sokolov2601
Member
Hello there.
I am a player that thoroughly enjoys playing Shiv, something about his bravado and swagger as well as his playstyle just feels so fun to play.
That said however, I think a lot of players can agree that Shiv is in a pretty bad spot right now, especially given the new map.
This is because Shiv isn't very fast and also needs to keep his rage up in order to stay relevant in any teamfight. That alongside shifting metas that heavily prioritize laning phase and you quickly find yourself useless if you don't snowball hard early on. Not to mention that a single 1250 item (Slowing Hex) or any form of CC can completely shut him down in a fight, making him a priority target for the enemy team which creates a very unfun experience for Shiv mains, even if they're ahead.
Aside from CC, antiheal is already extremely oppressive in the current state of the game, and Shiv suffers from it more than most due to how Bloodletting works. If the enemy team has a Pocket, for example, debuff remover becomes a mandatory buy, as their ult is lethal to Shiv. (Though, to be fair, the item is almost a must-buy in any game right now, but I digress from balance/meta issues.)
The only real way to counter this is either having a hard support who can babysit you or itemizing with both debuff remover and a healing booster. This forces Shiv to burn debuff remover at the start of a fight, making it useless unless the fight drags on long enough—or worse, requiring a teammate to babysit you just to stay viable.
Though there's an obvious problem with buffing Shiv. If we aren't careful we can quickly create a very problematic character that can 1v6 the entire enemy team and become lobby admin as we were all familiar with on release. I'll write out below what I think the core problems are and how we can fix them.
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The core problems I have found with Shiv are how Bloodletting works, what it's intended to do versus how it actually plays out in real gameplay, as well as Rage buildup and sustain.
Let me start with rage.
Rage is a cool mechanic, building it up is good and makes sense as it it's a prerequisite to going headfirst into a team fight as the teams dedicated frontline/tank.
I've paraphrased information from the community wiki here:
It's understandable why the mechanic is designed this way, you don’t want a late-game Shiv player instantly maxing out their rage as soon as they enter a fight. However, this setup makes it disadvantageous for Shiv to invest heavily in Spirit items, as building rage becomes significantly harder.
As a result, Shiv’s damaging abilities feel underwhelming, especially after the multiple nerfs to his dash. On top of that, his knives can be easily debuff removed, preventing him from stacking rage from a distance before engaging. This makes the main menu motto of "Bleeds out his foes and then goes in for the kill" feel pretty lackluster.
Which brings me to my first change:
I've made it so that rage decay is slowed and further reduced by Spirit, allowing him to maintain rage longer when investing in Spirit items. The multiplier I chose is pretty rudimentary and should not be taken at face value. I don't have data or metrics to back up a good multiplier so I just picked a number randomly.
Note that this works different from getting items like Duration Extender. Those items would only affect the time before rage starts to decay. Alternatively if this idea doesn't work out. Rage decay could instead slow with Duration Extending items instead though I feel like that is less interesting.
The reason I believe this change is necessary is that, due to Bloodletting, Shiv is often forced to disengage if he takes too much burst damage. This causes him to lose rage, making him essentially useless as a frontline/tank in teamfights, despite the game classifying him as one.
On top of that, Bloodletting makes an item like Fortitude far less appealing. Since Fortitude's healing only activates after 10 seconds of not taking damage, and Bloodletting defers damage over 12 seconds, Shiv is effectively forced out of the fight for 22 seconds which long enough to lose a significant portion of his rage, anywhere from 25% (in optimal conditions) to 50% (on average).
(I also believe this might be an unintended interaction, as healing effects like Healing Rite aren't canceled by Bloodletting damage, even though Shiv is technically still taking damage.)
I therefore propose the following change.
This alongside the previous change to rage makes it possible for Shiv to clear much more damage while in an active teamfight while his rage is up and keeps him in the fight. It also makes the ability more strategic as activating it while fleeing from a fight after losing rage would be worse than using it in the heat of combat. I also considered giving the 3rd upgrade an ability similar to Viscous's Cube's max AP upgrade, letting him remove all debuffs while at full rage.
I believe that this adds an extra layer of strategy to his 3 as it can also be used to purge debuffs at the start of a fight, at the cost of not being able to clear the deferred damage for a while.
My last suggestion is based on an earlier post made by @lukeolsson found here:
The post mentions replacing the ricochet mechanic, but I don’t think that’s necessary. If anything, it actually synergizes well with this suggestion, especially alongside the movement slow that knives apply at full rage.
I’ve taken the liberty of mocking up their idea, along with a few small tweaks I’d personally make.
I think that, especially after the nerfs to his 2, the third AP upgrade for his skill has become almost useless. This change would introduce a more engaging mechanic in the heat of combat, one that doesn’t outright nullify debuff remover but instead rewards players for being quicker than their enemies. It also leaves room for strategy on whether or not to chase after an enemy or to let them bleed out for the full DoT.
Those are all the ideas I have. Thank you for reading! I hope I was able to clearly explain my reasoning behind these suggestions.
As a final note, I want to bring up something tangentially related, that being Shiv’s missing voicelines. At this point, Shiv is likely the hero/Fate missing the most voicelines out of anyone, to the point where it actively affects gameplay. I can’t use my chat wheel to signal that I’m leaving an area, flanking, calling out missing enemies, and much more. I really hope this can be looked into because, as it stands, it genuinely hinders gameplay.
I am a player that thoroughly enjoys playing Shiv, something about his bravado and swagger as well as his playstyle just feels so fun to play.
That said however, I think a lot of players can agree that Shiv is in a pretty bad spot right now, especially given the new map.
This is because Shiv isn't very fast and also needs to keep his rage up in order to stay relevant in any teamfight. That alongside shifting metas that heavily prioritize laning phase and you quickly find yourself useless if you don't snowball hard early on. Not to mention that a single 1250 item (Slowing Hex) or any form of CC can completely shut him down in a fight, making him a priority target for the enemy team which creates a very unfun experience for Shiv mains, even if they're ahead.
Aside from CC, antiheal is already extremely oppressive in the current state of the game, and Shiv suffers from it more than most due to how Bloodletting works. If the enemy team has a Pocket, for example, debuff remover becomes a mandatory buy, as their ult is lethal to Shiv. (Though, to be fair, the item is almost a must-buy in any game right now, but I digress from balance/meta issues.)
The only real way to counter this is either having a hard support who can babysit you or itemizing with both debuff remover and a healing booster. This forces Shiv to burn debuff remover at the start of a fight, making it useless unless the fight drags on long enough—or worse, requiring a teammate to babysit you just to stay viable.
Though there's an obvious problem with buffing Shiv. If we aren't careful we can quickly create a very problematic character that can 1v6 the entire enemy team and become lobby admin as we were all familiar with on release. I'll write out below what I think the core problems are and how we can fix them.
---
The core problems I have found with Shiv are how Bloodletting works, what it's intended to do versus how it actually plays out in real gameplay, as well as Rage buildup and sustain.
Let me start with rage.
Rage is a cool mechanic, building it up is good and makes sense as it it's a prerequisite to going headfirst into a team fight as the teams dedicated frontline/tank.
I've paraphrased information from the community wiki here:
It's understandable why the mechanic is designed this way, you don’t want a late-game Shiv player instantly maxing out their rage as soon as they enter a fight. However, this setup makes it disadvantageous for Shiv to invest heavily in Spirit items, as building rage becomes significantly harder.
As a result, Shiv’s damaging abilities feel underwhelming, especially after the multiple nerfs to his dash. On top of that, his knives can be easily debuff removed, preventing him from stacking rage from a distance before engaging. This makes the main menu motto of "Bleeds out his foes and then goes in for the kill" feel pretty lackluster.
Which brings me to my first change:
I've made it so that rage decay is slowed and further reduced by Spirit, allowing him to maintain rage longer when investing in Spirit items. The multiplier I chose is pretty rudimentary and should not be taken at face value. I don't have data or metrics to back up a good multiplier so I just picked a number randomly.
Note that this works different from getting items like Duration Extender. Those items would only affect the time before rage starts to decay. Alternatively if this idea doesn't work out. Rage decay could instead slow with Duration Extending items instead though I feel like that is less interesting.
The reason I believe this change is necessary is that, due to Bloodletting, Shiv is often forced to disengage if he takes too much burst damage. This causes him to lose rage, making him essentially useless as a frontline/tank in teamfights, despite the game classifying him as one.
On top of that, Bloodletting makes an item like Fortitude far less appealing. Since Fortitude's healing only activates after 10 seconds of not taking damage, and Bloodletting defers damage over 12 seconds, Shiv is effectively forced out of the fight for 22 seconds which long enough to lose a significant portion of his rage, anywhere from 25% (in optimal conditions) to 50% (on average).
(I also believe this might be an unintended interaction, as healing effects like Healing Rite aren't canceled by Bloodletting damage, even though Shiv is technically still taking damage.)
I therefore propose the following change.
This alongside the previous change to rage makes it possible for Shiv to clear much more damage while in an active teamfight while his rage is up and keeps him in the fight. It also makes the ability more strategic as activating it while fleeing from a fight after losing rage would be worse than using it in the heat of combat. I also considered giving the 3rd upgrade an ability similar to Viscous's Cube's max AP upgrade, letting him remove all debuffs while at full rage.
I believe that this adds an extra layer of strategy to his 3 as it can also be used to purge debuffs at the start of a fight, at the cost of not being able to clear the deferred damage for a while.
My last suggestion is based on an earlier post made by @lukeolsson found here:
Shiv’s dash has been nerfed quite a bit and probably for good reason. However, in its current state, it feels pretty lackluster on its own, especially when enemies can simply debuff remove the knives stuck in them, effectively shutting down half of Shiv’s ability damage.
The post mentions replacing the ricochet mechanic, but I don’t think that’s necessary. If anything, it actually synergizes well with this suggestion, especially alongside the movement slow that knives apply at full rage.
I’ve taken the liberty of mocking up their idea, along with a few small tweaks I’d personally make.
I think that, especially after the nerfs to his 2, the third AP upgrade for his skill has become almost useless. This change would introduce a more engaging mechanic in the heat of combat, one that doesn’t outright nullify debuff remover but instead rewards players for being quicker than their enemies. It also leaves room for strategy on whether or not to chase after an enemy or to let them bleed out for the full DoT.
Those are all the ideas I have. Thank you for reading! I hope I was able to clearly explain my reasoning behind these suggestions.
As a final note, I want to bring up something tangentially related, that being Shiv’s missing voicelines. At this point, Shiv is likely the hero/Fate missing the most voicelines out of anyone, to the point where it actively affects gameplay. I can’t use my chat wheel to signal that I’m leaving an area, flanking, calling out missing enemies, and much more. I really hope this can be looked into because, as it stands, it genuinely hinders gameplay.
