V+ Highwayman Tweaks

I really like most of the vanilla classes, but I wouldn’t mind some tweaks to some of them. Problem is, most reworks I see are more extensive and more damaging to the way that hero is played in vanilla than I would personally like.

Highwayman in the vanilla game has a few problems. His riposte’s accuracy does not scale, meaning it has very low hit chance in higher level dungeons (lower than leper even!). Duelist’s advance applies a negative damage penalty to riposte to set it’s damage, but it stacks if you use advance more than once in a row. Grapeshot blast is just bad. His trinkets and camp skills encourage focusing on either melee or ranged to the exclusion of the other, but his ranged kit outside of pistol shot isn’t very good, and pistol shot doesn’t do anything another class can’t do with more utility besides. This mod aims to fix these problems and give more options to the class without diverging far from vanilla.

Here’s what changed (or didn’t change) and why:

This and Open Vein are basically two variants of the same skill. The narrow frontline targeting makes these skills somewhat mediocre, but they have solid damage when killing frontline enemies actually matters. Open vein is basically the better version unless you are facing skeletons. Ideally, one of these two skills should be replaced, but that seemed outside the scope of this mod.

I increased Wicked Slice’s CRIT by 2.5% at all levels, matching Pistol Shot. The larger crit gap should help differentiate it from Open Vein a little more.

A solid ability with good targeting. However, if you are specialising for ranged, Grapeshot Blast is bad and Point-Blank Shot is very limited. Pistol Shot ultimately doesn’t do anything that an Arbalest or Houndmaster doesn’t already do with more utility besides. I don’t think the answer here is to buff Pistol shot; it’s already decent. Rather, I think improving the other ranged options to better justify a ranged attack focus is the better way to go.

No change.

Very limited, but satisfying damage for the situations in which it works. Honestly I think this skill doesn’t have enough payoff for how limited it is, but I don’t want to just boost the damage further.

Gains Armour Piercing at all levels. Armour piercing seemed thematically appropriate.

Grapeshot Blast is, unfortunately, kinda bad. It has very low accuracy like the Leper’s attacks, but it really doesn’t have much to justify it. Most important enemies are in the back, and it doesn’t hit position 4.

Changed to hit rank 4 as well. Note that the accuracy remains low. This should be a big improvement to the ability that makes it useful in far more scenarios than before, but still requires ACC investment to make work.

Tracking Shot seems fine for what it does, reveals stealthed units so you can pick them off and buffs up for boss fights and other long combats.

No change, aside from flagging it to refresh after each farmstead wave.

This skill is good, but has some really clunky mechanics. The actual Riposte attack doesn’t level, so it doesn’t scale it’s accuracy. This means that at high levels, it still has 85 accuracy, while even the Leper has 95! Additionally, because the riposte damage modifier is effectively a debuff, using the skill more than once in a row will stack the debuff and put your riposte damage into the floor at lower levels. The attack skill itself however, is pretty much fine as is.

The riposte buff now has -30% damage at all levels, instead of -40% to -15% and has +0 to +20 ACC and +0% to +4% CRIT. Additionally, using the ability a second time clears the riposte before reapplying it, ensuring the buffs and debuffs don’t stack.

See the notes under Wicked Slice.

No change.

Wicked Slice +2.5% CRIT
Point Blank Shot is Armour Piercing
Grapeshot Blast additionally targets rank 4
Duelists Advance riposte buff:

• -40% to -15% DMG => -30% DMG at all levels
• +0 to +20 ACC
• +0 to +4% CRIT
• Clears Riposte before reapplying preventing buffs from stacking