So glad that Exhaustion thing is gone from Rampage. It might make Rampage a little too beefy, but it’s nice that it doesn’t muck about with the rest of the skills that use stamina now.
I’m not against the idea of having a powerful ability that then has a period of costly vulnerability afterwards, though. It feels fitting for the Hive Scum to do something reckless and then need to suffer the consequences. It’s like a painful hangover kind of thing.
A “withdrawal,” if you will.
Yeah it should be on the Cartel Special. Why on earth would the withdrawal mechanic be part of the berserk ability and not the ACTUAL DRUGS?
So here is a concept for how to incorporate Withdrawal into the Cartel Special. Short version: a button that makes your stimm stronger, but also makes it give you Exhaustion when it wears off.
I propose a fifth node path that goes straight down from the center, with a name like Dilution or Filler or Adulteration, and an icon like a skull or a toxic chemical warning; something that makes it clear there are downsides. These nodes cost no Viscosity, and slightly increase the buff effects of every other node, but also add a Withdrawal debuff after the Cartel Special’s effects end.
This would all be totally optional, mind you. If you keep your Cartel Special clean by just NOT taking any Dilution nodes, then the stimm would be unchanged from how it currently works, where you don’t have to deal with the Withdrawal mechanic at all.
The buff increase could apply to everything, though I expect it’d be easier to balance if it was limited to the basics: Toughness Replenishment, Damage Reduction, Strength, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction. If you take all the Dilution nodes, the total increase would be maybe 50%, at most 100%. That is, if you have all the Dilution nodes and all the, say, Wildfire nodes, instead of +20% Strength, you would get +30% Strength, maybe +40% Strength. 100% increase is probably too much, but could potentially still be reasonable, depending on how dreadful the Withdrawal debuff is.
The Withdrawal Debuff could be something like an inverse of every buff the stimm applies (as in, if you have the Wildfire nodes, the withdrawal will reduce your Strength, etc) or it could be a more generic debuff like the old Exhaustion, with reduced stamina regeneration, increased damage taken, that kind of thing. Or all of the above. It would scale with Viscosity; more buffs means more debuffs. And of course, every Dilution node makes the Withdrawal debuff worse, and possibly also last longer.
There could also be a node on the side of the Dilution path that lessens the debuff effect but increases its duration. Another could swap the effects around, like if the debuffs are inversions of the buffs, this node would lessen those effects and drain all your stamina instead. Or perhaps it could be two Dilution paths, both of which make the stimm stronger to the same degree, but one path makes the Withdrawal stronger, and the other makes the Withdrawal last longer. Taking all of them makes your stimm very strong, but you crash hard afterwards.
Another fun (“fun”) idea, taking the stimm again while your Withdrawal debuff is still happening will NOT REMOVE the debuff, just POSTPONE it, and the Withdrawal debuff can stack, meaning you can build up multiple stacks of Withdrawal if you keep taking your Cartel Special, like the old cliché of an alcoholic needing to keep drinking forever, because if they stop the collective hangover would kill them.
As for how this would affect the Stimm Supply ability, I think it’d be best if, in short, it didn’t. The increased effects and withdrawal from Dilution nodes will only affect the player using that stimm, and any allies who get buffed by their Stimm Supply will get an untainted version, one that behaves as though no Dilution was added to it. This way no teammates will ever suddenly get debuffs they weren’t expecting or aren’t used to. The Hive Scum know to only give the clean stuff to the rest of the Rejects or Rannick will have them all shot. Only true Hive Scum can handle it anyway.