Shiv's fun and interactivity changes suggestions

[angryponystar]

Suggestion one: Instead of being tanky all day, Shiv's third ability passive could be turned into an active. Filter part of the incoming damage, but just for the specified time, say, 5 seconds. Shiv WILL still die if his main health reaches zero, but then after (or during) the duration, shiv can Reactivate the skill to heal a portion of the damage filtered.
This accomplishes a few things. First, it rewards the player for using the skill at the right time, while punishing players who do not keep an eye out to press the ability again to heal in time. This in turn makes the ability more interactive and fun to use. Second, it prevents Shiv from feeling like an unkillable tank, as players will understand he is only hard to kill during the skill's effect.

The second suggestion is simply an idea to make his ultimate feel more connected to his unique rage mechanic. Having max rage increases the kill threshold of his ultimate, but drains his rage to zero. If he kills the target, however, Shiv performs an AOE bleeding spell to all enemies within, filling his rage meter once more. This change could make his ultimate more fun and rewarding to perform, but at the same time, requiring players to work his rage to the max to reap the rewards.

 

[cortachurroyup]

Shiv's third ability passive could be turned into an active. Filter part of the incoming damage, but just for the specified time, say, 5 seconds. Shiv WILL still die if his main health reaches zero, but then after (or during) the duration, shiv can Reactivate the skill to heal a portion of the damage filtered.

the funny thing is that I thought that the ability worked like that at first. right now it feels like a very cheap out of jail card and a strong healing ability and in no time players are going to figure out how to just bully with it.

 

[sam.louro.monteiro]

the funny thing is that I thought that the ability worked like that at first. right now it feels like a very cheap out of jail card and a strong healing ability and in no time players are going to figure out how to just bully with it.

they already do. its uncontestable he's the best character right now. its the big reason he got some good nerfs last patch. his base stats are high, and he has this heal back which makes having a big hp pool just as strong. matter of fact i dont think its a shock to say abrams is hard to kill and shiv now still has better hp scalling, and before it was even bigger. meaning that any few green items he picks that boost by a % would give him a LOT of value. He reminds me of achiles from smite, tanky, mobile, has some very spamable damage dangerous in close quarters with an execute. yes a tank/bruiser with an execute obviously that character made waves and is making them here as well.

The second suggestion is simply an idea to make his ultimate feel more connected to his unique rage mechanic. Having max rage increases the kill threshold of his ultimate, but drains his rage to zero. If he kills the target, however, Shiv performs an AOE bleeding spell to all enemies within, filling his rage meter once more. This change could make his ultimate more fun and rewarding to perform, but at the same time, requiring players to work his rage to the max to reap the rewards.

within this idea but make it more punishing (specially since it can reset cd's) make the threshold way lower and somewhat close to now at max rage but not replenish on some side benefit, he already chain kills because 25% damage is to much (another thing to tweak) so literally just have a rage spending systems. perhaps his 3 heals more but spends the rage he has so he can be as tanky as now but he has to give up ramping for his max.
because he is not made of paper and you need to chain cc to pop him or its a problem he stats bouncing daggers and having ticking healing that is fighting his bloodletting damage. Give him trade offs instead of all gas no brakes my bar is full and im angry

 

[larswillemsen]

they already do. its uncontestable he's the best character right now. its the big reason he got some good nerfs last patch. his base stats are high, and he has this heal back which makes having a big hp pool just as strong. matter of fact i dont think its a shock to say abrams is hard to kill and shiv now still has better hp scalling, and before it was even bigger. meaning that any few green items he picks that boost by a % would give him a LOT of value. He reminds me of achiles from smite, tanky, mobile, has some very spamable damage dangerous in close quarters with an execute. yes a tank/bruiser with an execute obviously that character made waves and is making them here as well.


within this idea but make it more punishing (specially since it can reset cd's) make the threshold way lower and somewhat close to now at max rage but not replenish on some side benefit, he already chain kills because 25% damage is to much (another thing to tweak) so literally just have a rage spending systems. perhaps his 3 heals more but spends the rage he has so he can be as tanky as now but he has to give up ramping for his max.
because he is not made of paper and you need to chain cc to pop him or its a problem he stats bouncing daggers and having ticking healing that is fighting his bloodletting damage. Give him trade offs instead of all gas no brakes my bar is full and im angry

I wish they would just rework him partially and admit defeat on his design.

Shiv has so many problems kit design wise that he's being clubbed into a corner to be even remotely balanced. I like the OP's suggestion a lot actually: make Bloodletting an active that absorbs part of the damage for a duration. They could even make it stronger than it is now as a result. Make it clearly highlighted. This would also allow people to silence or stun Shiv and actually kill him, rather than essentially always benefiting from what amounts to perpetual nuke immunity.

The same goes for his Rage. I don't understand why it benefits from all damage he deals. As a result the Rage meter is so annoying to fill up, forcing Shiv to constantly go around and punch inconsequential things just to keep the benefits. Just make it work on hero damage alone, and make it fill way faster. Currently it feels like you need to break every single bone in your opponent's body before Shiv feels angry enough to finish them off. Just because it works on all sources. It goes against his design of intermittent aggression.

I would also like to see them rework his knives in some way. Not having knives up as Shiv just feels so bad. There is nothing he can do if he has none of them and isn't already enraged (other than going back to punching neutrals again).

 

[IgorNL]

I wish they would just rework him partially and admit defeat on his design.

Shiv has so many problems kit design wise that he's being clubbed into a corner to be even remotely balanced. I like the OP's suggestion a lot actually: make Bloodletting an active that absorbs part of the damage for a duration. They could even make it stronger than it is now as a result. Make it clearly highlighted. This would also allow people to silence or stun Shiv and actually kill him, rather than essentially always benefiting from what amounts to perpetual nuke immunity.

The same goes for his Rage. I don't understand why it benefits from all damage he deals. As a result the Rage meter is so annoying to fill up, forcing Shiv to constantly go around and punch inconsequential things just to keep the benefits. Just make it work on hero damage alone, and make it fill way faster. Currently it feels like you need to break every single bone in your opponent's body before Shiv feels angry enough to finish them off. Just because it works on all sources. It goes against his design of intermittent aggression.

I would also like to see them rework his knives in some way. Not having knives up as Shiv just feels so bad. There is nothing he can do if he has none of them and isn't already enraged (other than going back to punching neutrals again).

I agree, they should rework Shiv, having to keep the rage bar full is really frustrating, the rage takes so long to fill that when it's full the enemy is already dead and I get irritated with how weak Shiv is without his rage while the other characters don't have any similar mechanics and are still stronger than Shiv, they should remove this rage bar and add the rage buffs to the skill upgrades, this rage bar has been ruining Shiv. Even more so in the early game when he doesn't yet have his rage bar, the character is practically unplayable, the worst character for the early game and when he gets strong enough to start playing the match is already over, Shiv is the weakest at the same time as he is the strongest, in the early game he does nothing and in the late game there is no one to stop him, it is a terrible balance.

 

[larswillemsen]

I agree, they should rework Shiv, having to keep the rage bar full is really frustrating, the rage takes so long to fill that when it's full the enemy is already dead and I get irritated with how weak Shiv is without his rage while the other characters don't have any similar mechanics and are still stronger than Shiv, they should remove this rage bar and add the rage buffs to the skill upgrades, this rage bar has been ruining Shiv. Even more so in the early game when he doesn't yet have his rage bar, the character is practically unplayable, the worst character for the early game and when he gets strong enough to start playing the match is already over, Shiv is the weakest at the same time as he is the strongest, in the early game he does nothing and in the late game there is no one to stop him, it is a terrible balance.

Conceptually speaking I think Rage is fine. But yes - Shiv is laughably weak without it. He seems balanced around having it up at all times currently, which is practically possible but very annoying for the Shiv player who is now constantly tasked doing chores.

This hero is getting nerfed into oblivion and back because they refuse to admit the problems with his design. His passive is the real problem, and probably always was (outside 0 cd Slice and Dice, which was subsequently triple nerfed). The random flailing nerfs as a substitute to admitting he needs a small rework made him miserable to play. His ultimate is really, really bad outside the Rage passive. Compare it to e.g. Vindicta's design: they realized how rare it is for people to be below 50% health the way her payoff is slanted. Yet Shiv's execute was nerfed twice despite being way more situational and working at way lower values? You almost never get to use it for an actual execute, it's just a super long cooldown gapcloser with mediocre range. His abilities are just clunky and awkward due to the repeated overnerfing.

They need to design his abilities in such a way both the Shiv player and the opponents aren't frustrated with it constantly. The most obvious candidates would be by just admitting his passive is fun for nobody and changing Rage. What I would personally try:

• Rework passive to an active that absorbs for a set amount of time. Shiv can still die when this is active. Absorption is higher than it is now. After the active ends, either manually or on a set timer, Shiv regains part of the deferred damage. This makes it MUCH less frustrating to play against Shiv as he is now vulnerable to CC like everyone else (and counters Bebop again, but everyone hates Bebop anyway). This was a suggestion from another use I like a lot
• Slice and Dice, increase range slightly, decrease windup a lot. I just don't like the way this ability feels. In a hyper mobile game like Deadlock having this small windup makes me miss it even when I feel like I deserved to hit it by closing the gap. After the repeated nerfs it really doesn't warrant being this clunky anymore
• Rage now only stacks on enemy damage. It stacks much faster and depletes much faster (with the same cooldown before depletion starts). Rage feels like it was designed around intermittent aggression. Currently it just means Shiv has to play a fulltime job of punching neutrals and creeps on top of playing Deadlock
• Ultimate now deals actual damage rather than a fixed amount, scaling with the amount of Rage Shiv has. Using his ultimate spends all Rage. Executes if the damage brings an enemy below a certain threshold. Something like (200 + 1.5x spirit) * (Rage - maxRage) + 20% execute. Massive damage nuke comparable to Vindicta, but puts Shiv in a bad spot as he loses Rage. People will now actually want to use it as an execute, rather than a gapcloser that deals 200 damage
• Rework Knives to refund part of the cooldown when hit under full Rage, remove the bouncing knife, remove the slow. Knives feel unnecessarily frustrating when they are on cooldown, as it is really all Shiv can do until he is very close to the target already. This is part of the reason his ultimate is just a glorified gapcloser for 80% of the uses

 

[IgorNL]

Conceptually speaking I think Rage is fine. But yes - Shiv is laughably weak without it. He seems balanced around having it up at all times currently, which is practically possible but very annoying for the Shiv player who is now constantly tasked doing chores.

This hero is getting nerfed into oblivion and back because they refuse to admit the problems with his design. His passive is the real problem, and probably always was (outside 0 cd Slice and Dice, which was subsequently triple nerfed). The random flailing nerfs as a substitute to admitting he needs a small rework made him miserable to play. His ultimate is really, really bad outside the Rage passive. Compare it to e.g. Vindicta's design: they realized how rare it is for people to be below 50% health the way her payoff is slanted. Yet Shiv's execute was nerfed twice despite being way more situational and working at way lower values? You almost never get to use it for an actual execute, it's just a super long cooldown gapcloser with mediocre range. His abilities are just clunky and awkward due to the repeated overnerfing.

They need to design his abilities in such a way both the Shiv player and the opponents aren't frustrated with it constantly. The most obvious candidates would be by just admitting his passive is fun for nobody and changing Rage. What I would personally try:

• Rework passive to an active that absorbs for a set amount of time. Shiv can still die when this is active. Absorption is higher than it is now. After the active ends, either manually or on a set timer, Shiv regains part of the deferred damage. This makes it MUCH less frustrating to play against Shiv as he is now vulnerable to CC like everyone else (and counters Bebop again, but everyone hates Bebop anyway). This was a suggestion from another use I like a lot
• Slice and Dice, increase range slightly, decrease windup a lot. I just don't like the way this ability feels. In a hyper mobile game like Deadlock having this small windup makes me miss it even when I feel like I deserved to hit it by closing the gap. After the repeated nerfs it really doesn't warrant being this clunky anymore
• Rage now only stacks on enemy damage. It stacks much faster and depletes much faster (with the same cooldown before depletion starts). Rage feels like it was designed around intermittent aggression. Currently it just means Shiv has to play a fulltime job of punching neutrals and creeps on top of playing Deadlock
• Ultimate now deals actual damage rather than a fixed amount, scaling with the amount of Rage Shiv has. Using his ultimate spends all Rage. Executes if the damage brings an enemy below a certain threshold. Something like (200 + 1.5x spirit) * (Rage - maxRage) + 20% execute. Massive damage nuke comparable to Vindicta, but puts Shiv in a bad spot as he loses Rage. People will now actually want to use it as an execute, rather than a gapcloser that deals 200 damage
• Rework Knives to refund part of the cooldown when hit under full Rage, remove the bouncing knife, remove the slow. Knives feel unnecessarily frustrating when they are on cooldown, as it is really all Shiv can do until he is very close to the target already. This is part of the reason his ultimate is just a glorified gapcloser for 80% of the uses

I like the character's ultimate, 28% of life and no CD combined with anti-healing curse to heal him makes him almost immortal and with the knives jumping at enemies and then you use slice and dice to reduce everyone's life and jump with the ultimate killing one by one, I think it's fun, what they should solve in the character in my opinion is how bad he is in the early game, when he doesn't have the passive and fury, and his M1 having the range of a punch before losing 98% of the damage, this M1 is no good even to kill the minions, Shiv's kit is the worst for the early game, they should give some buff to his M1 to make it more playable in the early game.

1. I think a good change for his passive would be to make it just passive, remove its activation, it delays the damage but he can't remove the delayed damage, but maybe increase the amount he can delay with his rage at maximum, so in order not to die from the delayed damage he will have to heal himself somehow, this keeps the ability strong but requires more for you not to die from it.

2. I think they could change the third upgrade "Reduces cooldown by 2s per enemy hit (1s for non-Hero). Max. 6s per Dash." for something that increases its range, I think the first upgrade that reduces the cooldown by 4s could be changed too, they could add an effect for when the target is finished, like a mark that lasts a few seconds and if the enemy dies with the mark it removes part of the delayed damage or heals, something like that would make more sense in my opinion.

3. I like how the ultimate works now, an ultimate that finishes the target and has no CD, I just think there should be a bonus for when you finish the target with it, receiving a heal or a buff, maybe receiving souls like the vindicta, in most fights I end up killing the enemy without the ultimate, in the late game 28% is almost nothing, you throw a knife and already kill the enemy if he has that much life, sometimes he has 30-40% then you use the slice and dice and he takes 2x the damage because of the rage effect and he dies straight away, making the ultimate practically useless and you don't get anything for using it so it doesn't make a difference, they could add something that would make people want to use it for its purpose.

4. I agree, without the knives the shiv does literally nothing, I like the idea of them jumping, but a CD reduction would be magnificent, they could keep the jumps and for each enemy hit reduce the CD by 2s with a maximum of 6 seconds, like slice and dice.

The impression I have is that the devs hate this character, he has a lot of potential and is the only character I like in this game, a gameplay that is not based on holding M1 the entire match, but the nerfs are killing him.

 

[larswillemsen]

I like the character's ultimate, 28% of life and no CD combined with anti-healing curse to heal him makes him almost immortal and with the knives jumping at enemies and then you use slice and dice to reduce everyone's life and jump with the ultimate killing one by one, I think it's fun, what they should solve in the character in my opinion is how bad he is in the early game, when he doesn't have the passive and fury, and his M1 having the range of a punch before losing 98% of the damage, this M1 is no good even to kill the minions, Shiv's kit is the worst for the early game, they should give some buff to his M1 to make it more playable in the early game.

1. I think a good change for his passive would be to make it just passive, remove its activation, it delays the damage but he can't remove the delayed damage, but maybe increase the amount he can delay with his rage at maximum, so in order not to die from the delayed damage he will have to heal himself somehow, this keeps the ability strong but requires more for you not to die from it.

2. I think they could change the third upgrade "Reduces cooldown by 2s per enemy hit (1s for non-Hero). Max. 6s per Dash." for something that increases its range, I think the first upgrade that reduces the cooldown by 4s could be changed too, they could add an effect for when the target is finished, like a mark that lasts a few seconds and if the enemy dies with the mark it removes part of the delayed damage or heals, something like that would make more sense in my opinion.

3. I like how the ultimate works now, an ultimate that finishes the target and has no CD, I just think there should be a bonus for when you finish the target with it, receiving a heal or a buff, maybe receiving souls like the vindicta, in most fights I end up killing the enemy without the ultimate, in the late game 28% is almost nothing, you throw a knife and already kill the enemy if he has that much life, sometimes he has 30-40% then you use the slice and dice and he takes 2x the damage because of the rage effect and he dies straight away, making the ultimate practically useless and you don't get anything for using it so it doesn't make a difference, they could add something that would make people want to use it for its purpose.

4. I agree, without the knives the shiv does literally nothing, I like the idea of them jumping, but a CD reduction would be magnificent, they could keep the jumps and for each enemy hit reduce the CD by 2s with a maximum of 6 seconds, like slice and dice.

The impression I have is that the devs hate this character, he has a lot of potential and is the only character I like in this game, a gameplay that is not based on holding M1 the entire match, but the nerfs are killing him.

I can't agree, but that's fine.

I don't think Shiv is weak early. He is just very middle-of-the-road. A 20% execute, which is what he gets without his second pip, is absolutely patheticly low at any stage of the game. In the early game, and I kid you not, you often get about as much if not more value out of the flat 200 damage (which is a decent nuke the first time you unlock it). I admittedly don't really understand why they triple nerfed this part of his kit either, but alas.

Like I said: I think the problem with Shiv is simply that there is no real way to get rid of him once he gets rolling. Currently he has been nerfed so viciously that he has little payoff for overcoming his greatest weakness: not doing much at range. I really think that just stems from the way his passive works. Other problematic heroes can be shut down to some degree. For the sake of argument consider Mo and Krill: the ultimate anti-carry. No matter how fed someone is, if they get caught by Mo and Krill they die. The only hero in the entire game that might not die to a 3-4 seconds stun is Shiv. It always takes a disproportionate amount of time to get rid of him. In Dota 2 there are similar passives, but they can be disabled by a mechanic called "break". Deadlock has no break. Shiv is not going to go down easily regardless of what you do.

I think taking away his access to free absurd survavibility vastly reduces how problematic he is, and hopefully would allow the developers to restore some of his initial numbers. He has been nerfed in literally every facet of his kit, and very aggressively so. He has almost entirely lost his identity as an assassin type character over the course of the nerf barrage.