I don’t get the elf’s new ult. It’s…not that great
It makes a wall of thorns that enemies cannot pass. It does damage upon appearing.
But if a tunnel is narrow enough to block it; attacking nonstop will do the same thing AND kill everything.
And in open areas; it’s basically a tiny 6 second wall that enemies go around.
I mean, she would be better served with it just appearing for burst damage, then disappearing, to cut down on visual clutter. Plus, teammates now have to deal with a wall blocking their view.
Change her level 30 talents to do the bleed, the 20% more damage, or something else.
But having it stay as a wall is just visual clutter, and a wall of attacking players will be more effective in tight quarters anyways.
Yeah but, honestly, that what her ult should be, IMO. Her level 30 talents should alter it’s effect (Bleeding, reduced armor, & reduced dmg)
The wall aspect is useless and just adds to the clutter, and is better served by just attacking.
Narrow passage the wall can block? Stand there and attack; no rat will get past you, and they will all be dead.
Wide open area? The wall is useless anyways; rats will go around it.
The wall aspect is either done better by standing there & attacking, or by not existing at all.
I run it with incandescense and bloodrazor. You can break up hordes pretty good with it and it staggers monsters. But then again siennas conflagration staff does the same at least for hordes
Short cooldown with possible 2-3 charges of it’s use can be really good when it comes to controlling the battlefield or providing cover from certain enemies. There are a lot of uses for the ult.
Yeahh I feel it’s a lot of style over substance. Sure there’s a few points where you might be able to block something with it or funnel enemies, but usually map design allows that by itself already. You can stop a charging enemy, but so can the staff while also not obscuring vision or blocking your attacks for a while. Changed to the damage version pretty quickly, since the utility of blocking seems rather niche while damage is always useful.
The wall seems like it’s better for higher difficulties to split up density. My hope is that Blackvenom Thicket is best for really high Elite/Special density, but Bloodrazor may do enough DPS that it’s not worth using any of the others.
The Boss and Elite damage from Bloodrazor with Radiant Inheretance, and Hunter is insane.
Not really sure on the interactions between A Murder of Spites and her Ult, but I think Bloodrazor may need looking at.
Also, she doesn’t seem as insane in general without Moonbow (Hunter) spam. Rotating between Moonbow AoE and Bloodrazor on chokes and climb point density gets a little silly, imo.
The rightmost ult talent means it will debuff/weaken enemies in the process but yeah, if your teammates are firing/fighting there it’s better to half block the tunnel so it funnels enemies not seal them off outright.
As @Kitten said it is better for higher difficulties, it helps the team manage pressure much better and can really slow threats coming in. It can get specials off teammates too, but definitely in many cases it is better to funnel enemies than outright block them off, it depends a lot on the situation really.
The attack buff when you use radiance coupled with the boosted push and the walls can give you very, very good control of the flow of a fight.
In total that looks like 50 ticks of 3.75 damage plus 58 or so burst, so a total of about 250 damage in the AOE.
That’s a lot of damage!
I really like the solid walls, though, they have great utility and add some creativity to your gameplay. Just hard to turn down that circle of death. Especially when you can trigger it twice or more and get 15 seconds of hulk smash at the same time.
I think the wall ults would be fine if the CD was cut literally in half. It does almost no damage and has no impact on open areas. If players could attack through it but enemies could not the current CD would be much more reasonable. The damaging variant is fine how it is.
It seems very situational. I won’t be surprised if people find ways to use it, but the more damage-dealing ult actually seems good without being too powerful (not counting the Radiant Inheritance talent for the bonus ult). It feels good, and I like it.
I’m actually surprised she doesn’t have a talent where the bush revives a downed ally. That was never game-breaking on Merc, but having a ranged way to do that would have some use for a support build.
On Yer Feet, Mates! sways Mercs to play differently & hold onto their career skill.
If Mercenary had access to something like FK It’s Hero Time then On Yer Feet, Mates! would be a lot more appreciated.
Thornwake reviving allies would work really well due to low cooldown & her passive.
I think they could add the revive talent, and maybe have a level 20 that makes the bush bigger, wider, and last longer. I really think some bold over-buffing might be in line here. It could always be brought back down, but if we can say “x version is bad and y version is OP, then balance is probably somewhere between those two”.
