All striker weapons should be buffed, in my opinion.

[Duxe]

So I just want to post about my experience doing a full clear on Rotwood post the Anomalies and Gems update.
I have every mastery completed. I have obtained every single boss weapon solo. I have completed every nimble task and goal that is currently in the game. As well as beating all the way through Super Frenzy 5 on both bosses, just not specifically for every single heartstone available, simply due to lack of interest in every single boss weapon.

Strikers are the only thing that stood out to me in solo play as having a severe lack of damage, especially AOE damage. I can use any of the other four weapons to deal AOE damage in a wide if not genuinely large area without any cooldown i.e. waiting on the weapon to return to my characters hands. The spear and hammer have a wide enough hitbox that they easily hit multiple opponents at a time and the bow and cannon are basically made to hit multiple opponents at once in one way or another.

I found obtaining Owlitzers striker to be such a pain simply because I had to spend such a long time dodging in each run to conserve HP because the proto-striker simply didn't kill things fast enough. The strikers really only hit one opponent, and often times you can't get in close enough to use your fast attack when there are large groups of mobs as is typical in super frenzies without risking the tradeoff of losing large chunks of health, not the mention, despite having a lot of hitstun, the fast attack is fairly lackluster in terms of DPS. The hitbox for hitting multiple opponents on the striker is pretty tiny, and even though it can happen, it rarely happened in my dozens of runs with the proto-strikers. It's also fairly difficult to execute focus hits with the strikers since your fast attack can't do it and your striker first hits don't count, again, often times in levels with too many mobs I simply couldn't hit or rethrow the strikers because I had to prioritize dodging.

Now I recognize I may just be unskilled at the weapon, but for me it took probably 1.5 - 2 times as long to complete levels with the strikers compared to any other weapons, with which most levels took an average of 15 minutes, give or take 5 mins depending on how focused I was and the powers I rolled. Almost every proto-striker run took me minimum 30 minutes.

My suggestion for strikers besides possibly just boosting their base damage a fair amount, would be to maybe consider adding something like "shockwave damage" to their hits. Whenever a striker hits an opponent it sends out shockwaves from the "force of impact" that do 50% of the strikers damage to a hitbox that is much wider than the default hits box. The focus hit requirements could stay the same on the shockwaves as well, but maybe consider increasing the shockwave damage per consecutive throw up to maybe 75% of the main weapons damage, +5% per consecutive focus hit or something?

I'm just throwing this idea out there and I'm sure there are many other ideas and opinions on all the weapons. I'd love to hear thoughts on strikers and other peoples experiences with them.

 

[WarspiteOUO]

I am a striker main ever since my first beta, I like to play all the weapons but I feel I probably enjoy and know striker better than most other people (cos lets be real not a lot of people really play this weapon). I've had this experience in the past for sure, but I simply think that strikers are supposed to be weaker on paper given its amazing synergy with numerous armor skills and powers.

I don't think it's that easy to just simply give a buff to striker because of that. Before the release of bonechill and super frenzies I would've agreed with you but as time goes on with more and more gear being available, I find myself having the most amount of builds for strikers than any other weapon. Striker is like a blank canvas, it is very simplistic in nature but there is an argument to be made that it can literally use any power given to you in a run; It actually has one of the fastest light attack speed when you dodge cancel and chain it indefinitely, making it a great stacker of 1v1, this is also one of the fastest trigger of the snortoise/colosapphire chestpiece.

And what's interesting about the ball is you know how you can slap it with your light combo or catch and throw it with your heavy? Well that gives you a way to throw the ball out using both light or heavy, so you can cater to your powers/builds in specific ways; It is also the only weapon that can deal damage without attacking, and by only recalling and letting the enemies knock the ball around.

 

I do think the damage could receive a bit of a buff but AoE basekit should be carefully tuned with a ranged weapon that can inflict damage while dodging(in fact should not really exist given how good striker synergizes with AoE/charge powers). The base skill of recalling the strikers to you could be changed into a more useful one for sure, I had an idea of like how cannon reloads per enemy hit with its skills, strikers could recall the balls to you with every skill as an additional effect. Your suggestion of AoE striker could be implemented on the exploding striker that is supposed to do that, but it would have to be a non-weapon hit probably to limit its effects with powers.

And right now my go-to SF build for striker is Bulbin|Colosapphire|Floracrane on the Owlitzer striker running Risky|Regen|Reroll. The bulbin head has an interaction with owlitzer skill that makes it hit multiple times based on distance after dodging, all hits benefiting from the crit bonus on the legs and turning it into a potent AoE move(especially good with agile striker ). Colo chest is mainly an enabler of the light attack combo. I actually feel very comfortable in this build knowing that I can take mostly any power, but specifically I have incredible hitstreaks with no filler hits, I can be very evasive and I have great CC and crowd damage, and I have some basekit crit to help me enable some powers. This is what I consider to be using striker to its full extent.