My problems with Holliday and what I would change.

[troxonater]

I would like to begin with what I like about holiday. I really like crackshot, and how the revolver feels to use. Crackshots always feel earned, and even when I get hit by it in game my reaction is just "fair enough" because I think its a perfectly balanced ability. I also think Lasso is fine as an ultimate, it basically works as a "fuck you" to one unfortuante person of your choosing, and its great at keeping those annoying ults in check where someone just sits somewhere and wins the team fight (Haze, Seven, Dynamo), or it can be used to kidnap a powerful opponent. The skill shot requirement makes it dodge able and makes it rewarding to land.

Now to the parts of holiday I don't like.
Bounce pad by itself is fine. Its not the greatest at escaping because your enemy can just follow you, so its not a complete get out of jail free card for bad positioning. And the tier 3 upgrade with stun is risky because going in with it is pretty bad for your positioning, if there's more than 2 healthy people where you land you'll probably still die. Bounce pad combined with explosive barrels is a problematic combo. It's been nerfed so its not a hard CC combo for like 4 seconds straight, but spamming barrels mid fight for the easiest damage in the game is not that engaging to fight with or against. This leads into my next point

Holliday has one viable build, and that's spirit holiday. Since all 4 abilities scale with spirit, and 2 benefit from extra charge, if you build anything else you're are throwing. I'm not even sure what vitality Holliday would look like, but the other path for Holliday to build is gun. Gun Holliday is obsolete because crackshot scales with sprit, so gun Holliday and Spirit Holliday does similar crackshot damage, while gun builds have neutered barrel and stomp damage. One of Deadlocks best gameplay features is build variety, and I dislike how polarizing Holliday is in this department.

The Rework:
First, I would get rid of the barrels. They aren't fun to fight against, and are mind numbing to fight with. The only cool thing about them is going for a barrel trickshot with your melee at medium to long ranges. I would replace the barrels with a new ability called "Fan the Hammer." Fan the Hammer when activated, would put holiday into a different stance and slow down her speed by a percentage, similar to vindicta I guess but walking. She can cancel at any time with a dash, jump, or pressing the ability again. While in this stance, Hollidays fire rate is increased by x% (You would have to play around with the numbers to figure out what feels right and balanced). Fire rate scales with spirit. Not entirely sure what the upgrades would do, probably just some flat stat increases or ammo manipulation maybe. The second big change is to make crackshot scale extra with bullet damage, not spirit. These changes would get rid of barrel spam, an unfun element of holliday for all involved, and make her kit not so reliant on spamming spirit items mostly, since theres now a tradeoff between Fan the hammer speed, bounce pad, and lasso, or the raw damage of scaling crackshot super hard. In my experience with struggling with holliday gun builds, its decently difficult to land crackshots consistanlty anyways in hectic combat, so I think making its max potential damage a bit higher is fine.

The goal of this rework is to have different things you can do with holiday. You have the play it safe and shoot from the backline with fan the hammer and crackshot, you have your boucepad stun combo into unloading a ton of damage with fan the hammer, and you have your lasso kidnappings still. This will get rid of mindless barrel spam, which just annoys everyone at best or kills them in an unfun way.

 

[Degenerate]

I think balancing around multiple playstyles is definitely the right choice and I love the idea of a holiday hitting a standoff "fan the hammer" against another player/team.

 

[micbenso66]

I would like to begin with what I like about holiday. I really like crackshot, and how the revolver feels to use. Crackshots always feel earned, and even when I get hit by it in game my reaction is just "fair enough" because I think its a perfectly balanced ability. I also think Lasso is fine as an ultimate, it basically works as a "fuck you" to one unfortuante person of your choosing, and its great at keeping those annoying ults in check where someone just sits somewhere and wins the team fight (Haze, Seven, Dynamo), or it can be used to kidnap a powerful opponent. The skill shot requirement makes it dodge able and makes it rewarding to land.

Now to the parts of holiday I don't like.
Bounce pad by itself is fine. Its not the greatest at escaping because your enemy can just follow you, so its not a complete get out of jail free card for bad positioning. And the tier 3 upgrade with stun is risky because going in with it is pretty bad for your positioning, if there's more than 2 healthy people where you land you'll probably still die. Bounce pad combined with explosive barrels is a problematic combo. It's been nerfed so its not a hard CC combo for like 4 seconds straight, but spamming barrels mid fight for the easiest damage in the game is not that engaging to fight with or against. This leads into my next point

Holliday has one viable build, and that's spirit holiday. Since all 4 abilities scale with spirit, and 2 benefit from extra charge, if you build anything else you're are throwing. I'm not even sure what vitality Holliday would look like, but the other path for Holliday to build is gun. Gun Holliday is obsolete because crackshot scales with sprit, so gun Holliday and Spirit Holliday does similar crackshot damage, while gun builds have neutered barrel and stomp damage. One of Deadlocks best gameplay features is build variety, and I dislike how polarizing Holliday is in this department.

The Rework:
First, I would get rid of the barrels. They aren't fun to fight against, and are mind numbing to fight with. The only cool thing about them is going for a barrel trickshot with your melee at medium to long ranges. I would replace the barrels with a new ability called "Fan the Hammer." Fan the Hammer when activated, would put holiday into a different stance and slow down her speed by a percentage, similar to vindicta I guess but walking. She can cancel at any time with a dash, jump, or pressing the ability again. While in this stance, Hollidays fire rate is increased by x% (You would have to play around with the numbers to figure out what feels right and balanced). Fire rate scales with spirit. Not entirely sure what the upgrades would do, probably just some flat stat increases or ammo manipulation maybe. The second big change is to make crackshot scale extra with bullet damage, not spirit. These changes would get rid of barrel spam, an unfun element of holliday for all involved, and make her kit not so reliant on spamming spirit items mostly, since theres now a tradeoff between Fan the hammer speed, bounce pad, and lasso, or the raw damage of scaling crackshot super hard. In my experience with struggling with holliday gun builds, its decently difficult to land crackshots consistanlty anyways in hectic combat, so I think making its max potential damage a bit higher is fine.

The goal of this rework is to have different things you can do with holiday. You have the play it safe and shoot from the backline with fan the hammer and crackshot, you have your boucepad stun combo into unloading a ton of damage with fan the hammer, and you have your lasso kidnappings still. This will get rid of mindless barrel spam, which just annoys everyone at best or kills them in an unfun way.

I like the idea as I also hate the barrels. I didnt enjoy playing with them as holiday and I hate playing against a holiday that lands 2-3 in a row, plus stun, plus ult. Literally cant move..

The concept of Fan the hammer is interesting but would it not make more sense thematically (cowgirl) that instead of increasing her fire rate, she rapidly unloads her 6 shooter and it gains a shotgun cone target zone for the shots (sacrificing accuracy for rapid fire).

Then upgrades can be something like increases damage, reduced cd, and some gimmick where if you dash (or just consuming stamina in general) you instantly reload your gun.

I would also argue that items that increase how many rounds you have should not increase her ammo count but rather increase her reload speed instead.

 

[Дедлокер]

This is an ability i made some time ago. If you want to get rid of the barrels i think something like this will fit Holliday pretty well.

 

[micbenso66]

View attachment 38140
This is an ability i made some time ago. If you want to get rid of the barrels i think something like this will fit Holliday pretty well.

Thematically yes.

Mechanically it sounds equally as frustrating as vex bolt except you have to still aim vex bolt.

Also, since these auto headshot, would this not activate crackshot too? A homing headshot that also activates crippling headshot and headhunter? that just sounds gross. This would only be acceptable if she is super easy to kill and so has to play real safe cuz a warm fart will kill her (Im ok with this lol)

 

[Дедлокер]

Thematically yes.

Mechanically it sounds equally as frustrating as vex bolt except you have to still aim vex bolt.

Also, since these auto headshot, would this not activate crackshot too? A homing headshot that also activates crippling headshot and headhunter? that just sounds gross. This would only be acceptable if she is super easy to kill and so has to play real safe cuz a warm fart will kill her (Im ok with this lol)

Well, without the barrels holliday is A LOT easier to kill, since she can`t stop you in place with a barrel and then just run away. This basically makes her a glass cannon type of hero.

And yes, it does prock crackshot. I think you can play around with the damage values to make it fair. And depending on the coin hitbox, speed, spread etc this might be harder to use than vexing bolt, since when the enemy sees the coins flying he has time to take cover while you aim at the coins. Still probably need to nerf damage a bit.

 

[micbenso66]

Well, without the barrels holliday is A LOT easier to kill, since she can`t stop you in place with a barrel and then just run away. This basically makes her a glass cannon type of hero.

And yes, it does prock crackshot. I think you can play around with the damage values to make it fair. And depending on the coin hitbox, speed, spread etc this might be harder to use than vexing bolt, since when the enemy sees the coins flying he has time to take cover while you aim at the coins. Still probably need to nerf damage a bit.

Indeed. the removal of the spamable knock up would make her a lot easier to kill if out of position.

I do think the numbers are a bit high but its because it homing. That gives me the impression that LOS doesnt matter. Plus allies can shoot them.

What if anyone can shoot them? If an enemy shoots the coin it drops out of the sky. the final upgrade adding 10 coins would really make it hard for the enemy to guess so it really only gives some early game countability but late game they would have to spam their clip into the sky instead of shooting holiday.

Its like a pseudo survival/cc ability without actually being one. Forcing enemies to make choices can get them to make the wrong choice. But for the most part, it always benefits holiday.