I saw someone mention this on Reddit, and after thinking about it, it’s really a reasonable idea.
Currently Unchained has a 2:00 wait between ults, but considering how low the countdown is on some of the other ultimates with far greater utility, that’s pretty unfair. It means she can essentially never use her ultimate for its utility, that you’re forced to constantly be saving it just in case something bad happens.
Look at Merc Kruber for example, his was the ult that everyone wrongly compared it to during the beta. Kruber’s ult is on a 90 second cooldown, it does a crazy amount of stagger to the point you can even stagger bosses(a Chaos Spawn munching on someone for example- Unchained can’t help that person, Merc can), restores 25 temp health, AND can either give your whole team a 40% damage reduction for 10 seconds or rez your entire team instantly with the push of a button. The rez is very good, but the 40% damage reduction for a full 10 seconds is near-broken. The amount of utility provided by Merc’s ult is unparalleled, and at a 90 second cooldown, nothing even comes close.
Unchained’s Living Bomb restores 30 and then does friendly fire for 2-3, meaning it actually restores 27-28, has essentially no knockback, almost no damage, a smaller radius, AND a 2:00 cooldown. It’s incredibly unfair. At least when she restored 50 temp health there was some utility, but someone apparently listened to the few people complaining and nerfed it into the ground. In reality her having either a 90-second cooldown or getting back 50 temp health on ult would at least make her a little more competitive, even though Merc would still have the better ult either way.
Unchained’s ultimate is entirely a utility ult for herself (for the most part). Bomb balm makes it better but the comparisons are not direct. Merc’s ult will only ever always scale inversely with how good your team is. Well, I guess that’s less true now because stagger is an extremely high value tool these days.
Anyways, Living Bomb on the other hand is primarily an anti surround and vent tool, used entirely to give you an extra life or allow more flexible strategies for aggression using your total heat. A buff to the cooldown is a direct increase to her overall survivability. Is what I think anyways. However I subscribe to the mentality that the skills overall impact should weigh against it’ cooldown. It should have a larger radius by default and should stagger. Else it should apply a powerful dot or do more damage. She’s literally exploding. I find it hard to believe that a man shouting very loudly is more disruptive to the forces of Chaos than a bright wizard point blank exploding.
Nope, she needs better thp talents for her, stagger and cleave is kinda stupid counting that she is quite powerhouse of melee and should have thp on kill and cleave probably
Her ult is quite good place even too good with that thp on ult
I think no one could argue that at least the 2nd part is a valid point. It’s already at 120s, the highest cooldown only shared with IB, so giving a fiery explosion the same knockback as someone shouting ‘we are the Übersreik 5, or 4, it doesn’t matter’ seems a-ok to me.
Even the small radius can stay the same, if we get at least that.
The UC ult should be buffed into a big nuke by giving it double the AoE and 50% more stagger and damage. Also greatly reducing the amount of overcharge UC receives from taking damage would be quite good, since you wouldn’t have to save her ult as an “oh sh*t” button when you get poked by a single enemy on high or even medium overcharge.
People still play UC? Just hop on BW and put on Kaboom! as it has a far superior effect with a shorter cooldown ('cept no vent. But BW doesn’t take heat on damage received, so…)
I’m mostly kidding. UC thematically is my favorite Sienna career, and used to be my most played, even with an underwhelming Ult. But with the introduction of beastmens and Cata, UC just can’t hang the way BW can.
I agree her Ult should match Krubs closer. At least stagger. But personally I’d like to see increase in range and shorter cooldown as well. Actual damage would be welcome, but I think is the least likely to happen (people already complain about its friendly fire, even though 2-3 damage is negligible.)
UC has issues with this patch and the cooldown of LB is only symptom of them. Now, we did lose Tick Tick Tick… (30% cd reduction) which is rather painful, but Bomb Balm is very good and worth the trade IMO. The other two capstone talents are hot garbage of course and you should never ever pick them.
The bigger issue is that she overheats from damage way too fast. This is due to 1: The loss 20% more overcharge talent from Tier 1, and 2: The enemy attack speed and aggressiveness changes result in chip damage being much more frequent. Combined, UC simply cannot afford to ride heat high because the pool above that is lower then it used to be, and can’t be maintained for as long.
To fix, she needs to either have that 20% overcharge put into her baseline passives, or she needs a reduction in the damage>overcharge formula. Reduced cooldown would also help, 90s would be much better paced then 2m, since that makes it up about once per horde. However, it’s the lesser of the issues and fixing the underlying problem would go a long way on it’s own.
I don’t think a shorter cooldown would do that much, I already think finding an optimal time to use it with how many different things it does incredibly hard. With bomb balm you consider before pressing f: Do I need to clear overcharge? Do I need to give myself thp? Do I need to give my teammates thp? Am I close enough to my teammates? Are there many enemies near me to damage? Will it be ready by the next wave of horde/specials? etc, etc. The fact that an ult that now has more of a support identity still dealing DoT FF to your teammates is just extremely annoying and that should be the first thing to go. It just seems when living bomb is on cd that things always go south and you overheat.
I second this. The 10% less overcharge generated talent is also pretty underwhelming.
Having a shorter cooldown, meaning her Ult would be able to be used more frequently, would literally take away the amount of considerations someone has to make. Removing 30s would give you a bit more freedom to Ult for utility as opposed to reserving it for an emergency vent. 90s cooldown feels good on Krub and Saltz, and I think their Ults resemble UCs the most.
There are a number of other ways to approach fixing UC besides giving her Ult a shorter cooldown, as people have stated. I’d be fine with any/all.
The 20% extra overcharge would be nice, but it would still leave UCs Ult really underwhelming considering what Krub and Satlz can do with yelling. I’d take it, but I’d like to improve UCs Ult itself.
Having its only purpose be for emergency venting is really lame. I’d like to use it to get an edge in a fight. Clear a chunk of horde, or have a solid knockback, have a larger effect, or something. The idea of exploding is cool, but it’s actual effect is weaker than other dudes yelling and that just seems wrong.
My main problem with the living bomb is its lackluster stagger. It doesn’t have to last long - but I think it would be enough if it infallibly interrupted everything in range, i.e. releasing any captive players, including from the spawn, and stopping enemy charges. The 2 min cooldown would be fine then because it would not be almost only about the overheat relief.