If you have been living under a rock lately, there have been a lot of Abathur hate threads lately ranting on why he’s so unfun to play against. One of the main reasons is because he empowers certain heroes that make them borderline OP (which includes any melee assassin, bruiser, or ranged AA hero).
I want to ask you guys what ideas you may have to replace this talent’s current functionality. One of my personal ideas I had was giving Heroic Symbiote hosts +10% more damage (both physical and spell) and their Basic Abilities recharge +25% faster (8s cooldown reduced to 6.4s). That might be a direct improvement over the current iteration, but that’s why I’m asking all of you to bring forth your ideas.
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I’m saying that your suggestion is flawed, because those two sixteen talents together (Slow on Spike Burst and Speed on Barrier) would be inordinately more powerful than Adrenal Overload is now.
Adrenal Overload is currently THE REASON you want an Aba on the team. Yes, his Soak is nice (outdone by others like Samuro and TLV), his global vision is fine (outdone by others again though), but hypercarries as early as level 4 is WHY he’s drafted in Ranked.
Us Aba mains want to actually play the character, not be a glorified Gall.
What? How are you supposed to take both of them? Pressurized Glands is a lvl 1 talent that Increases the range of Symbiote’s Spike Burst by 25% and decreases the cooldown by 1 second. The one you’re talking about is Envenomed Spikes
In ranked, the only reason you draft Abathur over TLV or Medivh is his Adrenal Overload enabling hypercarries such as Illidan or Hogger better than any other character (asides from MAYBE Uther).
25% CDR is way too much for a level 4 talent, even without the 10% flat damage increase. also should word it so that it’s Basic Ability Cooldowns, having it recharge traits/keyboard abilities and ults would be even more insane.
Attack Speed works that high because for the average hero that won’t be giving massive value until level 13-16 though it still compliments them very well at that range.
Imagine Cho and Gall both getting reduced cooldowns. Imagine manaless heroes spamming abilities like crazy.
Heroes like Malthael and Leoric who’s staying power in a fight directly correlates to them using their healing ability to stick around.
Shield Wall Varian will have some ~30% uptime on Protected.
If they do look at this talent i hope it coincides with a revision to illidan. Kind of like how tracer couldnt be buffed without first looking at tassadar.
At the end of the day, i do like the fantasy of how Abathur makes his host stronger. Kind of like when Fry from Futurama got worms from eating a sandwhich at a truck stop. Instead of feeling sick, there was a symbiotic relationship where the worms made him stronger.
IMO the main issues with adrenal are 100% uptime, limited interaction, and potential busted interactions.
I would link adrenal’s boost to carapace for a 2-3 second duration, refreshing whenever abathur does damage to a hero. This tones down the ability for PvE and rewards skillful input from the abathur to time turning it on, weaving in abilities, and hitting skill shots.
My gut is this sort of limit will allow the boost to stay at 25% increased attack speed, but that would be a tuning point. +Damage instead of IAS would decrease the power level overall but also increases burst damage (looking at you, tracer).
