Some Ideas on how to Fix Bloodhound Step

[skullbrandy]

Clearly bloodhound step is a problem, not only in PVP where it allows you to completely cheese your opponent and removes a lot of the skill in multiplayer matches but also in PVE where it also allows you to ease your way through a lot of encounters and takes a lot of the risk out of the game. The ideas I present here are more PVP focused but at the end of the day I think BHS would still be totally viable with any of these modifications.

Idea #1: Add a "delay" between casting bloodhound step. Only as much as a 1 or 2 second delay between casts, as the biggest issue with bloodhound currently is the ability to infinitely spam it with virtually no repercussions. Keep the FP and stamina costs of the ability the same.

Idea #2: Bloodhound step costs more FP. Right now I think it is 5, if you increased it even to 20/30 you would still have the spammability of it but you would have to be more conscious of how much you use it. This too I think would put a stop to the spam of the move, but even if someone gets spammy with it, they would have to pause to drink up cerulean tears much more often, leaving openings for opponents to re-engage with them.

Idea #3: Make Bloodhound step cost WAY more stamina. Keep the FP cost the same but make the stamina cost of the ability up to 50 - 75. Most builds end up with around 150ish stamina which would still allow you to spam the ability 2 - 3 times before having to allow your stamina to recharge. But also in the midst of a fight this would introduce a huge cost/benefit to using the ability (If I use BHS right now I will have to let my stamina recharge otherwise I won't be able to attack). I think this one might be my favorite of the 3 ideas here.

PS. Even when fighting bloodhound knights, they aren't spamming this ability. Almost as if they need to regenerate their stamina before beginning their next attack.....

But what do you guys think? Is BHS fine as is to you? Do you have a better idea of how to balance it? Let's talk about it.

[critter]

i gotta say, those of you guys saying they should just have a 1 second delay in bloodhound step, i agree with you. its a pretty decent sounding fix, keeps BHS still useful.

sounds solid enough to me.

[♔V3RD1CT]

tuxedocrab a écrit :

i gotta say, those of you guys saying they should just have a 1 second delay in bloodhound step, i agree with you. its a pretty decent sounding fix, keeps BHS still useful.

sounds solid enough to me.

Kind of. !.04 patch or whatever made the range less extended, so it already is a lot like quick step just more spam-able?

Doubt the big bosses would care to go this route because it is already almost a quick step exact clone.

[Frost]

Sintax a écrit :

Dollmaker a écrit :

BHS can be countered? yeah how? Illuminate me

Waiting it out until they ran out of FP? sure whatever...

No. The player is vulnerable when they attempt to take another action. So time your attacks. It's not complicated. He can spam it all day if he wants. Who cares?

Dollmaker a écrit :

I mean just look at this BS...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I93JATGQ-Rs

How is that any different than dodge rolling to evade attacks (which is far more common)? Have you ever used BHS or faced it yourself? I've literally had no trouble dealing with BHS, but as with most things in PvP, it does require patience. And again, dodge rolling is a far more common headache - FFS you can spam roll to evade AoEs!! - and it doesn't require a special skill. Everyone can do it.

This whole topic is completely subjective though. How do you know that you're not the problem when you complain about something being too OP?

Dollmaker a écrit :

Could also add that BHS is actually faster than Running...

Probably. But so what? So is riding horses. But you still use that right?

You realise roll catching exists right and is very common in PvP? You swing right near the end of a roll and catch them as their iframes stop. Very common with Halberds and thrusting weapons in general.

This does not exist with BHS because you can immediately go into another BHS and essentially have infinite iframes until you can no longer use BHS. This is why it is broken, you can spam it and become invincible for almost no resources. It's better than dodge rolling and quickstep combined.

[skullbrandy]

Frost a écrit :

Sintax a écrit :

No. The player is vulnerable when they attempt to take another action. So time your attacks. It's not complicated. He can spam it all day if he wants. Who cares?



How is that any different than dodge rolling to evade attacks (which is far more common)? Have you ever used BHS or faced it yourself? I've literally had no trouble dealing with BHS, but as with most things in PvP, it does require patience. And again, dodge rolling is a far more common headache - FFS you can spam roll to evade AoEs!! - and it doesn't require a special skill. Everyone can do it.

This whole topic is completely subjective though. How do you know that you're not the problem when you complain about something being too OP?



Probably. But so what? So is riding horses. But you still use that right?

You realise roll catching exists right and is very common in PvP? You swing right near the end of a roll and catch them as their iframes stop. Very common with Halberds and thrusting weapons in general.

This does not exist with BHS because you can immediately go into another BHS and essentially have infinite iframes until you can no longer use BHS. This is why it is broken, you can spam it and become invincible for almost no resources. It's better than dodge rolling and quickstep combined.

Stop talking to him, he's clearly trolling. No one can be this stupid.

[skullbrandy]

tuxedocrab a écrit :

i gotta say, those of you guys saying they should just have a 1 second delay in bloodhound step, i agree with you. its a pretty decent sounding fix, keeps BHS still useful.

sounds solid enough to me.

My thoughts exactly. The idea isn't to kill the ability. It should still feel powerful to use.

[Argonaut]

skullbrandy a écrit :

Highly disagree with your hot take.

Then either you don't PvP or you don't accurately understand why BHS is such a stigma.

tuxedocrab a écrit :

i gotta say, those of you guys saying they should just have a 1 second delay in bloodhound step, i agree with you. its a pretty decent sounding fix, keeps BHS still useful.

sounds solid enough to me.

What will happen is we will go from roll catches to BHS recovery catches and it will instantly become another useless skill because you can just spam quickstep for better odds.

You want an alternative to removing it entirely from the game? Remove all the iframes.

[skullbrandy]

Argonaut a écrit :

skullbrandy a écrit :

Highly disagree with your hot take.

Then either you don't PvP or you don't accurately understand why BHS is such a stigma.

tuxedocrab a écrit :

i gotta say, those of you guys saying they should just have a 1 second delay in bloodhound step, i agree with you. its a pretty decent sounding fix, keeps BHS still useful.

sounds solid enough to me.

What will happen is we will go from roll catches to BHS recovery catches and it will instantly become another useless skill because you can just spam quickstep for better odds.

You want an alternative to removing it entirely from the game? Remove all the iframes.

BHS is already faster than running and travels the distance of 3 rolls. Gonna be fairly challenging to catch it. Compared to rolling which is slower than running and already takes skill to punish. I think you're over exaggerating. BHS would still be totally viable in this scenario.

But since you have so much to say. Outside of removing BHS from game (cuz it won't happen) what is your idea on fixing it? Or are you just here to tell people why you think their ideas are bad?

[Dragonirian]

It's not as good as people paint it to be.
"Omg so broken" - it's literally the same as a dodgeroll just with longer range.
The only people complaining that I see are the ganksquads that are salty they couldn't trap a bhs user in a corner.
For everything else - it's as easy a getting good.
Bhs around you? Free aim and hit where the guy will land, it's a guaranteed hit, I was able to do it to a bhs user as well as recieve it as a bhs user.
People don't have many flasks and don't level mind if they are not mages. So they can't spam bhs for long and they DO run out of fp most of the time.
In duels BHS is predictable as hell, your edgy katana ninja character will get repeatedly parried if you spam attack at bhs exit which in my experience most of bhs users do.

[Argonaut]

skullbrandy a écrit :

BHS is already faster than running and travels the distance of 3 rolls. Gonna be fairly challenging to catch it. Compared to rolling which is slower than running and already takes skill to punish. I think you're over exaggerating. BHS would still be totally viable in this scenario.

But since you have so much to say. Outside of removing BHS from game (cuz it won't happen) what is your idea on fixing it? Or are you just here to tell people why you think their ideas are bad?

You confirmed my suspicions. You do not PvP and you do not understand why BHS is such cancer so I'm going to go deep here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXjcoUMzYb4
You can watch him sprint towards someone spamming BHS and yet the BHS user can't build enough distance to be safe until he runs out of stamina at which point he is just running directly in his face. BHS only builds distance when you try to attack before the spam is over removing all choice from you and leaving it entirely in the court of the person using BHS. This is the problem with BHS. It is 100% reward with 0% risk and leaves your opponent with no choice but to wait for you to run out of FP.

But why is this?

Because BHS has infinite iframes that last from the first frame of animation until the last frame of the animation. You cannot do anything to stop it, interrupt it or counter it because of this one reason. So let's go through a couple of fixes for this.

Take away iframes?
If you take them away from the start of the animation it doesn't matter because your counter is still entirely luck based. Now distance and speed become an issue and nerfing those just makes it a worse quickstep because you can be R1 spammed out of it.
If you take them away from the end of the animation you have changed nothing as your counter is now entirely luck based. Now you need to think about cooldown and recovery.
Take them all away and it's a dead skill.

Add a cooldown? You just made BHS stronger. People will BHS-> Stagger -> BHS or BHS -> Roll -> BHS because it has no recovery. Maybe you will affect itemization but this will result in poise monsters with heavy weapons abusing BHS leaving you no counter and giving rise to more greatsword poke.
Add recovery period? It's now a trap to use BHS because the instant you use it your opponent uses thunderbolt, ice spear, running R2's from certain weapon classes, moonveil etc for a free hit.
Add both? It's a dead skill. If you opponent has a weapon with a good running R2 or any ranged skill or ash of war you are giving them a free hit every time you use it.

So do we add multiple fixes?
Add a cooldown and a recovery? Panic rolling and quickstep are now infinitely better.
Add a cooldown and remove the iframes from the end? It is now worse than quickstep or panic rolling.
Are you seeing a pattern here?

So what do we do? Do we change the costs?
Do we raise the FP cost? Well all we did was make dealing with it last a bit shorter but the inherent problem of you being able to do nothing to counter it hasn't changed.
Do we raise the stamina cost? You haven't changed anything. Even if you can only BHS consecutively 3 times that is more than enough to dodge any AoE or build enough distance to recover stamina for another BHS. If your opponent tries to attack you at this stage you just BHS, wait for them to catch up, BHS etc.

No matter what angle you approach it from to balance it at best you will make it slightly less braindead or people will just create builds around abusing BHS. Sure, maybe you will see less 2kat BHS users but you will see a lot more full bull-goat greatsword BHS users.

As a bonus, no fix that doesn't kill the skill counters the strongest BHS abuse build which is dual bleed naginatas with BHS.

[Lylliana of Mirrah]

skullbrandy a écrit :

Clearly bloodhound step is a problem, not only in PVP where it allows you to completely cheese your opponent and removes a lot of the skill in multiplayer matches but also in PVE where it also allows you to ease your way through a lot of encounters and takes a lot of the risk out of the game. The ideas I present here are more PVP focused but at the end of the day I think BHS would still be totally viable with any of these modifications.

Idea #1: Add a "delay" between casting bloodhound step. Only as much as a 1 or 2 second delay between casts, as the biggest issue with bloodhound currently is the ability to infinitely spam it with virtually no repercussions. Keep the FP and stamina costs of the ability the same.

Idea #2: Bloodhound step costs more FP. Right now I think it is 5, if you increased it even to 20/30 you would still have the spammability of it but you would have to be more conscious of how much you use it. This too I think would put a stop to the spam of the move, but even if someone gets spammy with it, they would have to pause to drink up cerulean tears much more often, leaving openings for opponents to re-engage with them.

Idea #3: Make Bloodhound step cost WAY more stamina. Keep the FP cost the same but make the stamina cost of the ability up to 50 - 75. Most builds end up with around 150ish stamina which would still allow you to spam the ability 2 - 3 times before having to allow your stamina to recharge. But also in the midst of a fight this would introduce a huge cost/benefit to using the ability (If I use BHS right now I will have to let my stamina recharge otherwise I won't be able to attack). I think this one might be my favorite of the 3 ideas here.

PS. Even when fighting bloodhound knights, they aren't spamming this ability. Almost as if they need to regenerate their stamina before beginning their next attack.....

But what do you guys think? Is BHS fine as is to you? Do you have a better idea of how to balance it? Let's talk about it.

tbh, the easiest fix is get some friends and actually give some basic rules on not using certain Ashes of War, spells, Status Effect Weapons, Certain weapons like Greatshields.

[Zorin]

Dragonirian a écrit :

It's not as good as people paint it to be.
"Omg so broken" - it's literally the same as a dodgeroll just with longer range.

Standard dodge has 26 iframes then 16 frames of vulnerability before you can dodge again.

Bloodhound Step has 40 iframes then 4 (!) frames of vulnerability when dodging sideways, on top of travelling the distance of 3 rolls.

This ability is absolutely egregious and anyone who says otherwise is ill-informed or trolling.

[HixBozo]

So far I am not aware BHS to be forbidden in tournaments

[Lylliana of Mirrah]

HixBozo a écrit :

So far I am not aware BHS to be forbidden in tournaments

which is good. encourage more ds3 like playstyle.

[Sintax]

Dragonirian a écrit :

It's not as good as people paint it to be.
"Omg so broken" - it's literally the same as a dodgeroll just with longer range.
The only people complaining that I see are the ganksquads that are salty they couldn't trap a bhs user in a corner.
For everything else - it's as easy a getting good.
Bhs around you? Free aim and hit where the guy will land, it's a guaranteed hit, I was able to do it to a bhs user as well as recieve it as a bhs user.
People don't have many flasks and don't level mind if they are not mages. So they can't spam bhs for long and they DO run out of fp most of the time.
In duels BHS is predictable as hell, your edgy katana ninja character will get repeatedly parried if you spam attack at bhs exit which in my experience most of bhs users do.

That's been more or less my experience. Timing hits and using AoEs have worked for me.

I think it's pure salt driving all the whinging here or an unwillingness to adjust their own tactics.

[Sintax]

Zorin a écrit :

Dragonirian a écrit :

It's not as good as people paint it to be.
"Omg so broken" - it's literally the same as a dodgeroll just with longer range.

Standard dodge has 26 iframes then 16 frames of vulnerability before you can dodge again.

Bloodhound Step has 40 iframes then 4 (!) frames of vulnerability when dodging sideways, on top of travelling the distance of 3 rolls.

This ability is absolutely egregious and anyone who says otherwise is ill-informed or trolling.

Dodge roll also has lower requirements and doesn't require any tradeoffs to use. EVERYONE gets dodge roll as a free evasion skill and EVERYONE spams the hell out of it in every fight. Not so with BHS.

BHS is an improved version of dodge roll. So what? This is the nature of the game. It's certainly not game breaking. I get it. It frustrates you, but there's a lot in the game that's deliberately hard and frustrating.

You can either:

a) Take up the challenge and devise your own tactics (my preference)
b) Use BHS yourself, if you think it's that unstoppable
c) Cry about it here with little or no hope of solving anything

Good luck.