Look, when I play Artanis I play him to get some sweet swaps, charge in to go WHAP WHAP (WHAP) with my swords then walk away like a badass.
The instantaneous flurry of attacks? That’s really cool. So I’m wondering why we don’t focus on instantaneous attacks 'stead of the current “Illidan with a skillshot 2.0”?
I want 3 attacks baseline. I want 4 attacks talented. Hell I want 6 attacks all hitting instantaneously to make my opponent scream “IMPOSSIBRU!” and I don’t care if you have to reduce the damage of each attack by 50% to do it.
Remove the attack speed from talents. Slow his baseline attack. Give Twin Blades Triple Strike baseline at 50% damage. Change Blade Dash to give him replicated attacks depending on how many heroes he hits. Make Blades of a Templar give him an extra attack for 20% damage. Heck even give Phase Prism extra attacks when he lands it. All possibilities.
Point is, Artanis with lots of instantaneous attacks on cooldowns would be a lot cooler than “I can be good if I stick on the nearest target 100% of the time!” Artanis.
The biggest problem I see with that is it would make him even more vulnerable to blinds. JoJo, Cassia, and even Li Li just need to wait for WAPWAPWAP to be up, and Artanis is useless.
7 Likes
He’s already vulnerable to blinds, but he’ll be significantly less vulnerable to disables.
2 Likes
I really like the idea of Artanis dumping 4+ attacks on a single target in the span of a single second, but I think that’d be hard to balance and might cause some identity problems – he really isn’t meant to have that much burst damage.
It might be better to incorporate something like this into a new hero.
I think this might actually go along really well with an idea I posted a while ago for a trait or basic attack modifier that lets you store AAs as charges. Even better if their attack speed cannot be increased by attack speed bonuses, but the rate at which they store charges does.
3 Likes
Just reduce the damage of each attack to 50%.
We’re not adding burst damage (not until level 16 that is), what we’re doing is shifting his attack rotation to be more cooldown oriented and less uptime oriented.
In fact, until he gets the talents, his overall damage may decrease (but his survivability will increase for sure.)
Fair enough.
Still, I do think this would go better on a new hero, because this would likely require a major rework and would mess up Artanis for many people who play him now.
2 Likes
To each their own, I’d prefer this on Artanis because I personally think it really suits him. He’s a fast-moving space-warping psychic wizard.
The idea of him hitting his peak at 16 and slashing a single enemy 6 times? Gotta say that sounds pretty awesome, and the words “awesome” and “artanis” have not been spoken together for too long.
I dunno, I think I’ll have to put this on the ‘fun as a thought experiment, horrible to actually implement’ pile, if only for the ungodly amount of reworking, rebalancing and redesigning all of Artanis it’d take just to get this remotely viable. It’d be easier (and cleaner) to just make an entirely new Hero at that point, rather than have to warp every aspect of Artanis’ kit just to somehow twist them around this entirely different design concept.
While I can agree that getting that ‘omae wa mo shindeiru’ moment when the (north) stars do align does sound neat, that’s not really anything special. Just about every build on every Hero sounds great in theory. Being an unkillable meatgrinder that carves through an entire team without dying is also pretty awesome.
4 Likes
Artanis is already designed around this concept.
It leans far more in the direction of being very easy to implement, because he’s already halfway there.
You could keep the same number of attacks to reset his shield cooldown and not affect the amount of time it takes to reset at all.
In fact, the whole point of me making this thread is because I was looking for solutions to Artanis that are extremely easy to implement … and play to his strengths as a hero.
Where did you get that idea? His current design is mostly about getting into a fight, keep hitting things while you survive on your shields, and only stopping when the enemy is dead. The longer the fight, the better.
Your concept is basically the opposite, going for one quick (instant) flurry of blows and then walking away, rather than a prolonged endurance war. The only similarity is that both use aa’s, but the ‘rhythm’ of battle is entirely different.
1 Like
Because his main ability is Twin Blades, which has an upgrade, Triple Strike.
It’s built into his base kit, and specifically designed to work with his trait.
Wait, people take Triple Strike instead of Phase Bulwark?
No wonder his win rate has been tanking recently…
3 Likes
Im in big favor of removing Artanis
Its the best. More dmg. Faster shields and you will almost think your a real hero
~anabanana expert artanis hater
It is better burst, but I am not sure about more damage overall. In addition, you have to be more conscious of using W at the right times to maximize trait uptime. I find the whole “not dying” benefit of Phase Bulwark too good to pass up, unless the enemy team is literally all AA damage.
Oh yes, and it’s at a wonderful 45% winrate. Though that’s all the more reason to make triple strike (minus the c/d increase) baseline, with a damage reduction to prevent him from dealing more damage.
Jokes aside, Phase Bulwark has always had a subpar winrate (coasting in at 47% and generally being below 50%). It’s not because it’s not any good, it’s because Artanis sucks against spell damage … with or without Phase Bulwark. PB has never seemed to significantly affect that.
Eh, I have had the opposite experience. I have a higher win rate with that talent than Triple Strike, but that is mostly because if you are relying on Artanis for your burst damage, you drafted poorly. I will use Triple Strike in my “I only hit objectives” build for BoE, but in the random nonsense that is QM, I mostly take PB.
1 Like
Q build is fun.
Why would you want to ruin that rather than make it better.
A hero that just auto-attacks at melee range would be pretty boring.
No, without Q’s trait resets, it would be an even worse version of what you describe.
1 Like
It is so fun to watch Liam play Artanis.
Too bad he has to use that skin…
I’m not talking about experience, I’m talking about hard stats. At the highest rankings Artanis always does poorly with PB. It’s not that PB is no good, it’s that Artanis is no good against spell damage.
This is shown by the fact that Artanis is strongest against physical fighters.