Thoughts on Seven ult

[SafeSix]

Seven needs an ult rework. Every player I know thinks one of two things of it: 1. If seven has enough souls, he can press the button and everyone dies, 2. It is completely useless except in the case of an empty magazine.

I really like this character, his lore, his voice acting, and his art, but I understand that with his kit and historical performance in the meta, buffing it would feel like a step backwards and reintroduce a low elo pub stomper that was not fun. I think the core of this issue is that Seven, being a simple character, is to his detriment in finding utility. I have an idea of what would work but I respect that a number of things could be done to change this ability and thus give Seven more depth and viability.

My Proposal:
Make his body jolt around more so he's harder to hit, reduce the duration, and give me 3 total lightning strikes. This, in my opinion, would feel much better with the current Seven play style.

Ultimately, I think there's a very tough design choice here, that Seven is supposed to be "area denial" but actually plays like an AOE speedblitz hyper carry. His ult is used to finish off targets, we flick it on and off for about 3 seconds, never the whole duration, because in a team fight, leaving cover and standing still is suicide. But doing damage with his ult requires doing that. But it doesn't do enough damage to stop people peeking out and CCing you or outright killing you. Unstoppable and infuser only last 6 seconds and cost 12800 souls.

The value proposition of pressing 4 while playing Seven is bad.

 

[SafeSix]

Other proposals:
Let me fly faster during the channel, but not outside the bounds of the AOE when the button was pressed (dmg still requires LOS). This would allow players to skillfully dodge threats.

Make the first 3-4 seconds of the channel unstoppable. This would allow it to actually be used as area denial (supports with knockdown must take cover initially), while still allowing the ult to be answered the usual way.

 

[micbenso66]

Seven needs an ult rework. Every player I know thinks one of two things of it: 1. If seven has enough souls, he can press the button and everyone dies, 2. It is completely useless except in the case of an empty magazine.

I really like this character, his lore, his voice acting, and his art, but I understand that with his kit and historical performance in the meta, buffing it would feel like a step backwards and reintroduce a low elo pub stomper that was not fun. I think the core of this issue is that Seven, being a simple character, is to his detriment in finding utility. I have an idea of what would work but I respect that a number of things could be done to change this ability and thus give Seven more depth and viability.

My Proposal:
Make his body jolt around more so he's harder to hit, reduce the duration, and give me 3 total lightning strikes. This, in my opinion, would feel much better with the current Seven play style.

Ultimately, I think there's a very tough design choice here, that Seven is supposed to be "area denial" but actually plays like an AOE speedblitz hyper carry. His ult is used to finish off targets, we flick it on and off for about 3 seconds, never the whole duration, because in a team fight, leaving cover and standing still is suicide. But doing damage with his ult requires doing that. But it doesn't do enough damage to stop people peeking out and CCing you or outright killing you. Unstoppable and infuser only last 6 seconds and cost 12800 souls.

The value proposition of pressing 4 while playing Seven is bad.

At first i was going to disagree with you till the end. I do not play 7, but even before the ult was nerfed, as calico, I would be capable of getting into the air, damaging, ulting, and ultimately killing most 7s in their ult. So I understand this thought process.

So if I understand you right, you want it to be changed to either:

a) be a shorter 3 lightning strike, I guess semi burst ult.
b) ult have more survivability added to it so you can actually survive the long duration

Here are my takes:

Remove the ult from 7s body all together and attach it to ball lightning instead. Activating ult super charges ball lightning. It could have either version of the ult but lets say we simply keep the current version of the ult. The ball lightning would flight out to its final location, then expand to the ults current size and last as long as the current ult but does ball lightnings damage. The damage would be adjust as needed.

This allows for 7 to stay in cover while having area denial. Ball lightning damage would likely be reduced as a result.

Reactivating ult causes the lightning strike in the direction you are aiming, again originating from ball lightning.

Downside to this is that you can no longer counter this ult. Which means that the damage would likely be very low, or the length would be greatly shortened. Alternatively 7 loses resistances while ult is active making him much easier to kill during ult and reducing his abilities to come out of cover during a fight.

The alternative to this would be to keep it as it is but give his ult a shield when he ults or extra resistances/damage reduction when he ult and call it a day.