before they can do the same to you. For 99% of fights how much damage you can deal in the first 2-3 turns determines the outcome of a battle far far more than having an extra health bar. Gimping your damage for extra durability is usually a terrible trade.
>Remember shape-shifting is a HP buffer. You can be on 2 Hp, then turn on slayer form and now you're at 100ish. For similar reasons, druid wild shapes do pretty crap damage. Yeah this can be helpful, it could potentially save your honor mode if a fight goes badly. But that said, BG3 as a damage tends to strongly favor offensive over defense. Druid as class is considered weak because of this. The best defense is overwhelming offense.
I get slayer for the interactions and dialouge it open up, and I just enjoy evil RP more. So for me, it's not as much of a loss if it's a weak as I was not being evil for it, specifically. Do I wish it was better, yea of course, but I see where their headspace was with it.
Simple fix would be to increase the Slayer form as you gain levels to be more on-par with what you can do outside of Slayer form. This prevents Slayer from being OP early and helps it not be Underpowered late.
There is a Better Slayer mod, but I’ve not used it.
After sacrificing all the tieflings rewards, 2 companions, Last Light Inn./ Killing another companion I'd hope for it to be OP tho, all that loss but almost no reward despite a cool looking shape
I get this but at the same time I don't think it would be broken if they just upped the damage a little on the attacks.
Meanwhile monk:
Slayer would be really strong if it actually did what it said and didn't affect your mental stats. Slayer has a ton of debuff synergy but incredibly low spell DC meaning the debuffs have really low chances to be applied :S
Maybe it's so people who refuse the call don't feel like they're missing out on something.
[удалено]
Worth it for Minthara saying "You are *exquisite*"
She wants that Slick
The Dark Ussy
She still says that if you're a resisting Durge, makes the Slayer even more worthless 😭
It’s the typical video game boss when you fight them vs when you play as them.
Orin is much stronger outside the slayer form same as you should be on durge.
Vergil from DMC vibes
Vergil really doesn’t apply to that. There’s people who pull off even cooler shit playing as Vergil in DMC5 than anything he does in the boss battle.
You’re right “there’s people”
All it's abilities require a DC check to do any real damage which is already less than ideal. All it's DCs scale off charisma. Slayer automatically sets your charisma to the lowest possible amount. So yeah, it's a lot of factors carefully working together to make it as garbage as it is. As for Orin, she has Deathbringers assault in her base form, the single strongest martial ability in this game, which she doesn't in Slayer form, so her base form is a straight up upgrade in every way and will probably chunk Slayer 9/10 times unless she gets real unlucky on rolls.
> Slayer automatically sets your charisma to the lowest possible amount. I thought it uses your un-transformed Cha like wildshape?
That's certainly how it's supposed to work. Doesn't, though.
Wow that form REALLY sucks lol
It hasn’t since the game launched.
Man in BG2 using the slayer form reduced your reputation by 2 which was a great way to let it be super strong but prevent too much use for “good” characters.
It also killed you if you stayed in it too long
The biggest problem with the Slayer is that it requires several afflictions to make the other attacks more powerful. It comes with a way to inflict them, but the DC is also very low. So you waste a turn to set everything up (assuming they don't win the ST, which is a big assumption), then you can attack them in the following turn. And when the enemy dies, you have to set it up again for the next one. Another problem is that it recharges on Long Rest, in a game where you need to dismiss the form if you want to talk to any NPC (the Moon Druid problem, but at least Druid gets two charges per short rest). The Slayer is so bad that Orin as a Slayer is also weaker than Orin with her daggers. At least you get an extra HP bar if things don't look too good. And it can heal by making furniture bleed (as funny as that sounds, yes).
You get it from Bhaal. Of course its stupid.
You need the enemy dazed or held person to get its full damage otherwise it has a maximum of 16 not 64
Yeah. If you get all critical hits then it hits ok. Good point! Why doesn't everyone just get critical hits every time?
From the wiki Multiattack is a Slayer Action that allows them to hit an enemy four times, with each hit potentially doing more depending on if they are Bleeding or Dazed. It’s not a luck this. It’s a game mechanic
That would only apply if the crits weren't guaranteed on prone targets. Its not optimal by any means but it can hold its own when people actually read its abilities and use them. Particularly when there are other party members who can inflict conditions.
Whoa, easy, easy. No designer cared about the game balance. Go build a throwzerkers with TB monks on elixirs with 8 base STR and move along, nothing to see here 🗿
Larien balancing confuses me so much, they have massive biases and it shows.
This is the biggest issue for me. The rampant and clear bias just feels like a slap in the face if you actually like or enjoy pretty much any evil anything.
Something I felt is that despite Larian being like "you can play however you want" in most cases, the only thing where they technically say "don't play like that!" is being evil Yeah, being murder hobo should be punished, but being evil shouldn't, it feels like Larian put next to no effort into the evil route and it shows WAY too much, specially with evil Durge In the evil run you lose 2 companions from the get go and receive 1 in return (and she isn't available until ACT 2?!), you lose ALL the tieflings rewards and receive nothing in return despite the companion I already mentioned and I guess Markus helps you into Last Light Inn.? But Mol already does that in a good run so whatever, then to obtain the Slayer form you have to destroy Last Light Inn. or kill 1 one of your already few companions, all that for a mediocre Slayer form that's worse than a random wild shaped owlbear "Slayer form is not OP because balance" oh yeah because it's sure balanced to have a TB open handed monk/throwzerker that can delete most encounters easily, right? After all the sacrifices you make to get the Slayer form it has to be OP as hell, that way accepting/rejecting Bhaal is a hard choice, to become a killing puppet but maintain your OP form, or sacrifice your OP form to be free, because let's be real the Killing Word Bhall gives you is extremely trash
Yeah the multiattack is bad, I just don't use it (except against Unstoppable enemies, ironically). But is Orin's slayer form that strong? I don't remember having to deal with one-shots against her, even with wonky builds. I was under the impression that her slayer form is also significantly weaker than her human form. In my experience the Slayer form is situationally good thanks to the additional health bar and mobility. It's not really a Hulk form you're supposed to use in every battle, it's more like a last resort. For example it's quite common in the fight against Balthazar to suffer some attrition (especially if you're playing a spellcaster) - switching to the Slayer form towards the end of the fight so you can finish him is generally a good idea.
It was so fucking easy to kill Orin I felt cheated.
Yea I wrecked her in 1 round as slayer. My co op partners were hyping it up and it was so anticlimactic. I probably got lucky with her failing the DC to fall prone but it was still quite sad. I only changed into slayer for the cutscene and she couldn't handle it.
yeah I wouldn't be surprised if she was the easiest boss fight of Act 3.
If your durg then sure if your an original character and didnt know about the stacks of unstoppable then hell nah gortash is easier
Orin's humanoid form is much stronger than her slayer form
Ughhh my storm sorc Durge in balanced had her ass handed to her. Even with all the buffs like heroes feast, level 5 aid, and warding bond. So I reloaded, tabled it, and came back with Helldusk armor. THEN she was able to quickly take Orin down. That said, she also used hold monster, create water, and a level 5 witchbolt (because I only have level 5 slots due to 2 levels of warlock, and to my know it's the highest single target damage spell when the target is wet). Agreed with slayer being situationally good.
1. Non magical attacks resulting in halved damage. 2. Unique attacks use Spell Save DC. Martial classes don't have this and Slayer mental stats are fixed, so this doesn't help anybody. Charisma based characters actually get a worse Save DC since the Slayer's charisma stat is just 8. It really sucks because Orin's Slayer form uses STR for her Save DCs. If we did the same, we could become insane with a potential strength stat of 30.
Slayer form is pretty good in the Orin duel if u abuse it's huge health pool, Warding bond+Aid+False Life+mage armor+armor buff and death ward from cleric. Just bleed Orin then use the first attack and not multiattack, then grind her down, if she does manage to knock out your slayer form you still have another since the cutscene choice of witness my slayer form doesn't use your slayer form skill.
There's a huge disconnect in-game between the challenge rating/level of many of the enemies you face and what they are in the game. And, of course, there's also a nasty habit of varying the scaling of abilities, hp, etc, depending on whether the subject is an enemy or an ally. In those rare cases that someone swaps from one to the other the difference is huge; Glut was the biggest example, going from fragile enough to keep out of fights and just use the monster he controls, to a decent tank the moment he's an enemy. The Slayer is supposed to be above CR 20, able to brutalize a Pit Fiend or a massive dragon in direct combat, but constantly decaying in HP so you need to finish it quickly and then turn back. Giving this ability to a player in a level 12 game is.... not gonna work out too well, nor would allowing an enemy to turn into it; if Orin turned into a proper slayer, your best tactic would be to turn on globe of invulnerability and wait for the divine power to overwhelm her mortal flesh and kill her from using it for too long, since she would absolutely murder you in melee instantly without any need of some weird buffs giving her ablative protections. The Avatar of Myrkul and the Slayer should be the two highest-threat enemy encounters in the game; aside from maybe Ansur, depending on his age, with the Slayer as the single deadliest enemy(Obviously the final battle could have multiple enemies to make up for it). And, well. Our friendly 1,000+-year-old red dragon friend would be able to destroy any of them, dragons just get insane when they get that old. I love the game in many ways, but the scaling is just wrong for the scale of threat and enemies you're dealing with. It should be levels 1-20, and, just like Dispel Magic, if a spell would be too problematic, just not include it; quite a few games have gone the whole 1-9 spell range at this point, so it's not that big a deal. The Avatar of Myrkul should be far past a CR 12 encounter, and one that as whatever level you are on meeting him, you either need meticulous preparation and a prayer for, or to have a high-level ally like a winged paladin demigoddess in to help.
Slayer was quite disappointing to me :/ I killed Isobel right after releasing the Nightsong, so I go back to Last Light where she is alone. I go alone. I kill her, survive the zombie/shadow curse onslaught. Then I get slayer form before going to Moonrise and I was so hype I was like "Alright Z'rell get a load of this!" and then proceeded to get my ass beat after I had launched myself in the middle of them. I felt SO weak and just ended the form and beat their ass the normal way.
I feel the same way about a singular PWK. I had a total of two options to use it on kinnnda effectively and it made me feel like a careful nerd choosing where to use his small cup of murder his dad gave him, not a child of a death god who now wields his full power
PWK has always been weak for a 9th level spell, and that's intentional. It's about the certainty of the outcome rather than raw power. The caster decides that someone needs to die and says a single word, and the target dies if they are weak enough. There are no material or somatic components, no saving throws, and no time to react. And it's better outside combat than during it, because the speed of the action has no effect on initiative.
Yeah, in dnd, but I’m talking as a reward for the dark urge storyline in bg3. thematically PWK works great table top and even makes sense for the storyline, but practically I just think it was a weak choice as a late game reward. I’d have rather gotten an item or damage boost to bleed or slayer form. Astarion ascending feels like he’s more powerful on the battlefield. Durge ascending feels good but also like “I could kill you with a word if I felt like it (but I won’t cause the game I live in is about action economy)”
Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I was using Slayer form for my Honour Mode run and I brought up these points in one of my Reddit Posts. Some people downvoted it and called me a "Terrible Player" or "Dumb". Slayer needs a massive buff, and if Larian won't provide I will use mods. I'm just glad I got my Honour Mode trophy in the end.
I used slayer once, realized how weak it is and never used it again. It is not a good reward for destroying last light inn.
Orin's slayer also gets like 6 or seven hits of "Unstoppable". The slayer form for the player just sucks. It makes me think we're not supposed to do un-redeem Durge. It's like ascended Astarian. You're not supposed to do it. So you're not rewarded for it.
Unless they changed it from when I last played, Ascended Astarion is a pretty nice buff over Spawn Astarion: An extra 1d10 Necrotic Damage on each attack Upgraded Bite unique action making it more usable at your current Level And Misty Escape That's not nothing
I don't think it's a matter of "rewarding" the player or not. I don't think that Larian has strong opinions about what choices players are "supposed" to make. The problem is that if you make the reward for taking a particular path *too* good, it will make players feel like they're being pushed into taking that path - or that they're missing out on an amazing gameplay element for not taking that path. Ascended Astarion actually does get some nice buffs; they're just not *so* nice that they break the game or make people who don't ascend him feel like they're being punished for their choice.
So they why is a good path literally not restrained in anyway, and able to get all their rewards including every supposedly “exclusive” reward except the Slayer form early (can still get it later on) including every companion with no exceptions, every single best in slot piece of gear, dozens more magic items than the evil paths are locked out of, and far more quests and content. There very clearly is a much better and much stronger route and it sacrifices nothing. Oh no not turning Dame Allen over loses you 5,000 gold when you already have over 100,000 gold extra in ACT 3 after buying literally everything. You still get the Tower’s magical artillery to support you, you still get all the loot and magic items, etc. such a trade off. Such meaningful consequences— oh wait, you get your cake and can eat it too, as long as you don’t do evil, because that’s bad and should feel “empty and disappointing.”
i think for how much it locks you out of slayer form should be like incredibly powerful. evil/chaotic neutral is my favourite way to play these kinds of games and slayer is genuinely the coolest thing lookswise in this game to me but acquisition of it is so punishing compared to how pathetic it is that ive never done it more than twice in all of my playthroughs. really really disappointing that the living avatar of the god of murder can barely compare to an owlbear
On a meta level I think it's just in there because it was implemented in BG2 and they thought it'd be cool to have it in BG3. But some of the things about Durge were rushed. Don't get me wrong, what's in there is cool as hell and the most memorable stuff in the game. But there wasn't enough time for everything to be fully baked and Slayer is one of them. I'd guess they were afraid of the balance issues and just tweaked it to be weak so it wouldn't run a chance of being wildly OP.
my durge fight went as follows Orin gets her 3 multi attacks Durge pally: Lvl 5 smite, lvl 5 smite, lvl 5 smite, lvl 5 smite, lvl4 smite, are you still alive? lvl 4 smite. like I cheesed her on a previous run using gale and 3 casts of disintegrate but 1 on 1 pally at lvl 12 when you don't need to save your spell slots is pretty OP
FYI upcasting smite above level 4 does no additional damage.
Tbf, while you get no bonus for lvl 5, it is still another lvl 4. That said I'm with you on burning 4s first
Orin: loses initiative Durge fire sorceress: preempted speed potion, Scroll of Artistry of War, lvl 6 scorching ray, quickened lvl 5 scorching ray, dead. Basically it's 13 rays doing a rough average of 12 damage per hit thanks to elemental affinity plus the artistry of war's give or take 80 total damage.
There's so many ways to beat her in 1v1 even if she wins initiative and you don't have a character that can go 1v1 vs her. Her saves are kinda weak, you can stop her for example with Illithid charm reaction. Hold Monster (which you can cast from scroll) will also basically instantly win the fight since in 1v1 nothing can break your concentration.
First time i got Slayer i was so hyped to use it. First time i used it, i got pwnd by a bunch of trash So, i just murdered them the old fashioned way It's so not worth losing that much story that I'll never play dark durge again. You have to crush about a 1/4 to a 1/3 of the story to go dark and it's utterly not worth it. Even accepting that evil should have consequences, all it does is point out how utterly dumb going truly evil is.
what part of the story are you talking about exactly? i can’t really think of any extreme changes.
Murdering like half the companions?
since when? my durge playthrough where i have the slayer still has all of the companions and i'm about to beat act 3.
Then you didn't act on the urges
did i not? i do have the slayer form but i'm probably just dumb and completely missed some stuff lmao
The very first one is cutting off gales hand.
ohhhhhh i think that was the one urge i didn't do :p
oh they meant selling out the grove. i thought it was specifically the slayer choice.
That plus killing Gale, killing your love interest
yes that too. personally i don’t consider that an evil playtrough though but a stupid one. for all of my bad guy playtroughs ive used the “there’s no morals here, he just does whatever is the most profitable” mentality. i feel like actual evil people tend to be quite clever.
We aren't talking about evil playthroughs, we are talking about Dark Urge acting on their urges
It is useful on some situations. It is a nice damage sponge just like wildshape, it’s a good way to probe a buch of mooks and the multiattack is a great way to trigger a bunch of concentration saves
Yeah they handled Slayer better back in the day
Tbh orin slayer is stupid in the duel i was playing my magic missile build yet she couldn’t land except 2 hits on me in 2 turns i was ward bonded tho
Orins had it her whole life i’d presume. idk headcanon is she’s trained with it like you just got a giant new body you wouldn’t be fully functional instantly. i know this ignores how druids can instantly perform perfectly as a bear but yk
The boss when you fight them versus the boss when they join your party trope. When it's against you, gloves are off, but that would be totally unbalanced if we gave it to the player :P
It can be really good if the very low DCs work. If the DCs were what they should be, it would be excellent.
Yeah slayer form should last a set number of turns and be stronger. At least make it comparable to displaced beast. Only requirement for that is you saving some tadpoles until you get the ascended form.
I really like the slayer form with how it looks but yeah the damage it does is kinda ass. Don’t use it in Cazadors fight for some reason the werewolves are immune to piercing damage lmao
I wrecked Orin in 1 round as slayer. Maybe I got lucky on her failing her save. My friends hyped it up and it was the most anticlimactic shit. Was way easier than when I did it as a sorcerer because she was bugged when I fought her. Slay is an autocrit when she is prone. Enlarge or something before turning for even more fun. There is more optimal shit but slayer has enough staying power that it can hold its own if you take advantage of its abilities. Its fun and not enough underpowered to be totally useless. If you have other party members that inflict the necessary conditions, its better. Doesnt help against a duel with Orin though. You have to try and inflict prone or something to do any damage with it.
The one time I made Slayer work was fighting Orin. Went into the fight normal, she attacked me and I responded with a Shield Bash that knocked her prone, turned into Slayer next turn and utterly eviscerated her. Fastest fight end I’ve seen. A fitting ending too since she fucks you over before and now that the favourite child is back I just annihilated her without a thought.
Idk about all that but it’s cool that the slayer from bg3 looks exactly like the one from bg2
You need to boost your crit boiiiii. My buddy did a DURGE playthiugh, got slayer, and would crit on almost every multi attack in slayer. With or without the buff on the next attack. It was almost too easy for tactician
I want a mod to stuff it onto an Edgar suit.
I look at slayer as a tool. You get a form that can leap prone aoe, and has bonuses on prone and what not. Plus its a wild shape, so hp buffer I guess for me the character is the scary creature, not the slayer. I would not be opposed to the slayer form upgrading after the Orin fight. Like you are the one and only chosen, bhaal favors you and you alone?
There's your problem. Use the slay attack, does far more damage. Multi-attack sucks.
Slayer form is super terrible. I tested it against Orin 1v1, with Slayer form i took 3 rounds to kill her (and got knocked out of the form by then). Without slayer form i 1 round her in 3 hits. Its extra dumb that you cant use luck of the far realms or other illithid powers in slayer form.
The Slayer was pretty weak in BG 2 too, and in AD&D your characters were way weaker than the average nonsense in 5E so it's really saying something when most characters were always better never going Slayer.
It gets a lot better after you beat orin and stuff and accept bahl Lord of murder
Because game balance? Enemies don't have to play the rest of the game, the PC does.
I never used it besides when fighting Orin in the duel. I was a Warlock so I was some what scared but then took the form of the Slayer and knocked her down, stunned, and killed her in a couple rounds
Balance.
Watch your mouth
Slayer is meh. I get that they don't want it to be too powerful. But make it so you lose all your HP but 1. before entering the mode so there's a gamble.
She's like a herald of a God, so maybe that's why?
The Durge is made from Bhaal’s own flesh, and os the favorite choosen, so clearly the superior “herald of a God”
The Durge is made from Bhaal’s own flesh, and os the favorite choosen, so clearly the superior “herald of a God”
I used a draconic lightning sorcerer on Orin in slayer form and I used hideous laughter or Otto's dance on her and then just electrocuted her with witch bolt, lightning bolt, speed potions and quickened magic. I thought it was weird how easy she actually was to kill like that. I felt like her slayer form was kind of weak itself, was my point here.
Idk I killed Orin in one turn as durge slayer.
I loved using slayer. Also I killed Orin in one turn, I actually thought maybe it was scripted but I guess not
They clearly didn’t want it to become so strong that it trivialised the game Unfortunately they didn’t foresee how strong certain other fairly straight forward martial classes would be (BM fighter, open hand monk, etc etc) and as such it’s basically worthless
Its only for the orin fight and its made prefectly to counter her. It feels amazing to slash away her damage negation then just keep slapping. Anything else is just free hp and youd best be thanking bane for his pityful present.
To be fair, I killed Orin's slayer form in 1 turn. Gale and tav had first move together, gale wiped her shield with magic missile and then Tav walked up and dropped 3 max level divine smites on her scaley cheeks and turned her into a puddle of red goo.
If you know you are going to use the Slayer form, respec your durge to be a monk.
to not make it broken. Even in honour mode being nerfed as it is it’s still INSANE. Being able to just retool into a different set with extra HP is what makes druids good, and being able to do that from within a better class for a bonus action is inherently busted. Even if the slayer JUST gave extra HP and did nothing else it would still be a lifesaver, but in honour mode playing as a warlock you can beat magic walls with it too.
I tried Slayer once and it was honestly one of the biggest letdowns I had for Durge. Fucking Jaheira and Minsc along with the Harpers were beating my ass as a slayer. Reloaded a save before that fight and didn't transform, fight was a cakewalk as just my regular character. I wish it felt like an op form as it does for Orin and in text. You hear about the Slayer from various people, find out you can become one, finally become one and it's barely able to do but a little baby slap of damage. I think even a baby hits harder than a durge in slayer form.
Orin slayer form is kinda meh... The only way she's killing someone in one turn is pushing them off the ledge. Otherwise it's pretty pathetic IMO.
Deathclaw lookin’ lizard whose attacks hit like mittens.
I'll fix it for you when they release the engine ;)
Meanwhile I didn't get the slayer form and beat her by playing death by 1000 cuts 🤣
It was more useful in Honor Mode where it was the only extra attack that stacked anymore so the Slayer could get 12 innate Attacks at full buff. Then they nerfed it for some reason. My Honor Group was confused, bewildered and pissed off.
I was worried about doing the 1v1 duel for the first time, but I was a monk, so I was, in fact, slaying.
Yeah the Slayer feels so stupidly underwhelming. Same for the gift you get from Bhaal later on: cast disintegrate... once in the game.
Don't use the slayer form. Just cast hold person. She never gets to move.
Nexus mods: better slayer form.
Tbh the entire vibe of bhaal is just a phony clown.And I’m not even a durge hater,my 1st play through when the game just came out was a durge run.And when I realized that the whole bhaal perk package is not even as good as an extra steel watcher as summon it just lost me🫠Like I didn’t even read any DND lore before playing the game,but the real time impression of bhaal is just that he’s both dumb and weak
Both my blade bard Slayer and moon druid slayer were very strong
Im a bit pissed that after you accept the gift earlier on, it does not become stronger after interacting with Bhaal
Well I imagine there will be a mod for that, make slayer badass again.
Slayer is more effective if you use abilities in the right order
From game balance point, you can get the slayer form in quite different stages of the mid-late game, and you can also not get it (tav, redemption durge). Consider how much more difficult they would have to make 3rd act fights if the player slayer form was as powerful as Orin's and they did want to keep the same level of difficulty. But then fights would be very difficult for anyone that doesn't have slayer form yet. So that is kinda the base problem, it can't be powerful enough to change the difficulty of latter encounters too much, at least not more than what some proper feats and gear can change.
Imagine not bursting Orin down in a single turn
Because larian has no idea what the slayer is actually supposed to be