Killing Spree is possibly the worst ability in the game. Most of the time you’re completely gambling with your life if you wind up dying from the pressing the ability, usually from the prevalence of AoE abilities and frontals, but sometimes even from dev oversight bugs like on Dawnbreaker (where you’ll fall through the first two airships if you press the button). Risk/reward can be impactful and fun, but not when the ability so frequently is unsafe to press, such as in the 11.1 Rookery with the large number of AoE abilities that kill you after clipping them while in Killing Spree. What’s worse, Killing Spree is an almost mandatory talent if you want to play Trickster, which I personally enjoy playing more than Fatebound, since 2 of the hero talents are bound to using Killing Spree.
It was cool back in Wrath, but the uniqueness of the animation is no longer a selling point. It is disorienting with the camera jumps. The loss of control leads to deaths that are out of the player’s hands. You’re frequently being asked to guess “in the next 2 seconds will there be an ability that will kill me if I press this button.” With the fast paced nature of Outlaw, having one of the highest APMs in the game, I feel this is an unfair burden to place on players.
So here are my proposals:
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Give Killing Spree a new animation. Remove the loss of player control element to the ability. My personal suggestion would be to start with Demon Hunter’s Blade Dance. It is similar in feeling (you disappear, do a bunch of damage in an AoE, and then reappear), but you largely have control of your character and your camera angle. You should still be able to move your character around so that you can dodge incoming abilities.
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Give Killing Spree full immunity when using it in PvE. I dislike this option, but would be willing to accept it as a stopgap until proposal 1 could be implemented. Full immunity would make the ability strong making it possible to tank certain mechanics and trivialize some enemy abilities, thus I’m not a fan. I think at one point this was the case and the current damage over time debuff was implemented to stop this abuse.
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Massively nerf the debuff over time. If unwilling to do 1 or 2, at least make the debuff less lethal. Healers often have no idea where it’s coming from and don’t have enough time to react to save a lethal mistake. Yes the damage can be Cloaked off, but that can only be done so many times.
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Decouple Killing Spree from Trickster. If none of these changes are appealing to the devs, please swap Killing Spree with Blade Rush or something and decouple Killing Spree from Trickster’s talents. Buff Trickster to compensate.
Thank you for reading. Outlaw is my favorite spec, and I want it to wind up in a good place. If you have any other suggestions feel free to post them <3
