Initiate ability rebalancing

Can we come up with a way to make the initiate abilities better without making them overpowered?

Remote Defense Boost

The remote defense boost skill is useful for a low level initiate / solo initiate.  One thing that's not obvious from the description is that the initiate also boosts her own auras, and that increases their damage, range, and attack rate.  That's very nice, but it doesn't stack with buff beams, so once you get into the late game (where the buff beam is featured in almost every build), the skill becomes almost completely useless.  Even with 6.6k points in remote defense boost, I get zero boost to a buffed tower.  And in the early game, it sucks up a huge amount of mana when you really need mana for repairs and upgrades, so it's less useful than it could be.  (Doesn't stack with guardians either, by the way.)

In short: Early game - useful, but takes too much mana.  Late game - useless, provides 0 boost because it doesn't stack with buff beams.

Enemy Drain

The enemy drain skill is useful in the early game for a DPS initiate, which is a really fun character at low levels.  It helps a lot with killing ogres, for example.  It makes a great alternative to hero boost at low levels, but only for short bursts because it takes up so much more mana than hero boost.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work at all on bosses, so DPS initiates don't work as boss killers, only as ogre killers or (non-boss) purity bomb boosters.

In short: Early game - useful, but takes too much mana.  Late game - doesn't work on bosses, so almost no one plays a DPS initiate.

...

Right now enemy drain and hero boost multiply together, so you can do an absolutely incredible amount of damage to non-bosses with both boosts combined.  That's not particularly useful, but it's at least amusing on the tavern dummy.  If you made enemy drain work on bosses, it would be really overpowered due to multiplying with hero boost.  I'm not sure what the solution is, but perhaps you could make it work on bosses without multiplying with hero boost?  Any opinions / ideas?

In terms of scaling, if we look at damage alone, then with 4k hero boost, a hero does 3.79x damage; with 4k enemy drain, a hero does 1.86x damage.  So hero boost adds about twice as much damage.  With both boosts at 4k together, heroes do 7x damage.

(I'm not saying we should only consider damage, I'm just comparing the numbers here for reference.)

Remote defenses stacks with TBB, I'm actually pretty sure :o

Indeed, Enemy Drain should have an effect on bosses. However a full stack of Hero Boost and Enemy Drain would be overkill. There are 2 options I can think of.

A: Deal with Enemy Drain like with Call To Arms. Just one damage boosting ability applies to the boss. At best the one with the highest damage multiplier. This would make a DPS Initiate a viable choice, especially when soloing.

B: Deal with Enemy Drain like with Blood Rage. Blood Rage and Hero Boost do not stack completely. There is a hidden formular which evaluates a new slightly higher boost value.

I fully agree to mana costs. Compared to Monk these abilities are mana eater. Decrease ability costs for abilities which lasts over time (buffing other heroes) and/or increase Mana costs for Monk's abilities (nerfing Monk)

In my tests, remote defense gave exactly 0 boost to towers on a fully upgraded buff beam, even with 6.6k in remote defense stat :(  When I sold the buff beam, damage was different with the boost on/off.

I'll test it again later and maybe take screen shots.

Plane is correct, TBB and RDB boosts are applied the same way and thus the largest is used (generally TBB now)

RE: Enemy drain

Do note that this has multiple effects. It reduces enemy resistance (the damage buff noted), damage (portable strength drain), and speed (portable ensnare). All effects stack with any other effect (including aforementioned auras). It's one of the most under appreciated abilities in the game IMO

Remote Defense Boost...

Ah okay, I may remembered tests back in the days when my TBB wasn't that strong ^^

Enemy Drain

Well, I wouldn't say under appreciated. What do you want with an ability which only works against regular enemies while those are not the issue but bosses when it comes to a showdown? The only purpose I have with my DPS Initiate is; Fun Hero.

I'm not sure that bosses should be fully affected by it, but I could get behind partial effectiveness. Either some but not all of the effects or reducing the effect values.

@Alhanalem quote:

I'm not sure that bosses should be fully affected by it, but I could get behind partial effectiveness. Either some but not all of the effects or reducing the effect values.

Both of those sound reasonable to me :)  I think it would be overpowered if it worked fully on bosses, given how it stacks with hero boost.

Alternatively, you could change the way it stacks like EagleOne suggested, or maybe a combination of the two ideas.