Guan Yu, sadly, has fallen off to obscurity ever since they nerfed his signature skill, Taolu Assault. Now, it is basically a smaller, less bursty version of Berserker Barrage, with a minor defense buff attached. Combine this with his other only decent abilities, and Guan simply doesn't shine anywhere. His healing isn't great, his sustained damage isn't great, and his buffing and debuffing isn't great, either. His initiation still works, but that is essentially his only significant trait, not enough to carve out a niche for him.
Painless is just an extension of his Conviction, and not a real passive. He could use a real passive, either by shoving Painless into a part of Conviction and making a new passive, or tweaking the passive to interact with him in other ways, instead of just one skill.
Conviction is a decent healing skill, but its lack of scalings and the conditional heal boost hurt its use, and the 45 protections for 2 seconds are insignificant, especially in a meta of hyper-scaling early-game powerhouse sustained-damage burst caster autoattacking assassins such as Mercury or Osiris. And typing that sentence already makes me want to kill myself, so I suppose we're on the right track. It needs something, because as a raw healing skill, it's lackluster, and I don't want to make him a blind heal-bot.
Warrior's Will is okay. A small dash that slows people and reduces cooldowns. Good utility, I suppose, but not much else. The pocketknife of Guan Yu's skills, basically. Not much wrong with it, but it could be better. I don't know the "how."
Taolu Assault is now a mediocre damage skill with little utility. It forces you to sit for 3 seconds channeling, and the payoffs for doing so are underwhelming. It needs a buff to make it worthwhile.
Cavalry Charge is still a cool ultimate. I mean, if you have a rework idea, by all means, shoot, but I think Guan needs more tweaking then reworking.
This quote might also be of use, in respect to balancing healers.
Quoted:
The idea of a healer Champion was thought up in season 1, back when the design team thought that it was a harmless and popular niche. Since then the dev team has declared that healers don't belong in PVP games, stating they warp game balance and are extremely binary (either they heal so much they make any attempts to damage their team pointless, or don't heal enough and thus are basically useless). While other champions with healing abilities bring other things to the table, and thus their heals don't need to be overpoweringly strong, Soraka is a dedicated healer that brings nothing but healing to the team, and thus she's basically impossible to balance correctly and has received nerf after nerf. Right now Soraka is basically in the game to keep the people who demand a healer be in the game happy. But in exchange, she'll never be completely viable since healing is so inherently unbalancing.
I will spam this quote in every healer discussion. I think it should also be included in the letter to HiRez, because they obviously did not read this.
Make him a Guardian again, give Conviction some Magical Contribution, get rid of the horse and put back Tactician's Advantage.
And yes, I am completely serious in saying that I want Guardian Guan Yu back.
Honestly, his old ultimate was OP, even by today's standards. You'd get about 4 seconds of CC, and 2.5 seconds of hard CC, along with massive AoE damage that would be nearly impossible to juke.
I also dislike the idea of making him magical - I'd rather have him as a PHYSICAL guardian. (There's also not much difference between Guardian and Warrior Guan other than different damage type and a different ultimate, to be honest.)
As for hybrid contributions, well, in Smite, such things don't exist, because depth in a game isn't a thing according to HiRez. But I do love the idea.
I think that Conviction should be changed to a AoE buff that is strengthens by nearby enemies and/or allies. The healing feels out of place, however I do like the fact that Guan Yu is a sustain god (both in damage and lane). So make Painless grant him some form of sustain, like give him increased HP5 whenever he hits somebody with a skill which is increased when he hits an enemy god.
Warrior's Will I like this skill, all leaps in Smite fall under the "Large distance, long cooldown" leap and this is really the only one that doesn't (not as much at least). Its a bit underwhelming though so either buff its numbers and/or increase the cooldown reduction you get from hitting a god but make it only effect Warrior's Will.
Taolu Assault this skill needs to be able to steal protection again, it wasn't even op and was the main strength of Guan Yu. If its to much then make it just grant him protection or make it only grant him half of the protection shredded.
His ultimate is fine and pretty much the only thing he has going for him right now.
Warrior's Will I like this skill, all leaps in Smite fall under the "Large distance, long cooldown" leap and this is really the only one that doesn't (not as much at least). Its a bit underwhelming though so either buff its numbers and/or increase the cooldown reduction you get from hitting a god but make it only effect Warrior's Will.
Maybe give the slow some scaling, up to like 40 or something?
Taolu Assault this skill needs to be able to steal protection again, it wasn't even op and was the main strength of Guan Yu. If its to much then make it just grant him protection or make it only grant him half of the protection shredded.
It was pretty damned OP when he was a good support. Your ADC would deal close to true damage to the enemy ADC for the first like 10 min of the game. But I think it can work now, at least I hope it can work. Because he is pretty weak without it.
I think you should keep the whole "Hitting X ability reduces cooldowns" thing... because I think that whole idea opens up a lot of room for some pretty crazy strategies and it really gives Guan Yu his own feel.
Thanks to Ferrum for making the sig pic! He's beast af people.
IGN: BestJanusNA
What I'm listening to right now: Derp -Bassjackers
Seriously, stop saying this.
Hi-Rez decided to nerf all warriors, they are not going to change it back.
So just try to work around it, instead of through it.
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