Balancing Discussion: The Real Deal

Hades remodel confirmed.

I thought of something funny.... Gaydes.... :D

Well, if no one has anything else to say on Hades, let's move on to Apollo. ETA 3 hours, because I'm hopped up on caffeine right now.

Apollo has remained relatively unchanged since his introduction, but has consistently been one of the best ADCs in the game, due to his massive utility without compromising on damage or mobility. He's known to be an absurdly safe ADC due to his quick and easy hard CC, his protections buff, and massive mobility.



Problems

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Audacity is what makes his damage too good. While it may be conditional and unpredictable, he still can give himself higher DPS than Artemis, which is unacceptable.


So Beautiful is fine. Boring, but fine.


Serenade is frankly, a tank's CC on an ADC. This makes him nearly impossible to gank when playing a melee god, gives him fantastic dueling potential and surprising survivability. Basically, picture everything you hate about ***bha's Mez, add a protections steroid on top of that, and give it to an ADC. It even has a scaling CD.

The Moves is an escape that gives him more AoE CC, and an insane amount of mobility - both instant (escape ability) and for overall distance (speed buff).


Across The Sky...is frankly overpowered. Like, it can be used to escape. To splitpush. To engage on small fights. To secure kills. To chase down weakened enemies. It scales well in both base damage and scalings.


Each of these skills, and passive, are fine on their own, but together, they make Apollo less of a "jack-of-all-trades" and more into a "master-of-all." He has massive mobility, CC, damage, and utility, all on one ADC. He needs a nerf.

My Suggestions: I suggest changing his ultimate to have a flat 110 second cooldown. If he wants to spend it for [reason], he's going to have to suffer the consequences more keenly.

Serenade also needs a change, from 0.7-2.3 seconds to 1-2 seconds, and a flat 18 second cooldown. The protections steroid will also be removed, because granting a high DPS ADC that's not Graves with good escapability a protections buff is stupid.

Audacity now grants 25/30/35/40/45/50% attack speed, scaling with the levels he'd rank up his ultimate. But this won't be a complete nerf.

So Beautiful now grants a stack of Audacity for each enemy it hits. Gains 2 stacks if hitting an enemy god. Same for The Moves, that grants 2 stacks per god. The idea is that you get a weaker buff that's more reliable, giving him some consistency.

Hopefully, this will weaken his DPS, but not inadvertently so. He'll be pretty strong in the laning phase, being able to proc it easily with each minion wave, but late game, he'll still have to work for his stacks, albeit he'll gain them far more easily than before.

As a final, I dunno, bonus sugar cube or something, maybe have him get full stacks after getting a kill? Since he's like Draven and all? Meh.

Alternatively, here's a simpler version for HiRez's greedy little hive mind: Ult CD raised to 110 seconds. Passive attack speed reduced to 75%. Serenade cooldown raised to 18 seconds.

Well, judging by the lull in replies, no one has anything to say here. I'll be moving on to Osiris in 5 hours, unless someone has something else to say.

I do not play enough Apollo or fight against good Apollos enough to comment.

Hi, I'll be following this now too, yay :D

Osiris is Osiris. Currently considered to be the most overpowered god in the game right now.



Problems

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His swing chain, frankly, is stupid. It makes his jungle clear completely unrivaled, and on top of that, makes Qin's Sais broken on him.


Fragmented is a weird passive to evaluate. However, what makes this broken is how you can control it. In the jungle, it's easy to spam Sickle Strike, which has a low mana cost, until you have the 8 stacks requires. So basically, when viewed from the perspective of "free Fatalis for ganks", on top of the damage reduction, you can tell that it's a bit too strong.


Sickle Strike is far more powerful than it looks. Not only is this a near-permanent slow, but it's a constant source of ranged damage - cheap, sustainable, and essentially adding +60% of your physical power to your DPS every 5 seconds, even with only one rank.


Spirit Flail is probably the most aggravating slow in the game. This is dead easy to land, even easier when one manages to hit with Spirit Flail first, and makes you SO ****ING SLOW. It also happens to have high base damage and a short cooldown.

Judgement Tether is the most obnoxious one. Combined with his passive, it grants a maximum of a frankly stupid 66% damage reduction against physical attacks, and 50% for magical. That's not even mentioning the stun, which means instant death when playing a god without an escape. What's worse, the damage Osiris takes isn't reduced - it's the damage the target DEALS, which means that there is no counterplay by attacking other enemies, and makes it another support-like ability.


Lord of the Afterlife...honestly, isn't that bad. Like, it's annoying to have 0% healing and to be rooted for 0.8 seconds, but all things considered, this isn't the worst ultimate nor the best ultimate in the game. It's just there.


The reason why Osiris is broken is in the way his kit flows together. On paper, it sounds fine, but the problem is his fork. Thing.

Osiris has two close-range threats. His slowing combo, and his stun. In both cases, one MUST use an escape to get out, or risk 1v1ing Osiris. Now, the problem is, you have only one escape to use against two threats - and with his mobility and his semi-perma-slow, Osiris has no problem crossing the gap (Not to mention, the 3 second 40% slow will outlast any escape used). Combined with his massive damage reduction, it is nearly impossible to 1v1 the guy (especially with his damage reduction and his ability to negate healing), and he will nearly always be able to catch up to you. And when he does, well, he kills you, he either stuns you for 1.4 seconds or inflicts massive burst damage, or both. Morton's fork, both choices are bad news, etc.

Basically, he's not fun and he's not balanced due to his ability to make the enemy's choices feel meaningless. I think we should be giving him a real weakness, and/or reduce his ability to make the enemy unable to escape and outplay him and outduel him. For example, weakening his swing chain would hurt his early game, on top of reducing the damage from Qin's Sais, which could be enough. Or you could reduce his damage reduction. Or give an ability a longer cooldown. Or something.

I don't think Fragmented is all that broken.
It's actually pretty hard to time it just right that you have Fragmented activated and all your abilities are on cooldown. Using Sickle Strike in the jungle will probably (I'll try this) drain your mana too much. It'll slow down your clear a lot (untill you get some attack speed).

Sickle Strike does need a nerf imo. Increase the cooldown to about 8 (?). The slow on this one is fine imo, so is the damage.

Spirit Flail is broken. Damage is fine, but remove the damn slow. I mean, a 40% slow (seriously, everyone can hit that on top of Sickle Strike so the slow is kinda guaranteed) is ****ing stupid (well, sort of a 60% slow). He also gets 20% speed buff, so without sprint you're ****ed. Even with an escape your ****ed. My suggeston: Remove the damn slow. Just do it. It's just op.


Lord of the Afterlife is fine.