All Gun Builds Are Too Easy to Shut Down. Metal Skin Rebalance Needed.

[rainhaldro]

Spirit builds have dominated the game for too long. Any attempt to build a hero around gun damage is completely shut down by a single cheap item: Metal Skin.

For its price, this item has absurdly strong stats. The cooldown is only 20 seconds — any gun hero simply cannot engage an opponent who has this item. It's pointless.

If you try to engage, you blow all your abilities and end up in an extremely vulnerable position. If you survive, by the time your cooldowns and stamina recover, the enemy has Metal Skin back up in 20 seconds.

So no matter how well you play, farm, or build — in the late game a gun carry turns into a punching bag. You leave spawn, press all your buttons, walk back, and wait for cooldowns, having dealt almost no damage. Then you go out again and the same thing happens.

If a gun carry has a strong K/D ratio, the entire enemy team is already focusing them with ultimates and abilities. Metal Skin removes any remaining chance to fight back or help your team.

Imagine if there were an equivalent item for 3,200 souls that gave full spirit damage immunity for 5 seconds on a 20-second cooldown. It would be laughable and unplayable. Metal Skin is stronger than Armor Plated in my opinion, yet costs half as much.

Suggested rebalance options:

1. Reduce the active duration to 2.5–3 seconds. The current 5 seconds allow you to completely avoid all gun damage and the abilities that amplify it, letting you suppress a gun hero with zero consequences.
2. Increase the cooldown to 30–40 seconds.
3. Remove full immunity and replace it with 60–80% damage reduction. This would at least allow finishing off an enemy. Currently anyone can walk away too easily under that invulnerability.
4. Remove full immunity to bullet passives. Right now you have zero chance to deal damage or lifesteal through passives.

I think this item needs at least a test rebalance. If the adjusted stats prove reasonable, a similar item could be introduced for spirit damage as well — adding more balance, build variety, and survivability to the game.

 

[lordbeanthev]

Wrong place to post, scroll down to private feedback.

 

[skillitronic3]

can you, please, share with some match id where you think, metal skin ruined everything?

 

[blamagen]

Gun carries are supposed to be stronger late game cos they don't need to worry about cooldown to deal damage. If you make their counters much weaker, then they're going to be meta... gun metas existed before and you wouldn't want that.

 

[Hishui]

What if it formed a bullet absorbing shield around the player, scaling with level. And only had a chance, say 75%, of blocking bullet-based effects?