I have made some tweaks/changes to handmaidens talents that i personally think will benefit her
Handmaiden
dash
Dash now grants damage immunity during the dash, Dash now slightly staggers non elites/specials and deals 50% of original bladedancers damage instantly, ult width(damage and stagger radius) increased by 50%
Passives
NEW - Renewal: Size radius increases by 200% stamina regeneration nerfed by 50%.
NEW - Ariel’s benison: revives can’t be interrupted (by anything)
Tier 1 talents
Spirit echo
Martial blessing
Eternal Blossom
Tier 2 talents
NEW - Focused spirit: Afer not taking damage for 5 seconds, increase kerrilians power by 15%, resets upon taking enemy damage
Oak stance
OLD - Asrai grace NEW quiver of plenty: increase ammo cappacity by 40%
Tier 3 talents
Smiter
REMOVED - Mainstay, NEW - Bulwark
Enhanced power
Tier 4 talents
Willow stance
REMOVED - shadow step, NEW insert name: Dodging now applies bleed damage to nearby enemies, (same damage as unchaineds searing grasp)
Wraith walk
Tier 5 talents
EDIT NEW - heart of Oak: increase stagger strength by 30%
Birch stance
REMOVED - quiver of plenty, NEW insert name: After not taking damage for 15 seconds, Reduce damage taken by 50%, resets upon taking enemy damage
Ws and shade are too strong, so we should buff hm? Personally think hm doesnt need a buff, maybe some tweaks, but everything you proposed here is too much a buff for me.
Disagree with premise, but always like some reworks… yours don’t go far enough or make drastic changes tho sadly just slight tweaks to stats in general with a few good new ideas. Good effort =)
-Changing Aura range, Yes plz!!!
-IDK why assassin over mainstay, i tend to always prefer mainstay… but then again these stagger talents / mechanic never took very well for me either.
-Bleed Dodge. sounds good as long as it doesnt stack shouldnt be OP.
-QoP into passive, i like, new defensive talent sounds rewarding… but might be too similar to IB passive.
Handmaiden definitely needs a buff, but I don’t think just taking her numbers and increasing them is what she needs, so I don’t agree with most of this thread. I think her issue is that she’s supposed to be a dodgetank, and sure she can dodge, but she can’t ‘tank’. She sort of struggles in actually defending the team, imo.
This is how her passive currently works. Taking damage of any kind does not interrupt her revive, unlike how it works for other heroes. I think it could be a better, more significant passive if it flat out said ‘Revives can’t be interrupted by anything.’ Taking damage, being guardbroken, being pushed, nothing. Make her completely uninterruptable while reviving. THEN it’ll be a solid, identity-creating passive.
Been maining her for a good while now, and I think the only changes she needs are to her Ults and some QoL changes.
Ults: make them more useful as we’ve described in countless other threads, and remove the Talent for CDR on Ult. It’s only good for speed runs and cheesing, because her Ult is so awkward.
QoL:
Focused Spirit - Stop FF from removing it. This makes it completely useless when playing with a Wizard, or Flamethrower Dwarf
Make Power From Pain hit enemies when you block-cancel. You can only get this up if you put yourself in awkward positioning, so it’s one of the worst Ults in the game (other than Blade Dancer lul).
As for my thoughts on her in general:
She’s a melee focused Class, who can gain 10% Power or 5% Crit passively
She can also have 15% AS Passively.
She has Mainstay and Multiple Hit THP, the two best options for every Career, other than range
She can get 30% Block Cost reduction, which is better than Health, because of MHTHP. You can survive forever unless you get bursted down
Hag + Power Talents vs Bosses is insane
Basically, you can take both offensive and defensive stats passively, including Block Cost Reduction, which makes her extremely good for Cata.
On top of this, you get Stamina recovery for friends, and yourself, which means they can either drop defensive stats or play Push-Attack Weapons.
She even makes 1H Sword work extremely well. For everything else, you just run Crit/Crit Power.
I think she needs a new passive that improves her survivability. She has way too little health and damage resistance compared to other tanks.
Being a dodge-tank with near instant replenishment of stamina, even a skilled player can be taken down by only a few hits.
Handmaidens are elite fighters, and I think that should be reflected on her passives- and here’s what I think it should be;
Isha’s Protection
The Handmaidens of the Everqueen are expert fighters and blessed by Isha. If her guard is down (i.E not guarding), with the reaction speed of a master swordsman, Kerilian can parry and riposte any attack without the cost of stamina, every 20 seconds, and locks Kerilian in a guard for 1 second.
Enemies are taken off-guard by the surprisingly agile counter attack, and so the riposte is always a critical hit. Taking damage when Isha’s Protection is on cooldown restores 1/4 of the damage taken over the course of 10 seconds.
Huh. I don’t think I agree with Isha’s Protection completely, but you made me think…
You know, just in general, I think giving Handmaiden a passive that works just like the Parry trait would be cool. Similar to how Huntsman has Conservative Shooter built into his passive.
She totally needs a buff and a rework… Some your ideas are pretty nice, like more stagger and bleed damage during dodge. But she would need something more.
HM is absolutely fine, I have no idea why people think she needs a buff. She’s by far the most survivable hero, invis combined with wraith walk mean you can do pretty much whatever you want and never have to care about positioning.
Not being able to compete with shade and WS on damage (which is pretty heavily because she can’t abuse hagbane) isn’t an issue, those classes need to be toned down a little if anything (at least the ammo regen does). Her niche is survivability and clutching, both of which she’s absolutely broken OP at. Giving her 50% (!) damage reduction for essentially nothing is insane, that would be arguably the strongest talent in the whole game.
Only change she needs is the aura adjustment, though that’s not an issue unique to her.
Guys, not other nerf, please. Fatshark can’t build the game around those players (less than 5% of the total community) who would see the entire cast dragged down at the same level of Ranger Veteran.
There have been many nerf but now it’s buff time, or we will fight with the bare hands.
hagbane WS is totally fine and she has pro and cons when compared with BH (WS: good balance between crowd control and specials/elites killer; BH: the best career vs specials/elites) (rather Huntsman would need some love);
Shade just does her role: bosses and elites killer;
HM can just roam around the map. But in this game you can’t “just survive”. You have to do damage/support, things that HM can’t do (or better: she’s not totally trash, “only” heavily overshadowed).
I don’t wanna get into any nerf or not discussion.
I just wanna say nobody here said anything of nerfing handmaiden, she doesn’t need a nerf, but she doesn’t need a buff, she needs talent tweaks, for example the talent: ‘increase power when not taking damage’ tweak it so it doesn’t remove on friendly fire or keep ff but lower the timer. Thats all she needs, talent tweaks, like alot of careers need.
Edit: also you know why she is overshadowed like you said, because ws and shade are badly balanced, you can’t compare hm to rv or uc.
I don’t want to start that discussion either, don’t worry, for this reason I didn’t quote none.
I know that none wants to nerf HM; I wanted just express my disappointment for those people that, instead of talking about HM, started to talk about nerf for other careers.
Anyway imho “increase power when not taking damage” talent would still remain trash even if not removed with friendly fire.
I think that HM is overshadowed because she’s a weak and bad thought career… not because WS and Shade are too strong (imho they are balanced).
p.s we can talk about HM without problem, it’s a pleasure… BUT, as you said too, I don’t want to go off topic and to start to talk about other careers.
Haha what? Hagbane do way better against elites than BH sadly, only thing that can’t outperform is killing chaos warriors.
Insanse stagger, amazing crowd control and deleting hordes, one of best monster killer option without ult.
You can practically never take on your melee weapon with hagbane that is how it is broken.
hagbane ws is not fine at all
Well, as wrote I can only say I like to compare the overall situation. WS hagbane is more like a jack of all trades… But BH is best choice vs specials, elites and bosses.
For example if I have a team already good vs hordes, BH fits much much better.
But sorry, I don’t want to go beyond this.
I can add, as said, that for the game’s health this should really be “buff time”. For example, if we consider ranged careers’ situation, Huntsman and Ranger Veteran Need some love… But there are many other examples.
As pretty much everyone else here has said auras should be bigger. Her Ult talents could use some tweaking because there isn’t much real choice there at the moment. Ideally dash had more utility before reaching level 30, and enemies couldn’t track you so well through it without GoL.
Otherwise she’s fine. Clutch potential might not matter every run but nobody saves a run that’s going south like handmaiden.
Edit: Should add that yeah the Focus Spirit change is a no brainer.