When I "rebalanced" Rangers for my own game a couple of weeks ago, instead of changing Blademaster to ignore points of armor I altered the Arc/Fusion blades to give +1/+2 pierce. I feel that changing Blademaster makes the Ranger too powerful in the early game (even more than Rangers already are) and is unbalanced compared with the other classes. If armor needs to be handled that's what frag and plasma grenades are for. Soften up the targets with a grenade and then the Ranger can swoop in for the (easy) kill.
Fair point. I decided to make this mod after my experiences with the class in a Legendary campaign. IMHO the major weakness of the melee Ranger is that the maneuver you describe is risky in a way that's completely out of proportion for the damage or utility you're getting. There's tons of other classes that are better at mopping up softened targets and don't have to sprint headfirst into potential enemy pods to do so.
The idea behind the two points of armor penetration is twofold. First, armor is fairly rare in the early game, so I took that over increased damage with the intent of giving the perk some more "oomph" in the mid to late game where (at least on higher difficulties) everything is covered in armor pips and a ton of enemy units have melee counters (exploding on death, counterattacking, electrocuting you, etc).
The second purpose for the armor penetration is to allow you to open a turn with a Ranger slash against a single target without having to soften it up first, the idea being that using the melee attack is more appealing if you could still have spare units available if the attack activated a new enemy pod.
I plan on playtesting the mod further in the future and tuning it as required. This is only the first iteration, after all.
We obviously have different play styles. I haven't (yet) played on a setting above normal, so the foes I've been facing aren't nearly as tanked-up as the ones you're accustomed to. But more crucially, I think, is my tactics for approaching enemies. I send out a ranger (one of two on the team) using one action to flush out the next pod. Once they've been triggered, my two grenadiers (backed by two snipers) blow the heck out of them. The ranger then uses their second action to clean up whatever is left. Repeat each turn. This works well for me because my rangers carry SMGs which grant them +3 mobility, as well as any armor and PCS that also boost their mobility. Having 15-20 (or more) mobility allows rangers, especially when using Reaper, to really clean up. My most recent record was six codex kills with a single Reaper series, after one of my grenadiers first popped 3 clustered codex with a plasma grenade.
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The idea behind the two points of armor penetration is twofold. First, armor is fairly rare in the early game, so I took that over increased damage with the intent of giving the perk some more "oomph" in the mid to late game where (at least on higher difficulties) everything is covered in armor pips and a ton of enemy units have melee counters (exploding on death, counterattacking, electrocuting you, etc).
The second purpose for the armor penetration is to allow you to open a turn with a Ranger slash against a single target without having to soften it up first, the idea being that using the melee attack is more appealing if you could still have spare units available if the attack activated a new enemy pod.
I plan on playtesting the mod further in the future and tuning it as required. This is only the first iteration, after all.