The Problems with Acrid

[scrunt]

Acrid's kit is solidly designed and he has the potential to be a really fun character, but arbitrary restrictions to his design and other issues make him deceptively weak, most of them being related to the weaknesses of poison, his main gimmick.

--For starters, poison damage cannot crit. Additionally, poison ticks cannot proc ANY items. Literally none of them. This means the majority of his kit does not work with the vast majority of good items in the game, and his overall damage output falls off extremely fast given the set rate of DoT he can do.

--Additionally poison damage falls off even more because armor reduction applies to poison, so despite the description of the ability, it is almost never actually 10% of enemy hp. It also doesn't scale with level.

--The R ability's DoT is no longer separate or stackable with poison like it was in the first game, which makes his damage output worse than before. The R DoT also used to be lethal, which if the devs really don't want normal poison to be lethal, I think this would at least be fair.

--The R also has really bad range so it can be very difficult and tedious to actually get poison to spread

--Due to his main source of damage and DoT being nonlethal, he is prone to being swarmed by still alive enemies.

--No extra survivability like i-frames or shields, unlike Loader and Mercenary, so the melee side of him is too risky and useless later in the run. He basically needs Visions of Heresy to be able to do decent damage and finish off poisoned enemies without dying.

At the end of the day, Acrid's damage comes slow, usually too slow for him to be a viable choice over other characters, and he needs a bit of love. If not his poison being lethal (which in all honesty I think that'd be fair and not as broken as some people think), something else to make his damage better.

Working around the developer's intent that poison should not kill (which, again, I don't think it'd be broken if it did kill especially in its current state), I think Acrid could use the following buffs:

--Poison damage is no longer reduced by enemy armor

--M1 attack poisons like it did in the first game

--poison ticks proc item effects

--Epidemic has its original properties, where it's a separate, lethal DoT that stacks with poison

--Increase the range of Epidemic's spread

--Gain an increasing light damage resistance buff for every enemy currently under the effects of poison, giving him much needed survivability and giving a point to mass-poisoning enemies

[GIRL]

I wouldn't mind his non-lethal Poison if Epidemic was lethal. You're right about how in the original game, Epidemic was it's own debuff, different from Poison. I kinda was also wishing it would be the same. If his basics applied Poison and the Poison could stack, that would also be nice without it being too broken - so long as Poison remains non-lethal.

Epidemic, I think, SHOULD do lethal damage, a way to sort of finish off groups of enemies weakened by Poison. Mechanically it makes sense. You use one of his leaps to get in, poison a bunch of enemies, then use his second leap to get to safety and use Epidemic to finish them.

Also I think it would be neat if Epidemic did 0 base damage, but did more and more damage based on Poison stacks (if they change it to stack) on an enemy. That would emphasize it's use as a "finisher" move even more. Perhaps a skill variant that could be added one day...?

[Sergeant_Braken]

Just a heads up; the poison dot doesn't deal 10% of an enemy's HP per tick. It is supposed to deal 10% of an enemy's HP in total before it wears off without being reapplied. Someone posted that it ticks approximately 31 times, so it's more around 0.3% HP per tick.

But, as you said, it's affected by armor, so it doesn't even do that much.

[Dragontoast]

Originally posted by Bard:

--M1 attack poisons like it did in the first game

--poison ticks proc item effects

--Epidemic has its original properties, where it's a separate, lethal DoT that stacks with poison

--Increase the range of Epidemic's spread

The M1 poisoning would be really nice.
Poison ticks should heal for leaching seeds, but I think that's the extent it should go.
Epidemic's range for spreading definitely needs increasing.
Letting Epidemic be separate from poison would be nice simply because if they let it stack multiple Acrids won't be nerfing the team(my biggest issue with Acrid currently).

To add to this list:
--Give each Acrid a unique poison DoT, currently if you have 4 Acrids you have the DPS of 1 Acrid(with a little extra for the initial hit damage).

[Aegix Drakan]

.......What do people think of Epidemic poison killing, but ONLY on the final tick of the status? So, like, if it takes 5 seconds to tick through all the damage, it only kills at the end of the 5 seconds, even if the intial hit takes the enemy to 1 hp.

Like, so far I really like acrid, but he's SO hard to get started on. You need huge amounts of survivability and speed, plus items that can actually finish enemies off (bleed dagger, gasoline, etc) in order to cope with the huge amounts of low-HP mobs that remain. I REALLY feel like he needs a tiny little something in order to really shine. He's close, REALLY close...But still missing one little something...

[Thug Killadome]

I'd be fine with the poison not killing if his shift was improved so you could either aim it at wisps or cancel it early to hit airborne targets

[A Very Kupo Guy]

His M2 and R feel like slightly different versions of the same skill. One does a bit more up-front damage and has a low cooldown, while the other just hits more enemies. They feel like alt skills, almost.

[--E@T TH3M!--]

I was thinking of making a topic like this after trying out Acrid for 2 runs. He has a good concept, and his character design looks really nice (and cute too; I mean, have you seen where the fresh meat and happiest masks are placed? CUTENESS), but too many glaring restrictions as you mentioned.

- Totally in support of poison damage being able to kill. If they absolutely want to stick to the non-lethal poison gimmick, then they seriously have to buff M2 and Epidemic. M2 needs to have a larger hitbox because it's so wonky right now, and Epidemic as some of you have mentioned could do with larger AoE and actually being able to kill.

- No i-frames or shield on melee attacks = certain death if you try to do that in later stages, even with Jade Elephant up. They could give a strong but temporary shield upon landing after his ground pound as a form of mitigation, which would encourage players to at least do a hit-and-run style similar to Loader.

[Ittrix]

I can see the issues with him being melee and not having defensive utility.
Also frustrating his poison doesn't really scale with items. It does scale with level though- it does 1000% base damage *or* 10% of enemy max HP. Whichever is higher.
It's why you'll tick for 5 damage on a lesser wisp with 35 HP, then 6 when you level up. Then 7, then 8, and so on. His base damage does scale faster, but not enough to justify the lack of items.

Keeping in mind that it hits with about the power of a nano bomb, it'd be nutters to let his poison or epidemic kill. Imo, just letting it scale with fire rate, procs, and crits would be enough.

He's not really prone to being swarmed in my experience. Epidemic is just as good for taking out swarthes of 'still alive' enemies as it is at making them. It spreads waaay faster than in the first game. Plus, like 99% of the items in the game do damage in an AOE. You *will* get an item that can help finish off weakened enemies. A range buff would still be nice on it, though.

[kameltoes]

most mp runs I've played, Acrid is the first to die

[Jon]

Originally posted by Ittrix:

Also frustrating his poison doesn't really scale with items.

It actually does, sort of. the 1000% base damage component factors in Focus Crystal, AP Rounds and Shaped glass. If, however, this final value doesn't exceed the 10% target health value then it still gets superseded by that. The easiest way to test this is to get a few focus crystals, poison a target then move in/out of 13m range and watch the damage change. to see that it doesn't work for the 10% damage component, simply do what I did and stack 20 AP rounds hoping to have a poison that would melt all bosses in 20 seconds (it doesn't).

I think what confuses people is that the displayed damage always relates to the 1000% base damage value even if the applied damage is the 10% health value.

That and the fact that he's advertised as a melee character when he's really a ranged character after the first loop.

What I find people fail to bring up in acrid discussions is his 15 base damage - the highest of any character and a full 25% higher than most other characters. His tri-tips, will'o and gasoline procs are stronger and that goes a long way for him, especially with his R being so effective at fishing for procs (up to 20 hits, at range, on a 10 second cooldown with 1 coef is really, really good).

[gachi is manly]

I definitely agree with a some of your purposed changes. I think some would be too powerful (poison having a proc coefficient sounds nutty) but others like poison not being affected by armor and epidemic spread range increased a bit would be nice balance tweaks.

[Xio_the_fluff]

I feel like the poison for m2 and epidemic should be separate effects, and the poison should have a proc chance on items, but make it a compairitively lower chance than the initial hits/mele hits since it is a DoT (as well as it activating leach seeds possibly.)

[Kupo Nut]

He is very viable, his main purpose is melting walls, when you are stuck in a stage without enough power to kill anything, this is where Acrid shine, given time he will melt through everything...the only problem is that the implementation of his poison is done in the most boring way possible.