Ash Revisited Feedback Megathread

[DatDarkOne]

44 minutes ago, CursedByLight said:

The ultimate outcome of this might be:

• Slowing the frame down as a whole.
• Your teammates will outpace you and kill whatever you're trying to mark.
• Players with established power range setups will no longer benefit.
• Ash's motif will be swapped from swift silent killer to patient killer waiting for his time to strike.
• Smokescreen's change will be good, however it won't fit thematically with the proposed ultimate scheme because it is being adjusted to be more on the move.

I have no problems with any of this.  I'm more the patient type anyway, and this fits more what I like.  I do admit it definitely changes how Ash is played in groups.  Which can be considered very bad for those with less "patience". 

It seems that DE is heading toward a more synergy type gameplay with most of the changes over this year.  With heavy emphasis on removing press one button to win mechanics.  It could be that they are using these changes as ways to slow down gameplay and/or add more tactical elements.  If you look at the long view, rushtards and Leeroy Jenkins are getting wrecked slowly but surely.  This last bit is just a working theory of mine based on observation over the past year.  I could be completely wrong. 

[Sgiandubh]

I like the idea of making Ash more mobile. The problem is that that fluidity comes to a jarring halt once the kill animations begin, then you've got your bearings askew when it's over. It seems to run counter to the moving smokescreen change, which encourages movement and a more dynamic style. Furthermore, while watching the animations, enemies which were marked can be killed. While totally fair and I understand this was needed, this means that at times while you can mark a bunch of enemies, you're forced to stop your gameplay to watch Ash kill only 2 of them. That's a bit of a let down and detracts from the fluidity. I get that energy is refunded but it's far from the "storm" it's supposed to be. I do have some suggestions:

Press 4 1st Time:

The Gathering Storm- The most significant addition to Ash's Ult was the tagging system, however there is absolutely nothing to this apart from the tagging itself. There's a lot of potential here to make the tagging of targets more interesting. An increase in movement speed and maneuvers would help players move around a map and target more enemies. Tradeoff would be a reduction in damage output, maybe?

The Eye of the Storm- More of a situational idea, but how about a small AOE around Ash which automatically marks enemies in close proximity ( about 5m- unaffected by mods)? This would follow him as he moves and enemies which move out of the AOE without being targeted manually would be unmarked. This would be your emergency escape if you get massively swarmed or if you need to clear a small area really quickly. It would save you from spinning around like a mad man trying to mark everyone. It would also synergize with teleport as you could teleport to a high-priority enemy in a cluster of dudes, kill him, then mop up the rest.

Press 4 2nd Time:

Blade Storm- For the move itself, after the build up of tagging, an unsheathing blade is heard, followed by a thunder clap as Ash's shadowy doppelgangers murder the marked targets in a flASH- similar to the Stalker's effects before he jumps you...or a nullifier shows up and ruins everything. No slideshow. Not drawn out.

 

A more general UI suggestion would be to display somewhere how many enemies we have marked.

 

Brain leak over.

Cheers!

[Edermask_]

Its true they should expend on the marking system, it has so much potential. They could add bonus to his other abilities, to ash himself or even bonus damage/utility against marked targets. Right now there is not many reasons to use his BS over using your other abilities or even just normal weapons.

[Girunugal]

Can you at least make his 3rd ability useful against any Capture target? 

[Kaotyke]

1 hour ago, KoinStar said:

Weird. How do I fix this? It just looks like black text on a white background for the normal post.

Just select "Automatic"

[Oni-Habu]

1 hour ago, CursedByLight said:

The ultimate outcome of this might be:

• Slowing the frame down as a whole.
• Your teammates will outpace you and kill whatever you're trying to mark.
• Players with established power range setups will no longer benefit.
• Ash's motif will be swapped from swift silent killer to patient killer waiting for his time to strike.
• Smokescreen's change will be good, however it won't fit thematically with the proposed ultimate scheme because it is being adjusted to be more on the move.

Things that could be improved:

• The ultimate could remain fast paced.
• In the case that you don't outright kill something in higher level missions, keep the animation short so that the rest of your team can engage.
• Make all of the marked targets get hit at once. It has been said that watching each animation isn't a fun time, especially if you don't kill something outright.
• Teammates can hurt marked targets. This is an outlying annoyance among the community if the Ash in question doesn't have high power strength/good melee.
• Rework the animation to be you overlooking your ultimate taking place from where you cast it.
• Invulnerability during the animation.
• Either have the shadow clones do all the work visually, or make it look as though your frame vanishes for a second to decimate the enemies in the distance.
• Keep the current mechanic where enemies within range of the targeted enemy will also be hit.

Locking on is a good mechanic to think about for this game, but it would be better implemented in the throwing melee category, perhaps in the form of a melee mod.

I'd actually prefer if it worked like Mesa's peacemaker. You hit it, enter bladestorm mode and can shift your camera around to find targets. pressing m1 results in an animation where Ash disappears for just a blink, and the target is attacked/killed, as if for a fraction of a second he moves too fast to see.

The issue would be making it so ash doesn't play exactly like Mesa.

My other idea was the turn bladestorm into an aimed dash ability  (like genji from overwatch) , except where you do more damage on a subsequent dash the more targets you hit with the previous dash.

So a good ash could dash through a large group of enemies several times then dash through a single large target to inflict more damage on a single target.

[SodapopKevin]

Was playing around with the Ash rework, he's not bad but his kit feels like it could be improved upon to make him for fun so I thought maybe modify his ult a bit. Change the focus part into a toggle (which I call Assassin's presence).

 

While in ult mod you have a passive dodge chance and all your weapons become silenced and a modest energy drain per second. Also while in this model your Shuriken will act like focus mode currently does, marking targets with a second press throw out a shuriken to each target, staggering them, revealing their weaknesses to the team (similar to Banshee) and marking them for 10 seconds. If in the next 10 seconds you click off your 4th ability toggle you'll start teleporting around, slamming the embedded shurikens into the target's bodies for standard bleed and bladestorm damage.

 

I was having trouble thinking up other changes AP would have for his other abilities, but I think I have some fun ones. Teleport would be pretty similar, but while you have your toggle on your teleports would knock the teleport target to the ground, setting up a ground finisher. It seems like it would really fit the assassin theme. For smoke screen I had a few thoughts but couldn't really decide. One was Ash replaces his normal smoke with sleeping gas, stealthing him while knocking out enemies until they take damage or the duration of the CC expires. Another thought was giving it an increased duration, decreased cost, or a buff along the lines of a movement speed increase.

 

The rework seems like a good star, it would be fun to expand on him further and make him more active.

 

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

2 hours ago, KoinStar said:

You mean Black? What text color should I choose?

Automatic, because your post is unreadable on the dark theme.

[hukurokuju5]

skill mechanics are still the same... just with tweaked usability and nerfs to energycost and #of hits on  bladestorm

1. damage

2. invisibility

3. teleport finisher

4. damage

 

how bland

 

 

Edited November 27, 2016 by hukurokuju5

[Madamou]

So as an reasonable Ash player I was very very happy to see the changes to any of the ability you changed !

Even though the changes are  pleasant (especially for smoke screen) Blade Storms is still full of quality of life issues.

The main problems it had before rework were :

- Press 4 to win ability 

-Teammates couldn't hit targeted enemies

- Cutscenes making it a sit and wait ability with no real interesting feature.

 

As for the two first points DE made a very good job at changing it in a nice way, yet the last one remains and here are some ideas that DE could take into account :

 

- Most obvious one and probably what's to be least expected : Using Bladestorm after  completed the marking sends forth shadows and allow you to keep playing but you can't recast it before the Shadows came back.

- Second and probably the most "game changing one" : Make it interactive, with  the need to press buttons, to do a sort of rythm game while in Bladestorm that if you fail at it  cancel the ability, so that players won't just sit and watch  their  doing their job for them.

[Yaerion]

Just now, Madamou said:

-

Teleported within: 

 

[Yaerion]

21 minutes ago, SodapopKevin said:

-

Teleported within: 

 

[StonedMakak]

1 hour ago, Sgiandubh said:

The Eye of the Storm- More of a situational idea, but how about a small AOE around Ash which automatically marks enemies in close proximity ( about 5m- unaffected by mods)? This would follow him as he moves and enemies which move out of the AOE without being targeted manually would be unmarked. This would be your emergency escape if you get massively swarmed or if you need to clear a small area really quickly. It would save you from spinning around like a mad man trying to mark everyone. It would also synergize with teleport as you could teleport to a high-priority enemy in a cluster of dudes, kill him, then mop up the rest.

Logged in just to upvote this.

It's an easy enough tweak, no drastic changes needed, adds another layer of interactivity and has great, natural synergy with not only Teleport but with Smoke Screen as well. The only thing I'd actually change about your idea is to keep the "close proximity" marks permanent. That way you can choose between marking via aiming or by running past mobs. 

For instance, I tend to move around an awful lot in combat, and being able to shoot mobs in the distance with my trusty Dread, while bouncing from group to group of nearby enemies, leaving deathmarks behind would be awesome. The damn cutscene would still be there, but hey, baby steps.

At the very least this should be an augment for Bladestorm.

As far as first posts go, not bad, not bad at all.

[wtrmlnjuc]

Bladestorm and the rest are pretty fun, but energy costs should be reduced all across the board a little further, and Shuriken needs some tweaking.

[(XBOX)LexaHex]

I suggest to make blade storm targeting much smoother, instead of having to aim at an enemy pinpoint, the crosshair should expand a little and every enemy in the crosshair should  be selected, sort of how mesa's peacemaker works. The crosshair size can be increased using range mods. Energy cost should be a little cheaper aswell. 

Maybe bladstorm should be changed dramatically; as soon as enemy is highlighted Ash will send out a clone to attack while the player still has full control over ash and can continue highlighting or doing whatever else. I'm trying to say that the player shouldn't partake in the buggy animations and just let the clones do all the work. This should allow players to contribute kills to the team without having to constantly lose their selected targets to teammates and stand around awkwardly looking for enemies.

[(XBOX)Blade of Justic]

I'll post this here since it seems to be rather applicable as well. This is from another thread.

 

Why not just do this with Bladestorm:

Activating it causes you to start burning energy. Energy will continue to burn until you deactivate it.(Holding the button for Bladestorm instead of tapping it will deactivate the ability.) The energy burn rate will be influenced by Power Duration

Ash summons clones relative to your Bladestorm level and your combo counter. As your combo counter increases, so do your clones.

• Building your combo may happen before ability activation. Dropping the combo after activation does not cause your clones to be reduced. 
• You may increase your combo during Bladestorm's duration instead, doing so will still cause you to gain clones but dropping the combo during Bladestorm will cause your clones to be reduced respectively.

Your clones disperse into the area and freely attack enemies with the weapons that you've brought with you on your mission.(The distance they are allowed to travel away from you is determined by Power Range.) The clones each will do a percentage of your damage and have a percentage of your health, shields and armor based on Power Strength. During this time, you may tap the button for Bladestorm while aiming at a target to cause one of your clones to assassinate it. During the assassination animation, that clone is unavailable. (Meaning you may not spam the key over and over on the same enemy in order to stack assassination attempts.) The same target can not be assassinated until you or a previous clone have finished their assassination attempt. Ordering your clone to assassinate a target will cost some energy. The energy cost will be influenced by Power Efficiency.

While this mode is active, Shuriken, Teleport and Smoke Screen are empowered.

Shuriken:

While empowered, Ash and all of his clones will throw a shuriken to where you are aiming relative to each of your and their positions. (Shuriken damage of clones are affected by Power Strength)

Teleport:

While empowered, if used on an enemy unit, Ash will leap to the target and assassinate the target himself. (Assassination damage relative to your melee weapon damage, combo counter and Power Strength.)

Smoke Screen:

While empowered, you and your clones all turn invisible, causing your attacks and the attacks of your clones to have a stealth bonus. (Stealth bonus damage percentage is relative to your own and based on Power Strength)

 

One thing I enjoyed about Ash was that he was the icon of assassination. As such, I believe this idea will cause your to work almost like the leader of an order of assassins. You will command them to kill and, through your decisions, lead your band to glory. 

I believe the randomness of allowing the clones to work on their own could weigh in to allow your team to help in interesting ways without you doing all of the work. At the same time, you have the ability to clear an entire room IF you can properly manage your clones, damage, combo and energy on the fly and each one accordingly depending on what is most important to you at the time. 

When are your clones needed the most? Should you send them out now and risk losing too much energy or hold them until it really matters? Should you let them run rampant or focus your efforts on a single target?

Let me know what you guys think.

[NyxCrab]

Ash feels like he's in a better place or at least more fun to use, though he still needs a few tweaks imo. Shurikens should scale off of base damage melee mods like pressure point and spoiled strike, but not elemental mods. Maybe let slash mods increase the damage it does too idk. Smoke bomb is fine though it's stagger should have a little more like enemies that got staggered have reduced accuracy for something. Teleport is fine too. Blade Storm however should be changed so when you mark enemies and use it your clones are sent out so you're still able to run around and do your own thing while your clones deal with the targets. Maybe make it so if you press 4 on a marked enemy while your clones are busy taking out other targets you jump in and attack the enemy you marked for bonus damage.

[--AJ-Larkhans]

My feedback is:
He is super slow and clunky, not to mention the 2,7x (1,8x) increase in energy cost.
By the time I activate the bladestorm squadmates already killed every mob on low level, on high levels fatal teleport does a better job.
And the fact that enemies get  alarmed by my ult between the 3 hits of bladestorm break the purpose of desintegrating corpses.

 

[Hitsuke]

My only complaint with Bladestorm in its new incarnation is that targeting mode is indistinguishable from regular, and if you're marking enemies at a distance it's sometimes difficult to tell if you've actually activated the ability or not, especially when the particle effects of enemy attacks kick in etc.

I'd like to see a slight alteration in the UI when you're in marking mode. Maybe the screen could grey out slightly with a kind of lens effect which draws your focus more towards the centre of the screen. I think a kind of slowdown effect similar to jump aim could be beneficial too.

Edit: Oh and reduce the base energy cost to 10 per mark... 15 is ridiculously high.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Hitsuke

[(PSN)REAPER_021417]

Well thanks for killing ash guess I'm done spending money on plat playing this game my bank account also thanks you RIP ASH

[UrielColtan]

I don't think it should stop at just Ash's clones attacking if the Bladestorm is reworked again, I believe Ash himself should also gain an ability/abilities in his 4 state, the clones can just be supplemental to that state. Much more interactive and fun that way, especially without the unnecessary and long cutscene shenanigans.

Edited November 28, 2016 by UrielColtan

[UrielColtan]

12 hours ago, (PS4)downwardkoi said:

Well thanks for killing ash guess I'm done spending money on plat playing this game my bank account also thanks you RIP ASH

They aren't exactly done, this is just a first draft. This is sort of a crowd sourced game and nothing is finalized. Offering feedback can help improve him for the better. Does PS4 even have the rework yet? If not, then by the time you get it, it will probably be wildly different than how it it currently is on PC and likely better.

Edited November 28, 2016 by UrielColtan

[Azamagon]

Shuriken

I find this ability really lackluster, sadly. I think utility would be the way to go.

* I think a good compromise would be to add a 3rd shuriken, but this one goes straight forward and has punchthrough (modded with P.Range)

* Make it add to and benefit from the melee combo counter

* An added stagger or stun effect would be nice

* Struck targets are automarked for Bladestorm at no additional energycost (other than the Shuriken cost). With the 3rd shuriken and its punchthrough, that means, if used well, you'd have a very economical Bladestorm!

 

Smoke Screen

Only missing something tiny. Like:

* Enemies staggered by Smoke Screen also have their accuracy lowered (potency modded with P.Strength)

* Augment could leave a small cloud behind. Allies walking through gets the invis, enemies walking through gets the accuracy debuff (constantly refreshing if they linger). It could potentially also block line of sight for enemies

 

Teleport

While not a horrible ability, it could also needs some sprucing up:

* After casting Teleport, Ash gains a slight and brief boost to movespeed and melee attackspeed (boost modded by P.Strength, duration by P.Duration)

* On the landing point, all enemies in a moderate radius become finisher-stunned (radius modded by P.Range)

* Potentially, make it free-aim? At least if holdcast? If so, then how about also adding that if you teleport to a wall, you wall-cling to it with an added X second duration (modded by P.Duration)

 

Bladestorm

I honestly like it better now, but it is indeed a bit slow. So, to help alleviate that:

* Make the mark per enemy cost 10 energy by default. The synergy with Smoke Screen is already there (it's great to use it before starting to mark).

* While marking, in a small/moderate radius around Ash, enemies are automarked (Natural Teleport synergy!). Note: If that's too "easy", at least make the AoE-marking occur in an area around Ash where he lands after using Teleport during the marking mode (not as natural, but at least some decent synergy)

* While marking, Ash could gain an added special crosshair-ring (default size about the same as the total current crosshair, if drawn as a circle). Any enemy seen in this ring is marked. Crosshair's size is modded by P.Range!

 

With these changes, I think he'd feel rather "complete"

Edited November 28, 2016 by Azamagon

[notHunky]

Yeah... I already don't play ash much since his kit for the most part is underwhelming against some of the more tougher enemies later on in the game. Bladestorm was probably one of his only abilities which acted somewhat like crowd control while dealing tons of damage, and this rework is just a straight nerf to that ability. I think you guys should roll back these changes until a better rework can be implemented; I mean a complete rework to his kit with better synergy added between all his abilities like how Frost, Saryn, and Excalibur were all changed.

In the meantime though, maybe a few minor changes could help ash out? I'll make a more well thought out suggestion later but right now I think Ash could use some tweaks such as:

• Loading the default non-augmented Shuriken ability with concussive explosives which momentarily blind and stun enemies, opening them to melee finishers.
• Increasing the duration of Smoke Screen's invisibility and allowing fellow Tenno to also turn invisible if they are within 15 meters of the initial cast. (Do not make this an augment. Ash desperately needs to have more skills which help benefit the team.) The range of the stun and ally invisibility effect can be effected by range mods.
• When first activating Bladestorm, Ash should throw his new stunning shurikens in all directions (applied only as a visual effect) which will blind and stun all enemies within X amount of meters. This will allow players to still get the crowd control effects similar to the original ability, while being able to select targets and such for the new rework. Oh, and maybe the new Bladestorm should only use clones for the finishing attacks, so that the player can still perform actions and shoot at things.

Edited November 28, 2016 by notHunky

[Syln]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Blade of Justic said:

I'll post this here since it seems to be rather applicable as well. This is from another thread.

 

Why not just do this with Bladestorm:

Activating it causes you to start burning energy. Energy will continue to burn until you deactivate it.(Holding the button for Bladestorm instead of tapping it will deactivate the ability.) The energy burn rate will be influenced by Power Duration

Ash summons clones relative to your Bladestorm level and your combo counter. As your combo counter increases, so do your clones.

• Building your combo may happen before ability activation. Dropping the combo after activation does not cause your clones to be reduced. 
• You may increase your combo during Bladestorm's duration instead, doing so will still cause you to gain clones but dropping the combo during Bladestorm will cause your clones to be reduced respectively.

Your clones disperse into the area and freely attack enemies with the weapons that you've brought with you on your mission.(The distance they are allowed to travel away from you is determined by Power Range.) The clones each will do a percentage of your damage and have a percentage of your health, shields and armor based on Power Strength. During this time, you may tap the button for Bladestorm while aiming at a target to cause one of your clones to assassinate it. During the assassination animation, that clone is unavailable. (Meaning you may not spam the key over and over on the same enemy in order to stack assassination attempts.) The same target can not be assassinated until you or a previous clone have finished their assassination attempt. Ordering your clone to assassinate a target will cost some energy. The energy cost will be influenced by Power Efficiency.

While this mode is active, Shuriken, Teleport and Smoke Screen are empowered.

Shuriken:

While empowered, Ash and all of his clones will throw a shuriken to where you are aiming relative to each of your and their positions. (Shuriken damage of clones are affected by Power Strength)

Teleport:

While empowered, if used on an enemy unit, Ash will leap to the target and assassinate the target himself. (Assassination damage relative to your melee weapon damage, combo counter and Power Strength.)

Smoke Screen:

While empowered, you and your clones all turn invisible, causing your attacks and the attacks of your clones to have a stealth bonus. (Stealth bonus damage percentage is relative to your own and based on Power Strength)

 

One thing I enjoyed about Ash was that he was the icon of assassination. As such, I believe this idea will cause your to work almost like the leader of an order of assassins. You will command them to kill and, through your decisions, lead your band to glory. 

I believe the randomness of allowing the clones to work on their own could weigh in to allow your team to help in interesting ways without you doing all of the work. At the same time, you have the ability to clear an entire room IF you can properly manage your clones, damage, combo and energy on the fly and each one accordingly depending on what is most important to you at the time. 

When are your clones needed the most? Should you send them out now and risk losing too much energy or hold them until it really matters? Should you let them run rampant or focus your efforts on a single target?

Let me know what you guys think.

i like that actually !