Ash Bladestorm Energy Costs

[Manodemo]

Just wanted to know if anyone else thinks Ash's Bladestorm costs too much energy for each individual mark. Especially low level, it costs way to much for not enough in return. I would want to see the non- invisible cost go to like 7 or something. 

[TKDancer]

not really? with just streamline thats like 11 energy per kill without invisi, thats pretty good imo

 

if they halved its energy cost it would be too little

[Kalvorax]

considering its quite high energy efficiency for an Ultimate....i see no reason to lower the cost even more...though i wouldnt mind if the invisible cost was 1/2 the non invisible cost.

[Dragazer]

The Supposed "rework" ended up nerfing Ash's 4 to garbage: 

• (Pre rework: 100 energy for 18 enemies. Post rework: 270 energy for 18 enemies 180 while invis) 
• You are now limited to 3 attacks per target (when b4 rework your clones would attack until your target dies.)

Edited November 10, 2017 by Dragazer

[ashrah]

no with fleeting and streamline  its resonable energy cost.... without efficancy mods and who going blind rage line that will not work for sure

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

Nah...considering that teleporting grabs orbs, his stats make him perfect for rage use, the damage more then justifys the cost, that marking cost is returned on death, the cost is lowered on invisibility and his remaining kit is cheap as hell.... not really.

I'm only running streamline+rage recently and don't have energy issues whatsoever.

Edited November 10, 2017 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[(XBOX)Angryspy101]

I don't mind the energy cost for bladestorm since efficiency exist, and Ash's first three abilities cost are dirt cheap by default and if you use efficiency they basically cost nothing. 

Besides bladestorm is meant to be used as a backup ability for certain situations.

[Nazrethim]

5 hours ago, Dragazer said:

The Supposed "rework" ended up nerfing Ash's 4 to garbage: 

• (Pre rework: 100 energy for 18 enemies. Post rework: 270 energy for 18 enemies 180 while invis) 
• You are now limited to 3 attacks per target (when b4 rework your clones would attack until your target dies.)

And you aren't accounting for 3 marks, wich will push it to 780 (540 while invisible)

 

5 hours ago, Kalvorax said:

considering its quite high energy efficiency for an Ultimate....i see no reason to lower the cost even more...though i wouldnt mind if the invisible cost was 1/2 the non invisible cost.

Picture this: Imagine if Rhino Stomp, Avalanche, Cataclysm and Molecular Prime costed 15 energy PER enemy hit. Or what if Dissarm costed 10 energy per enemy disarmed. Or Exalted Blade costed additional 10 energy per wave.

You do the math.

5 hours ago, ashrah said:

no with fleeting and streamline  its resonable energy cost.... without efficancy mods and who going blind rage line that will not work for sure

The frame has default 150 energy at rank 30. That's either 10/5/2 dudes if you go for 1/2/3 marks.

The cost is indeed broken.

 

6 hours ago, Manodemo said:

Just wanted to know if anyone else thinks Ash's Bladestorm costs too much energy for each individual mark. Especially low level, it costs way to much for not enough in return. I would want to see the non- invisible cost go to like 7 or something. 

A better way could be to make it a 100 energy ~6s Duration Marking mode that allows you to mark free of cost. That would put it in line with other ultimates in terms of cost.

[Nazrethim]

3 hours ago, (Xbox One)Angryspy101 said:

Besides bladestorm is meant to be used as a backup ability for certain situations.

It is meant as a "kill'em all" ability actually. The descriptions says that. ANd it's terrible at it. So much that at levels lower than 30 it's outperformed by everything down to freaking shuriken

As you rise in level it just becomes less and less effective, as SScreen plus a goodish melee outperforms it, a decently modded gun outperforms it.

At endurance levels SScreen+Well modded melee outperforms it, Fatal Teleport scales beyond what BS ever will, and to top it off the second BS dumps you after the cutscene you are dead. And let's mention that his other abilities require little to be useful, BS however requires a lot of stuff stacked to not s*ck

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Nazrethim:

Picture this: Imagine if Rhino Stomp, Avalanche, Cataclysm and Molecular Prime

 

What's the cost of those for 2 hit enemys? What's it for 5?

Even old BS had trouble spending all 18 hits on crows with a 50m max range build (what usually resulted in getting stuck on eximus units and the likes) and he could choose his battles back then..

 

You sure can calulate off a more or less infinite value but in actuall gameplay, you're lucky if you get the opportunity to hit like 10 enemys, especially as theyr range starts at 15-16-25-30m on max rank, what kinda equals the average cost of un- and discounted marks...

Edited November 11, 2017 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[Nazrethim]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Not gonna quote the other 2 cause those are literally designed to hit many enemys for little damage.

MP prime may just be a debuff but it leads to ludicrous gibs of large masses of enemies.

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What's the cost of those for 2 hit enemys? What's it for 5?

100. Always. They are designed to hit as many as possible, not to be all-solving hammers that you use regardless of what you face, be a an army of Nox or a lvl1 lancer.

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Even old BS had trouble spending all 18 hits on crows with a 50m max range build (what usually resulted in getting stuck on eximus units and the likes)

Well, you could NOT build for max range and actually pay attention instead of spamming it. The Eximi stuck served as a deterrent to mindless spam if you think about it.

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You sure can calulate off a more or less infinite value but in actuall gameplay, you're lucky if you get the opportunity to hit like 10 enemys, especially as theyr range starts at 15-25m on max rank, what kinda equals the average cost of un- and discounted marks...

Depends. If you play solo you will rarely see more than 25 enemies and ususally face between 5 and 12. In Squads, even when there are only 2 players, you can get 15 to 25 near constantly depending on tileset.

Discounted marks only serve when allies kill the targets before slowstorm gets to them or when the damage is enough to oneshot them. If you mainly use gunplay BS damage falls off at lvl60s. A single strike is still enough to kill when you factor the bleed, but the additional marks are used anyway. Not a big deal if the cost per mark was 5 base, but at 15 it's just bonkers. Specially considering BS is intended to be used on as many targets as possible, indicated by it's long range and high target cap.

 

Making it a 100 energy 6-10s marking mode would be much better.

Edited November 11, 2017 by Nazrethim

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Nazrethim:

-snip-

The cost would still be 50 or 20/target, 10 energy if you manage to hit 10 enemys, what equals the cost BS would have under invisibility, for like 90 or even under 50% the damage BS can do without further scaling trough combo and slash proccs. That it would fall off using guns is also for debate ever since naramon started to maintain your combo counter, even on moderate use.

Enemy spawning was lowered as time passed, that's true but that BS couldn't even hit 18 enemys at its absolute peak, on a maxed range kinda shows what's up..

Meaning you do the multiple damage, on the multiple range for pretty much the same cost on a much better damage type, in actuall gameplay, slower but not bound to opportunitys as the others would do as is. It's not really expensive or slow...or lets say MORE expensive or slower then your average ultimate ability. It's just different while still beein kinda balanced.

It has it's little flaws that may or may not bother (like targeting that could be a little better and slash proccs only showing effect when it would fall off otherwise) but it's a fine ultimate regardless.

 

Edited November 11, 2017 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[(PSN)TertulSee]

I feel that Ash’s Bladestorm only got worse because of how much it costs now. It’s too much for what it’s worth. Saryn can clear entire rooms with Spores but Ash can only kill 3 enemies for the same cost. This pretty much invalidates any reason to use Ash for Bladestorm. I think it should get reworked again so that Bladestorm has some value rather than a useless kill everything with a clunky animation.

[Valaska]

I dunno... I don't bother with invisibility and my energy management was fine with Ash. He was almost boring to play, it felt like playing Final Fantasy 13 where you just watch a crap ton of cinematics and then just... Doing it again. And again. I never had a shortage of energy?

[Nazrethim]

3 hours ago, Valaska said:

I dunno... I don't bother with invisibility and my energy management was fine with Ash. He was almost boring to play, it felt like playing Final Fantasy 13 where you just watch a crap ton of cinematics and then just... Doing it again. And again. I never had a shortage of energy?

If you run with Max Efficiency BS cost is roughly the same cost per target as old BS had by default. In terms of build diversity, the revisit was a step backwards. Old BS could work with whatever stats you applied. Revisit made it a powerhungry ability that makes efficiency and rage required to keep up with the enemy spawnrates when you need to kill and fast, and it pretty much killed Blind Rage builds that traded cost for power. At the same time the increase in range made the stat pretty much pointless, Old BS was actually a double edged sword. Sure you could build for max range, but that carried the danger of accidentally bladestorming a disruptor or eximi, or you could build for reduced range, trading reach for control over what you bladestorm.

[ashrah]

ash 4th need rework its not practical at all on high lvl u dont have that much time to 3 mark all cz things heat up pretty quickly

[Valaska]

22 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

If you run with Max Efficiency BS cost is roughly the same cost per target as old BS had by default. In terms of build diversity, the revisit was a step backwards. Old BS could work with whatever stats you applied. Revisit made it a powerhungry ability that makes efficiency and rage required to keep up with the enemy spawnrates when you need to kill and fast, and it pretty much killed Blind Rage builds that traded cost for power. At the same time the increase in range made the stat pretty much pointless, Old BS was actually a double edged sword. Sure you could build for max range, but that carried the danger of accidentally bladestorming a disruptor or eximi, or you could build for reduced range, trading reach for control over what you bladestorm.

Ahh, I see. I just went for efficiency naturally, never played him before re-work.

[Nazrethim]

54 minutes ago, Valaska said:

Ahh, I see. I just went for efficiency naturally, never played him before re-work.

It wasn't actually a rework, as it didn't change anything else on Ash besides making SScreen castable on the move and the usually annoying "teleport can now be used on objects, but only destroyable objects with healthbars that are placed randomly and don't help at all, usually the game deciding that the 1m tall Blunt was your target instead of the hulking Heavy Gunner Eximi right behind it"

 

Pre-revisit it was actually well designed, sure, it got broken with efficiency, but no more than any other ability due to that stat's exponential scaling.

It was a clean up tool designed to destroy groups of grunts easily, but struggled to kill Disruptors and Eximus (the intended use was to get rid of them first, then BS to clear the rest, not spam as soon as an enemy appeared). That was Fatal Teleport's job. Now they cost the same but FT scale much better, and BS is weaker (and more expensive if you go for 3 marks) and only has the inherent advantage of being able to target some enemies FT can't.

Specifics of Blade Storm:

Old:

100 Energy cost. 20m Range and 20m Radius (Range was how far you can tag an enemy, and Radius affected how big was the tag around that target). 18 Targets tagged max (including the initial target) and 18 attacks max (if there were less than 18 enemies the remaining attacks would be used on the enemies until all  18 attacks were used). Ash and 3 clones attacked all marked targets (if there was only 1 enemy Ash would attack him personally until all 18 attacks were done or the target died). Damage per attack was 1800 (200ish against Disruptors and Eximus). Affected by Melee Combo counter and Steel Charge, as well as Attack Speed from mods and arcanes (Berserker not included).

Current: 0 cost for activation. 15 cost per mark (45 if 3 marks are applied). -33% cost reduction if invisible (15/30/45 >>> 10/20/30). You need to aim each target. 2000 damage per mark (affected by combo counter and steel charge). Ash attacks everyone himself, clones follow him if multiple marks were applied to consume them. 50m range and fall-off (if an enemy goes beyond 50m the mark dissapears). If marks dissapear or the enemies die before they are used by either Ash or his clones the cost is refunded.

 

Doing the fast math it goes like this:

You need only 300 energy to attack 50 targets with old BS (3 casts). But between 750/1500/2250 (500/1000/1500 invisible) with current BS.

You need 100 energy to attack 18 targets with old BS. But 270/540/810 (180/360/540 invisible) with current BS.

Assuming you didn't hit any Eximi, and BS animations by defaul last about 1-1.5s (we will do with 1s) Old BS took about  6s for 18 enemies and 18s for 50. Current takes 18s for 18 enemies and 50s for 50 enemies.

As you can see, just from raw stats, it was a huge undeserved nerf (considering the ability worked fine and it was a well known broken stat what made it look broken combined with usual lazy players spamming instead of using "the intended way").

Edited November 12, 2017 by Nazrethim

[Grave.Knight]

I know why they changed it, I just don't know why they changed it to this. Why not revert it back to the way it was, but instead of Ash and two clones it's three clones and no Ash.

[Nazrethim]

5 hours ago, Mifune013 said:

I know why they changed it, I just don't know why they changed it to this. Why not revert it back to the way it was, but instead of Ash and two clones it's three clones and no Ash.

Because World on Bladestorm is even dumber than current one. They didn't go with something else because they didn't want to fix Ash's issues or rework him, they just lazily put together a terrible tweak to the 4 and hoped that players would be distracted enough by a QoL change to SScreen and a shinny skin. Notice how Ash took 9 months to go from the announcement of a chance to BS to the actual revisit, with plenty of feedback, and ended up terrible, meanwhile Hydroid, Limbo and Oberon took 3 months each at most.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Mifune013:

I know why they changed it, I just don't know why they changed it to this. Why not revert it back to the way it was, but instead of Ash and two clones it's three clones and no Ash.

Another perspective is that it was actually well recieved at that time...

 

Believe it or not but even the "fast" original was WAY slower then any option at the time where saryn ult could do like 8k AoE instantly and mesa was a 360° aimbot...

People still played and enjoyed Ash a lot BECAUSE of the animations, BECAUSE it was different and because of the finisher damage so they reworked it to be engaging, fixed its issues and let it remain the same by design.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

18 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

 

I think our previous idea discussion might be the most effective way to change it. 

Standard 100 cost nuke. A quick second of invulnerability as he disappears then reappears, in that second having marked all enemies in whatever shape DE chooses (cone, PBAoE, Target enemy AoE, etc.) then all marked enemies are rapidly hit by 'afterimages' (once each, since it will be faster and can be recast with normal cost drawbacks as usual) over a set time period (1 or 2 seconds?) while Ash is free to continue the fight.

[Nazrethim]

1 hour ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Another perspective is that it was actually well recieved at that time...

Well, it took a while to figure out how much Ash got scr*wed. I defended it for about a week, but I was running my SShuriken build with plenty of effi, it was when I tried to use my other builds that the truth sank in. BS is unusable outside of max efficiency+rage, and it's so slow that it's pointless until the player gets an attack speed riven and primed fury combined to reach a decent attack rate, not good, just decent.

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Believe it or not but even the "fast" original was WAY slower then any option at the time where saryn ult could do like 8k AoE instantly and mesa was a 360° aimbot...

Mesa still wipes all that for a midly attentive player, and Saryn has a few seconds of build up but can melt hordes instantly. BS cost ridiculous energy for crowds larger than six and takes a few seconds of build up and then ages to actually attack.

The original was actually as slow (I'm talkin pre-clones BS) as current one, but with a reasonable cost and no ridiculous marking phase, then the clones were added because DE realised that they made a single-target assassin in a Horde game, so they added the clones to speed up things. So BS actually worse now than original BS was

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so they reworked it

"revisited"

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to be engaging,

a marking mode that you can pretty much turn on at start and ignore the rest of the mission and 200% more cutscene than before, how engaging.

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fixed its issues

Fixed ONE issue: bladespam, by creating more issues to the point the ability is NOT advised to use outside of super specific builds dedicated to it. They also made it's goodish augment useless for some reason.

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and let it remain the same by design.

Which ultimatedly doomed the revisit because they didn't fix the core problems of the ability, just added more to it while keeping it mostly the same.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Nazrethim

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 7 Minuten schrieb Nazrethim:

 

Mesa still wipes all that for a midly attentive player, and Saryn has a few seconds of build up but can melt hordes instantly.

Not really. It's now about as effective as just using guns and saryn is great in theory but her rework is ACTUALLY broken at the point her spore spread is inconsistent and poison spread doesn't work at all...however a maximum of like 9 spores for 30 damage each can be considered "melting enemys away". There sure is a lotta rumor surrounding her "greatness" but tests leave you in tears.

I did the same work defending saryns rework untill i spend weeks of intense testing in the void, cloaked in naramons shadow step, equipped with a set of dual zoren and only ONCE did i see a posion procc adequate to the damage i was dealing...

 

Then you have ash, who is fine with as much as a streamline+rage in generall on his build, irrelevant of your remaining build...be it focused on more duration, on utility or on a lil more strength for seeking shuriken, who combines finisher damage.

Like 2 or 3 mandatory mods on your melee would hurt his build diversity 😅

[Nazrethim]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Not really. It's now about as effective as just using guns and saryn is great in theory but her rework is ACTUALLY broken at the point her spore spread is inconsistent and poison spread doesn't work at all...however a maximum of like 9 spores for 30 damage each can be considered "melting enemys away". There sure is a lotta rumor surrounding her "greatness" but tests leave you in tears.

I did the same work defending saryns rework untill i spend weeks of intense testing in the void, cloaked in naramons shadow step, equipped with a set of dual zoren and only ONCE did i see a posion procc adequate to the damage i was dealing...

Duly noted.

Personally I used her a bit and besides insane energy costs (Prime's capacity doesn't make up for it since orbs aren't percentile recharge) she's good at what she does.

Maybe I need to play more en Endurance levels beyond 100 with her.

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Then you have ash, who is fine with as much as a streamline+rage in generall on his build, irrelevant of your remaining build...be it focused on more duration, on utility or on a lil more strength for seeking shuriken, who combines finisher damage.

Like 2 or 3 mandatory mods on your melee would hurt his build diversity 😅

You seem to miss my point: Ash works with whatever build you use, really. Blade Storm flat out doesn't work outside of max effi+rage&PFury+AtkSpdRiven.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Nazrethim