I noticed what i hope to be a bug in the capstone function with Amara’s Avatar.
Video link below to watch what im talking about.
Avatar:
“Amara’s Action Skill can be activated while it’s cooling down. This skill may only be used once per completed cooldown.
Additionally, increases Amara’s Max Rush Stacks.
Additionally, if Amara’s Action Skill kills an enemy, it refunds half of her Rush stack.
Current Effect:
Bonus Rush Stacks: +10”
In the video he hits and kills 2 targets with what im guessing is Phasecast, while being capped on Rush stacks, now he has 20 going active, and generated 13 in reserve.
He then casts it again on a new target that also dies, and now he has 33 active stacks, OK i didnt know you could have more actives running than what the passive states you can have in total.
Is that a bug? Thats not gripe tbh.
Heres the problem… casting the ability a second time restarts the entire skill cooldown !
Its a coding accident, right?
Because not only does it make the skill clunky, it breaks synergy with Rush itself, and every power the other trees offer to help her offence and defence, and most of all it complete ruins her core strength, dotting reliably.
I urge you to fix it so that it starts cooling down the first use, and then you have whatever remains on cooldown to make use of the 2nd one.
Might be a deliberate balancing thing. Maybe that includes the rush stack “anti synergy” as well. Players will tend to double tap their action skill, but the second one won’t benefit from as many rush stacks (on paper, I’ve seen the weird stuff going on with the refund mechanic).
So they either have less uptime and doubletap, but do less damage; or grab some extra rush stacks for the second one but have more downtime.
I’m also pretty disappointed that the cooldown restarts. Should at least be stated in the skill description I reckon.
I was bummed too when I realized that the cooldown resets, but I highly doubt it’s unintentional. You can still stagger your skills to net more uptime on all your abilities that trigger off action skill usage, just not twice as often.
They could just reduce effect and dmg on the second use if its a balance problem towards burst dmg/CC.
Phasegrasp 7s CD on 1st use and 60% less effect/dmg on second use.
The resetting of the cooldown is a bummer, but it seems intentional.
Concerning the 33 rush stacks - I think it’s intentional as well.
Yes, you can only have a max. of 20 rush stacks, BUT remember it’s not rush stacks that give you stats at all. Only consumed rush stacks are giving the stats and technically they aren’t described as having a limit. This seems intentional I think.
Also, it doesn’t seem like you could stack the rush buff indefinitely if you reduce your action skill’s cooldown with for example skill points, artifacts, guardian ranks, etc. below 20 sec (the duration of the rush buff) to refresh the buff.
As shown in the video every rush buff decays on its own - When the Amara had 33 stacks you can see that first 20 buff stacks decay and then the 13 buff stacks that were gained on the 2nd action skill.
It is definitely a designe choice. If they wanted each cast to have a CD they could code it like FL4Ks Rakk Attack Action skill and have each cast be on rolling charges each having a set CD rather then a conjoined one. We use to see this all the time in games like World of Warcraft where some people could copy and or re cast spells with long CDs bit the CD gose back to full.
Avatar is definitely designed for a “Rush” build where you focus on bursts of power where you obliterate the enemies but when Rush slows down you need a bit to ramp up again. A skill like this is designed in this way to help you extend and amplify your burst. It’s not intended to make your Rush Burst just last forever which would defeat the idea of a burst of power play style.
The way i see Avatar is its designed to keep her powers in the game for longer and to be hands on when you want your passives to do the job a little better.
Its all about dotting and keeping all her action skill triggers in the game as much as possible, and as permanent as possible, remember dots take time to really go up to full (id imageine that its normaly 3s dot timer and 6s with Anima) and she invests heavily for that job description as is.
Im not saying it wont still be “ok” but it could offer her so much more of a wiggle room in how she is played.
After reviewing her skill tree I would like to highlight the main synergies “Avatar” has with skills in the same tree. Based on these synergies I think I know how they imagine most players using it. Now Some of these im not 100% if this is how they work because the game isn’t out yet.
First off and I think this is one of the biggest parts of this is “Do Harm”. “Do Harm” adds action skill damage after using your action skill. I would imagine this applies to the action skill that consumed the “Rush” stacks. This would make the First Cast do quite a bit of damage based on pre stacking. Now the 20 second clock for the action skill damage buff starts ticking.
Assuming you are also using “Violent Tapestry” I believe you should also gain some stacks if you action skill applies its elemental. Now if you are also using an elemental weapon you will build some more stacks during this 20 second duration.
Next is “Laid Bare”. This gives you 8 seconds of more damage on the targets you hit with your action skill.
Now assuming that “Do Harm” can stack upon recast rather then just replace the previous buff your second Phasecast will do a truck load of damage and I would hope kill your targets. Now you have a bunch of stacks back so your ramp up time for you next burst is even easier. This is all theoretical based on how I assume some skills work in tandem. If “Do Harm” dose not stack you still have “Laid Bare” to help kill your target with you second Phasecast.
I would also like to add in as a bonus “Anima”, “Tempest”, and “Wildfire” are all right as the start of the Fist of the Elements tree. At Based Phasecast will be doing Shock and going for “Tempest” will net you “Soul Fire” to give you the option between two elements.
The windows may be short but when played right will be DEVASTATING. (Ques up Let the Bodies hit the Floor as Phasecast comes off CD)
narfkeks
(May this forum rest in peace - Davin Dittrich)
#10
I also think that it is intentional and if you think about potential bonuses from gear, it does make sense, as even with full cooldown, we aren’t that far from having 100% uptime on most post-action-skill bonuses. 40% additional action skill cooldown rate is enough for permanent “Samsara”. Now, if we think about bonuses from past class mods, we can expect at least 1 cooldown-focused class mod.
So, yeah, it hurts the playstyle quite a bit, but it doesn’t completely ruins it (edit: yes, my first reaction was probably quite the overreaction). Amara will be just a bit more reliant on gear now.
Even if Avatar works as intended and ends up being quite good, it would not be the elegant choice compared to using ur second cast without triggering cooldown - like from a design perspective. I wouldn’t mind trading some dmg for the utility of using 2 action skills in one cooldown window.
Now you’re pretty much forced to double cast your action skill in order to getting the cooldown rolling again. You get a dps penalty for not doing so.
Having the second cast not trigger an additional cooldown would give you more freedom of placing that second cast.
1 Like
narfkeks
(May this forum rest in peace - Davin Dittrich)
#12
True. At least they should have updated the description to something closer to Fl4ks “Rakk Attack”. “Amara’s Action Skills now have 2 charges before cooling down” or something like that would be much clearer.
Yes, the description was what led me to believe that you can use the 2 skills in one cooldown window.
A bit off topic: do gearbox employees check these forums for bug reports and feedback?
I guess everyone’s busy these days preparing for launch and the “issue” described here is not a gamebreaker. Was just wondering if things will be addressed properly after launch.
narfkeks
(May this forum rest in peace - Davin Dittrich)
#14
If we believe Gearbox on it, then they are indeed listening to our feedback. They seemed to know for example that many aren’t impressed with how Amara’s and Moze’s Action Skills perform. And Chris Brock said that they are going to patch the game, if changes need to happen.
You shoot and apply as many dots and reload pretty fast, having a classmod that adds more points into “Restless” means that you have a sub 20s cooldown whichever way Avatar will end up working like regarding cooldown trigger.
Here’s the interesting point, her active stacks refresh and stack more on top it, if you have 5 points into “Restless”, and a class mod that adds 3 points, you can essentialy have unlimited amount of stacks going.
As i just learned in that video in my OP, active stacks DO NOT decay but are added onto the old ones with a new timer, making her “Do Harm” “Deliverence” and “Remnant” store untold powers and insane Anarchy potential without downsides.
Edit:
In any case it doesnt change the means on how to make use of Avatar, you still only get reload speed, and dmg bonuses for a very limited amount of time because you cant cut the ability in half. Essentialy she is forced to make a hammer out of her action skills, and we dont know how well damaging action skills scale into end game. Alternatively you can make them into a sort of CC, such as Glamour but they add cooldown penalties and makes it impossible for her to maintain just the active rush stacks.
I cannot stress how important it is for her to have Avatar be exactly as it says on the tin.
Edit2:
I just saw artifacts and classmods that reduces cooldowns. I think we’re semi fine as is
Why does the second cast trigger full cooldown? Because if it didn’t, then they could achieve the exact same results with a lot less work by saying “Cooldown Time for your Action Skill is cut in half”. It’s like @maxeastwood says: this isn’t about keeping your Action Skill up all the time; it’s about giving you a hard-hitting opening burst that you use hoping to inflict massive damage, if not kill outright. After that, you have to wait for the Cooldown to finish so you can Burst again. It makes perfect sense to me.
It’s just not elegant, you pick Avatar and you have to double cast your action skill. Otherwise you loose damage. It doesn’t go well with some of the action skill related buffs, it seems like a waste of great synergy focused playstyle.
There’s a difference between cooldown time cut in half & using it again during cooldown. Being able to use it again during the cooldown gives you some freedom in placing your second skill use.
Sure, having the burst potential is cool and all, maybe even intended to work like that. But in terms of design it’s rather lackluster compared to having that timeframe where you can use ur skill again without any cooldown penalty.
So the fact that the second cast triggers the full Cooldown completely breaks all skills that are supposed to synergize with her Action Skill? The only way they could ever work is for you to get 2 casts per Cooldown?
Frankly, it seems to me that everyone is upset because they got a playstyle in mind based on how they thought the skill worked. When they found out how it actually worked, instead of adjusting how they think the playstyle will work, they instead decided that the only logical answer was that the people who created the game must obviously be wrong; it’s not remotely possible that they built up an entire playstyle idea on incomplete information, after all. That’s not a thing that happens.
