rystilsrants

[rystilsrants]

Hey guess what hasn’t happened in the last 9 months.... But at least they listened to my Cauterize ideas, so that’s good.

I really Need to get motivated

‘Cause I wanna get my thoughts about everything out here before the Season 3 changes get announced but I’m having trouble getting off my ass and focusing.

[rystilsrants]

I really Need to get motivated

‘Cause I wanna get my thoughts about everything out here before the Season 3 changes get announced but I’m having trouble getting off my ass and focusing.

[rystilsrants]

Game Mechanics #3 - Knockback And Impact

So here’s a thing. Why don’t a lot of boops and other knockback abilities have an sort of impact damage associated with them? Surely that would make knockback more useful on closed maps with no killzones, like Primal Court, and surely we have the technology to do that. After all, we can detect collision events (Impaler Arrow, Overpower), and we can measure distance (Literally all damage falloff mechanics), so why can’t we make something better? The other thing is the arbitrary way knockback is measured. It appears to be a form of movement speed, which would explain the stupidly high numbers; Character base movement speeds appear to be the distance they can travel over the course of  1 minute (Meaning a movement speed of 360 is equal to moving 6 units per second). So, if knockback truly is a form of movement speed, similar to character base movement speed and projectile speeds, then we need to figure out a way of basing damage off of this value, without the damage being as stupidly high as the knockback numbers. So, what I would do. Abilities that deal knockback should, on the first collision with a solid object (Usually a wall), trigger a damage event, dealing damage to the target that was flung, and the damage should always be based on the knockback force. I recommend the damage be 30% of the knockback force; This will allow Fernando’s max knockback card (1,600) to add 480 damage if knocked into a wall. And now we need a way to define damage dropoff, without having a base range to go off of; Most damage dropoff events define a minimum and maximum dropoff range, and scale the numbers u or down over this distance, from a maximum of the original damage, to a minimum percentage. But, as knockback is a movement speed and not a flat distance moved, we lack a range along which to place those minimum and maximum points, so we need to define such a range. The easiest way to do this is place a maximum damage marker at a unit measurement of 2% of the knockback’s value. Thus, with 1,600 knockback, maximum damage is obtainable as far away as 32 units. Then, we set the minimum scaling (30% of the original damage) at 5% of the knockback’s value; Thus, with a 1,600 knockback value, minimum damage (144) would be dealt at 80 units and farther, if you can manage to knock them that far. And, because the damage dealt is based on the knockback value, and because Resilience reduces the intensity of knockbacks, Resilience would actually be effective as a way to mitigate impact damage. I think this system would work quite well for making knockback more dangerous in deadly spaces; Torvald ult will actually be quite powerful now, as pinning a target into a corner with the force of the ult should actually damage them severely. Plus you can reverse the scaling for some abilities, causing them to deal more impact damage the farther the target is flung, as well as have special events trigger when maximum or minimum impact occurs.

[rystilsrants]

I’m super excited

For the season 3 changes. Maybe someone at EvilMojo has been reading my blog, because they’re finally balancing Caut and Wrecker with heal and shield numbers, and I am... So excited.

[rystilsrants]

Game Mechanics #2 - Class Roles

The classes in this game are rather poorly defined and not really given much in the way of reward for following their roles. In fact, we have many characters that fall into multiple roles, like Khan, or are put into 1 role when they really belong in another role, sheerly because of one defining factor, like Lex’s passive. So, here I am introducing a revised set of classes for this game, along with two new details - Subclasses, and primary/secondary class roles. These are terms that, at a glance, help you identify what a character is good at. Each champion has a Primary Role and a Secondary Role, allowing them to gain additional credits for more versatile things, and making the system more rewarding for more versatile characters, than the existing flat four-class system does. Each character gains full bonus from their Primary Role, and half the bonus credits from their Secondary Role. This is to reward players for using  Thus, a Primary Bruiser/Secondary Assassin would gain: +50% credits for objective time (Plus an additional +50% if contesting), +50% credits for taking damage, And +10% credits from kills (+5% if within 3s of combat starting, +10% if a flawless victory). If the above champion’s roles were reversed, being Primary Assassin/Secondary Bruiser, they’d gain: +20% from kills (+10% if within 3s of combat starting, +20% if a flawless victory), +25% from taking damage, and +25% for objective time (+25% if contesting). If a champion’s subclass roles are both from the same class, the benefits stack. A Primary Assassin/Secondary Harrier would gain:  +30% credits from kills (+10% if within 3s of combat starting, +20% if a flawless victory), +25% credits for getting assists, and +5% credits on kills and assists for every 5s they were in combat before the elim occurred; While A Primary Ranger/Secondary Blaster would gain: +75% credits from dealing damage (+50% if further than 150 units, +10% if target is on the objective, +10% effective damage for each target hit beyond the first), and so forth. The classes, and their subclasses, are as follows: Frontline - Guardian, Bruiser Support - Controller, Leader Flank - Assassin, Harrier Damage - Blaster, Shredder, Ranger The four base classes gain credits as follows: Primary Frontlines gain 50% more credits from standing near an objective. Primary Supports gain 50% more credits from healing allies. Primary Flanks gain 20% more credits from landing the killing blow on enemies. Primary Damages gain 50% more credits for dealing damage to enemies. The 9 subclasses, their defining characteristics, and their methods of gaining additional credits are as follows: Guardian Frontlines are characterized by high ally survivability, utility, and large defensive abilities; They are anchor tanks that excel at defending allies and objectives, being difficult to dislodge or take down. Primary Guardians receive 50% additional credits for absorbing damage, and 20% more credits for getting assists on enemy champions.  Bruiser Frontlines are characterized by high self sustain, damage, and crowd control; They are brawler tanks that excel at buying space for their team by forcing enemies to retreat or die, and harassing backline characters. Primary Bruisers receive 50% additional credits for taking damage, and 50% additional credits for contesting an objective.  Blaster Damages are characterized by AoE attacks and other forms of area denial. They tend to be very good at driving enemies where they want them to go, and punishing them when they don’t. Primary Blasters receive 20% additional credits for dealing damage to enemy champions if the target is currently capturing or contesting an objective, and their damage output for the purposes of determining credit gain is increased by 20% for each additional enemy hit beyond the first with any given instance of damage. For example, directly hitting three clumped targets with Willo’s mainfire would not only count the 500 damage dealt to each, totaling to 1,500, but would be increased by 40%, to 2,100, for the two additional champions struck, but only for the purposes of counting towards the 6,000 damage needed to earn Damage Dealer credits. Shredder Damages are characterized by high fire rate, high ammo count, and otherwise heavy sustained fire in the mid range, causing enemies to duck or be whittled away. Primary Shredders cumulatively gain 20% more credits from dealing damage for every 5s they remain in combat; Thus if you deal 6,000 damage over the course of 15 seconds without going out of combat, you will gain 64 credits rather than 40. Ranger Damages are characterized by their single-shot burst potential and long range combat, forcing enemies to avoid granting you line of sight for fear of getting a sniper bullet to the head. Primary Rangers receive an additional 50% credits from dealing damage to enemy champions if the target is more than 150 units away at the time of the damage. Assassin Flanks are characterized by their ability to lock down and finish off a single target before retreating, typically being high burst, short range, and sustained mobility, with some CC. Primary Assassins receive an additional 10% more credits for killing an enemy champion if the target was slain within 3s of combat beginning, and plus an additional 20% if the target did not manage to damage, CC, or otherwise harm the Assassin before they were slain. Harrier Flanks are characterized by low cooldowns, high bursts of mobility, and sustained damage, allowing them to outplay, annoy, wear down, and distract enemies, without dying in the process. Primary Harriers receive 50% additional credits for getting assists on enemy champions, and an additional cumulative 10% more credits from kills and assists for every 5s they remain in combat before the elimination occurs.

Controller Supports are characterized by high CC and decent mobility, allowing them to turn the tide of fights by disabling the enemy so allies can finish the kill. Primary Controllers gain 50% additional credits from CC’ing and debuffing enemy champions.

Leader Supports are characterized by buffing capabilities and ability to turn the tide by helping an ally rather than harming an enemy, excelling at assisting in fights in more consistent but less offensive ways than a Controller. Primary Leaders receive 50% additional credits from buffing allies. 

[rystilsrants]

Game Mechanics #1 - Credit Gain

So as it stands, currently, there are two very useful actions in this game that do not grant you credits for the most part. This is intended to fix that. In addition to the events that currently trigger credit gain (Objective time, dealing damage, healing, shielding, taking damage, getting kills and assists, and capturing an objective), these following methods also grant the listed amount of credits. CC’ing or debuffing an enemy champion grants 20 credits for every 10s they were debuffed. In the case of knockbacks/knockups, this counts air time, before the target strikes a solid surface or changes their momentum of their own accord, such as Nether Stepping mid-air, or Blinking to the ground. This does not, however, count healing reduction as a debuff for the purposes of gaining credits. This would likely also warrant the addition of a Debuff Time stat to the end-game match statistics screen. Buffing allies with movement speed, shields, Astral Mark and the like, any positive status effect at all, grants 20 credits for every 10s they were so buffed.  This would likely also warrant the addition of a Buff Time stat to the end-game match statistics screen. Additionally, damage absorbed by damage reduction or damage immunity, as well as damage blocked by Atlas’ Stasis Field, Terminus’ Power Siphon, Zhin’s Counter, and Androxus’ Reversal, count towards absorbing damage with a shield for the purposes of credit gain, as well as toward end-of-match Shielding numbers.

[rystilsrants]

Item Shop Rework #4 - Blue Items

Last but not least, the Defensive category. The category everyone buys after they finish Cauterize.

Illuminate: Does its job as-is; I don’t think it needs to be changed, except potentially being able to hear invisible champions properly when they’re within range of being able to see their outline. I still don’t like the way this game does stealth in the first place, but this item works. Edit: Actually, now that I’ve thought about it. Illuminate is a passive item that counters active abilities, and I think that is absolutely trash. That’s the whole reason I hate Cauterize; If Caut was something like Smite’s Cursed Anhk where you had to activate it (Like Dead Zone), it would be fine, but it’s not, so it’s ass. So I’m gonna give Illuminate the Cauterize treatment. 1) Change the way it works. Rework it completely. Instead of causing it to increase the range at which you can see stealth champions (Which is shit against Rangers like Strix and Sha Lin anyway), instead, it needs to work differently. So, each time you deal 600/400/200 damage to a target, they get a stack of Illuminate, which makes them visible to you through stealth (A hard reveal, self only). One stack fades every 0.25s, similarly to Cauterize.  Each individual person’s stacks are counted separately, which means that the longest duration wins out, rather than all of them stacking together. Kinessa could reveal a target for 1.5s with her single shot, while Ruckus would have to ramp up and predict target movement, but this gives everyone the ability to actively cancel stealth.

Resilience: The other most overtuned item in the game besides Cauterize. Resilience just scales too hard, making CC abilities irrelevant and allowing tanky characters to play without concern, since every CC thrown at them is just a stutter-step. So. 1) Reduce the scaling. Like Caut, this should go from 30%/60%/90% to 25%/50%/75%. Still works, just not as well; 2s stun will be 0.5s instead of 0.2s.  Haven and Blast Shields: Essentially the same item with different situational uses, these feel pretty weak, especially with all the damage-amping and burst that happens in this game these days. With mobility nerfed, these items have become weaker than they would’ve been if mobility in this game had remained as it was. My solution is to revert the item’s nerf. 1) Revert the scaling. Instead of 7%/14%/21%, put them back to 10%/20%/30% like they used to be. Encourage people not to stack 5 direct characters on the same team, and allow people to avoid a bit of the burst.  NEW! Safeguard (300/600/900): This item grants you a personal shield equal to 10%/20%/30% of your maximum health. The shield lasts eternally until broken, after which there is a 15s recharge period before the shield activates again. While this isn’t an entire section dedicated to shielding, this makes Wrecker more useful against more than a handful of characters, and will hopefully cause Wrecker to compete with Cauterize a little more. 

TL;DR

Illuminate is fine should reveal the target for 0.25s for every 600/400/200 damage dealt to them.* Resilience should be 25% per level instead of 30% per level. Haven and Blast Shields should be 10% per level instead of 7% per level.  New item Safeguard grants a bubble shield equal to 10% of your health every 15s.

[rystilsrants]

Item Shop Rework #3 - Yellow Items

Next on the list, the Utility category. This is probably one of my favorite categories, but it’s also one of the most frustrating to try and buy.  Nimble: Wonderful. Helps slow characters get some movement speed, so they can avoid big AoE attacks. Helps poor Terminus actually use his mainfire. However, for what it does, I just don’t know if it’s worth it; Chars with short-range weapons (Especially Term) are still murdered by the slow incurred from firing your main weapon, but if the slow was reduced or removed, they’d just WM1 the whole game. So for right now, I think this item is best left alone, as I can’t really think of a way to make it better other than maybe reduce the cost. Master Riding: This is one of the least-used and yet most annoying items in the game. I typically firstbuy it on Cripple Inara, rushing a tactical position near the point and straight-up locking it down (As I learned from the great Chavsberry). I also see it used on snipers and flanks, to get into position and buy room for their team. I don’t really know how this item would be improved, either, but it’s less problematic than Nimble for sure. Moving on... Morale Boost: This item is just weird. Level 1 does next to nothing, level 2 feels good, and level 3 just feels like level 1. It feels bugged and nobody has addressed this. This item doesn’t even work with ult-based builds; Diminishing Returns eats most of the bonus it gives, when in a ton of cases, Chronos and Deft Hands would be better because you get to use abilities and shoot more, which in turn generates more ult charge. It’s even more useless on chars whose ults you wanna hang onto, as it provides no benefit when your ult is already ready. So here’s what I’d do, knowing we already have the in-game tech: 1) Change how it works. Instead of improving the charge rate by 15%/30%/45%, it should instead cause your ult to cost 10%/20%/30% less ult charge. True, this means Snow Globe Evie could ult 5 times with 100% ult charge instead of twice, since Snow Globe makes her ult cost 50% less and 50 - 30 is 20, with 100/20=5. That would be annoying, but not too bad. Resil is a thing.  But on other characters, it means you not only gain the ability to ult faster than before, but you also regain the ability to ult again faster if you charge to full. If you reach 100%, ult charge, your ult only costs 70%, leaving you with 30% left, which means you only have to regain 40% of your charge to ult again. This would also interact well with ults that give you refunds; If Viktor ults at 100% and doesn’t fire a rocket, he’ll only have to rebuilt 10% of his ult charge to ult again. This means he could whip out his ult to scare people without it costing him the ability to actually ult. Now, 30% is less than 45%, but I don’t want Evie to be able to ult every 5% charge she gets, especially since she gains 6% charge for a direct hit. Plus we’re not getting 45% charge increase to begin with due to the way Morale Boost implodes on itself. Honestly my first instinct was to put the scaling at 5% or 7% instead of 10% ‘cause I’m scared of it breaking Evie XD Chronos: Why does this item still cost 400? Because they needed a token “expensive item” to warrant having 400 credits at the start of a match instead of 300? Why not make Cauterize that item? Who knows. But tbh: 1) Reduce the cost. Even if you only reduce it to 350/700/1050, it’d help, but I’d prefer it be 300/600/900. NEW! Supercharge (300/600/900): Ever wonder why we have an item to make every resource in the game come up faster, except resource meters? This item fixes that; All it does is increase the recharge rate of your resources by 10%/20%/30%. This affects Koga’s Energy, Strix’s Stealth, Io’s Moonlight, Terminus’ Power Siphon, and any future resource-based champions. I was tempted to include the charge rate of Imani’s Mana, but it’s stupid fast as it is, and its charge rate is action-based, not time-based like the others. Could also add Fernando and Grohk’s weapons to the list, perhaps, but for now let’s leave those off.

TL;DR Chronos needs to be reduced to 300/level. Morale Boost needs to change from +15% charge rate/level to -10% charge cost/level. Nimble and Master Riding are fine. New item Supercharge increase recharge rates of champion resources by 10%/level.

[rystilsrants]

Item Shop Rework #2 - Green Items

I guess it makes sense to just move up from red to green, then yellow and blue, working up from the bottom since i started in the hellpit that is the red category. So now we’re on to the most situational item category in the game - Green (Healing) items. I’m not sure why we have an entire category centered around a single sustain mechanic, when there are other sustain mechanics in the game, such as shielding, damage immunity, and so forth, that aren’t given an entire category to themselves. Especially considering that two of the four green items, HALF THE ENTIRE CATEGORY, are nearly never picked, and the other two are situational. A single red item makes this entire category useless. Sure, the devs are gonna say “but in the event someone doesn’t buy Cauterize, these are powerful”. Which is a bullshit excuse and the entire REASON I see 5 max-tier Cauts rushed every single game - The devs have created a monster and won’t do anything about it. They won’t buff Rejuv because without Cauterize, healing is already busted. They won’t buff any of the green cards, which only require buffs because of Cauterize. Anyway, enough. Onward to the real rant. Kill To Heal: My personal favorite among green cards, I use it all the time. I rush it on a lot of characters, giving me early-game sustain that allows me to snowball; And it level of cheapness, combined with its usefulness, allows me to heal 900 per kill by the time the enemies have Caut 2. Even with said Caut applied to me, I’m still healing 360 per elim, without relying on a healer - I just burst and keep going, or otherwise participate in kills. I run this mostly on bursty chars and healers, allowing me to stay in the fight and keep on rolling. It only costs 200 credits, so I can actually buy this and Life Rip, giving me a ton of sustain that’s hard to overcome, but once overcome, leaves me with two useless item slots. But there’s one other thing that bothers me about K2H, and that is how it falls off on any beefy character. In fact, it is the only item in Paladins that uses flat numbers instead of percentages, with the exception of Illuminate. So, with these things in mind, I would: 1) Make it scale. Change it from 300/600/900, to 15%/30%/45% of your max health. On a character with 2,000 health, this is the exact same number, and thus is only worse on Maeve, Koga, Talus and Evie. On tanks, this gives them a viable option to use when they have no healer (Which happens too often, let’s be real), without having to invest an entire deck into healing. This means that Inara could get a 2,115 heal on elim, which could go up to 2,452 with her max health card, 2,961 with Earthen Guard up, and 3,433 with both. Insanely useful when you don’t have a healer; That’s very similar to having a Mega Potion Pip on your team, without taking up a team slot. However, with Cauterize (My version, from my Red Items post), this would be reduced by 75%, changing the numbers to 529, 613, 740 and 858, respectively. Makes Caut effective, and probably still a must-buy, but those are still respectable numbers.  2) Nerf the cost. Needs to bump up from 200/400/600 to 250/500/750 to accommodate the above change. Just to prevent it from being picked up alongside Life Rip right out the gate. Life Rip: This item used to be used so much, and now I see it very little, despite the fact that Cauterize’s duration has actually been nerfed since then, while Life Rip’s cost has been cut in half. And truthfully, it’s a bad item not only because of the numbers, but also largely because of the way the game works. You see, this item is useless on ability-based characters. It’s only useful on characters who are attack-based, because you only get the heal from landing attacks. So to begin with, you are only healing for a small percentage of your DPS, which... Is horrible, considering the number of characters out there with 600 DPS or less. Playing Nando? Fuck you, you’re only healing for 135 a second, which is probably cut down to 13.5 a second because of Cauterize. Subtracted from the DPS of the enemy team, that’s piss. That’s not worth the credits.  Worse, it doesn’t count against shields or deployables anymore (Oh, the days when Drogoz could buy Wrecker and Life Rip and get giant heals off shooting Torvald when the old man was first released...), and damage reduction of any sort also reduces the heal because it’s based on actual damage dealt. This means that Blast Shields would reduce Nando’s DPS from 450 to 355, cutting the heal to 107, which means this man is healing for 10.7 fucking health a second. WOW, GLAD I MADE THAT INVESTMENT. The worst part is that, unless you’re a sniper, you’re never going to get this heal without Caut applied, because you HAVE to be in combat to get healed, unlike Kill To Heal, where you can tag someone, dip out, and get the heal when your ally kills them. There isn’t a single situation where this is worth buying. Smite is actually far more balanced. There are many different ways of increasing survivability, and at least one way to counter each of those. You can increase your health, your health regen, your incoming healing, your damage reduction, and even give yourself lifesteal and shields - And Smite’s lifesteal (On Magical characters, anyway) works on abilities. You can flat-out increase your damage, penetrate enemy damage reduction, reduce enemy healing, and so forth - And even the penetration is useful without the enemy getting any defense items, because every god has base defenses built-in along with their built-in HP5. In the end, gameplay typically comes down to tactical choice in items, positioning, timing, resource management, and mechanical skill like aim, reaction time, and so forth, as opposed to ONE single solitary item in the ENTIRE GAME being the first thing EVERYONE BUYS because it’s just objectively better. Why not just... Give everyone Caut built in to save them an item slot, at this point, ‘cause they’re gonna buy it anyway. Anyway, so here’s what I propose: 1) Double the scaling. Change it from 10%/20%/30% straight to 20%/40%/60%, because Cauterize exists. True, we’re gonna have Sha Lin healing for 600 a shot, Kinessa for 650, but you must remember, these will mostly be reduced by 75%, reducing Sha Lin’s heal to 150 a shot, which is not bad and still respectable. 2) Change the way Lifesteal works. In my Gameplay Mechanics post(s), I’m going to propose, among other things, that anything that doesn’t count as a Weapon Attack will now benefit from Life Rip, Caut, Wrecker, and so on, but only at half rate. This means that Nando’s Fireball can now heal him for 150 per hit, apply 2(.5) Cauterize stacks on each target hit, and deal 875 damage against shields and deployables. Rejuvenate: The ally to healers everywhere, Rejuvenate is a good niche item for any tank or flank being pocketed by a support (Though flanks should only really go for it if the support is Jenos). What really annoys me about this item is the mindset around it; People like to act like it reduces Caut 3 down to Caut 2, but it doesn’t. Let’s take Khan’s heal, ‘cause it’s 1,000 flat and I’m lazy. Caut reduces it to 100 at Caut 3. Rejuv 3 only increases this by 30. Literally 30. Now, my version of Caut makes this less of a problem; With my Caut and the current Rejuv, it would only be reduced to 250 and 325, respectively, which is a lot better than 100 and 130. However, I have not changed the healing reduce cap, which means focused fire can still send Cauterize up to 95%, which reduces your heals down to utter piss no matter how much Rejuv you have. And, because of Cauterize, the healing numbers of many supports in this game are already over-inflated, which I will address in my champion-specific posts, along with the shield values I mentioned under the Red items post. So here is what I would do to Rejuvenate: 1) Change the way it works. Instead of increasing the healing output (Because Seris doesn’t need to be able to heal the tank for 4,300+ health over 2.5s every 1.5s, yet still be useless when Cauterize is used), instead it now causes 5%/10%/15% of healing received from other allied players to ignore healing reduction. This doesn’t inflate healing numbers when Caut isn’t applied, and also doesn’t pair with Life Rip and Kill To Heal to make a giant sustain demon that blots out the sun with green numbers, but it does still do its job. In the above case of the Khan heal, the difference between old Rejuv and my Rejuv against my Caut is old Rejuv heals for 325 and my Rejuv heals for 350, but against 95% healing reduction, old Rejuv heals for 65, where my Rejuv heals for 200, so overall the numbers are more stable. Veteran: The name alone strikes fear into the hearts of every person who has accidentally bought this item. It’s useless, it’s a meme, it reeks of legacy design from back when there was no out of combat regen (Since back then, you had to pick up health packs to heal, or buy Veteran to heal you over time when you weren’t in combat - Now the game’s mechanics themselves heal you when OoC. So, I would remove this item entirely; I have never encountered a single situation in this game where this would be a useful pick, because you can’t even get OoC healing while hiding behind your shield as Khan or Nando, ‘cause your shield taking damage keeps you in combat. I’ll replace it with a better item.

NEW! Siphon (300/600/900): A new green item to counter healing in a different way from Cauterize. This item creates a 60-unit radius effect around you which can be seen by yourself and enemies; It should look like an red/orange version of Grover’s heal radius on the ground. Essentially, you siphon the healing of your enemies - Any time an enemy within this radius is healed by anything except this item, you are also healed for 15%/30%/45% of the healing value. If your team has Cauterize on the enemy, not only will that enemy’s heal be reduced, but so will yours. If the enemy Khan shouts near you, you’ll be healed for 450, but if he has Caut 3 on him, he’ll only heal for 250, meaning you’ll only heal for 112(.5). The reason this item cannot siphon healing off of the enemy’s Siphon item is simple - This way you don’t have reverbing heals bogging down the server. Imagine; Khan shouts, healing himself for 1,000. You heal for 450, and he heals for 202(.5) off of that, which heals you for 91, which heals him for 41, and so forth until the heal reaches 0. That would be stupid.  NEW! Inspire (300/600/900): And now the positive version of Siphon. This creates a 60-unit green radius on the ground only you and your allies can see. Whenever you are healed by anything except Inspire, allies within this radius are also healed for 15%/30%/45% of the healing value. Buy this as a Flank, carrying heals from your Jenos to where they need to go. Buy this as a tank to help your healer spread her healing out, healing both tanks with one cooldown. Like Siphon, this has no reverbing; Can you imagine? 5 people buy this, clump together, and collectively heal to full off one measly Astral Mark. The thought makes me shudder. 

TL;DR

Kill To Heal needs to change from 300 HP/level to 15% max HP/level, and have the price increase by 50/level. Life Rip needs to double in strength (Going up to 60%) and be increased in cost for 50/level. Rejuvenate needs to change from up to 30% increase healing, to allowing up to 15% incoming healing to ignore healing redux. Veteran is leftover legacy design and needs to be removed. New item Siphon allows you to heal yourself for up to 45% of nearby enemy healing. New item Inspire heals nearby allies for up to 45% of the healing you receive. 

[rystilsrants]

Item Shop Rework #1 - Red Items

Here I’m gonna rant a little bit about the item shop. This is the first in a series of four, and I’m going to suggest changes for each category separately, just to prevent this whole subject from being a single giant wall of text, but rather four giant walls of text because apparently I can’t keep things short and sweet. TL;DR at the bottom. Cauterize: Public enemy number one. This is my least favorite item in the entire game and, as a support main, I hate it with every single fiber of my being. This thing scales too hard, and isn’t balanced across all characters in the same way Wrecker and Bulldozer are; Slow shooters almost never grab Cauterize unless they have a large AoE on their shots (Like Pip, for example); Meanwhile, on some characters, its effectiveness goes through the roof (Such as Fernando being able to more than double the duration, and Lian being able to spread it constantly with no effort). What I would do, is: 1) Change the scaling. It needs to go from 30%/60%/90% to 25%/50%/75%, at least. That way, late-game, it doesn’t eat the support class completely, but its early effectiveness is roughly the same. However, this would not change the max healing reduction cap of 95%, meaning if you have two or three people with caut 3 shooting at the same target, they can theoretically reach 95% healing reduction. 2) Change the duration. Instead of lasting a flat 1.5s, it should, instead, apply stacks, with a single stack being removed every 0.25s. When you attack, it applies one stack for every 100 damage dealt; Each individual person’s stacks are counted separately, which means that the longest duration wins out, rather than all of them stacking together. What this means is, Kinessa, for example, can instantly Cauterize a target for 3 entire seconds with a single shot. Meanwhile, Ruckus has to ramp up the duration, but can reach longer Cauterize durations overall due to sustained fire. Stacks will decay regardless of being reapplied, preventing “tag” fire from building up insurmountable heaps of healing reduction to wait out. In summary, this allows healers to remain relevant at all stages of the game, making the support role more fun to play, and thus more likely to get played; While at the same time, actually gaining strength overall, since enemies can’t as easily instantly full-heal when they dip out of line of sight for less than two seconds. Wrecker: The bane of shield characters everywhere. I remember trying to play as shield-based Barik and getting pitted against Vivian back when she had Wrecker 2 as a talent and thus kept inhaling me using her Wrecker 5. Shields in this game are too early-game, just like healing; At the start of the game, their health is too high, and at the mid-to-late-game, they mean basically nothing. If I could change Wrecker, I would probably: 1) Change the scaling. In a lot of cases, +225% damage is rather much. I would reduce the item from 75%/150%/225% to 50%/100%/150% like Bulldozer. The cost may also need to be scaled down from 300/600/900, to 250/500/750, or some such number. However, this change alone would not fix the problem; I would likely lower the health of most shields by around 15%-20% to compensate, but I will address that on a case-by-case basis in my champion-specific posts. Bulldozer: Literally fine; Leave it how it is. Deft Hands: Also fine, with the exception that reload speed caps at 60% and diminishing returns is weird about reload speed things. NEW! Perforate (300/600/900): This item is designed specifically to help against characters that have high damage reduction, and essentially, it causes 5%/10%/15% of your damage to ignore damage reduction, being dealt as true damage like a Drogoz ult. With the growing number of champions that rely on damage reduction (Inara, Terminus, Buck, Maeve, Talus, etc.), we need an answer to the damage reduction other than “Dedicate an entire champion slot to Jenos”. 

TL;DR

Caut needs to scale down from 90% to 75%, and last 0.3s per 100 damage dealt rather than 1.5s flat. Wrecker needs to scale down from 225% to 150%. Bulldozer and Deft Hands are fine. New item Perforate causes 15% of your damage to ignore DR.

[rystilsrants]

Intro

Aight, so. I’ve been playing Paladins since late October of 2016. I discovered the game via stumbling across Alpharad’s video “Not Overwatch” video, which was posted on the 5th of October that year. When I joined, Mal’Damba was the newest character and there were only like 18 characters in the game. I joined in fucking OB36 or so. So, I’ve been playing this game for three years pretty consistently, other than a couple breaks when the game pissed me off. Which means I almost know what I’m talking about. As I make this post, Io is the newest character. I’ve been playing on Version 2.07, the Pirate’s Treasure update. There’s speculation about who the next champion, Raum, will be. I know this post seems a little odd, but in reality, it is an effort to give context to the things I’m going to say about the current state of the game, so others later don’t get offended or call my perspectives outdated.  Anyway, welcome to the hellscape that is this blog and the game it’s about. I’m Rystil, and this is where the screaming begins.