Hildryn, Updated Thoughts

[CrownOfShadows]

Alright, I was very negative earlier, so this is mostly to say that Hildryn is very strong now after all (for regular play).... if you have secret hidden knowledge that shouldn't be secret.

A few things:

1. First and foremost, I had no idea Balefire had an alt fire during aegis gale. If you didn't know this either... surprise! I have 3 suggestions in this regard.
   1. Mention this on the augment mod. Nowhere does it say that balefire magically gains an alt-fire.
   2. Maybe mention this in the config screen for balefire when that augment is equipped. All it says there is that it has a charge attack. Nowhere does it say it also has an alt-fire.
   3. Mention this in the ability screen or at least in the ability tips. This info does not exist anywhere in there either.
   4. Maybe make this a default action for regular Aegis Storm - that is, make it so balefire can always alt fire during aegis, but it only shoots one projectile or something. That way people will have some precedent for it (and you could more naturally talk about such functionality in the ability screen).
   5. Or maybe make this a default action of balefire in general, so that it has quickshot, charge shot and alt fire by default.
2. And/Or really...  just make the alt-fire the main fire for balefire! All of my previous complaints about how atrociously bad Balefire is hold true if you just try to use its regular OR charged fire - they're both terrible, some of the worst things to shoot in the game. Make the alt fire the main fire would be my first recommendation, and then just get rid of everything else and gale can shoot it in it's vanilla state (the current gale alt fire). Basically, balefire itself still sucks, so another option would be to make the main fire good by giving it fire rate and crit, and also giving more help to the charge attack. Since the charge attack has an augment effect, you probably aren't too keen to ditch that, so at least make it worth using, it's painful.
3. You should definitely make it impossible to un-equip balefire during aegis in general. This was another reason I thought Hildryn still was miserable to play, I kept turning it off by accident. If you turn off balefire during aegis, you do not get your actual secondary or primary in it's place (which might be cool too if you want to do that instead), but you get nothing. This isn't good. Trying to shoot results in nothing. Very frustrating.
4. I'm not a fan of how many fire rate tricks are needed to make balefire's alt fire actually ok to shoot during gale. Balefire is only good if you use alt fire with gale, have anemic agility, lethal torrent / gunslinger, amalgam body count, reinforced bond. That's kinda ridiculous. Using it with only anemic agility is actually painful, which is crazy. If it could reliably crit, then we could use arcane velocity, but alas).

Very user-unfriendly. It was a good addition and it's the only thing that makes aegis playable (and balefire for that matter)... but, uh, only if people know it exists.

So, to sum up, tell people you changed the basic functionality of the weapon and that it only works on an augment (for a completely different ability!)

And plz make balefire just good on it's own still, that'd be nice. The average user who picks up Hildryn without gale and smokin' fire rate will still puke at balefire AND aegis.

[Hypersycos]

The rest of your points are valid, but it's somewhat overshadowed by the first thing I read (point 1.1)..

Quote

Aegis Gale

Aegis Storm Augment:
Balefire has an Alternate Fire during Aegis Storm. The blast deals 15% of Hildryn's Max Shield as additional damage

(emphasis mine). I don't think that could be any clearer, unless they replaced "has" with "gains".

[Lapideus]

As I've stated before, I agree that the alt fire from Aegis Gale should just be basic functionality. The double Chargers in Aegis Storm should actually do something without having to sacrifice an entire mod slot. I disagree, however, that it should replace the regular fire of the weapon. I'm in the minority that always liked the Balefire Charger, and I quite enjoy using Balefire Surge. I would be rather disappointed if it went away like you suggest.

Also... yeah, as the poster above pointed out, the augment's text does in fact make the existence of the alt-fire pretty obvious.

Edited Thursday at 05:31 AM by Lapideus

[CrownOfShadows]

15 hours ago, Hypersycos said:

The rest of your points are valid, but it's somewhat overshadowed by the first thing I read (point 1.1)..

(emphasis mine). I don't think that could be any clearer, unless they replaced "has" with "gains".

Whoops, you're right, mb