Sorry, I didn’t make this clear in the post. The flinching would replace the invisibility.
Good points about Bladedancer.
As far as distance goes, the main idea is to make dashing through hordes in a rather reckless, like how Slayer can leap over them with relative safety, a reasonable choice for Handmaiden. Full control might be too much, but just being able to turn a little during the ult would help with various terrains in the game.
However, you’re right, it wouldn’t do enough. I wanted to attach the bleed to melee attacks so the talent didn’t feel useless when armour appeared, since armour penetrating attacks apply bleed through armour, you could use heavies to get the benefits.
How about:
- Bladedancer
Now lets the player alter direction somewhat during the dash and lets the player attack as normal during it. Attacks apply a bleed affect during the dash and for 6 seconds after. Passive bleed not removed. This should be enough, since just by ulting at your feet you’ll get 6 seconds of bleed damage on a coolown of 20 seconds (realistically that’s probably 15 seconds at most). You’ll still get more value by doing good dashes through clumps of enemies because the 6 second timer only starts after the dash has ended, so that’s an extra second during the ultimate. This might seem like lot of bleed, but it would be like a conditional version of Flense (Flense is a very strong talent, so a weaker version of it should be balanced on a low cooldown ult).
The passive bleed could also be changed to have a delay on it that deals significant damage, and be samurai like in nature, suddenly dropping enemies. This would be a departure from how bleed works normally in this game, but could be cool visually.
Asrai Grace. It was very bad as it relied on HM being near allies the entire time instead of a brief moment, effectively punishing any use of the dash at all. If the effect strength being based on the number of allies makes it too reliant on others, then it could be made to only require one ally to encourage pairing instead, like Comrades in Arms does, though the effect would have to be weaker as a result.
Currently I’m thinking:
- Power from Unity
Every ally near HM at the start of when dash is activated grants 20% cooldown reduction. This would reduce the cooldown 8 seconds (would be 6 seconds with CDR on trinket). Being near one ally would reduce it to 16 seconds.
It could also be made to have diminishing returns instead, to encourage a minimum of pairing up while rewarding being with the full team without relying on it. E.g. First ally is worth 30%, second is worth 20%, third is worth 10%.
Very good point. I think you’re right about having it on one talent. The 2nd talent row on all careers is usually very important and decides the career’s main form of offense with a mechanical interaction. On FK that’s stagger, power or speed, on Slayer that’s 2h weapons, 1h weapons or a mix of both etc. Oak Stance would be heavy attacks, mobility and reach. Focused Spirit would be for breakpoints, ranged damage and stagger strength. Asrai Alacrity would be for direct frontlining and frequent but not heavy cc.
Something like:
- Oak Stance
Increases crit chance of charged attacks by 5.0%. Movement speed during charged attacks increased by 25.0%. The crit chance here is to encourage frequent use of the heavies and for Swift Slaying uptime.
Then for Heart of Oak:
- Heart of Oak
Landing a heavy attack increases dodge speed (only dodge speed, not range) by 15%. Dodge speed only as any more dodge range will likely make hitting enemies after dodging nearly impossible.
I wouldn’t say the change would make it easier for all elf weapons. The ones that don’t horde optimal chains that have push attacks in them would still have some awkwardness from it, but wouldn’t feel as terrible as they do now with it. What FK weapons don’t have good uptime with Crowd Clearer?
- 1h Sword, 1h Mace, Mace and Sword, 2h Hammer, Exec all work easily and incorporate push attacks when fighting hordes.
- Shields have to make use of their push frequent and can ignore their push attack when fighting hordes, but don’t get punished for using it since it’s a timer instead of a set number of attacks.
- Greatsword and Halberd have to use their push attacks very often when fighting elites in mixed hordes, and the Halberd often needs to push to reestablish control against a horde.
You rarely want to use the push attacks SnD, DD, Dual Swords have, with SnD’s push attack only becoming relevant on elites. Dual Swords have higher single target dps vs armour with heavy chaining (whereas Kruber’s Greatsword has higher single target armour dps with the push attack) and DD’s push attack doesn’t do anything of note.
Crowd Clearer is a popular pick for FK. I’m not sure if it needs to be buffed, but if it were to be, what approach do you think would be ideal? The timer could be extended to 4 seconds, or the boost increased to 20%, a distinction could be made for 1h weapons and 2h weapons (so 3s for 1h, 4s for 2h) or would another change be better?
I was tempted to type out changes to Willow Stance as well. I was thinking that it could be changed to only add a stack when not taking damage (excluding friendly fire) during a dodge. Taking damage wouldn’t remove a stack, but wouldn’t add on either. This would suffer similar issues as Focused Spirit does now, but on a much smaller scale because of how frequent dodges are. The 20 damage or more over the course of 1 second could be added here as well. None of this is necessary as Willow Stance is fine as is and works as a talent, but I thought it might be worth mentioning the idea.
Yeah. Not sure what numbers would work, but I think 20 would be reasonable as 1 ratling bullet at point blank does 3 damage, getting clipped by the initial gas throw from a Globadier does 10 damage, while the first tick of gas after it’s landed does 15 damage, 1 Ungor Archer arrow does 12 damage, a single tick of the Stormfiend’s ground fire does 8 damage and the direct stream of fire does 19 damage if only hit by the very start of it, and a Warpfire Thrower does 7 damage per fire tick. This value of 20 means HM still has to avoid the vast majority of damage they’ll be confronted by, but not damage that’s unreasonable to avoid consistently without overly defensive play.
You’re right about the lore, but, and I could be wrong here, I don’t think most players really play HM in V2 to be like one from the lore after a certain point, and it’s not what the career has ever really been like. They play HM for the extreme mobility, evasion and the clutching with support elements mixed in. These changes don’t make HM a classic tank, but rather an evasion tank that can deal with a massive numbers of enemies through dodging and movement and not raw dps.
WHC and Slayer are good examples of careers that can use mobility and specific weapons to deal with massive numbers of enemies with high dps uptime, but raw killing power that lets them kill enemies almost immediately as they move into the slots around the player is a large part of this too. The overall goal of my suggestions are to make HM good at this in a different way, where dps uptime would come mostly from sheer mobility instead of raw killing power.