How I Think Qi Blast, Water Flow, and Full Control SHOULD have worked.......

[Anderson]

To be clear, I like all those abilities. But, I think they could all have been combined into a single technique.
Here is how:

You start with Qi Blast, as usual. When you learn Water Flow, your Qi Blast can now also detonate even if you don't charge it. To explain, for the Qi blast to detonate, you have to hold down the button for a moment. Water Flow means you can just dash through, then keep moving. I propose that this ability be simply added to Qi blast, letting you Talisman through, then forgo charging (which would normally just cause the Talisman to whiff), OR detonate it for the usual 3 Charges.
Full Control, then would allow you to control exactly how much to charge. At 3, it would take about as long as Qi Blast does.

Then, Enhanced Full Control would function as normal, adding damage to the 5-charge detonation (and the extra stagger). Enhanced Water Flow would cause the non-charged detonation to occur a bit faster. And Enhanced Qi Blast......wouldn't exist at all. Instead, a separate ability (called Azure Qi) would give you an Azure Sand for every, say 8 talisman charges you have used. Would be less unbalanced than the current version which just requires 3.

The final ability would basically be this:
You dash in, and can then either keep moving, letting the Talisman detonate more quickly than usual, or keep charging up to 5, dealing extra damage if you go for full 5.

Cheers

[Lidoh]

I agree that there seems to be a bit of awkward imbalance with the Talisman abilities. Full Control and Water Flow feel like very separate abilities. In my playthrough, I entirely relied on Water Flow because it allowed me to survive while getting in important damage, but there was never really a reason to switch it out. I tried Full Control and could not really get used to the charging until I tried using it for Eigong, ironically. I feel like you should have an option during a fight to keep getting in smaller detonations or risk charging up for a bigger attack based on how the fight is going.

[Leprochaun]

I prefer the way it is over your proposed changes to combine them all into one technique. The current way promotes different playstyles while your way would homogenize them all. I think there is value in not having everything.

[Unrighteous]

Don't know if charging has a use, but I felt like water flow was clearly the best option. Not having to worry about charging and being able to get extra damage in instantly felt like a no-brainer.

The upgrade tree isn't amazing, but the core gameplay is so good that I gave it a pass.

[Rotom]

Originally posted by Unrighteous:

Don't know if charging has a use, but I felt like water flow was clearly the best option. Not having to worry about charging and being able to get extra damage in instantly felt like a no-brainer.

The upgrade tree isn't amazing, but the core gameplay is so good that I gave it a pass.

See I was the opposite. Up until the final boss I thought water flow was useless. The pure damage full control could do compared to water just made it the no brainer choice for me. I never ran into a scenario where I didn't have time to charge until the final boss.

After beating the final boss I could see how water could be super useful in specific builds, but I still used full control for my 2nd playthrough since it doesn't need a specific build to hit hard.

[leo_gear]

Choosing Water Flow is a choice that will let you better defensively use talismans and keep on the move so you can't get knocked out of detonation. The drawback is, it will do less damage per talisman.

Full Control does about as much as Qi Blast unless you activate all 5 charges, in which you do a moderate amount more damage than Qi Blast, and a lot more than Water Flow. The drawback is, you need to pay the charging tax which you can be knocked out of or take a bunch of damage while you charge.

I feel that making Water Flow have the ability to charge the talisman would blur one of the key differences of damage dealt. You'd either have to lean more on the stagger for Full Control to feel like it's unique OR make it do more damage. Right now, damage dealt is a factor when choosing your specialization.

[Songbird]

Water Flow does the most damage per charge but the least damage per talisman/time unit. It also takes longer to detonate than Qi Blast or Full Control (with lower charges).

Qi Blast and Full Control both let you detonate talismans faster than Water Flow. Qi Blast is indirectly the highest DPS option in that it restores azure sands. Full Control can do the most direct damage while inflicting stun, but it also gives you access to the ability to just detonate talismans for 1 charge, which both gives you the ability to spend less qi than the other styles (pre-ultimate upgrade for Water Flow) and also gives you the fastest detonation.

I personally found Water Flow to be nearly useless for boss fights, since when I'm applying talismans to bosses, I want to use that limited window for the most damage possible. Against normal enemies, it's also pretty bad unless combined with the stasis jade to be able to attack while the talisman is working, but I still normally preferred the Full Control 1-pop. (Qi Blast is fine, but you kinda get infinite azure sands from just killing tougher enemies, so it wasn't really used much over Full Control.)

[leo_gear]

Originally posted by Songbird:

Water Flow does the most damage per charge but the least damage per talisman/time unit. It also takes longer to detonate than Qi Blast or Full Control (with lower charges).

Qi Blast and Full Control both let you detonate talismans faster than Water Flow. Qi Blast is indirectly the highest DPS option in that it restores azure sands. Full Control can do the most direct damage while inflicting stun, but it also gives you access to the ability to just detonate talismans for 1 charge, which both gives you the ability to spend less qi than the other styles (pre-ultimate upgrade for Water Flow) and also gives you the fastest detonation.

I personally found Water Flow to be nearly useless for boss fights, since when I'm applying talismans to bosses, I want to use that limited window for the most damage possible. Against normal enemies, it's also pretty bad unless combined with the stasis jade to be able to attack while the talisman is working, but I still normally preferred the Full Control 1-pop. (Qi Blast is fine, but you kinda get infinite azure sands from just killing tougher enemies, so it wasn't really used much over Full Control.)

If you take into account that you can be attacking a boss while your Water Flow tag is ticking to detonate, Water Flow may equalize with Full Control if not surpass it with certain builds. I want to say the highest dps you can accomplish is going to be with Water Flow + Swift Jade + Last Stand (if you can not get hit, otherwise Breather Jade) purely because you can efficiently detonate internal damage built up from parrying.

Watching a vid of a player mauling Eigong with Water Flow is a sight to behold. No idea which is actually better, but I see the merit in either 3 of the forms with maybe seeing the fully upgraded Qi Blast being a bit much. A slight rebalancing may be just limiting the azure sand recovery to a % chance: 75% if you have 0 azure sand, 33% if you have 1, 15% if you have 2, etc etc.

[Songbird]

Originally posted by leo_gear:

Originally posted by Songbird:

Water Flow does the most damage per charge but the least damage per talisman/time unit. It also takes longer to detonate than Qi Blast or Full Control (with lower charges).

Qi Blast and Full Control both let you detonate talismans faster than Water Flow. Qi Blast is indirectly the highest DPS option in that it restores azure sands. Full Control can do the most direct damage while inflicting stun, but it also gives you access to the ability to just detonate talismans for 1 charge, which both gives you the ability to spend less qi than the other styles (pre-ultimate upgrade for Water Flow) and also gives you the fastest detonation.

I personally found Water Flow to be nearly useless for boss fights, since when I'm applying talismans to bosses, I want to use that limited window for the most damage possible. Against normal enemies, it's also pretty bad unless combined with the stasis jade to be able to attack while the talisman is working, but I still normally preferred the Full Control 1-pop. (Qi Blast is fine, but you kinda get infinite azure sands from just killing tougher enemies, so it wasn't really used much over Full Control.)

If you take into account that you can be attacking a boss while your Water Flow tag is ticking to detonate, Water Flow may equalize with Full Control if not surpass it with certain builds. I want to say the highest dps you can accomplish is going to be with Water Flow + Swift Jade + Last Stand (if you can not get hit, otherwise Breather Jade) purely because you can efficiently detonate internal damage built up from parrying.

Watching a vid of a player mauling Eigong with Water Flow is a sight to behold. No idea which is actually better, but I see the merit in either 3 of the forms with maybe seeing the fully upgraded Qi Blast being a bit much. A slight rebalancing may be just limiting the azure sand recovery to a % chance: 75% if you have 0 azure sand, 33% if you have 1, 15% if you have 2, etc etc.

Eigong speedrun record uses Qi Blast FWIW.
A few more normal attacks do not compare to actually dumping your charges into talismans, unless maybe if you run Qi Blade. Qi Blade is pretty good, but it does require you to be grounded, which is sometimes an issue, and Swift + Blade is 5 computing power. But I did run that build for F&F, just I found very little reason (or window) to actually use the talismans from Water Flow because Qi Blade just eats every charge you get instantly.

[Curiousfellow]

The big advantage to full control, IMO, is that you do a big burst of damage in a single attack window. This means you can focus on defense for the rest of the fight. Qi blast and water flow may be better when you're playing really well(or when you're relying primarily on internal damage), but full control doesn't require as much focus. It gets harder to get windows like that on later bosses like Fuxi and Eigong, but until then it has the benefit of being relatively easy to use.

[Stret]

i think letting players have access to all talisman types at once in the way you describe would be really busted. its more interesting to build a particular playstyle with your talisman & jade choices
If anything, a jade that maybe lets you have two different talismans coexist like that would be really cool. but that would take so much more effort to program than nearly every other jade combined

[Anderson]

Originally posted by Stret:

i think letting players have access to all talisman types at once in the way you describe would be really busted. its more interesting to build a particular playstyle with your talisman & jade choices
If anything, a jade that maybe lets you have two different talismans coexist like that would be really cool. but that would take so much more effort to program than nearly every other jade combined

What's busted about it?

If you normally use Full Control, let's say, then all this does is let you pull of Water Flow if you don't feel like charging the Talismans. The closest to busted would be, i guess, combining Enhanced Full Control with Azure Sand recovery. But all that really means is that Azure Sand recovery is a bit busted. Using Enhanced Qi Blast is already borderline busted, due to how powerful the bow is. This is why I would also nerf it to only recover an Azure Sand every 10 talismans used, instead of every 3 (like it is now).

[Songbird]

Yeah, Qi Blast is busted in situations where you can convert bow ammo into DPS. As I mentioned, since basically every moderately tough enemy drops a bow ammo anyway, the returns for general exploration aren't great, but it just kinda destroys bosses, or lets you skip many of their worst attacks if you're willing to use the slightly lower DPS of Cloud Piercer.

Water Flow vs Full Control is a more interesting argument. Generally speaking, your Qi generation is crazy fast in boss fights, and Water Flow won't keep up with it once it costs 1 Qi. In order for Water Flow to not fall far behind, you have to push to constantly reapply the talismans, using windows that are too small to detonate talismans at all (basically pushing talisman instead of normal attacks). If you're only using it to be able to get a couple extra attacks during big openings, you might as well use one of the other styles and actually empty your Qi during these windows, so you're not just wasting damage by parrying with capped Qi all the time. And as I mentioned above, I like the fact that Full Control can do a 1-pop to just immediately finish off standard mobs, rather than having to wait for Water Flow to trigger and end them. Water Flow is technically more efficient if you are willing to just keep moving past enemies and not pick up their drops, but you could also just not fight them at all, so it starts to get hazy about what is "best" there.

[Stret]

Originally posted by Anderson:

What's busted about it?

youre letting a player pull off the easy and cheap waterflows for free damage, at the same time as you let them cast the full control nuke whenever they like. you no longer have to choose one or the other & build your jades around it
its pretty obvious

[Anderson]

Originally posted by Stret:

Originally posted by Anderson:

What's busted about it?

youre letting a player pull off the easy and cheap waterflows for free damage, at the same time as you let them cast the full control nuke whenever they like. you no longer have to choose one or the other & build your jades around it
its pretty obvious

It's not free damage, you are using it INSTEAD of doing a full control.
Perhaps my idea was not understood? Short version would be:
You dash into the enemy with the talisman and either 1. leave and keep moving, letting the Water Flow explode for the damage it normally does, or 2. Keep charging it like normal, up to how ever many talismans you want. You don't get BOTH of these effects, that would indeed be busted. You ALWAYS would use one or the other, never both. Hope that's clearer.

[Stret]

you are using it INSTEAD of doing a full control.

yes, youre using it whenever you dont have a window to cast full control, or are too afraid to cast full control, dont have the qi for a full control, or...
Thats just plainly busted for obvious reasons. Instead of having to commit to one of them, you can just constantly alternate using them for the best circumstances for each one. Thats no different from wanting the game to let you change the jades you have equipped on the fly, or even just outright having more jades than the limit.