By my math she has an effective cooldown down time of 24 second. That’s right, only 4 seconds longer than HM dash for Bloodrazor… It’s actually kinda nuts.
…Surrounded is a bit of an overstatement, if you are surrounded you wont even have space to dodge and are probably dead already. But yeah if you only got enemies on the front/left or right then you can do that on basically any career.
Right, my bad.
I do not think damage is the problem, it can chunk the daylights outa normal mobs and even do a fair bit to monsters for all i care, but, i did note armor pen as a problem i think.
Stagger is the only think blackvenom really does consistently well, i do not think bloodrazor should be poking into that. A choice between damage and control&other stuff if you will.
High cleave however…honestly there are so many weapons that already do that so i cant really muster any energy to call it really strong. If the armor damage takes a hit then that problem’s main component as i see it is basically solved.
Pre-cast delay is negligible, post-cast isn’t. I was referring to the formal one. Also the cd is 40 sec. What 60 sec is her passive. AOE isn’t small when it’s fully packed with enemies including elites and that is what happens in anywhere above legend. Also it’s AOE is remarkably larger than how it’s pre-cast mark suggests. Armor pen and monster stagger are issues too, on that we can agree.
Doomsight is problematic with an ability happy team. Bloodrazor also is problematic but without other needed aspects, which is why I called it too good in a dumb way. As for which is more overtuned is debatable, but I personally find Bloodrazor much more so as my own Cata build is Bloodrazor + MB + Pale Queen(the most no-brainer build I’ve ever used), while I can’t bear to have the wall ult even with Doomsight + Javelin.
As for Radiance I find it acceptable after the nerf, although if you don’t find it so and have other options to make it a better and more interesting talent I surely am interested.
Yeah my bad on the cooldown, thought her ability and passive had the same one for some reason.
There are so many weapons that do this in the game that i cant even muster energy to call one trick that just demolishes normal but extremely stacked mobs particularly strong. The only notable aspect of it i think is the armor thing hence i just noted that.
That´s because the walls are just flat out bad much more often than they are not, the whole OP is dedicated to that. But on the topic of the walls, i have used blackvenom a bit and sure, it´s decent alright, but it´s sooo boooring to use and it has all the problems listed throughout this thread that bloodrazor doesnt.
As for builds, even discounting moonbow you can just run radiance + doomsight + bloodrazor javelin if you happen to particularly dislike bosses. Or the bleed staff build with the 2nd option on the level 10 row, all works. And are all very much too strong.
Critical javelin basically kills any elite anyway, as does bleedstaff crits.
You can even drop radiance for incandescence if you want since bloodrazor is just strong enough to merit that, maybe not in terms of dropping a monster instantly but over the course of a cata/+ run. And on that note, radiance by itself is not really overpowered anymore i think, it just still stacks with doomsight and bloodrazor and the high finesse elf weapons which is where it ends up doing too much.
Not so many weapons in V2 can massively dmg 4+ elites from distance, heavy stagger them and stagger monsters at the same time if we think about it. Anything close to it would be Trollhammer. One might come up with Corus staff or shotguns but formal lacks stagger and later lack armor dmg unless used by BH; not that they are fairly balanced in any way, just an example to show how overtuned Bloodrazor is even when compared to them. It’s an instant bomb, with remarkably low effective cooldown.
About Doomsight, I have no objection on rebalancing it. Weighting which is more in a dire need of change, whether Doomsight or Bloodrazor, would be debatable but I don’t want to focus on deciding that as I feel both are ought to be changed anyways.
And hence i noted that as i wrote : P
Had it only been effective on unarmored targets i really would not have bothered with saying much about the ability but indeed, the armor penetration it has and the monster stagger are too good.
And because it penetrates armor so well the cleave becomes a problem as well, which i do honestly not think it would be if it didnt. Strong maybe but not on a level onto itself.
Yeah well that would be the geist of it, and i agree.
Having played both as SotT and as someone with a SotT on the team (elf is far from my main, I’m more a Saltz and Bardin player), honestly the biggest problems with the wall ult are: a) not being able to see through it, but enemies can and will hit you through it if you are right up against it, and b) not being able to easily swing and shoot through it.
It absolutely devours ults, e.g. bh ult if elf drops it in front of you as your ult goes off or even shouts like WHC’s as it forces you to waste precious ult time pushing through the wall or going around it if dropped in your face after you shout.
On using the wall
The wall itself works very well at blocking threats but only situationally. Most SotTs I have encountered in QP just spam slap the wall down in your face in the middle of combat to no real gain and would be better served to that end with Bloodrazor.
If used well it can help a lot - it saved several CoE expeditions for me and friends by being able to slap it behind me up against a wall while securing a revive. The fact it knocks enemies over when summoned and again after it wears off with Blackvenom provides a lot of CC to secure the revive. Ofc, you can’t place it too close to the person you’re reviving or enemies will hit you through it or loop around it - it’s a bit dependent on anticipating their pathfinding. The Ironbark Wall by contrast adds far too little to be worth it, longer duration doesn’t help if enemies are anyway focusing it, and if they go around you’re far better off with Blackvenom’s CC to knock them down when it explodes as they go around.
Most importantly, you can’t stand up against the wall. Standing near to it is dangerous as enemy attacks pass through and honestly doesn’t gain you much, you either stand off to one flank or a good distance back if you’re using to wall off somewhere you aren’t focusing atm.
Ironically using it in chokepoints is stupid if you wall off the choke while your team are managing it, you give the enemies free hits and disorient the team. It’s good to block specials or suddenly flanking hordes and pats to give your team time to react, but most SotTs I see just throw them down at the start of a horde in front of teammate’s faces the moment it is off CD whether there is a choke or not and then never have it available or use it for moments where it would help save them.
In open maps e.g. against the grain you can always kite towards a fence with your team and put the wall up beside the fence to cover more area, but I find on these maps it can be better to throw the wall down vs a broad spread out horde and then you take one side of the wall fighting the enemies that pour around it while a teammate takes
the other side. This requires more coordination though, so either a team with good awareness and/or mics.
It can be good at bunching patrols up if you have a bomb handy and they can’t get around as it condenses them hard.
Without Bloodrazor it’s not an ability that lends itself well to spamming like certain other ults as the potential for interfering and sabotaging your team is huge, it’s more something you save for moments that’d help ease up the pressure on your team.
Vs bosses it’s especially bad as (even with the damage taken debuff from Blackvenom) you’ll probably just end up blocking friendly ults. Vs bosses you should only use it if a friendly is about to get ledged or curbstomped and you can block off the boss for a second to save them.
But ofc the problem is QP elves aren’t all going to think that way and thus having a SotT on the team can be a huge annoyance in a way other careers seldom are - excessive FF from certain weapons and players can be counteracted to some extent with THP and so on, but having your LoS constantly blocked at crucial moments cannot.
Ah perfect, 360 degree LoS blocking and eating hits through walls, this is what the team needs “This is no hedge, it’s a tomb!”
Nope, I agree 100%. Bloodrazor looks good aesthetically, the default wall looks more like something the Knights Who Say Ni would demand to fence off their shrubberies.
Going back to my first point, as long as the wall blocks friendly LoS and attacks it’s always going to remain annoying if used poorly. To improve it, I’d a) take out the leaves/hedge part and instead make it visually a copse of bramble/vines extending upwards. Have it so you can see between the gaps in the wall. And b) I’d at least allow ults to pass through the wall e.g. BH ult etc., but tbh, since enemies can anyway attack you through it, I’d extend it to allowing all melee attacks by friendlies to pass through it. (Personally, I’d even extend that to all friendly ranged attacks, but that could be argued against seeing as the wall blocks enemies ranged fire).
Beyond that, Ironbark needs to provide actual utility that is not merely duration to be worth taking. Blackvenom has a niche, Bloodrazor works (too) well, Ironbark adds nothing. If the hordes goes around it, it is useless (while Blackvenom can catch them with the fade explosion), if the horde attacks it you won’t get the full duration anyway. In any case, the talent needs to provide more.
I do like this as an alternative solution / enhancement. But still, the LoS and attack blocking wouldn’t go away, although it’d make the wall much better to play around - it’d be kinda off casting it off to a flank to get the brambles alone in the right area however. The wall’s graphic taking damage as it loses health/duration would be great too.
Would love to see some gameplay from those saying the Wall is bad. How and what are you using it for?
I’m having ridiculous success, especially on Cata+ (deeds, etc) with good wall placement, as it gives stupid amounts of survival and feeds your team damage.
If you communicate your walls and their intention to your teammates, you should have no problem making use of it.
With this build: https://www.ranaldsgift.com/18/333233/26,8,3,3/29,5,3,1/3,2,1/4,7,4/1,7,1
I get the Wall up so often, that it’s mostly used for spamming AoE Shrapnel while my DPS clear up. Other than that, you can just spam it into high density, and play defensively until it ends and then your team can burst.
Ironbark sucks as a Talent though.
We usually call out “wall is bad” on Discord, when it gets us out of tough situations, or I use it to Shrapnel/Stagger an entire patrol.
@Drakonhammer
Yeah, I’m not sure how many people know that you can turn the wall too, by holding F and then left clicking, so it doesn’t block people. In corridors it’s really strong.
That’s almost the exact same build I use with Repel and Blackvenom. It does work very well when you use it right, Sigmar knows it’s saved several CW expeditions for us, but having played with a lot of different QP PuGs there absolutely are a lot of elves that use the wall atrociously and block off ulting teammates + throw it in teammates faces and then never save it or use it in moments where it’d actually help a lot. I think it’s worse on Legend than on Cata…
I love Blackvenom but playing with a SotT on the team that uses the wall really badly is extremely annoying, I’d say worse than people going for the FF world record. I left a run where the elf did nothing but plonk it in my face as WHC whenever it came off CD and especially when ulting. I don’t think he was trolling, just not paying attention to how he used it since his awareness wasn’t great otherwise, no response in VC when I asked him (politely) to use it differently, he wasn’t an exception either.
Edit: Honestly - like many other mechanics - that should be stated somewhere ig so even casual players are told. Still, benefits Blackvenom way more than it does Ironbark.
I suppose I haven’t eaten a hit through it. XD When I’ve thrown it up I don’t usually go stand next to it.
I like that idea.
The thing about the game, though, is that mobility and damage are far, far more important than defense. There are only a few moments where you desperately need to buy a few seconds in one spot; they do happen, of course, but they’re rare.
But usually, delaying only adds to your problems as more things might spawn in, or else they stay the same, and your THP is probably ticking down. This is the problem with the default hedge. It’s why Bloodrazor and Blackvenom are inherently better; they deal/increase damage, meaning you can pre-emptively prevent enemies from stacking up as hard or burst them down.
I was thinking in my head; if the hedge went laterally extending to the borders of the nearest wall (ie theoretically infinite) it still probably wouldn’t be that good. You’d still only be cutting off everything behind it for six seconds. I know that’s an absurd idea (it’s not a suggestion) because it’d probably have crazy issues, but just a thought experiment. It would still be very, very niche.
Depends a bit. The wall does have some uses with managing density, e.g.: engi on the team or flamethrower (or Sienna with the right staff), also volley xbow and some other weapons: a) make the chokepoint even narrower so they can mow down the horde more easily. Vs pats it can work well in conjunction with trollhammer torp or a bomb too as they have to stack on top of each other. Requires decent team coordination and/or teammate awareness however. b) block off a patrol entirely so they bunch up, then bomb them the moment the wall clears (this works well on the bridges in the CoE first map for example and e.g. along the cliffs in some sections of campaign maps, but bad anywhere enemies can climb around).
As for mobility and damage, I’m not disputing that, but controlling enemy density isn’t totally independent from that. It’s the same reason you shield-bash dense clumps of enemies as opposed to one or two nappy rats strolling off to one flank.
Sure, situations where it is life and death are more rare, but there are many situations over a regular run where Blackvenom can help make it easier and spare the team some damage if used well.
Honestly, the greatest utility I have found for it is saving teammates from ledges in CW , with Blackvenom you can pick them up easily + the wall throws half the enemies off as it goes up and then down. It’s extremely satisfying. And there are ledges everywhere on those maps.
But yeah, Blackvenom mainly serves to amplify the bunching up effect with all its knockbacks, Ironbark doesn’t offer anything helpful really. Hence I agree Ironbark needs a boost/a proper, useful niche, whether FS alter the basic wall or not.
I guess if they went with @Philip’s extended brambles idea then having more duration on that would be useful.
To make my point another way, even if you don’t find it particularly useful the way some players don’t find shield weapons useful, the wall at least wouldn’t be detrimental if used wrong if it didn’t block LoS and attacks as it does now. At worst it’d be a net whatever, as opposed to a nuisance and troll-y. You’d still be able to track and deal with the enemies behind it.
The only sticky wicket on not blocking LOS is finding a way to do that while still blocking ratling fire or warpfire (if it even does that currently). Maybe those two uses are less important, though.
I differentiate between the normal wall/ironbark wall and the blackvenom.
The former is useless AF almost all the time while the latter is at least somewhat useful most of the time even on cata. Sometimes truly good albeit more rarely due to lacking enemy density most of the time.