Rework Yamatos Spell 1 and Spell 4 for the upcomming VGU

[Zeifos]

I wanna preface this by saying that i really like this character but after playing her a few games there are some major flaws with her design in my opinion.

Her 1 only feels good to use if you're focusing most of your build on spirit, which makes her autos feel rather useless and more of a filler between Spell 1 CD.
If we compare this gameplay to a similar ''ADC'' if you will, Haze.

Haze has free reign over her spell 1 because it's instant and pops a sleep which can be an extremly valuable tool. In order for Yamato to deal significant damage with her spell 1 she needs to charge it for 1.5 sec, and doing that whilst a Haze can sleep you, or just straight up out dmg you feels often very lack luster, not to mention that you might even miss your spell and that means good riddance to you.

Let's shift our focus over to her spell 4 (ulti) while it looks good on paper and i've had some really fun plays with it, it's just straight up bad in most cases and don't really feel rewarding to use.

If im playing Shiv and i ulti someone i often feel very good and the game rewards me for calculating it properly. Yamatos on the other hand has a charge up time, and a rather low up time even with the rank 3 upgrade on it.

So i have alot of opinions, but what would be my suggestion then?

Since alot of her kit is focused around getting up close and personal - let's continue in that theme.

Spell 1 idea would be something along the line of a cross slash, enemies hit in the middle take extra dmg and it gives you a slight dmg increase to them for a short duration. That would feel really good with the rest of her kit aswell as her aesthetics.

Spell 4 (ulti) I love the general idea of a ''Steriod'' but tweak it.
Perhaps we could get her to shriek loudly and get the boosts that she gets now, but make it last for 8+ sec but remove the immortality part of it.


Immortality on this spell don't really feel good most times, do i use it when im about to die for a second chance, or do i start with it when we engage in order to be able to deal the most dmg? That sounds like the premise of it but more often than not feel really poorly in practice.

Oh, and her rightclick scales extremly bad into the late game, Valve plz.

Her new concept arts looks fire, it would be so cool to play her with new tuning aswell.

English is not my native language, any grammar police out there be warned.

 

[LED]

In terms of the 'fantasy' of the hero and how she feels, I think her 1 right now is critical--but I agree that it seems similar to Bebop hook in that it's more of a failure of the enemy team if they get hit by it (worse, given how she announces that it's coming, making it difficult to even catch someone out of FOV). Yamato's ability to set it up (without her ultimate active) is minimal until she totally depletes the enemy of resources, which means she usually requires allied setup (the recent nerf to knockdown exacerbates this). I don't think that's an inherent problem, but a) reliance on an ally* feels aesthetically strange with the rest of Yamato's kit, and b) it feels bad to not have a strong option to itemize your own setup like similar tools in other games, e.g. Pudge/Mirana buying Atos or Eul's.

 

[ianmansfieldart]

Personally Id rework the 2 Since it feels so similar to Lash's and isn't really all that interesting, its crucial to her kit but I think it could still be worked around. Id move her mobility to her 1, Making it a charged slash that can then be reactivated to slash again and dash to the end location. I personally feel she should be more Melee focused but melee in this game feels very lackluster, and honestly wish it would be reworked as a whole system so that we can get some interesting melee characters who don't just also have a gun. For Yamato perhaps her 2 switches to sword form changing her ranged Left click to a quick sword slash attack that grants stacking movement speed, and can be charged like a melee to do a large circle slash and doesn't anim lock you