Let's talk Blade Master

[yseraw 10]

I've been playing a fair bit of Blade Master recently; it's only 75 at the moment and it does feel strong, which is good. The only issue is: it feels like it only has three skills. The "Crit damage" either simply does not work, only works for left-clicks (a possibility I guess, but there's literally no reason to ever left-click a target, furthering the point), or is way lower than the purported 15% chance to do 3x damage. 

 

To be honest, it would be fine to just nix the crit knife damage skill all together and add in anything else. It doesn't really fit BM's play style since if you're not getting kills with the ult you're going to want to be backstabbing in your downtime anyway. 

 

Of course, if the crit actually worked then the 55~ damage body right-clicks would be 150+ and instantly kill, which would be interesting.

Personally, I think BM has enough great damage with a stab + ult and would do well with the crit damage being replaced with +30-50 health or something. There have been many rounds when I've clutched a 1v3 or 1v4, and that feels good. I often buy a ring of regen to help with survivability: the 125 hp does wonders. 

 

 

The other small quality of life chance would be altering the weird delay between coming out of Wind Walk and starting up Blade Storm. I can't tell you the amount of times when I've stabbed someone in Wind Walk, or simply just ran up to them trying to get in a good position, and then getting merked because my ult never went off for like 3~ seconds afterwards. Since BM works with only 3 reliable skills atm, the Wind Walk is crucial to getting around and into positions where you're not instantly killed before you can Blade Storm effectively. 

 

I think Hornycat's "knife race necessity" comments accurately explains the issue here: without Wind Walk, the Master has none of the quintessential knife race qualities (speed, invis, damage mitigation outside of the ult) and would just be sluggishly running around the entire time desperately trying to get a decent Storm going on via picks. With Walk, you can become evasive via stealth and have enough speed to get out of sticky situations when Mirror image doesn't proc.

 

Also, Mirror image is interesting. Sometimes there are many rounds when it doesn't proc once. Then when it does, it procs like 2-3+ times in the same round, which is odd. 

 

All in all, I enjoy the race, it is powerful and does cause alot of complaints when played meaningfully (I love this version of blade storm), these are just minor changes that could help with overall cohesion.

 

Thanks for reading. 

 

Edit: Also, people sometimes mention that the range on the ult extends past the red ring's visuals. I think the ult's range is perfectly fine, considering all of the points I just listed; if the ring was just a bit bigger to reflect the area effected, that would help with the clarity and stop some of the "wtf I was out of the range, that ult is broken" worries. 

Edited January 17, 2015 by yseraw

[B-cock #1 641]

I would like the ult to properly display it's intended range or nerfed accordingly.

 

Personally I think it's fine the way it is, the ultimate is its staple and it's a very good one at that. It has it's better maps like pretty much every other knife race.

[HCMikey 248]

Here are my issues with Blade Master.
 

1. The ultimate effect is very misleading and doesn't exactly tell you when you are out of range when you are on the receiving end.

2. The chaining of skills between its ability and its ultimate is so unintuitive. You would think that during your ability you would be able to activate your ultimate at the cost of having no more spirit walk when you press your ultimate key, but apparently not.

3. The chance of the extra knife damage has to be increased significantly, to about 25-30%. Blade master, and knife races in general don't right click enough in one round to justify such a low percentage like the one we have now. If you count the average amount of times you right click anyone in one round, you'll realize it isn't as high as you think. I think many people forget this. I'd rather have knife races lean slightly towards the overpowered side than the underpowered side.

4. That Spawn skill seems so out of place and doesn't even compliment blade master, it ruins a potential kill sometimes . Replace it with one that reduces all your cooldowns [both ability and ultimate] by 2-3 seconds whenever you successfully left click an enemy. It brings the left click into play nicely and there are some really interesting things you can do with just this skill alone. It supports both spirit walk and your ultimate and it acts as a sort of killstreak reward where you can chain spirit walks or ultimates as long as you get kills.

 

5. If the delay for the ultimate after spirit walk can't be fixed, then adjust the ultimate so that it gets some type of buff if activated right after spirit walk.

Edited January 17, 2015 by HornyCat

[Gamer4125 40]

does cause alot of complaints when played meaningfully (I love this version of blade storm)

 

My biggest complaint about Blade Master is that you can't be ult immune to it. If I can be ult immune to Flame Pred and Tiny, I should be able to be ult immune to Blade Master. Also you shouldn't be able to sit under palace in mirage and ult and kill anyone above you.

[Name 2616]

 

Edit: Also, people sometimes mention that the range on the ult extends past the red ring's visuals. I think the ult's range is perfectly fine, considering all of the points I just listed; if the ring was just a bit bigger to reflect the area effected, that would help with the clarity and stop some of the "wtf I was out of the range, that ult is broken" worries. 

Ping. This is a ping issue. Always will be.

[B-cock #1 641]

Ping. This is a ping issue. Always will be.

I have the lowest ping in the server and I still get hit from an extra 5-10 yards away

[MrCoolness 547]

Thank you for taking your time to comment on this creation of mine.

 

Firstly, I created Blade Master to closely resemble the Warcraft Blade Master. All the skills I took directly from Warcraft so that we can have some actual Warcraft heroes in our War3 mod I will take a look at the critical strikes if you say that it appears defective, but the skill in Warcraft was a 15% chance and so I would like to keep it that way. I am not completely against changing the skill as I understand Warcraft and War3 are two very different things.

 

Now, I will address the transition from the wind walk to the ultimate for both you & hornycat. The delay between the two is there, and it is there on purpose. During the initial release the most immediately overwhelming part of Blade Master was that it could use the ult and wind walk simultaneously. I disabled the ability and made it so that the two cannot be interchanged for balance purposes.

 

Now, the ultimate range is perfectly accurate. It only appears inaccurate. The ring that is initially released is done so at a specific location, however the player is constantly in motion and the damage from the release is immediate and so the ring does not seem to follow appropriately because you appear to have "evaded" it in a sense by reaching past the end of the ring... but it is not the case I will not be reworking it because it is too much work for a cosmetic.

 

The respawn skill was meant to initially create several clones that moved in random sequence according to how you moved. However it was too difficult for me to make moving clones and work with collision detection and all that jazz, so I settled for a respawn as if in Warcraft when you kill a clone it just goes poof. If you want to play a knife race that relies on combos, have a try at hand of god. It is a difficult race to play but can be extremely rewarding

 

I like the idea of giving a buff if you activate it in sequence, but we will see. Thanks for the thread.

 

 

 

P.s. you can't be ult immune to Blade Master because his ultimate disables his attack, and that would render him completely useless just because you're ultimate immune... Not to mention ultimate immunity was meant to be an immunity to harmful affects directed at exactly you (mainly magic damage), and not an immunity to AOE types of damage.

[HCMikey 248]

Yeah, hand of God is by no means "extremely rewarding" and I know buffing that race is a more delicate and much harder task but that's another thread for another day. I understand the delay and I understand why we can't have both spirit walk and the ultimate simultaneously on, what I don't understand is why I have to wait till the end of spirit walk to activate my ultimate, just let me cut it short. Anytime throughout the duration of spirit walk, I should be able to press my ultimate key, wait 1 second for my delay and then the ultimate kicks in right after spirit walk stops. Right now it's just a really awkward mechanic of blade master.

 

For the ultimate immunity issue someone was asking about, I thought it was pretty common sense why the ultimate wasn't able to be blocked by necklace. I have absolutely no issue with the ultimate having no counter.

 

The changes I would like to see are a buff to the extra knife dmg chance from 15 to 25 percent or add the buff to the ultimate after Spirit walk is activated. It can even be like the way Tiny works with Avalanche and all that shit. Just add something to it based coolness.

Edited January 18, 2015 by HornyCat

[Name 2616]

I have the lowest ping in the server and I still get hit from an extra 5-10 yards away

Not just your ping, your ping + the enemy's ping.

[xmen 983]

Yeah, hand of God is by no means "extremely rewarding" and I know buffing that race is a more delicate and much harder task but that's another thread for another day. I understand the delay and I understand why we can't have both spirit walk and the ultimate simultaneously on, what I don't understand is why I have to wait till the end of spirit walk to activate my ultimate, just let me cut it short. Anytime throughout the duration of spirit walk, I should be able to press my ultimate key, wait 1 second for my delay and then the ultimate kicks in right after spirit walk stops. Right now it's just a really awkward mechanic of blade master. For the ultimate immunity issue someone was asking about, I thought it was pretty common sense why the ultimate wasn't able to be blocked by necklace. I have absolutely no issue with the ultimate having no counter. The changes I would like to see are a buff to the extra knife dmg chance from 15 to 25 percent or add the buff to the ultimate after Spirit walk is activated. It can even be like the way Tiny works with Avalanche and all that shit. Just add something to it based coolness.

Wasn't it changed so that you can cancel the ability by hitting with your knife + then insta ulti?

[HCMikey 248]

Wasn't it changed so that you can cancel the ability by hitting with your knife + then insta ulti?

 

If it was, I'm out of the loop then. Can someone confirm this is the way it is? I haven't played blade master in a while and I won't be able to get on for some time.

Edited January 18, 2015 by HornyCat

[yseraw 10]

Wasn't it changed so that you can cancel the ability by hitting with your knife + then insta ulti?

 

 

If it was, I'm out of the loop then. Can someone confirm this is the way it is? I haven't played blade master in a while and I won't be able to get on for some time.

 

Yes skitt the god tweaked it a little and it feels much more balanced and mechanically sound. You can ult out of wind walk now; knifing had always dropped wind walk but there was just that awkward delay between wind walk dropping and Storm being allowed to activate. 

 

This small tweak really helped the cohesion. I do appreciate MrCoolness coming through with explanations, though. I figured something like that was the case with the ring perception, so that caveat was really geared towards the general comments when people die to it. 

 

 

 

The only other topic is, I appreciate your desire to stay true to canon with the 15% but the thing is: I've leveled BM to 80 now and I have never killed someone with the "x3" damage knife. It always takes two, and it even sometimes takes three right-clicks to kill someone. Triple the damage proccing would look something like Frodo or Takeno one shotting you with a knife to the face, and that simply does not occur with Blade Master. Theoretically it should happen atleast once every 15-round map.

 

I guess it's possible that whenever it did occur the target was sub-100 health and would have died to a single right-click anyway, but that seems highly improbable.

Edited January 19, 2015 by yseraw

[JGWENTWORTH 7]

I have never, ever seen Blademaster do more damage with a knife attack

Either playing BM or being on the receiving end of a stab.