Crusher Buffs And Changes
Changelog
Base Stats
tweak: Health increased to 600, from 550.
tweak: Armor increased to 35, from 30.
tweak: Movement Speed increased to Tier 3, from Tier 2.
tweak: Plasma Regen decreased to Tier 6, from Tier 7.
tweak: Slash Cleave Ratio increased to 0.65, from 0.40.
tweak: Slash damage decreased to 30, from 40.
tweak: Slash slow duration decreased to 0.7 seconds, from 2.
tweak: Re-added Cleave slow. Cleave slow duration decreased to 1.8 seconds, from 2.5.
tweak: Cleave CDR amount increased to 0.7 seconds, from 0.5
Abilities
tweak: Charge cooldown decreased to 12 seconds, from 14.
tweak: Charge damage decreased to 55, from 60.
tweak: Charge stun/knockdown duration decreased by 50%.
tweak: Charge plasma cost increased to 30, from 5.
tweak: Stomp cooldown decreased to 16 seconds, from 18.
tweak: Stomp damage increased to 70, from 65.
tweak: Stomp knockdown duration increased to 0.5 seconds, from 0.2.
tweak: Stomp slow duration decreased to 0 seconds, from 1.
tweak: Stomp plasma cost increased to 70, from 20.
tweak: Shield explosion immunity duration increased to 3 seconds, from 2.5.
tweak: Shield duration increased to 12 seconds, from 7.
tweak: Shield plasma cost increased to 50, from 20.
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Details
Crusher has become something of a glass cannon as of lately. It would be okay if that's what it's supposed to be, but looking at its design, abilities, description, and even the name, I have a feeling that this is not the case. As it is right now, Crusher excels far too much at singling out a lone marine and blowing them up without any further counterplay. If you get hit by the charge (Sometimes Marines can't even see the charge because it's outside their field of vision), you're pretty much guaranteed to die before you even have the chance to get back up. It's okay to have a stun, but when that stun is a guaranteed one shot that you're not always able to anticipate, I don't think it's very fair, or fun.
Likewise, Crusher lacks the durability to do anything else after it demolishes its target, leading to it almost always having to run away. What's the point of having CDR on its slashes if it almost always needs to flee from battle before any of its abilities can go off cooldown again? It seems meaningless, like a bunch of ideas were thrown together that ultimately didn't work. Crusher should be a caste that thrives in the heart of battle, not a caste that excels at picking off a single marine and running back. These changes are an attempt to bring Crusher back closer to what I think it was originally meant to be.
Also, the plasma costs were abysmally low- Even if your abilities DID come off of cooldown, there was never any actual decision making you had to do. It just didn't make sense. Crusher needs to rely less on a flawed, unfair ability to be successful, and more on other, somewhat-fairer tools, instead.
Edit: Even with the above information, it appears that the vast scope and scale of the changes I have made to Crusher has left some people thinking that I am completely insane, and have no particular objective in mind. Hopefully, directly going over each change will make things a little more clearer, at the cost of making this MR take even longer to read.
Health and Armor increase: Crusher feels a bit too squishy now, especially for the playstyle I want to enforce.
Movement Speed increase and Slash slow decrease: These changes are one and the same. It would feel better for the Crusher player to move faster, meanwhile, to compensate for that extra speed, its slow on a single target has been drastically reduced, to the point where you can no longer chain-slow people, and that change should make it feel better for marines trying to escape. Chaining slows with your slash made slashing for Crusher way too braindead and easy, so this should overall place a higher emphasis on skill, while still feeling more fair to both players.
Slash damage decrease: With the significant buff to both its durability and speed, I felt that it was fitting to take power away from somewhere. As things currently are, it only takes three (sometimes even two) slashes to break somebody's foot. Considering the increased speed will make this even easier to do without having to actually land a charge, I felt like taking away 10 power from its slash was fair play, and speaking of charge, between that and stomp, Crusher already does a shit ton of damage to one target. If you land your combo on someone now, you'll have to commit harder to killing them, and that brings up the next change.
Charge changes in general: This is by far the biggest problem I (and from what I've seen, most people in general) have with Crusher. I wish I could bring the old charge back, but I'm not good enough at coding to do so, and it seems like there are also a good amount of people (Particularly on the dev side) who are against it, so I've done the best that I can do. The range was reduced so that assassinating people from outside their field of vision with only a split second of reaction time is no longer possible, and the stun was reduced because it lasts so long (Like, close to 6 seconds) that getting hit by it was usually a guaranteed death. Of course, these two changes draw a massive amount of power away from the ability, so in order to compensate, I lowered its cooldown so players have access to it more. Another change that I made in order to compensate is that the windup is now slightly shorter- This should hopefully be throwing a bone, however small, to the people who hate the windup time on charge in general. You can still react to a Crusher charging, of course- It's just a little bit harder now, which is fair. Also, with both the charge damage and stun duration decreased, as well as the reduced slash damage, you are now all but REQUIRED to have to spend your stomp if you want to blow someone up. Before, the damage of both were so high that you could oftentimes kill someone without using stomp before they had the chance to get up. This will emphasize decision making more, and the stomp change below coincides with this.
Stomp changes in general: Normally, I'm against removing ANYTHING from the game, but I do genuinely feel like both the knockdown and slow on stomp could not both exist without holding the other back. Seeing as how Crusher still has plenty of AOE slows, between the reintroduced Cleave slow and the 3.5 second slow on Charge (Which isn't mentioned anywhere but in the code itself), I figured that Crusher would already have enough slows, and considering the main point of stomp was to get you out of bodyblocking situations, I felt removing the slow on stomp was a necessary sacrifice to make saving your stomp after a successful charge a lot more rewarding. For comparison, the new knockdown time is 2 and a half times shorter than Burrower's Tremor.
Shield changes: Just too short. Considering that a lot of Crusher's bulk comes from its shield, having your shield run out on you in the middle of a fight is just stupid, and feels horrible. Now, in almost all cases, your shield will actually have to be worn down in order for it to disappear. Also, the explosion damage immunity was raised just a little bit, just to further strengthen the whole 'T3 that's hard to blow up' thing it has going on.
Cleave damage increase, Cleave CDR increase, and Cleave slow reintroduction: As things are right now, Cleave does almost nothing. That's somewhat okay, because Crusher has a lot of single target damage, but since I'm reducing that, I feel like it's also right that I take the opportunity to make Cleaving actually feel like it's doing something again. Overall, a bit more emphasis has been placed on dealing AOE Damage, instead of single target damage. It's still possible to blow up one person with Crusher, even if there's more counterplay and you need to commit harder (Which is a good thing, if you ask me), but now you have the additional option of trying to deal meaningful splash damage, instead. Basically, Cleave exists again. You have the option to go for that sweet splash damage, and additional CDR reduction.
Plasma changes: These are just so that Crusher has to actually pay attention to its plasma bar again. Should make Crusher players think a little bit more when they're using their abilities.
Related Issues
Closes