I’m sure this gets brought up on the regular, but man are blightstormers frustrating. They only need a moment of line of sight to cast, from virtually any range, and are then free to teleport away to some unreachable place while their storm wreaks havoc. Some situations this is annoying, others it’s a big hinderance, and once in a while it’s downright catastrophic. It all depends on the geography really.
Here’s my suggestion to improve these and make them less… broken. First, they need a maximum range. Something reasonable, like gas rat range. Second, they must maintain line of sight for the storm to persist. If they teleport to somewhere that they cannot maintain line of sight, the storm dissipates. Maybe make them more likely to teleport somewhere within line of sight.
This is hands down the most infuriating enemy in this game.
I’d say the problem id primarily the range and angle of LoS they need to cast, and even then, the range is secondary; they can, of course be tracked through their casting and most Careers have options to deal with thing even that far away.
But by the “angle” I meant that they only need a momentary LoS, and it can be so narrow that no human player could use the same to do anything. This has caused problems before, particularly in Skittergate’s Gatekeeper arena, where visibility (and firing angles) to outside is very limited, but Blightstormers could still use those angles momentarily to cast their storms while we could do nothing to retaliate. They also tend to stay at at least moderate range after casting, i. e. outside the arena. It seems that we’ve had less troubles out of them lately, but I don’t know if that’s just luck or if something was changed at some point. Range-limiting their casting wouldn’t often do nothing, as only a few maps have visible ranges long enough to be worrisome (Athel Yenlui and parts of Against the Grain and Skittergate come to mind), but I wouldn’t say no to it.
As for the storm dissipating if LoS is broken, I think that would make things too easy. The sorcerers teleport away as soon as they take any hit, and are unlikely to 'port to visible locations, so any damage at all to the sorcerer would be likely to break the spell. They also wander around slowly while the storm rages, and are quite likely to break LoS themselves during that time. If some ease would be wanted to that, a realistic (and more limited) approach would be that the storm can only target players and follow them as long as the sorcerer has LoS. I don’t know how well that would fit the lore, i. e. whether the storm has a mind of its own (like it seems to now) or whether it’s the sorcerer that keeps controlling its direction, but it would give us a better chance at avoiding the storms.
There’s nothing more frustrating than a blightstormer dropping a storm on you in a narrow passage near a cliff then going poof somewhere untargetable. And god forbid it happens while you’re knee deep in a swarm and can’t get a shot off in those few seconds before they go poof. You’re just stuck with a storm that you can’t do anything about and possibly can’t escape which can throw you off a cliff and instantly kill you. I wouldn’t be here making a post if this exact scenario hadn’t happened many times over.
The issue for me is the range. Getting a storm cast from a tiny figure in the distance - sometimes outside of the tag range - then the little fatty skips to behind a building or up a tree in the distance is silly. HE should simply teleport somewhere with LoS to the players.
I understand your frustration but I can only partially agree with you. If they drop a storm on you from a visible location and you are on a cliff in a swarm: that’s the point. If you fail to avoid it, it’s no different than getting an unfortunate catch-pole around your neck. Moreover, the storm slays the bad-guys, too, so avoiding it (hopefully in retreat) allows you some breathing room. Stormers have saved me from Storm-Vermin patrols in those close-quarters, too.
This all being said, I agree with both you and @Yzneftamz about the ability to cast through a grate in a gatehouse behind a wooden board with two damage castle structures and a palisade covered by three piles of rubble. Sometimes, those stormers appear where they certainly should not… however, the number of times in 10 games where they do that and it causes a critical fault in my crew? Only about once every 10th game. And even then, we generally recover.
@Argonaut14 makes another good point. The max-range of a globo is too short for a stormer. If we can see them as well as have them 4 meters away, it’s not a challenge. However, if they can storm from outside tag range, we have an issue because I can’t communicate to my team. There’s no way for me (while playing without super long range weapons) to help coordinate my team to succeed.
Clearly you underestimate the range of a globo, lol. Their range is actually quite far, they just don’t use it very often (probably because of the arc of their globes). But not half way across the entire map far like a blightstormer can be. My point is simple, they are often too far away to retaliate against when they cast their storm, and then vanish into untouchable realm soon after. And that’s supposing you actually get a chance to see where they cast from to begin with. Those trace marks back to the caster only last a couple seconds. If you’re fending off a bunch of enemies and miss that little window, you’re hosed. Especially if they were far enough away that you can’t even hear their chanting. And as for the hook rat comparison, you can be freed from a hook rat. You can be freed from a leech. Hell, you can even be freed from a chaos spawn. But if that blightstormer has disappeared behind buildings or hills or trees and is untargetable, you cannot be freed. So how about this, keep the insane range, but if the storm is active, it has to have line of sight OF THE STORM (not the players). It can’t teleport somewhere unreachable until the storm abates.
Dontchu worry, I see where you are coming from for the range-bits, but their range needs to be fairly extreme in order for them to be any threat. At least, IMHO, I believe that keeping Line of Sight would cripple them too much but I can also agree that not requiring Line of Sight does cause a lot of troubles. For the most part, this is a fringe-case for me (I don’t know what everyone else’s experience is, but I very rarely find that they teleport to a place I can’t murder them at) but I do understand that it can annoy.
I run as Waystalker nearly exclusively to clear those pesky specials and shoot them behind walls and over cover; this is probably why I don’t suffer to them quite as much, but that’s just me! Certainly not a 100% guarantee that everyone else experiences things the way I do.