After running a few runs today, one of the things that perhaps frustrate me the post kept revealing themselves in the most unpleasant manner possible. Over the coarse of three runs…
I was
interrupted healing an ally on white health who promptly died when hit by Pyromancer’s Burning Head
Downed before a horde arrived and immediately gutted with no opportunity to gain temp health, courtesy of burning head
had a team wipe thanks to a patrol being pulled far ahead in the map by waywatcher drinking a concentration potion and mindlessly spamming F to get kills
hit several times by pointless actives used on targets I was engaged in melee with
Perhaps this is more annoying to me, but when allies rely on these abilities, it is in my experience, at the cost of other players enjoyment. I am of the opinion that these abilities need to change, if not in behavior and pathfinding, then all together.
Behavior and pathfinding
While I do not play Sienna/Pyro or Kerillian/Waywatcher the most, it is clear to me from repeatedly experiencing the same things that these abilities do not function in a game with friendly fire. If there is a possibility of harming your allies, it should not be through something that is out of your control, which unfortunately right now it is.
They are erratic and random, I’ve seen arrows circle a single target before hitting me in the face. I’ve seen a burning head bounce in between walls, only to change angle in a second and head straight for me. I’ve been the first target to be hit, only for enemies surrounding me to die like flies, despite being engaged with me in melee.
Solutions?
Maybe I am alone in the camp that believes something needs to be done about these abilities, in any case I only see one remedy which is to remove friendly fire from these actives altogether. That, or rework them into something more interesting. ( I may be biased, but I find auto aim inherently uninteresting and design lazy, worse yet they encourage bad habits and behavior. )
In any case, what would you suggest to fix these abilities, if at all?
I have even been hit by my own trushot volley multiple times and have it seen happening where Keriplayer fires it, it does an immediate 360 and hits her in the back on the way.
Other than that, there is a very simple solution: After hitting the first target, remove ff from it.
I also think the abilities should be changed to something else, auto aim is just boring in every game it is used.
How about changing the Pyromancer Ult to a bigger fireball, that behaves similarly to the Bounty Hunter Ult, only that it does less damage but goes straight through enemies, hitting more of them in a line.
Sounds awfully similar to a regular charged fireball staff. It would certainly have to have damage VS both armor and superarmor. The reason why burning head is so good is probably that it doesn’t have any get-out-of trouble value like the ults of BM and unchained.
It would be interesting to see it replaced with something non-homing, but it would need a lot of damage, or it would have to be replaced with a utility ult, but that would make it too similar to BM and a number of other careers.
I like the idea of the special not doing team damage after it hits it’s first enemy. But to be fair, I’ve seen True Volley do some really strange things. I’ve had enemies right in-front of me, hold F and tag the enemy red for my ult to hit him. Release F, ult flies immediately to the left and hits kruber in the head, he wasn’t even on my screen, in my line of sight…
Also, it sounds like you’re describing the game I played with you on Convocation of Decay lol. Sorry for all the team damage xD
It is unfortunately something you’re basically encouraged to do, due to the nature of the abilities.
Auto aim is in my opinion extremely lazy and uninventive design, and it makes people quite frankly spam them endlessly to benefit the most, which I understand, but doesn’t make it less annoying thanks to friendly fire. It often catches me off guard and kicks me out of the flow by doing damage to me.
Undoubtedly though, not all cases are the fault of the auto aim; if you use burning head or trueflight in a narrow corridor, you’re a twit.
Let be real, the real problem is BH with crossbow lol. My wife runs that build, and she has head shot me a few times in the heat of battle. I’m dodge weaving around and what not. But holy crap does it hurt. It’s around 10% of the Elf’s HP.
i don’t know about you but autoaim was the main reason why vt1 was so fun for me and made me play it to death. it’s extremely satisfying to see arrows or fire bolts streaking and arcing to the target and hitting it, watching it fall over dead from very far away, kinda like having a pet kill for you. if everything needed to be manual aiming, there would be less variety in playstyles.
in vt2 it’s toned down by having a cooldown instead of spammable with range weapons, so i think that’s a good balance.
besides, a waystalker that just spams trueflight everytime it’s up, is not a good waystalker. it needs to be reserved for pesky assassins or clumped up shieldvermin or that lurking gasrat or blightstormer that’s over a cliff.
I’m with you. I thought it was quite fun and if you used it to nail specials before they had even seen the party it was something you could get quite artistic with.
With that said I think moving homing into Ults was a smart move. But I’d like them to return closer to the VT1 mechanisms (where you’re really aiming at a specific target most of the time) instead the spammy approach that dominates now.
These abilities are purely in the game for console players to be able to kill specials I reckon to suit using a controller. I have a deep, intense burning rage when I keep getting spanked by Burning Haad and…
Waystalkers are designed for brand new players. Ambient Heal, Temp Health heal, Auto Aim Ult and a selection of weapons that are very proficient at a wide array of enemy types and you have a definite “entry level” hero.
If it was ONE arrow, for ONE special and you needed to actually highlight the enemy and have some kind of aim (like VT1) then this might be bearable. Chugging a Conc Pot and levelling a patrol is purely there for the newest players to the franchise and it’s an entry level career.
Of course there are people who can be successful at Witch Hunter Captain and play Waystalker, but the career is designed to allow absolute amateurs to have some accomplishment in the mission. Those who excel at WS are using the entry level class to chase green circles. I’ve just put on my flame proof suit.
not everyone can use this entry level class well =)
also, it’s hard enough fighting bad host lag, people leaving halfway through, and steam disconnects in this game. i’ll take all the advantage and fun exploits i can!
Dunno. Seems fine to me. Occasionally, the ults will loop or bounce oddly into a teammate or the caster. However, the rebounds usually makes sense with how the ult hit the geometry. Like Burning Head has a pretty predictable path most of the time. But maybe I’ve also shot it a few thousand times now…
I particularly like it when it seems to path from one side of the map to your head then back to where it started. This normally feels like it goes just though you head and out the other side before immediately pathing back though your head to return to it’s starting location…
I guess it’s possible that I’m actually a storm-fiend wanna be with a rat on my back but…
Haha. I swear it’s possible to control reasonably well with a little practice.
I’ve found that the weird bounces usually happen with a cast with no targets. So it’s not hitting the target cap and just ricochets around – although it does respect geometry angles on the rebound. This is just pure user error. People getting hit multiple times is bad luck.
There also seems to be some sort of soft hit cap (like 5ish mobs) where the duration of the continued bounces is shorter. In other words, it feels like it’s designed to dwindle faster after it has killed a couple targets (with no remaining targets) but before hitting the hard hit cap.
This last one is pure speculation on my part from spamming the hell out of it on my RSS/Beam Pyro. I’m averaging 70%+ kills from ult per game and it’s up every 3-5 seconds stacking 40% CDR. Plenty of experience casting the damn thing lol but it’s not like I can point to firm facts.
