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That is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
Ahem…
I figured there should probably be a dedicated thread for this because this is going to be the biggest discussion around the two classes. To get us started, I’d like to give my thoughts, but I am conflicted.
I think Daredevil just about justifies itself in a vacuum. We don’t have a dedicated manoeuvre class. The closest would be swashbuckler, but they’re still only doing them as a means to an end, namely triggering panache. Daredevil wants to trigger adrenaline to do more manoeuvres for the most part and has massive action compression to achieve this. I am also sympathetic to the idea that it would be awesome if this was the sort of things anybody could do. I guess that’s true for every class, but it really stands out here.
Slayer on the other severed monster hand, I just don’t see it. Mark quarry feels like it has very similar problems to investigator where there’s a real chance it just isn’t going to come up, which is the kind of specificity that I really don’t want to see on a class. If this were an archetype feature, this would be more acceptable, as hyper-specific archetypes are common, and people haven’t really had much of an issue with them. It would also let people use the more interesting part of Slayer (Trophies) on any class, which suffers from a similar problem as Daredevil where it really is just something anybody could do.
I doubt Paizo are going to pivot at this stage, and I don’t mean to denigrate the work put into these classes by saying “Ew I don’t want them”, but I think they both need more work to justify them as their own thing. Daredevil might already be there to be honest, but slayer needs more. I think I would lean away from the tracking aspect (especially since it feels very ranger) and more into the trophy-gathering aspect. People bring up Final Fantasy’s blue mages here, and I think that’s a good idea. Battlezoo have already tried something similar, so it could work.
I’m very eager to hear everyone’s thoughts because I’m obviously stuck a bit in the middle of the discussion and I’d like to try and make up my mind.
The day of the stream I was kinda worried for the new classes because neither the mechanics nor the flavor behind either of them seemed to be "strong" enough to justify full blown classes. Now, after having the somewhat full context of the playtest (because its entirely possible some features were designed with Paizo knowing people aren't going to like them. It happened before), I think both could become full classes, but certainly not in the state they exists right now.
The mechanical niche of the daredevil is Athletics maneuvers. Yes, everyone trained in Athletics can use them already, but its usually trade-off in which the player trades damage for support. This is true even for archetypes that specialize into Athletics maneuvers like wrestler. The problem is that the daredevil is totally lenient on props which is already a huge red flag (see AP map design). The daredevil is also supposed to be the "risky" class, but it doesn't feel like that all. Yes, the class relies heavily on press, and while the class makes press actions more desirable, I think most of them are really bad because it seemed like the devs designed them taking into account they are going to be used by a class that reduces the MAP on press actions. Its similar to how fire impulses on the kineticist were seemingly designed taking into account that fire kineticists increase the damage die size of fire impulses, making them weirdly weak unless you have the fire impulse junction.
A thing I noticed immediately is that the class it repeats multiple time in the flavor of many of its features that the daredevil is, paraphrasing a bit, in the heat of battle putting itself at risk and taking damage, yet the class has 8 + Con HP per level, no acccess to medium armor, but Diehard at 1st level and heals more from Medicine? This feels totally out of touch on what the class is supposed to represent. I feel like 10 + Con HP and access to medium armor should be the bare minimum for such a class.
Everything else is okay-ish. There's too many flourish feats as well but I'm sure that's going to be fixed on release.
In regards to the slayer, in my first read I thought it was in a much better state than it really is. Not like its in a bad state exactly (I'll go in detail why next), but right now I honestly don't see a reason why I would ever want to play a slayer over a reflavored thaumaturge any time soon. Mark Quarry is atrocious, trophies are weirdly...bland? to the point where the feature barely justifies its existence, and chymist's vials and consecrated panoply feeling like trap options. Even bloodseeking blade which I think its by far the best tool, if you look at it, its just a buffed precision ranger with pseudo-fighter accuracy boost put together into a subclass.
The specializations of each tool are almost universally bad though.
Most slayer feats also have a tool requirement, which likely is going to result in most slayers that choose the same tool to feel same-y.
I believe in Paizo because all the recent classes have been huge hits, so I'm sure they are going to be much better at release. Thats why I think its important for us to provide feedback now because, regardless of if you think these should be classes or not, the boat has sailed and these are going to be classes like it or not, so let's hope for Paizo to have the best feedback avaiable to design the best version of these classes possible.