Improving Lerk Bile Bomb
Imbalanxd
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
<div class="IPBDescription">how to make this new ability less useless</div>So I think most people are in agreement that this new ability is essentially useless. Its risky to drop, and has zero reward because of how little damage it does and how slowly it does it. So here's a simple idea on how to make it useful: <b>Make the damage over time effect stack</b>.
What I propose is the following
<ul><li>Reduce the current damage over time effect by 25%</li><li>Increase the duration of the bile bomb effect by 50%</li><li>Increase the cooldown of the bile bomb ability by 1 second</li><li>Allow the effect to be stacked multiple times, each bile bomb adding another stack, linearly multiplying the damage</li><li>Dropping a bile bomb on an already afflicted structure should renew the timer on the effect</li></ul>
I think this would improve the ability to a point where it was considered effective, though not overpowered, and also add some interesting game-play. What I envision is lerks being required to do constant bombing runs in order to really stack up some serious damage on structures. Being able to hit a marine outpost time and time again would be highly effective, but also very risky, as the marines know the lerk must strike again soon in order to maintain the damage, and can prepare.
A change like this would also make it highly beneficial to have "squadrons" of lerks looking for marine structures. A group of 2 to 3 lerks could very quickly stack up some serious damage on any structures they could find. Of course, lerks themselves are not ideal for defending locations, so having too many lerks could be dangerous.
PS
Make catalyse usable on players, giving a primal scream effect. The alien counter to nano shield. In turn, double the energy cost.
What I propose is the following
<ul><li>Reduce the current damage over time effect by 25%</li><li>Increase the duration of the bile bomb effect by 50%</li><li>Increase the cooldown of the bile bomb ability by 1 second</li><li>Allow the effect to be stacked multiple times, each bile bomb adding another stack, linearly multiplying the damage</li><li>Dropping a bile bomb on an already afflicted structure should renew the timer on the effect</li></ul>
I think this would improve the ability to a point where it was considered effective, though not overpowered, and also add some interesting game-play. What I envision is lerks being required to do constant bombing runs in order to really stack up some serious damage on structures. Being able to hit a marine outpost time and time again would be highly effective, but also very risky, as the marines know the lerk must strike again soon in order to maintain the damage, and can prepare.
A change like this would also make it highly beneficial to have "squadrons" of lerks looking for marine structures. A group of 2 to 3 lerks could very quickly stack up some serious damage on any structures they could find. Of course, lerks themselves are not ideal for defending locations, so having too many lerks could be dangerous.
PS
Make catalyse usable on players, giving a primal scream effect. The alien counter to nano shield. In turn, double the energy cost.
Comments
Except you can pretty much never run out of eneergy when spiking, you should always be able to at least do something. At the current energy costs you either get to drop a few bilebombs or you spore and nothing else.
You can drain you're energy bar when spiking. However, since individual spikes cost very little energy, the practical effect that it just reduces the spike attack's dps when it gets to zero.
This. Xarius, try draining your energy with spore and then switch to spikes. Spikes will still shoot with the exact same fire delay (correct me if it's slightly lower) as when you actually had energy. I always wrongly assumed that the dps stayed the same, though, silly me. I'm now curious as to how much damage they do without energy. :)
I think you misunderstand. At zero energy, shots fire slower so the Lerk ultimately deals less total damage over time.
Dropping a bile bomb on an already afflicted structure should renew the timer on the effect
I think this would be a good implementation of bilebomb
the dmg can get crazy but only if no one stops the lerk from reapplying timer
(you can also place a maximum number of stacks allowed on a structure to put an upper cap on dmg)
I know one way. Give it back to the gorge.
Lerks need other tools to be relevant throughout the game. Bilebomb isn't one of them.