The problem with Kullervo and a simple fix

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

Kullervo is a great damage dealer and a really interesting frame, but his defence just doesn't quite work.

His 2 gives him a static (max 5000) amount of overguard, which up to a point makes him really tanky, past that he needs to constantly be recasting and rolling to stay alive, and then there's a point where he just gets one shot and has to quit.

The problem (at first) seems that overguard doesn't get Adaptation and doesn't gate, so he can be one or two shot by most Steel Path enemies.

But, a similar mechanism works great for Rhino, the difference is that Rhino's overguard scales with enemies while Kullervo's is static.

The fix is 3 small changes

- Each of the 3 daggers that can strike an enemy should do a proportion of that enemy's EHP, say 10%

- Each of those hits gives Kullervo 5% of the enemy's EHP.

- Remove the cap, Kullervo can just keep stacking if he wants. This might seem exploitable and excessive, but Gara exists.

That's it, leave everything else the same. This would make Kullervo consistently tanky. If he ends up too OP reduce those ratios, if too weak increase them. 

[BiancaRoughfin]

26 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

- Each of the 3 daggers that can strike an enemy should do a proportion of that enemy's EHP, say 10%

- Each of those hits gives Kullervo 5% of the enemy's EHP.

- Remove the cap, Kullervo can just keep stacking if he wants. This might seem exploitable and excessive, but Gara exists.

I find the percentage based damage for this ability unnecessary, given how it will scale with enemy level, it would cause Kullervo to gain an absurd amount of Overguard on higher levels and end game content.

Im ok with the Cap being 10K~20K but not uncapped. Gara`s abilities dont give her any form of Absorption, they give her Damage Reduction, the ability of hers that stacks is splinter storm with her Mass Vitrify and in honest opinion, the damage it stacks should be capped.

I think the only fix that really needs to be made is allowing for Adaptation to apply its effect on overguard tho this might make Rhino even more unkillable as his IronSkin cant be dispelled now.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

19 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

I find the percentage based damage for this ability unnecessary

For what? He's tissue paper on any long SP game mode.

20 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Im ok with the Cap being 10K~20K

That puts up the one-shot cap a little, but not for long because Adaptation doesn't affect overguard - 90% damage reduction means your health is 10x as effective as overguard.

So 2k health and 5k overguard becomes 20k health and 5k overguard.

Even your top cap of 20k is only going to buy you an extra couple of hits.

46 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

Gara`s abilities dont give her any form of Absorption, they give her Damage Reduction

Which is so much better than overguard.

A couple of ability synergies with Helminth can get to 99% DR, which means 100x health.

47 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

I think the only fix that really needs to be made is allowing for Adaptation to apply its effect on overguard tho this might make Rhino even more unkillable as his IronSkin cant be dispelled now

Yeah, that. Adaptation working on overguard would fix Kullervo and make Rhino immortal. Giving Kullervo similar scaling to Rhino doesn't break either of them.

48 minutes ago, BiancaRoughfin said:

, it would cause Kullervo to gain an absurd amount of Overguard on higher levels and end game content.

Which is exactly what Rhino gets. It's exactly what any no-shield frame needs (well, that or using up stacks like Nidus) and Rhino gets a shield gate too.

But this scaling applies at both ends. When you first get Rhino in the early star chart his overguard is a few hundred against 5-15 level enemies, which is well balanced. Kullervo has 5k (and remember, for players starting in Duviri he is the first frame they'll be able to get the resources for) - he's an OP tank if you get him before doing the star chart.

Rhino still works in SP Circuit, getting hundreds of thousands of overguard. Kullervo still has 5k and it's gone in one hit.

[Ksape9901]

So, a few things.

First, for some humor.  Kullervo has 15 daggers and only shoots out 10.  I want my other 5 daggers to work!

Second, Rhino's overguard does have gating when it's activated which forces it to scale.  So your comparison doesn't fully work.  When Rhino activates his iron skin he then gets invincibility and it scales from that.  After about ~40 minutes in SP survival it is possible for your overguard to get destroyed while still in animation.  While this shouldn't happen all the time, there has to be some sort of gating involved.  With that in mind some gating has to be added anyway.  With that, and the aesthetic of Kullervo, I think that it might be better to take more the mindset of Nezha, where you get gating at the beginning and the end of overguard.

Third, I love (not sarcastically) your last point on Ghara.  Let's be honest, Kullervo is not a top damage frame, there are better for AE nukes, he's just stylish.  And as for survivability, there's Revenant.  Period.  Nothing else needs to be said.  Having a short shield gate type gate would not break anything.  It would just bring him in line and make him more balanced.

 

[PsiWarp]

What if we gave him invulnerability frame per dagger? 10 daggers x 0.25 seconds of invuln = 2.5 secs of invuln total. 3 x 0.25 = 0.75 s of invuln max per enemy. A reactive damage gate vs. passive shield gating.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

On 2023-06-29 at 12:50 PM, Ksape9901 said:

Rhino's overguard does have gating when it's activated which forces it to scale

That's not what I mean by gating.

Gating is a mechanic shields have where excess damage doesn't carry over.

So, if you had 10 shields and 100 health and you took a 500 damage hit then you lose all 10 shields but you don't lose any health at all.

But, if you had 200 overguard and 100 health and you took a 500 damage hit you'd be dead - all 200 overguard would be gone and 300 would go through as damage to your health in one hit.

This doesn't matter so much for Rhino as his overguard scales with enemy damage, so when they're doing 10k hits he has 150k overguard.

For Kullervo a small overguard ends up pretty useless - it doesn't even block status because any hit that does damage counts that first. So most effects wipe his overguard and then just apply anyway.

On 2023-06-29 at 12:50 PM, Ksape9901 said:

When Rhino activates his iron skin he then gets invincibility and it scales from that.

Exactly - that isn't a gate, the invincibility is part of the ability, but you're not relying on those few seconds of invulnerability to survive, you're relying on the crazy amount of overguard you have afterwards.

When Rhino runs out of overguard it will go straight through, but he also has a shield (with a gate) so even without the overguard he can't be 1-shot.

On 2023-06-29 at 12:50 PM, Ksape9901 said:

Having a short shield gate type gate would not break anything.  It would just bring him in line and make him more balanced.

According to Thursday's Devstream this seems where they're going. I think that could work if he also gets a much higher cap - 15-20k rather than 5k.

[Grave.Knight]

They're giving him three buffs for his Overguard. The first buff will increase the base cap of Overguard, though they haven't said to what. The second buff is that the Overguard cap will scale with power strength. The third buff will give Kullervo gating when Overguard breaks, though they haven't shared the duration nor the cooldown for the gate mechanic.

[(XBOX)Exoni Prime]

On 2023-06-28 at 3:38 PM, BiancaRoughfin said:

I find the percentage based damage for this ability unnecessary, given how it will scale with enemy level, it would cause Kullervo to gain an absurd amount of Overguard on higher levels and end game content.

Im ok with the Cap being 10K~20K but not uncapped. Gara`s abilities dont give her any form of Absorption, they give her Damage Reduction, the ability of hers that stacks is splinter storm with her Mass Vitrify and in honest opinion, the damage it stacks should be capped.

I think the only fix that really needs to be made is allowing for Adaptation to apply its effect on overguard tho this might make Rhino even more unkillable as his IronSkin cant be dispelled now.

1. No, it wouldn't. Enemies don't deal bad damage to each other because of health, its because of armor. Health doesn't scale as immensely. 

2. So mass vitrified giving complete damage immunity doesn't count?

3. That's not going to be enough unless you think inaros works in high level sp without vazarin.

[BiancaRoughfin]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Exoni Prime said:

2. So mass vitrified giving complete damage immunity doesn't count?

Only applies wile shes channeling the ability and she cant do anything else wile thats happening.

[(XBOX)Exoni Prime]

On 2023-07-02 at 11:38 AM, BiancaRoughfin said:

Only applies wile shes channeling the ability and she cant do anything else wile thats happening.

with all due respect, it not only glasses enemies but her passive can also proc.

while she cant do much she has a reason to do said thing.

again. form of damage absorbtion considering enemy health contributes to mass vitrify.