A Short, Sweet, And Simple List Of Buffs To Underused Skills

[TehLaggy]

The concept behind these proposed changes are:
1. They buff relatively unloved skills rather than nerf good ones.
2. They are relatively small and simple in scope, and presumably sane to code.

I would appreciate it if any feedback kept these principles in mind, since elaborate changes are far less likely to be implemented or considered!

Teleport - Change the flip after teleporting to actually hit and stun the target so that there is no penalty, and in fact incentive, for using it offensively.
Blade Storm - Double the animation speed. The concept is cool, but it really is too slow.

Silence - Double the range and duration. It's already super niche, at least make it painless to use in said niche.

Fireball - Double the damage and burn damage; have burn damage be affected by Focus.
Fire Blast - Lower the energy cost to 35; it's in no danger of dethroning World of Fire even then.

Super Jump - Make usable while in the air for one use, disabled until you touch ground afterwards.

Freeze - Have a 0.75 second/level (max 3) duration where health damage does not end the frozen effect. (doesn't work on bosses)
Ice Wave - Lower the energy cost to 35.

Radial Disarm - Have it actually disarm ancients so they can't attack you; this is not that big a deal, toxics still have poison cloud, healers still heal, and Loki is not going to become overpowered from being able to neutralize disruptors.

Pull - Double the range; it's still an incredibly situational utility power but let it be used to abuse environment more.
Shield Polarize - Make it a 10/15/20/25m radius self-centered AoE that both restores allies' shields and removes enemy shields.
Bullet Attractor - Have it amplify damage by 30% to make up for not being able to hit weak points (unless it already does this, I'm not sure).

Psychic Bolts - Double the damage.
Absorb - Fix Shade cloak with it and have it reliably draw aggro.

Iron Skin - Confer complete invincibility for half the duration and only tick the damage threshold on the latter half. (You still can't cast it mid-effect so you have a small window of danger where you might be taking damage too fast)
Radial Blast - Lower the energy cost to 50.
Rhino Stomp - Double the range so that it doesn't cry at Bastille.

Venom - Enemies who die with it active have the spores automatically explode. Spores deal 100/200/300/400 poison damage (affected by Focus) on top of the normal effects in its AoE.
Contagion - Triple the duration (oh noes making melee usable for almost a minute?!)

Shock - Double the damage, increase the stun rate to something appreciable like 50%.
Speed - Give it 50% evasion (immunity) to ranged damage while active.
Electric Shield - No damage nerf needed for shooting through the shield; let all weapons (including sniper weapons) take advantage of it. Lower the energy cost to 35.

STUFF I'M STUMPED ON:
Well of Life - I actually don't know; it's such a redundant ability. No HP cap would make it more immortality and kind of boring. Changing it to be something beyond the "tag an enemy" effect would be beyond the scope of short, sweet, and simple. Any ideas on this one?
Bounce - Hilarious but I can't think of anything to make this combat relevant compared to his other skills that doesn't also increase its trolling potential.

[MAL1WAN]

Bounce - Hilarious but I can't think of anything to make this combat relevant compared to his other skills that doesn't also increase its trolling potential.

 

I'm I the only one who sticks these babies to a wall then run towards it to give me a massive boost to get out of combat?

[TehLaggy]

You can, but there's always the issue of it costing 50 energy when you can spend a piddly 25 more for Bastille's "nothing in a massive area around me can touch me for 15 seconds"....

[MAL1WAN]

You can, but there's always the issue of it costing 50 energy when you can spend a piddly 25 more for Bastille's "nothing in a massive area around me can touch me for 15 seconds"....

Well, yeah. I wish it would only cost 35 or less...

[CY13ERPUNK]

volt speed really needs no buffs, but otherwise, OP has some decent suggestions (espec rhino stomp and venom)

[Lactamid]

Just something:

Perhaps all of the 1:st damagae abilities should scale both with the lvl of the actual skill but also with the lvl of the frame.
That way they could still be somewhat viable when used in later stages of the game, but not be massivle over powered when starting out with a low frame that has been supercharged.

Some of the more status-using abilities migth need other buffs such as:
Freeze - destroying an enemy makes it shatters in a icecloud slowing any nearby enemies. Or atleast breaking the ice would still leave them severely slowed.
Fireball would set the target on fire, and any nearby enemies (or those how came in contact with 1:st target) woulf start burning too.
Shock - chain lightning ftw, higher lvlv = more chain-targets.


*Speed unloved? it's _THE_ farm-ability of the game.

Well of life, Small AoE spell - target an enemy and all enemies in a small area around it becomes affected by the same spell.
 

Edited June 18, 2013 by Lactamid

[Grefter]

Well of Life I could see getting sort of an AoE variant of it's current functionality. Heal based on damage dealt in a pulse like an Ancient Healer. Scaling of the heal might need tuning a bit.

That way it would let you have a chance to heal whoever needs it instead of praying the person on low health can shoot the target (instead of running away). Might actually mix it up in situations where it is viable in place of Blessing because not all situations actually call for that Invincibility to be busted out.

Still not sure if I would run it over a passive mod on Trinity, but I would think about it at least. Also would easily bump Trinity up to having 4 pretty good skills which would be pretty enviable in the current environment.

Edit - So leaving post half written for an hour makes for duplicate ideas. It is a good one Lactamaid!

Edited June 18, 2013 by Grefter

[TehLaggy]

Damage not scaling with levels feels like a deliberate design decision; not sure if 1st level abilities should suddenly break this trend. It's just that a lot of them right now are just total jokes for damage (Fireball/Shock come to mind).

 

Speed is fine as is? Really? I've never seen Volts use anything but Overload and the occasional Electric Shield, Speed seems niche at best. If you want consistent fast farming and don't need any damage abilities I see people running Loki for that and not suffering from the weird camera alterations.

 

Well of Life... well, 100 hp pulse on a target would certainly be an improvement from the current incarnation. Perhaps having it be self-cast on Trinity instead of an enemy and just be a every X seconds radial heal (ala Ancient Healers) would let it be a cheap alternative to Blessing.

[Grefter]

I think making it be a pulse from Trinity loses some of the dynamic she has going for her with interacting with enemies.  Honestly I think that brings Well of Life down to boring level of Blessing while removing some of the ways it can compete.  Anchoring it to Trinity gives it limited range to within 30m (or whatever) instead of unlimited range like Blessing. That also requires a greater amount of team coordination to work.  Keeping it as an interaction with the enemy gives it Line of Site as a requirement, lets Trinity target the heal on an enemy near the guy who is standing in the Toxic Ancient goo and normal player/enemy interaction will take care of the problem (You know, shooting them in the face).

 

It puts more of the skill check on the Trinity player and less reliance on player coordination.  For all that I would love to promote better player coordination, I would rather see Trinity skills be Online play friendly (like Blessing already is to an astounding degree).