Handmaiden Dev Oversights

There are two handmaiden talents, in the current state of the game, that are completely useless.
First is the passive, Ariel’s Benison (Revive can’t be interrupted by damaging attacks). With the ability to block during revive (by any hero on any specialization, including also handmaiden) this passive is obsolete. Even as handmaiden there is no reason not to block while using revive as aside from avoiding interruption you ALSO avoid damage, which the handmaiden passive does not do. There are two ways revive can be interrupted while reviving which is by knockback/stun effects (which also interrupt the Ariel’s Benison) and running out of stamina while blocking during revive. In the first case this is just another reason why Ariel’s Benison is obsolete even from level 1 and in the second case if you are taking that many hits trying to revive someone then it is not the best option to revive someone especially on Champion or Legend difficulty (where talents are the most essential) since you will just die in any attempt to help someone else. It could be advantageous to instead increase revive speed, or enemies losing sight of handmaiden while reviving, or decreasing damage taken by handmaiden during revive and/or 5 seconds after successfully reviving someone.
Second talent is the level 25 talent option, Bladedancer (Dash now deals damage to enemies as Kerillian passes through them but stuns less). Personally I would prefer to stun more with action, not less as this increases survivability and crowd control utility. However the damage of this effect does not seem to have any effect at all. There is bleeding damage naturally on Dash which will kill the weakest of enemies in about 2 seconds of time after dashing without this talent. Dashing through enemies with this talent does not have any effect on this timer regardless of hero power after much testing. The decrease in stun is VERY noticeable however and I consider this talent a complete disadvantage with no advantage. Essentially, taking this talent is a nerf to handmaiden. It would be nice if this talent did some considerable damage such as instantly killing the weakest of enemies (essentially quickening the effect of the bleed effect and giving slightly more DPS on bosses) OR increasing the stun effect (perhaps even expanding the effect to man-sized enemies and bosses).
Other than these issues handmaiden is quite enjoyable and I look forward to playing handmaiden with actual benefits to these two actions.

1 Like

Agree. They rushed with this game so much. The careers design is most noticable proof. Half talents useless or just made up in few seconds (nobody would even consider taking some of them), many does not work. Half of ults in game are charges/dashes for different careers and half are some sort of projective/shot. Lame. Passives were also “designed” without any testing and I can’t think of more transparent example than Handmaiden passive- uninterruptible revive when everyone can just hold block and revive…

Just something that you may not have known, when you start a revive, you can use HM dash and it will still continue the revive.

5 Likes

Talent 10: Eldrazor’s Precision; Increase Hero Power by 15.0% but reduces attack speed by 5.0%
This is kinda a bad option, if its good or not doesnt matter, a trade off on talents for a class that is not shining at the moment feels a bit odd. Change to 10% more Hero Power and it would feel more natural.

Ariel’s Benison = unlimited block while reviving.
You can be interrupt by heavy attacks or by an Assassin or Packmaster

2 Likes

Only the attack speed reduction part of it is working atm so, unusable until patched…
Also can we stop nerfing everything? like wtf…

2 Likes

How would that be a nerf, - 5% attack speed is huge. Usually you dont need more power on a weapon, you need attack speed. But ye to each their own, my point was to make a + stat only, not at the cost of another stat. +15% power then.

dude that talent makes you hit slower

Thats my point. Exactly my point. Im talking about a functioning talent= 15% more power, -5% attack speed. (I know right now it doesnt work properly, doesnt matter)
The other 2 talents are nichepicks - Boss heals you, you take less dmg as last one standing. - Both really bad.
So the 1 talent that would make sense to boost her performance has a drawback on it. And the drawback of 5% attack speed may seem little… but its huge, since its the whole attack speed of a weapon property. (Anyone playing Kruber with +15% attack speed halberd knows how strong 5% can be on a cleave weapon).
Btw I play Handmaiden with spear.

believe me, if that talent worked properly it would be a must pick, even in its current form since
1, +15% power level-> you cant get it from gear, you are capped at 300(600) without talents/effects, while you can get attack speed on several gear pieces, and even theres a meele trait that gives you 20% on crits for 5secs
2, still power level, it not just increases damage, but also stagger/cleave and interruption, which are much more valuable than that extra 5% as.

same here

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At 600 you already stagger everything except CW and SV with certain attacks. Cleave is amazing and I use the hold block - light attack a lot for cc and clear waves. I dont deny it though, 15% power sounds strong and I would love it, but I personally prefer having the 5% attack speed with a spear thats build on attack speed. Perhaps im growing old with the mentality; Enhace the good parts not balance the weak parts of a character. (Dont take that literally, I think you know what I mean)

Still have the problem - The only talent at lvl 15 that would be a performance boost does affect another stat in a negative way. That should be - in my opinion - a luxury choice, 2 base talents and 1 that has a drawback. Perhaps Im nitpicking if I am the only one with this problem (Even though I heard similar complaints on different streams).

That not the problem, and you are not :smiley:
The problem is that the other 2 choices are too situational
1, health on boss kill, 1, you need to get a boss, 2,you need to die, to profit from the clear wounds, 3,you need some white healt
2, simply everyone else needs to die(which probably end of the game, tho i had games where i got the value), but at this point you still need to watch out for specials, which still like to pounce on you without warning sounds, because its still bugged along with the horde loop(which i guess mutes the specials)
So basically they should make another 2 talents with garanteed bonuses, that are at least as good as the power increase one.

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Hero power also does affect the degree of stagger as well. If it is high enough you can knock creatures down instead of just pushing them off balance (although most of the time it is only on creatures you can kill in 1 hit so its a small gap in whether or not that buff in power knocks an opponent down or just outright kills them). Although I agree in that the level 15 talent is really not an actual choice and this is the case for 90% of all talents on every hero on every specialization. There is generally 1 clear choice for every tier and all other options are VERY exclusive to a niche choice for picking such talents and for the most part choices in this game are garbage. There should be some real options for talents that make people think and can even alter the way a hero is played rather than just offer a small stat buff or boost a form of play that is already offered and ideal at level 1.

I also use a spear on handmaiden, which is another thing. Generally even weapons don’t offer a real choice in this game.

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devresponse
Also, 19 days after launch (i wont count beta… {EDIT: because i cant, and it worked fine at that time :smiley: })
A response and fix(balance! read it everyone) soon, finally.

Guys, EVERY THING that adds power is bugged.

yeah. Sorry about that. Feels extra bad that it took this long to find.

But the stuff did work fine in beta! So you can’t count that time even if you wanted to.

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yea, sorry, i still learned the game at that time, so couldt really find the difference then.
will edit my answer tho.
Can you tell us the release date of the fix patch? Or is it still unknown?

They said in another post that the fix is incoming soon.

yes, i saw that, but they did not say an exact date

BTW i think The shade need more love from the Devs :slight_smile: