Yami Akane
New member
Before everything else, I'm not a native english speaker, so you there might be some grammatical errors here and there.
The idea shared in this thread is just a thought that I had while seeing Zerggy's gameplay with new Haze after the last patch (Items being usable while Haze is ulting), and the thing that stucked in my mind is: Why is it just Haze that doesn't have an actual spirit build? Or that actually uses much of spirit items in general? Most of spirit items she uses are just to support his gun damage (bullet shredder) or utility items (silence glyph, decay, slowing hex), and she has a lot of things that could escalate with spirit such as her ult and also how her fixation works, and I'm not talking about more damage, but ways for the spirit to interact with these abilities.
And if you consider characters that aren't designed to have spirit power as its main build, such as Abrams
The biggest problem with Haze is that she is a pub stomper, she is a really good character in high mmr, but she isn't as a good stomper as she is in lower mmrs, since people aren't used into buying counter items (knockdown, curse, silence glyph) or protection items (improved armor, ethereal shift, metal skin etc). And because of that, most of the people who complains about her, - which is understandable - are people from these low to mid ranks. So my idea is, make spirit somehow interacts on Fixation's Stacks and the amount of people her Bullet Dance hits, explanation below.
CONSIDERATIONS: Guys, everything that I wrote below are just my opinions on how I feel about Haze and what I would change.
FIXATION CHANGES
Fixation currently has without any upgrade a 0.2 extra gun damage per stack, while at max upgrade, it increases its extra gun damage per stack to 0.35, to a total of 28 extra gun damage (8 at tier 1, 16 at tier 2). So why not make her spirit power increases how much stacks she gets, instead of giving her a flat max stacks based on its upgrade? For example:
- Fixation's stacks scales with x0.35 spirit power (rounded down), so if you have 100 spirit power with items, it's max stacks would be increased by 35, giving a total of 75 stacks.
- Decrease the t3 damage per stack upgrade to 0.3, instead of 0.35 (or even 0.25).
So if you have Surge of Power + Improved Spirit + Bullet Resist Shredder + Quicksilver Reload, you would have 104 spirit on your Fixation, it would give her an extra 36 stacks, maxing your stacks to 76, giving you a total of 22 extra gun damage.
"Would it make her worse? Since this would make her more dependant on Spirit Items?"
Yes, and I already considered this, Haze needs too much Fire Rate for her to be useful in the game, so it's pretty common for any Haze player to rush such items like Burst Fire and Swift Striker, which makes Haze's player life easier to max out her Fixation stacks, but we could do these changes:
- We could make Fixation a passive ability with an active condition, such as Mirage's third ability, in which if you active it, you "consume" half of the stacks from an enemy that has any amount of Fixation stacks (like a targeted ability), and you would receive the same amount of Fire Rate as the amount of stacks consumed. So if you would consume half of 80 stacks, it would give you an extra 40% Fire Rate, which is comparable to Burst Fire. This effect could persists for like 10 seconds, and this would give her space for being less of a Farm Bot, by making her having extra Fire Rate (which she is basically built around), without her need that much Fire Rate items, which could give you space for defensive or situational items, like armor, esc resilience, reactive barrier etc. (I rarely see even pro/high mmr haze on asc/eternus build any defensive items, because it slow down her build)
- With this, I think it would make her less dependable on Spirit items, is instead of giving +40 extra stacks on t2, it could be decreased to +20, so with the same build, you would have 96, (Surge + Imp Spirit + Bullet Shredder + QR) which would give you a 29 extra gun damage (basically the same amount as you would have with the current Fixation).
BULLET DANCE CHANGES
Her ultimate currently doesn't hit more than one target, and with ricochet, it hits only 3 characters in total, and considering it's completely random, you currently only use while you're 1v1ing someone, it's not worth to use it while in teamfights anymore, which kinda broke the idea of the character, while I still think it's not bad balance wise, I still think it made her a bad character, since she now is EXTREMELY dependant on her Gun, which creates a huge skill gap on what makes a Haze Player being GOOD.
Ideally, what I think would be a great incentive to help both types of gameplay, both those players who just want to spam ult on team fights, and those who wants to have ult as a second option for fight oppression, is somehow make Spirit interacts with the ult. The changes I think would be interesting:
- Make the amount of target be based on the amount of spirit power she has. So for every 80 spirit, she can increase the amount of enemies she hit by 1. Which would be over 6k investment just to have this capacity. So if you have Surge of Power on Ult, Boundless Spirit, Superior Cooldown on Ult, Bullet Resist Shredder and also a random item like Shadow Weave, you could have 202 spirit power after Shadow Weave ambush effect, which would give you 3 targets to hit. But for you to be able to do that, you need to spend 24,400 souls for these items, which is pretty much just an end game or ultra snow balled game. You also wouldn't have spent that much on gun items to support your gun generally speaking, so your gun power would only be increased by Fixation, which you could go over 120 stacks, giving you 36 extra gun damage on max Fixation and 60% fire rate on Fixation usage. While it may sound overwhelming, most people on high mmr lobbies knows how to counter or deny a Haze ult bot spam, and most people on low MMR doesn't farm that much even on 30+ min games, it's not that hard to find people farming less than 40k in a 35~40 min game.
"Wouldn't this make her more abusive through the game?"
To be fair, I think it would, but it's just something I had in mind. While it would make her extremely strong on late game, it would also make her early and mid game weaker because she would be both dependant on gun and spirit items. But since a lot of items both from gun and vitality can give you a lot of spirit items, she might have more options of builds to do, besides the old ricochet + lucky shot.
Some maths of builds, consider that I will be giving her only three Flex Slots in all of these builds!
BUILD 1: M1 and Ult build! - Souls Spent: 39.100
Spirit Power: 61, +5 from Spirit Armor, +12 from Pristine Emblem, +12 from Unstoppable
Weapon Damage: 11.1, 167 DPS, can go up to 34.1 with Fixation.
HP: 2.300~
- Fixation: 61 max spirit, +18 stacks, 78 total, +23 gun damage.
- Bullet Dance: 2 targets (95 spirit on it because of surge of power), can hit 6 enemies (ricochet)
BUILD 2: Fixation Focus/Tank - Souls Spent: 39.900
Spirit Power: 100, +8 from Improved Spirit Armor, +6 from Divine Barrier
Weapon Damage: 12.6, 192 DPS, can go up to 42.6 with Fixation.
HP: 2.500~
Resistance: Bullet - 77% (max Escalating Resilience stack + frenzy buff) // Spirit - 45%
- Fixation: 134 max spirit, +40 stacks, 100 total, +30 gun damage
- Bullet Dance: 2 targets, but no ricochet.
Haze's base Fire Rate would be 52%, with Burst Fire, 82%, with Max Fixation Stack activation, 132%.
BUILD 3: Extremely situational build (building considering what is happening on the game)
Spirit Power: 90, +5 from Spirit Armor, +6 from Slowing Bullets, +9 from Return Fire
Weapon Damage: 12.7, 157 DPS, can go up to 38.8 with Fixation.
HP: 2.400~
Resistance: Bullet - 76% with full Escalating Resilience and Return Fire, Spirit - 22%.
- Fixation: 90 max spirit, +27 extra stacks, 87 total, +26,1 gun damage
- Bullet Dance: 2 targets, but no ricochet.
Haze's Fire Rate would be 24%, with Burst Fire, 54%, with Quicksilver Reload and Kinetic Dash, 89%, with half stacks used, 132%.
Final Comments
I actually doesn't think it is 100% balanced to be 100% clear, but it's just a general idea of her being able to use spirit items to change the way her build works. She would still be able to get max benefit by just going full gun. So if she buys items that doesn't increase her weapon damage directly, such as Return Fire or Enchanter's Barrier, she would still make these items somehow useful through the game, so it wouldn't be useless souls neither it would make the item worthless after lane phase. Since just Reactive Barrier + Enchanter's Barrier for example, is enough to give you an extra 7 stacks (+2.1 extra gun damage), which is more than a t2 gun item would give you, slowing bullets for example, increase your gun damage from 5.6 to 7.06, which is a 1.46 gun damage increase.
Which would also make Haze less bullied in games, it's not that hard to just have your game fully destroyed by an Abrams that build Hunter's Aura and Pointblank or Lifestrike, diving on you with a combo and killing you with 3 to 4 hits. And you wouldn't need to rush Ricochet since you could also use Fixation to receive an extra boost to your Fire Rate before you ult, so set ups for fighting or ulting would be extremely good.
And this would make her more reliable in lower ranks while also making her more reliable on higher ranks. And I think lower rank/mmr players wouldn't be behind, since they would focus on building spirit + ricochet to be able to stomp fights with ultimate, while high rank/mmr players would make the character more useful through the entire game. Since it wouldn't be an easy target, she would a considerable amount of damage, without having to hyper focus on building damage, and she would be more avaiable to 25~30 min games, while still being extremely strong (and might overwhelmingly strong xd) on late game, which doesn't remove the idea of her design, which is to be a late game stomper. But after last update (the update that let Haze use items while using her ult), she got extremely weak and doesn't have the strength for lower mmr games stomps, and she is extremely dependant on set ups and also for you to be extremely good with your aim, which it isn't a problem, I just think the character shouldn't be summarized by "only players with insane aim can play this character". Also, her current WR on deadlocktracker (10th of November) is 47,7%, and in the last 24 hours, it decreased to 45,8%.
Anyway, summarizing the whole concept: Make the character less unviable on early game, by giving her the opportunity to build resistance/sustain items, so she isn't turn into an easy target for soul farming, while giving her enough strength and build possibilities to make her mid game presence stronger, without making it overwhelming/stomping, and letting her shine on those last fights/skirmishers from around 25~30 min games, which are usually when most of the game ends in higher mmr.
If you have any comment, idea, feedback, critique, feel free to tag me on deadlock official discord server, my id and name respectively there are yamiakane and Yami Akane.
The idea shared in this thread is just a thought that I had while seeing Zerggy's gameplay with new Haze after the last patch (Items being usable while Haze is ulting), and the thing that stucked in my mind is: Why is it just Haze that doesn't have an actual spirit build? Or that actually uses much of spirit items in general? Most of spirit items she uses are just to support his gun damage (bullet shredder) or utility items (silence glyph, decay, slowing hex), and she has a lot of things that could escalate with spirit such as her ult and also how her fixation works, and I'm not talking about more damage, but ways for the spirit to interact with these abilities.
And if you consider characters that aren't designed to have spirit power as its main build, such as Abrams
The biggest problem with Haze is that she is a pub stomper, she is a really good character in high mmr, but she isn't as a good stomper as she is in lower mmrs, since people aren't used into buying counter items (knockdown, curse, silence glyph) or protection items (improved armor, ethereal shift, metal skin etc). And because of that, most of the people who complains about her, - which is understandable - are people from these low to mid ranks. So my idea is, make spirit somehow interacts on Fixation's Stacks and the amount of people her Bullet Dance hits, explanation below.
CONSIDERATIONS: Guys, everything that I wrote below are just my opinions on how I feel about Haze and what I would change.
FIXATION CHANGES
Fixation currently has without any upgrade a 0.2 extra gun damage per stack, while at max upgrade, it increases its extra gun damage per stack to 0.35, to a total of 28 extra gun damage (8 at tier 1, 16 at tier 2). So why not make her spirit power increases how much stacks she gets, instead of giving her a flat max stacks based on its upgrade? For example:
- Fixation's stacks scales with x0.35 spirit power (rounded down), so if you have 100 spirit power with items, it's max stacks would be increased by 35, giving a total of 75 stacks.
- Decrease the t3 damage per stack upgrade to 0.3, instead of 0.35 (or even 0.25).
So if you have Surge of Power + Improved Spirit + Bullet Resist Shredder + Quicksilver Reload, you would have 104 spirit on your Fixation, it would give her an extra 36 stacks, maxing your stacks to 76, giving you a total of 22 extra gun damage.
"Would it make her worse? Since this would make her more dependant on Spirit Items?"
Yes, and I already considered this, Haze needs too much Fire Rate for her to be useful in the game, so it's pretty common for any Haze player to rush such items like Burst Fire and Swift Striker, which makes Haze's player life easier to max out her Fixation stacks, but we could do these changes:
- We could make Fixation a passive ability with an active condition, such as Mirage's third ability, in which if you active it, you "consume" half of the stacks from an enemy that has any amount of Fixation stacks (like a targeted ability), and you would receive the same amount of Fire Rate as the amount of stacks consumed. So if you would consume half of 80 stacks, it would give you an extra 40% Fire Rate, which is comparable to Burst Fire. This effect could persists for like 10 seconds, and this would give her space for being less of a Farm Bot, by making her having extra Fire Rate (which she is basically built around), without her need that much Fire Rate items, which could give you space for defensive or situational items, like armor, esc resilience, reactive barrier etc. (I rarely see even pro/high mmr haze on asc/eternus build any defensive items, because it slow down her build)
- With this, I think it would make her less dependable on Spirit items, is instead of giving +40 extra stacks on t2, it could be decreased to +20, so with the same build, you would have 96, (Surge + Imp Spirit + Bullet Shredder + QR) which would give you a 29 extra gun damage (basically the same amount as you would have with the current Fixation).
BULLET DANCE CHANGES
Her ultimate currently doesn't hit more than one target, and with ricochet, it hits only 3 characters in total, and considering it's completely random, you currently only use while you're 1v1ing someone, it's not worth to use it while in teamfights anymore, which kinda broke the idea of the character, while I still think it's not bad balance wise, I still think it made her a bad character, since she now is EXTREMELY dependant on her Gun, which creates a huge skill gap on what makes a Haze Player being GOOD.
Ideally, what I think would be a great incentive to help both types of gameplay, both those players who just want to spam ult on team fights, and those who wants to have ult as a second option for fight oppression, is somehow make Spirit interacts with the ult. The changes I think would be interesting:
- Make the amount of target be based on the amount of spirit power she has. So for every 80 spirit, she can increase the amount of enemies she hit by 1. Which would be over 6k investment just to have this capacity. So if you have Surge of Power on Ult, Boundless Spirit, Superior Cooldown on Ult, Bullet Resist Shredder and also a random item like Shadow Weave, you could have 202 spirit power after Shadow Weave ambush effect, which would give you 3 targets to hit. But for you to be able to do that, you need to spend 24,400 souls for these items, which is pretty much just an end game or ultra snow balled game. You also wouldn't have spent that much on gun items to support your gun generally speaking, so your gun power would only be increased by Fixation, which you could go over 120 stacks, giving you 36 extra gun damage on max Fixation and 60% fire rate on Fixation usage. While it may sound overwhelming, most people on high mmr lobbies knows how to counter or deny a Haze ult bot spam, and most people on low MMR doesn't farm that much even on 30+ min games, it's not that hard to find people farming less than 40k in a 35~40 min game.
"Wouldn't this make her more abusive through the game?"
To be fair, I think it would, but it's just something I had in mind. While it would make her extremely strong on late game, it would also make her early and mid game weaker because she would be both dependant on gun and spirit items. But since a lot of items both from gun and vitality can give you a lot of spirit items, she might have more options of builds to do, besides the old ricochet + lucky shot.
Some maths of builds, consider that I will be giving her only three Flex Slots in all of these builds!
BUILD 1: M1 and Ult build! - Souls Spent: 39.100
Spirit Power: 61, +5 from Spirit Armor, +12 from Pristine Emblem, +12 from Unstoppable
Weapon Damage: 11.1, 167 DPS, can go up to 34.1 with Fixation.
HP: 2.300~
- Fixation: 61 max spirit, +18 stacks, 78 total, +23 gun damage.
- Bullet Dance: 2 targets (95 spirit on it because of surge of power), can hit 6 enemies (ricochet)
BUILD 2: Fixation Focus/Tank - Souls Spent: 39.900
Spirit Power: 100, +8 from Improved Spirit Armor, +6 from Divine Barrier
Weapon Damage: 12.6, 192 DPS, can go up to 42.6 with Fixation.
HP: 2.500~
Resistance: Bullet - 77% (max Escalating Resilience stack + frenzy buff) // Spirit - 45%
- Fixation: 134 max spirit, +40 stacks, 100 total, +30 gun damage
- Bullet Dance: 2 targets, but no ricochet.
Haze's base Fire Rate would be 52%, with Burst Fire, 82%, with Max Fixation Stack activation, 132%.
BUILD 3: Extremely situational build (building considering what is happening on the game)
Spirit Power: 90, +5 from Spirit Armor, +6 from Slowing Bullets, +9 from Return Fire
Weapon Damage: 12.7, 157 DPS, can go up to 38.8 with Fixation.
HP: 2.400~
Resistance: Bullet - 76% with full Escalating Resilience and Return Fire, Spirit - 22%.
- Fixation: 90 max spirit, +27 extra stacks, 87 total, +26,1 gun damage
- Bullet Dance: 2 targets, but no ricochet.
Haze's Fire Rate would be 24%, with Burst Fire, 54%, with Quicksilver Reload and Kinetic Dash, 89%, with half stacks used, 132%.
Final Comments
I actually doesn't think it is 100% balanced to be 100% clear, but it's just a general idea of her being able to use spirit items to change the way her build works. She would still be able to get max benefit by just going full gun. So if she buys items that doesn't increase her weapon damage directly, such as Return Fire or Enchanter's Barrier, she would still make these items somehow useful through the game, so it wouldn't be useless souls neither it would make the item worthless after lane phase. Since just Reactive Barrier + Enchanter's Barrier for example, is enough to give you an extra 7 stacks (+2.1 extra gun damage), which is more than a t2 gun item would give you, slowing bullets for example, increase your gun damage from 5.6 to 7.06, which is a 1.46 gun damage increase.
Which would also make Haze less bullied in games, it's not that hard to just have your game fully destroyed by an Abrams that build Hunter's Aura and Pointblank or Lifestrike, diving on you with a combo and killing you with 3 to 4 hits. And you wouldn't need to rush Ricochet since you could also use Fixation to receive an extra boost to your Fire Rate before you ult, so set ups for fighting or ulting would be extremely good.
And this would make her more reliable in lower ranks while also making her more reliable on higher ranks. And I think lower rank/mmr players wouldn't be behind, since they would focus on building spirit + ricochet to be able to stomp fights with ultimate, while high rank/mmr players would make the character more useful through the entire game. Since it wouldn't be an easy target, she would a considerable amount of damage, without having to hyper focus on building damage, and she would be more avaiable to 25~30 min games, while still being extremely strong (and might overwhelmingly strong xd) on late game, which doesn't remove the idea of her design, which is to be a late game stomper. But after last update (the update that let Haze use items while using her ult), she got extremely weak and doesn't have the strength for lower mmr games stomps, and she is extremely dependant on set ups and also for you to be extremely good with your aim, which it isn't a problem, I just think the character shouldn't be summarized by "only players with insane aim can play this character". Also, her current WR on deadlocktracker (10th of November) is 47,7%, and in the last 24 hours, it decreased to 45,8%.
Anyway, summarizing the whole concept: Make the character less unviable on early game, by giving her the opportunity to build resistance/sustain items, so she isn't turn into an easy target for soul farming, while giving her enough strength and build possibilities to make her mid game presence stronger, without making it overwhelming/stomping, and letting her shine on those last fights/skirmishers from around 25~30 min games, which are usually when most of the game ends in higher mmr.
If you have any comment, idea, feedback, critique, feel free to tag me on deadlock official discord server, my id and name respectively there are yamiakane and Yami Akane.
