Unchained ultimate is used as a fuse most of the time while playing on high overcharge for damage output (otherwise if surrounded or to save ally), and often it gives the impression that you have no ultimate at all. After using it, you forced to abstain from using your staff because overcharged means death, no matter how many health you have. In case you forced to use your staff (to kill specials) you became quite vulnerable for some period of time. So I suggest to reduce ultimate cooldown.
Or I suggest to reduce cooldown of ultimate if it was used without overcharged state.
Autotrigger for ultimate ability.
When you accidentaly overcharged, it is taking some time to realise it, and whithin this period you can’t dodge, or block, or push, and you can take certain amount of damage up to lethal. I think it would be reasonable for ultimate to trigger automatically when overcharged.
Or maybe this lifesaver effect could be remade into passive like Zealot have. This way ultimate will be used for it’s effect on enemies only.
Friendly Fire from ultimate ability.
When your ally is fallen, you can use your ultimate to clear space near him from the enemies. But if someone started to lift him, your ultimate will interrupt it, and can possibly doom him. Same thing when you accidently overcharged near downed ally when someone trying to save him. So I suggest to remove friendly fire from ultimate.
Boss stagger from ultimate ability.
It would be good if ultimate would stagger bosses. There is no reason for it to not do so. I was unpleasantly surprised that it is not doing so after I tried to free ally from Chaos Spawn.
Block cost reduction from Dissipate talent.
Dissipate talent gives you additional х0.5 block cost modifier when you have overcharge and allow you to vent overcharge when blocking attacks. This modifier gives you near shield level of block cost reduction (with smaller effective angle though) while you have overcharge. In the same time other Sienna’s careers have means to have 100% block cost reduction. I finding it kinda strange. Taking overhead strike venting all overcharge and leave you without this bonus. I think it would be reasonable if Dissipate gave you additional block cost reduction instead, so you could have 100% block cost reduction while you have overcharge. Or… maybe x0.5 modifier should stay no matter of overcharge presence. Personally I like second variant even more, because this way you will not underestimate your block cost reduction in critical situation, because it always the same.
The only part here that I agree with is the Boss stagger. That would indeed be a nice addition to the Skill, and would add to the apparent power of it without becoming a killer ability.
For cooldown, it’s high for a reason. A significant purpose for the Skill is to be a lifesaver if you overheat. The high cooldown makes it so that it can’t be used every time you get there, and you need to actually balance your heat most of the time. Get yourself to moderate-to-high heat (depending on your trust on your skill and needs of the situation), then switch to wailing on in melee. If you go dangerously high, use a method of your choice to get rid of some of the heat - or all of it, if you want to keep casting. The Skill is there in case you eat an overhead you shouldn’t have, and another attack right after. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s an active ability with a significant use as a safety mechanism.
For similar reasons, the auto-activation wouldn’t be good. The Skill has one button you need to press to activate it; If you panic and forget what that is or you forget that it exists, it’s on you. Completely. In addition, that would be inconsistent with everything else: Ironbreaker doesn’t activate his ability automatically when you engage a Patrol, Waystalker doesn’t automatically shoot any Specials - and Unchained doesn’t automatically prevent her exploding. That kind of thing is strictly for the Careers’ Passives, which is what Zealot’s ability is - and that one also has a long cooldown and a limit for its effectiveness.
Friendly Fire is on for any and all damaging Career Skills. Removing it for one would be inconsistent. Yes, interrupting a revive with it is annoying, but remembering that is part of learning to play the Career. If you want to help the reviver, there are other ways (like melee combat) to do it. Also, in this case, it’s very much in character for the Unchained Sienna to not care about damaging her allies.
Dissipate is, as the name implies, first an ability to remove heat in melee combat, and an aid to blocking comes as a secondary effect. It works quite fine as is. It even balances its own use: If you block a lot, you gain other forms of safety with the capability to take more hits or to start casting again. Besides, the 100% BCR is mainly a gimmick build anyway - a safe, but not that effective kit (and boring to boot).
Dissipate is not working properly. It’s either bugged or the talent info was never correctly updated. It clearly states that the talent will add up to 50% BCR with stacks of overheat. But it doesn’t, the most you get is around 20-30%. So I’d suggest submitting a bug report if it is and issue for you.
The thing is, this ultimate is used mostly as safety mechanism and less like ultimate ability itself.
And if there is no need to reduce cooldown, why all people I know using cooldown from all 25lvl talents?
Funny thing, when I asked one guy I playing with, he responded in a similar style. But when I suggested to remake lifesaver effect into passive, he suddenly agreed. I do not see big difference though.
Because a) a universal reduction to the ability’s cooldown would be a different thing from making a choice, and b) because the alternatives are useless. I don’t argue that a reduced cooldown would make the Skill more effective. I’m arguing that it would probably make it too effective, and significantly reduce the need for heat management (which, I think, is the most significant hurdle in playing Unchained well, and the most important balancing factor for the Career). To reduce the rate of picking the CDR Talent, the other two need to be made more appealing. I actually thought this soon after making my first reply, but putting in the Boss stagger, either as a replacement or in addition to, say, the added damage, could start turning the tables.
I don’t agree with a Passive version either. I’d say it would make playing Unchained too safe, but more than that, it would prompt huge changes in the Career Skill - too much work for too little gain, in my opinion.
And no, none of the other Careers have a condition where their Career Skill triggers automatically - it’s all active use of it, even with Waystalker’s and Pyro’s homing missiles. If you don’t aim them, they go wherever, and if there’s a bunch of enemies, they’ll likely hit something that wasn’t intended.
I do think there are some ways to improve the Unchained’s Career Skill, but my approach would be to widen its other appeal instead of trying to make it easier to use for saving oneself. Possibly change the Talents so that they do something useful (and really change up the Skill’s use), and/or tweak its base parameters to give more reason to use it for more than immediate self-preservation. So yeah, I think your concerns have merit, but the approach is problematic.
UC doesn’t really have an ult, at least not like the other careers do. That’s part of the appeal. In it’s place, you get the Heat/Dps juggling act you have to play. IMO, that juggling of overcharge IS the ult, because it’s what you focus on while you are fighting. You play other classes planning around your ult and choosing the best time to use it; you play UC planning around your heat and choosing whether to heat up or pull back. It’s not like the other characters and that’s fine. Why should they all be the same?
With that in mind, I can’t imagine taking any talent other then CDR. It’s the only one that addresses the careers actual gameplay, which is heat management. Unless it starts doing enough damage to down an entire chaos patrol, the ONLY thing I’m using it for is to vent heat from surprise damage spikes. I can’t afford to use it for anything else - it’s how the class is designed. The only way to make the other talents attractive is to make the CDR talent baseline and replace it.
Also, they need to stop sucking. The damage on living bomb is so low that even boosting it by 200% would still leave it underpowered. Spending a talent on 50% is comical, and increasing the radius is actually a negative because of friendly fire.
i might consider something like moving the ult to a “buff”/timer which you could “use” by pressing R or something while holding melee to activate the heat dump/blast and give her something a bit more aggressive for a proper ult, even if it’s just a self buff (though a forward facing blast with damage and stagger or something would be nice). not like throwing it on a 1+ min timer would make it less of a panic button than it does as an ult, and blocking to dump feels far too passive, imo. at the least, i would like to be able to properly vent without swappin to ranged, and this feels like a decent compromise.
Unchained is actually a very very good example of a risk/reward build. Using the ULT is never going to be on the same scale as a BH or Shade deleting a CW, but it does mean you can range-attack-the-living-tits out of everything once it’s done … OR … use the damage stacks to tank through tougher armour. As a class it gives you lots of choice and this means there is a lot of ambiguity about the usage of the ULT - hence this thread.
The ult “works” in that it gives versatile players some really effective choices for the class. Building for full CDR can mean a huge amount of ranged damage from UC, OR building for high damage/crit can mean high damage stacks and the ability to tank armour very well. IN fact, high stacks + str potion can take apart a patrol quite comfortably,… but this is a fairly specific situation.
In my most whimsical thoughts I’d rather ALL characters ULT’s gave this kind of varied gameplay options rather than very specific situations for each one.
As for block cost reduction, considering the current dodge-meta, ANYTHING to do with blocking is going to be used far less than any other aspect of the character build be it dodging, attacking, crit chance, %vs whatever or even movement speed. 100% BCR is a gimmick, nothing more really.
