Bloodletting ability

[Erl-King]

There are a lot of feedback on Garuda being squishy, considering her passive and lack of damage mitigating abilities besides frontal shield. Most common suggestions are to give invincibility frames for her 1st and 2nd abilities and reduce/remove 'recovery' animations on them. Another most common suggestion is to speed up charge of her 4th, but lets talk about Garuda's survivability and health management.

Her passive and high energy pool makes it tempting to use Quick thinking for max damage and while it works to some extent, it shouldn't be the only way to utilize passive and survive Toxic/Slash status on 2hp. Here is my idea on how to improve Garuda's survivability and add even more synergy to her kit.

Bloodletting - in addition to giving energy it also grants Blood Armor - Iron Skin like external armor, equal to [sacrificed health]*[ability strength]. Blood armor quickly deteriorate at rate 5% of max per second (down to 0 in 20 seconds).

This won't suddenly turn Garuda into unkillable frame, but it will prevent Bloodletting from killing Garuda under effects of Toxic/Slash status and give more usage to her 2nd ability. Blood fountain will not just heal you, but also walk off with temporary over-armor (cast 3rd and heal up). At low levels and early stages of the game it would work as poor's man Quick thinking - preventing deaths before you could heal up. At later stages of the game it will give some utility in giving status resist (immunity to knockdowns and so on).

[Williamwaitunnaing]

i agree with the lack of survivality for garuda. there should be something to increase it with ability 3

[csaszar]

Make her no shield but high life frame somewhere between Nidus and Inaros.

With this low life pool she will be always squishy. With the above change her sigik would be also almost always on.

[Erl-King]

There've been a lot of ideas thrown around about armor/damage mitigation abilities for Garuda. As I see it DE don't want yet another one 'reduce damage by 90%', like Mesa, Gara, Nezha.

I had various ideas for boosting her survivability:

1) Blood shield - increase her armor immensely (+9000), but proc Bleed equal to 1% of incoming damage or fixed value on each incoming attack. Sort of reversed Garuda's mark. Drawback is that it won't stack with other defensive boosts and will immediately kill Garuda on 2hp if she doesn't have Quick Thinking.

2) Blood totems reduce enemies damage, like Pacify aura of Equinox. Weakening effect that would help Garuda when she gets into the crowd. Drawback is obvious - totems are stationary and Garuda already lacks in terms of dynamic.

3) Iron skin like hyper armor from either 1st, 2nd or 3rd powers or from all of them in some ways. To keep things balanced it needs to have some limitation. Personally I prefer this hyper armor being temporary. Drawback of this approach is hyper armor being hard to balance - strong and scallable = frame is unkillable, weak or static = no effect at high level content.

4) Second chance - Garuda's 3rd power leaves behind blood sigil - place where she will respawn with 2hp if killed in next X seconds and be invulnurable for Y seconds. Arguably unique (Loki decoy augment), but abusable, unless cooldown or some other limit is placed. I dislike cooldowns, so maybe 'blood sigil' recharges only when Garuda reaches 100% health.

5) Make Dread shield have two modes - when Garuda remains in one spot or moves slowly (casting, aiming, waling) Dread shield is in frontal mode like now, when Garuda moves quickly (bullet jumping, sprinting) shield switches to mobile mode - hyper armor style body cover that depletes Blood orb to mitigate damage. Drawback is difficulty of making this work without overcomplicating already complicated ability and possible clunkiness of switching modes.

Thoughts?

 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Erl-King

[LuckyCharm]

Really dont feel like she needs added survivability because her lack of it means you have to use her blood altar and shield properly. The ability does need something extra to make it worth it though.  Im leaning more towards a cast speed increase buff,  that way her 4 charges faster,  and theres less animation time for the other two.