Abomination is not abominating

[Hryakel]

I feel like its not really worth it to transform abomination most of the time. His monster form is not much stronger than human and its not really worth stress that it deals to party.

Like, I play him almost every run, and tried wanderer and moribund the most. 7 out of 10 times that I transform him, I find that I do it for fun and not because it will give me tactical advantage( like: "I can afford some stress damage and really want to see cool monster form").

And most of the streamers that I watch( to be fair I don't watch a lot of them) play him mostly as human.

I feel like monster form needs a small buff, to be better than human form, enough to be worth a risk of stress.

[joecatty]

Agree his pull move in human form is such a strong assist for many tactics, that I struggle to justify the beast. Right now, it is mostly viable as a last resort, when everything goes bad

[ZexxCrine]

Same as it ever was

[Hryakel]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

Same as it ever was

I mean, the fact that it was like that before doesn`t mean good changes cant be made.

[Maj. Crimes]

Originally posted by Hryakel:

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

Same as it ever was

I mean, the fact that it was like that before doesn`t mean good changes cant be made.

Better keep the tried and tested before making any bad changes.

[QuartzBeam]

I don't find beast form weak at all, nor do I find the stress particularly hard to manage—so long as you're a wee bit selective with when to transform and when not to. (In fact, I've run Abom without a stress healer once or twice, and it went great.)

Wanderer's beast skills can ignore or even exploit almost any defensive tokens the enemy throws at you, and will out-damage most equivalent skills in the same circumstances. (Rake vs multiple targets, Rage vs Vuln, Maul vs Block) Hell, if you just master Transform, any enemy with a Vuln token is an easy 16-21 DMG, which shoots up to 21-26 DMG once you've mastered Rage as well.

And Moribund is the de facto "high risk, high reward" path. If you transform at low-to-no stress, it'll probably hit like a wet noodle and quickly run out of steam. But if you time the transformation right, you can be dishing outs ton of crit Rages or hitting both front ranks for a whopping 11-13 DMG.

[Hryakel]

Originally posted by Maj. Crimes:

Originally posted by Hryakel:

I mean, the fact that it was like that before doesn`t mean good changes cant be made.

Better keep the tried and tested before making any bad changes.

Well, I get that, but from what I've heard abom was one of the worst characters in dd1(not bad, but relatively to other characters). And had same problem as now, of beast form not really being worth it. So can you really call it "tried and tested"?

I'm not saying he needs some huge rework, just small buff to monster form, maybe additional tokens, or something. I am not a game desighner, so I am not speaking profesionally, just giving my feedback as a player.

[Hryakel]

Originally posted by QuartzBeam:

I don't find beast form weak at all, nor do I find the stress particularly hard to manage—so long as you're a wee bit selective with when to transform and when not to. (In fact, I've run Abom without a stress healer once or twice, and it went great.)

Wanderer's beast skills can ignore or even exploit almost any defensive tokens the enemy throws at you, and will out-damage most equivalent skills in the same circumstances. (Rake vs multiple targets, Rage vs Vuln, Maul vs Block) Hell, if you just master Transform, any enemy with a Vuln token is an easy 16-21 DMG, which shoots up to 21-26 DMG once you've mastered Rage as well.

And Moribund is the de facto "high risk, high reward" path. If you transform at low-to-no stress, it'll probably hit like a wet noodle and quickly run out of steam. But if you time the transformation right, you can be dishing outs ton of crit Rages or hitting both front ranks for a whopping 11-13 DMG.

Again, I am not saying that he's weak, I am just saying that its not really worth it to transform him. He's monster form deal about as much damage as other good damage dealers, that dont give your party stress, and at the same time loose his human form survivability and utility.

And I get that its not really hard to manage stress, I said it myself, that sometimes I transform him just for fun. But stress in itself is not a problem, its the fact that this stress is not really worth it.

[Alex]

In Confessions nothing is really that dangerous. In Kingdoms though, that is a different story. I had to "hulk out" Abomination on a few occasions to avoid party wipe, and he does wreck ♥♥♥♥ up remarkably well in those kinds of situations, when you need damage, you need AoE, and you need it NOW, stress be damned.

[Brad]

Really the only time I find he's actually powerful is when there are armored enemies and he can use his ability to deal increased damage against armored enemies, or if you have a hero that can cast vulnerability so abomination can deal increased damage. Even then, I feel like he's only really worth transforming in the very hard fights.

[Reedo]

For me, it is really path dependant. The wanderer and second path (can't remember the name) seem very focused on his human skills. The Fiend and moribund are much better in monster form. Especially that 6 bleed skill of the fiend is insane. It does good damage and a 6pt bleed. (7 if you have the memory). That is just wild dmg output. And the stress can be easily handled imo. The moribund is a bit different, he feels better in beast form, but probably needs a buff. His skills just don't do a ton of damage. Like the rage does almost guaranteed crits, but what does that matter if you are only gonna deal 16dmg with a crit? So agree with you on that path.

[Hryakel]

Originally posted by Reedo:

For me, it is really path dependant. The wanderer and second path (can't remember the name) seem very focused on his human skills. The Fiend and moribund are much better in monster form. Especially that 6 bleed skill of the fiend is insane. It does good damage and a 6pt bleed. (7 if you have the memory). That is just wild dmg output. And the stress can be easily handled imo. The moribund is a bit different, he feels better in beast form, but probably needs a buff. His skills just don't do a ton of damage. Like the rage does almost guaranteed crits, but what does that matter if you are only gonna deal 16dmg with a crit? So agree with you on that path.

Heavily agree on moribund (haven`t played bleed path that much because don`t really like dot builds), but moribund have very high risk with almost no reward - you need to have him on relatively high stress to have good crit chances, so you risk him being focused by enemies, and having meltdown, and for what? 16 dmg crit? some characters can do 16 dmg without crit.

I get that maybe they don`t want to encourage dmg meta that game have, so maybe give moribund more defensive capabilities, his rage already gives him aggro and block(when upgraded) on crit, so why don`t make it so he gets it just by hitting? and on crit he recieves block+ for example or 2 blocks and aggro tokens?

[Reedo]

I really encourage you try the fiend, he is hella strong.

[Hryakel]

Will do, but my point with moribund still stands.

[QuartzBeam]

Originally posted by Hryakel:

Again, I am not saying that he's weak, I am just saying that its not really worth it to transform him. He's monster form deal about as much damage as other good damage dealers, that dont give your party stress, and at the same time loose his human form survivability and utility.

And I get that its not really hard to manage stress, I said it myself, that sometimes I transform him just for fun. But stress in itself is not a problem, its the fact that this stress is not really worth it.

But that's the thing: there are a lot of cases where Wanderer's beast form outperforms other damage dealers, and not just in damage, but in utility too. It's not gonna put them out of a job by any means, but it's a pretty significant advantage for how minor the downside is in my experience.

I mean, quick breakdown:

Rake is kinda meh, sure, but its mastered version at full power might be the strongest front-rank cleave in the game, dealing 7-9 DMG with a whopping 20% CRIT. (That means a 36% chance of landing at least 1 crit.) And it's pretty darn competitive at half power too, with 5-7 DMG and 15% CRIT.

Rage and Maul will blow just about any bread-and-butter attack out of the water when it comes to exploiting Vulnerable and Block/Block+ tokens respectively. (Plus, the former also boasts rank 3 reach and a significant 15% CRIT.)

Slam gets to both deal decent damage and remove all dodge tokens from the target once mastered, on top of the repositioning and knockback it offers. (Your other options for removing dodge deal no damage, and your other options for ignoring dodge are all conditional.)

And Instinct is just... *chef's kiss*.

[QuartzBeam]

Side note about Moribund: Rage isn't his "main" attack, Rake is. Rake has 11-13 base DMG at full power, so it scales insanely well with Strength tokens and damage trinkets. (Plus, it only heals 1 stress if it hits only one enemy, so it's much more sustainable for boss fights.)