Bladestorm rework feedback

[lolmetimbers]

Holding and scanning enemies is indeed more interactive but is not desirable or viable. It's just plain annoying and clunky.

Edited October 8, 2016 by lolmetimbers

[Doctor_Grayfield]

6 hours ago, Trichouette said:

It's still brainded, they could've given us better, especially with ALL the feedback post.

In the end we waited for months just to get a change from "press 4 to hit 18 enemies" to "hold 4 to hit as many as you can with your energy pool"

And if they really increase the damage output, i won't stop laughing, as if finisher damage & DoT wasn't enough.

Not sure what you mean by "brainded", but "better" is subjective.  I feel very much that they gave us better.  Now we'll have to hold a button and aim to hit stuff, aim more to hit more stuff, and aim at stuff again to hit stuff more times.  They made it interactive, exactly as they always said they were going to do.

[Trichouette]

10 minutes ago, Windspike said:

Not sure what you mean by "brainded", but "better" is subjective.  I feel very much that they gave us better.  Now we'll have to hold a button and aim to hit stuff, aim more to hit more stuff, and aim at stuff again to hit stuff more times.  They made it interactive, exactly as they always said they were going to do.

The casting is interactive, the ability is still a cutscene with nothing to do between each stab.

They could've used all the feedback like the classic "allow ash to teleport from a target to another during bladestorm", that was already less "brainded"

 

Sure it's better, but it's a missed opportunity to do something better.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

Can't really say how the Bladestorm rework is like, but if it's like the Bow's Homing Arrows mechanic from Toukiden Kiwami, I'm totally alright with it. From what I've read about it the rework seems to be going toward that direction.

[g-y-z]

The issue I see with the rework is that Blade Storm will turned into a damage ability that requires line of sight targeting. But if you need to do line of sight targeting to deal damage, why not just use your gun or Mesa's Peacemaker?

This reminds me of the current state of Oberon. He is balanced between damage/buff/healing, but other specialized frames outclass him in any one of those categories, so there is no incentive to use him. Reworked Ash will have armor strip, stealth, and line of sight targeting, but there are better/quicker/less tedious ways to strip armor than shuriken, there are better stealth frames, and there are more efficient methods to kill things that you already have line of sight to.

[DiabolusUrsus]

8 hours ago, Dawn11715 said:

I actually like it to be a cutscene, thats the basic idea of the ability (which they didnt wanted to change according to the latest devstream)

However, with this hold mechanic, the ability is at least somewhat more interactiv.

It's token interaction, though. If that's what they're gonna insist on, they should at least have it be tap once for target, tap twice for trigger. Sure, [DE] Rebecca was still moving around... but notice the dramatic decrease in parkour, etc.? That tells me it is for sure a "Hold 4," which is gonna be really clunky.

8 hours ago, Windspike said:

I don't think DE ever said that they intended to change these things.  They just want to take away the ability to hit one button and trivialize content.

I personally like the cut scene; many people do.  And if you think about it, it does allow you to control the animation length at least; you can control how many times you attack, so the duration is kind of up to you.

I never said that they intended to change everything on that list... I said that the change failed to fix those glaring issues, which are the primary reasons I was in support of a Blade Storm change. Hence, it's a poorly-applied nerf because it doesn't actually upset the status quo. It just makes the ability more inconvenient to use.

While you can technically control the animation length... how many people do you know who aren't going to hit as many targets as possible with each cast? And when they do that they're stuck Blade Storming when that ally goes down a few seconds later, or when anything else happens that requires their intervention.

As long as Blade Storm offers true invulnerability, it's still going to let Ash trivialize content. Changing it from Press-4-to-Trivialize to Hold-4-to-Trivialize isn't going to fix anything.

[DiabolusUrsus]

7 hours ago, Tsoe said:

 

The rework sound very cool in fact

it change a lot actually...

_you can multi mark 1 ennemie

_you have to think and aim while avoiding bullets instead of mindlessly pressing 4

_create a synergy with smoke bomb

 

you wont be immortal while locking targets

 

now it open another question will they change teleport?

Teleport will have to change cause it will be just overlapping since you can Bladestorm 1 ennemie only if you want

The way Blade Storm works now you can frequently multi-mark an enemy that needs it even without trying to because of how the targeting logic works... and it isn't technically capped.

No, you don't have to think. Blade Storm is powerful enough that it (for the most part) kills what it hits in balanced content. So unless the target acquisition time is needlessly long and clunky, you can hold for, sweep your mouse, and trigger. The fact that the cost is per attack and not per cast means that players won't even be penalized for not making the most out of each cast... and casting it more frequently means more time spent invulnerable. Sure, there will be "breaks" in the action, but there are already breaks... and the invuln is still a significant boost to survival capability.

You say it will have synergy with Smoke Screen, and then go on to say that you won't be immortal while locking targets... if you go invisible, how are you at any significant risk? Sure, you can take damage... but... Loki proves that as insignificant and the stun on Smoke Screen would make it superior to Invisibility if it had the same duration because it helps break enemy targeting.

Teleport won't necessarily have to change if Blade Storm still returns you to the original cast location.

[EvilChaosKnight]

Can someone explain to me what's the benefit of manually aiming Bladestorm at individual targets if I can do just the same and shoot instead without making myself too vulnerable?

[(PSN)wildcats1369my]

how about press 4 as before no targetting required but add qte event. if you fail the animation stops

[VergilDT]

On 10/7/2016 at 1:43 PM, TaylorsContraction said:

From Dev Stream #81:

 

• You will now Mark the enemies that will be attacked.
• Ash will attack each Marked enemy only once, but multitaged enemies will also be taken care of by your shadows.

First cast, you're scanning, 2nd cast you activate the ability. It's not comfortable to hold abilities, just a QoL :).

Teamplay: *presses 4, proceeds to mark enemies* damn looks like my 3 other teammates have already kill them with massive aoe weapons/abilities and I've wasted time.

Solo: *presses 4, proceeds to mark enemies*   *dead*   because any enemies worth fighting will burn you down before you've marked enough enemies to be worth the cast.

[(XBOX)Englands Own]

It's so the Ash player actually has to play the game, instead of pressing 4 and watching a cut scene.His Blade Storm was a cheap/cheesy move that needed something doing with it.Now Ash players, along with Mesas, Saryn have to actually play the game.Which I applaud DE for doing.

[----Fenrir----]

One change I would like to see. Wouldn't it be nice if teammates get a damage bonus when attacking targets marked by BS? I mean all that marking stuff is way way too slow so the least it could provide is a buff to teammates because they will kill the enemies long before Ash is ready to do anything anyway.

And it would finally turn Ash into a team friendly frame :)

[Chipputer]

9 hours ago, Trichouette said:

It's still brainded, they could've given us better, especially with ALL the feedback post.

Define "better."

This isn't your game. This is DE's game. They don't just take the most favored idea on the forums, they take ideas that fall in line with their developmental ideas. They clearly want Ash to have something similar to this (or couldn't be satisfied with any complete change of Bladestorm), so they went with, "you can still do it, it just requires you to actually aim it and isn't instantaneous."

This also lets you focus down one target in an entire group, meaning no more getting stuck on Disruptors or Manics.
This also means that you can avoid targeting Energy Leeches in high level play, holding them still near other players who then have to relocate.
This also means that you can target just the most direct enemies around someone you want to revive, clear the area, and not have an entire group of enemies left to stab.

It's much more usable, much more party friendly, and much more interactive than it was before.

Crying out loud, I'm surprised at all the people talking about interactivity considering some of the most used frames don't even have any interactivity in their ultimates. You press 4 and everything freezes. You press 4 and everything burns. You press 4 and commence the slam'n'jam. You press 4 and a few bodies pop out of the ground and run around drawing fire and throwing rocks. You press 4 and 7 ghosts pop up.

Now it's suddenly bad that Ash presses 4 and has to sit through an animation, especially considering his attack completely ignores armor and is basically a stronger nuke than anything else in the game? As far as I'm concerned, making you sit through an animation is their way of balancing how overpowered it is.

[(PSN)TertulSee]

It's Saryn all over again. This time with aiming instead of set up. I wish it was kinda like Mesa's Peacemaker in which you mark all the enemies while in a focus mode then recast to execute all enemies.

[Kiyomaru-EN-]

50 minutes ago, (PS4)wildcats1369my said:

how about press 4 as before no targetting required but add qte event. if you fail the animation stops

I forsee some problems with that. For example that many people seem to hate QTEs in general (I don't care, if the timing is not broken). Then I do not want to imagine how much impact a bad host-connection would have on the success of said QTEs... Also what if they mess up the timing of the QTEs just like they did with some of the combos on certain stances? While it would make you kinda work for your power, it can also horribly cripple you if you screw up, either because of your own failure, or other influences. If this were to be implemented I'd hope that they do not let a mistimed button press cancel the whole cast, but maybe just cause your attacks to deal less damage.

10 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

Define "better."

This isn't your game. This is DE's game. They don't just take the most favored idea on the forums, they take ideas that fall in line with their developmental ideas. They clearly want Ash to have something similar to this (or couldn't be satisfied with any complete change of Bladestorm), so they went with, "you can still do it, it just requires you to actually aim it and isn't instantaneous."

This also lets you focus down one target in an entire group, meaning no more getting stuck on Disruptors or Manics.
This also means that you can avoid targeting Energy Leeches in high level play, holding them still near other players who then have to relocate.
This also means that you can target just the most direct enemies around someone you want to revive, clear the area, and not have an entire group of enemies left to stab.

It's much more usable, much more party friendly, and much more interactive than it was before.

Crying out loud, I'm surprised at all the people talking about interactivity considering some of the most used frames don't even have any interactivity in their ultimates. You press 4 and everything freezes. You press 4 and everything burns. You press 4 and commence the slam'n'jam. You press 4 and a few bodies pop out of the ground and run around drawing fire and throwing rocks. You press 4 and 7 ghosts pop up.

Now it's suddenly bad that Ash presses 4 and has to sit through an animation, especially considering his attack completely ignores armor and is basically a stronger nuke than anything else in the game? As far as I'm concerned, making you sit through an animation is their way of balancing how overpowered it is.

This reminds me when they were talking about one of their first prototype reworks, where they made it like WoF, in which activating the ability would summon your clones, which then would attack everything around you, while you yourself could still move around and use all your abilities and weapons... I guess some people would be really for that idea.

Anyways, I think the problem the most people have is that the attack animation is sometimes way to long and it gets really boring after having used this ability for 100+ times, to which I have to agree. But besides that, I am very interested in seeing how this new rework plays out. 

[EmptyDevil]

Shuriken

Each shuriken could have a chance(25% chance maybe?) to carry and impale enemies to a wall for a few seconds(maybe 6 seconds), like an arrow kill. The humanoid enemies could squirm on the wall until they finally drop down, like so:

 

This suggestion idea came from the following thread back in February, that was made by @DE_Adam:

"Ash – Shuriken: Damage as normal, but no impale to walls. If any weak points are exposed they should be auto-targeted."

It's something Ash never had, but I thought this was a really cool idea and would like to see some minor CC action with this.

Also seems to be depicted in Shuriken's preview image:

 

 

Edited October 11, 2016 by EmptyDevil

[Sintag]

So the enemies do a silly dance and the Shuriken releases them?

 

Seems legit.  Maybe the chance to slam them into the wall could be increased with Power Strength?

[Xekrin]

Interesting idea but I don't really like depending on rng for things like this.  Either it does this special thing or it doesn't.  rng is fine for things like slash procs or crits but things that are CC quality should be 100% of the time if they are going to happen at all.

Personally I just want to see as many as 5 shurikens at once for this ability.  Perhaps scaled with power strength or something,  I feel like shurikens should be capable of more than minor damage with a bit of armor stripping with the augment.

[Xzorn]

It should be toggle.

Tap to start, tap to execute.

Similar to Mcree's Deadeye, without the wait.

[NinjaZeku]

Thing is though, Ash's Shuriken, Void-Energy-powered as they may be, are pretty much just regular throwing stars,
even if they had the impact strength to knock someone back (and did that instead of slicing through them),
it just doesn't seem very feasible for such a (small) projectile to nail someone to a wall. *shrug*

I mean, yeah, I've seen Anime / movie scenes where someone's loose clothes got pretty firmly attached to a wall with thrown weapons
but in those cases, that's what the intent / aim was, and thus no real damage was actually done to the wearer.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I don't like how this rework sounds for many reasons.

1 - Controller Support aka... Why It won't work...

First of all, as a console player, holding abilities just doesn't work properly... Heck, just switching arrows and firing them on Ivara is a pain in the neck, I can't even believe we're supposed to actually move about while holding our controllers in a wierd clamped up eagle-claw manner trying to mark multiple enemies, let alone mark them multiple times for the full damage potential. I can see it working on a keyboard and mouse setup, just not on a controller setup. Maybe if you rebind your whole controller preset just so the ability gets it's own trigger it could work, but not on the Dpad, and certainly not on the touchpad either.

2 - Drastic Drop in overall dps and redundancy due to Fatal Teleport requiring the same amount of work for a guaranteed kill.

Even if you bump the damage on each bladestorm hit, you're still going from an ability that consistently hit 18 targets and mostly killed them in one cast to an annoying "must aim and mark each enemy individuall multiple times" setup. This will drastically lower the overall usefulness of Ash in tense situations, especially since ash already has Fatal Teleport, an ability you must aim and that one hit kills everything. Is there any logical reason why I should take the time to mark five enemies multiple times, then hopefully deal enough damage to kill them all when I could simply cast fatal teleport five times in a row and instantly one shot them. If i have to take the time to manually aim at things with bladestorm, might as well use fatal teleport and get a guaranteed kill on any level of enemy. As a matter of fact, why even bother aiming a skill at all when I could aim with a bow or other high damage weapon and one shot the guy anyway.

3 - Old bladestorm as a means of surviving versus being squishy and dead.

Most Ash builds relied on bladestorm as a means to mitigate damage recieved . In endgame content, bladestorm was what mostly kept Ash alive... It allowed him, even when surrounded, to go into an invincible state where his shield would recharge and enemies around him would be unable to kill him for the duration of the cast... This allowed Ash to go full on offensive, knowing that when things got rough, he could pop his ultimate and clear a mob surrounding him while being able to recharge his shield (and gather health and air pods using carrier in the process). With the new system, Ash will spend more time aiming at foes than actuall killing them, and aiming requires precision and will get you killed in a game where movement is what keeps frames alive and where bombads and other units can oneshot you. This also totally changes the playstyle of Ash, from being a fast paced frame to being a "slow, aiming frame"...

4 - Rip Arcane Trickery.

Part of what made Ash such a cool frame for endgame players was the awesome synergy it had with Arcane Trickery. It allowed fans to create builds that didn't have much duration, focusing on Range and Power Strenght, yet would get a full 20 seconds of invisibility reliably due to Bladestorm dealing finisher damage on 18 targets, almost guaranteeing Trickery would pop out. With the rework, it'll be hard to target more than five targets at a time, drastically lowering the chances of proccing Trickery. Besides, since the new ability requires precision aiming, you'll be pretty much required to have extended duration anyway, because you can't exactly stand around the map doing nothing while you get shot by enemies as you're attempting to mark multiple enemies multiple times... Honestly, this doesn't make much sense on Ash... Would make sense on Ivara due to her long invisibiity , but ash has a short invis that's all about quick burst hits.

5 - Meanwhile, Ember still has an active bladestorm that doesn't have to be aimed... Aka double standards.

Seriously, you're nerfing an abilty that forced the player to be stationary and that was limited to 18 targets when tons of frames, including ember, still have totally overpowerd ults that litterally wipe the whole map with no effort. Think of Ember's world on fire, Mesa's peacemaker, Excalibur's Exalted Blade, Mirage's Hall of Mirrors Simulor Combo, Nova's "Let's molecular prime the whole map and chain detonate them"... Yet it's Ash that gets destroyed, the only frame that actually had drawbacks to using his ult (being immobile + being limited to 18 enemies). You're not forcing anyone to be more "active", you're just pushing your existing Ash fanbase to Ember... Only now they won't even have to aim their abiliities at all and will just walk from start to finish watching enemies die around them from the fire... GG, problem solved !

6 - Why even use Bladestorm anymore ?

It's a good question, really. Why should I bother using Ash's ult when I can go invisibile , using a sword and getting the 4X damage multipler coupled with the blood rush body count combo counter to rank up insane active dps without tedious aiming and energy usage . Why bother aiming and marking targets when I could one shot them with fatal teleport and a dagger while being refunded most of the ability cost... Why not just go invisible and shoot them with a bow, I'm already forced to aim , might as well pick two birds in one stone and do the killing as I aim.

To me it seems like Bladestorm 2.0 is irrelevant and useless, as Ash will be able to get his kills easyer using other methods nowadays. There's nothing ultimate about having to slowly aim at multiple enemies to get kills when all other classes get spammy AOE attacks that wipe out rooms of foes in one cast.

That's about it, my two cents on the matter, hopefully you guys see why this so called "nerf" doesn't really improve much, only making Ash less of a frame than he was before.

 

Edited October 8, 2016 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[Volinus7]

See the similarity?

Mesa

Ash

Mcree

Freedom gundam

[(XBOX)Angryspy101]

40 minutes ago, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

I don't like how this rework sounds for many reasons.

1 - Controller Support aka... Why It won't work...

First of all, as a console player, holding abilities just doesn't work properly... Heck, just switching arrows and firing them on Ivara is a pain in the neck, I can't even believe we're supposed to actually move about while holding our controllers in a wierd clamped up eagle-claw manner trying to mark multiple enemies, let alone mark them multiple times for the full damage potential. I can see it working on a keyboard and mouse setup, just not on a controller setup. Maybe if you rebind your whole controller preset just so the ability gets it's own trigger it could work, but not on the Dpad, and certainly not on the touchpad either.

2 - Drastic Drop in overall dps and redundancy due to Fatal Teleport requiring the same amount of work for a guaranteed kill.

Even if you bump the damage on each bladestorm hit, you're still going from an ability that consistently hit 18 targets and mostly killed them in one cast to an annoying "must aim and mark each enemy individuall multiple times" setup. This will drastically lower the overall usefulness of Ash in tense situations, especially since ash already has Fatal Teleport, an ability you must aim and that one hit kills everything. Is there any logical reason why I should take the time to mark five enemies multiple times, then hopefully deal enough damage to kill them all when I could simply cast fatal teleport five times in a row and instantly one shot them. If i have to take the time to manually aim at things with bladestorm, might as well use fatal teleport and get a guaranteed kill on any level of enemy. As a matter of fact, why even bother aiming a skill at all when I could aim with a bow or other high damage weapon and one shot the guy anyway.

3 - Old bladestorm as a means of surviving versus being squishy and dead.

Most Ash builds relied on bladestorm as a means to mitigate damage recieved . In endgame content, bladestorm was what mostly kept Ash alive... It allowed him, even when surrounded, to go into an invincible state where his shield would recharge and enemies around him would be unable to kill him for the duration of the cast... This allowed Ash to go full on offensive, knowing that when things got rough, he could pop his ultimate and clear a mob surrounding him while being able to recharge his shield (and gather health and air pods using carrier in the process). With the new system, Ash will spend more time aiming at foes than actuall killing them, and aiming requires precision and will get you killed in a game where movement is what keeps frames alive and where bombads and other units can oneshot you. This also totally changes the playstyle of Ash, from being a fast paced frame to being a "slow, aiming frame"...

4 - Rip Arcane Trickery.

Part of what made Ash such a cool frame for endgame players was the awesome synergy it had with Arcane Trickery. It allowed fans to create builds that didn't have much duration, focusing on Range and Power Strenght, yet would get a full 20 seconds of invisibility reliably due to Bladestorm dealing finisher damage on 18 targets, almost guaranteeing Trickery would pop out. With the rework, it'll be hard to target more than five targets at a time, drastically lowering the chances of proccing Trickery. Besides, since the new ability requires precision aiming, you'll be pretty much required to have extended duration anyway, because you can't exactly stand around the map doing nothing while you get shot by enemies as you're attempting to mark multiple enemies multiple times... Honestly, this doesn't make much sense on Ash... Would make sense on Ivara due to her long invisibiity , but ash has a short invis that's all about quick burst hits.

5 - Meanwhile, Ember still has an active bladestorm that doesn't have to be aimed... Aka double standards.

Seriously, you're nerfing an abilty that forced the player to be stationary and that was limited to 18 targets when tons of frames, including ember, still have totally overpowerd ults that litterally wipe the whole map with no effort. Think of Ember's world on fire, Mesa's peacemaker, Excalibur's Exalted Blade, Mirage's Hall of Mirrors Simulor Combo, Nova's "Let's molecular prime the whole map and chain detonate them"... Yet it's Ash that gets destroyed, the only frame that actually had drawbacks to using his ult (being immobile + being limited to 18 enemies). You're not forcing anyone to be more "active", you're just pushing your existing Ash fanbase to Ember... Only now they won't even have to aim their abiliities at all and will just walk from start to finish watching enemies die around them from the fire... GG, problem solved !

6 - Why even use Bladestorm anymore ?

It's a good question, really. Why should I bother using Ash's ult when I can go invisibile , using a sword and getting the 4X damage multipler coupled with the blood rush body count combo counter to rank up insane active dps without tedious aiming and energy usage . Why bother aiming and marking targets when I could one shot them with fatal teleport and a dagger while being refunded most of the ability cost... Why not just go invisible and shoot them with a bow, I'm already forced to aim , might as well pick two birds in one stone and do the killing as I aim.

To me it seems like Bladestorm 2.0 is irrelevant and useless, as Ash will be able to get his kills easyer using other methods nowadays. There's nothing ultimate about having to slowly aim at multiple enemies to get kills when all other classes get spammy AOE attacks that wipe out rooms of foes in one cast.

That's about it, my two cents on the matter, hopefully you guys see why this so called "nerf" doesn't really improve much, only making Ash less of a frame than he was before.

 

Hopefully DE see this, and learn their mistake about this "rework"

[(PSN)xXToastiButterXx]

I don't play Ash often (he's lower than 2% on my profile)

And as you all can see, I am a console Tenno, I would like for Bladestorm to be a toggle ability for marking enemies and not a held ability.

I personally use R3 (pushing in the right stick) for "Held" abilities like Ivaras Quiver and Vaubans Minelayer, and it makes it easy to use in battle, but I can imagine how  much harder it would be to have to hold down R3 while trying to aim and run around only to accidentally let it go and not be able to hit all the enemies I wanted.

I have played on PC and have my own binding but even then, I can imagine it would be hard for PC players to hold down a key (be it 4 or whatever you have bound) while moving and aiming at the same time.

with this I plead to you DE, make the ability a toggle so that we can turn it on and off when we have either marked all the targets we want, or have reached the max amount of times we can mark enemies.

[Tveoh]

@(ps4)rinneganadri :can see how that can be an issue.   Though.. i'm thinking maybe..   use the hold feature to trigger the ability to activate and just press 4 or your controller equal, to mark targets,   then when you have them marked.  hold the button/trigger to preform the attack animation.   just my thoughts on it

Edited October 9, 2016 by Tveoh
Post merged into megathread. added tag to show who i was responding too