Initiate and Countess Ability buffs

Countess and Initiate have been for a long time generally considered useless as DPS classes, as they lack DPS boosting skins and have poor offensive abilities on top. I would like to propose at minimum modifications to, if not replacements of, current abilities to make each class more relevant, especially seeing the benefits that Apprentice and Adept saw in the last update.

Initiate abilities have already been partially discussed here:

https://dungeondefenders.com/1/topic/137703/

Initiate:

Remote Defense Boost is completely useless for a multitude of reasons, and I think it should be replaced in its entirety with a better ability, but I'd like to hear others' opinions on how it can be modified to work as well.

Enemy Drain is an ability with a lot of squandered potential. Initiate would see far more play if this ability even partially affected bosses. To what extent it should affect them, obviously, is up for discussion, but I believe that it is the best path for this ability.

Countess:

Call to Arms is for all intents and purposes a worse version of Hero Boost. While it does have several unique effects, they are outweighed by the obnoxious mana cost and general weakness of the buff compared to Hero Boost. This is another ability I would like to see removed entirely, but again, this is a discussion, not a demand.

Joust is another ability with potential that I think is let down by its lack of damage and uselessness against bosses. Having your Joust cancelled after 4 ticks of damage and not even doing 8 million damage total to the boss is extremely disappointing, as you are then forced to rely on you subpar Mega Chicken damage for the rest of its HP since your standard sword swings tickle at best. Really you're just better off with a Monk.

(This is purely my opinion and is no reflection on the CDT or development)

RDB: Agree totally. The ability just runs against any active playstyle and so is only really of benefit when one can already steamroll (which makes it of no benefit...)

Enemy Drain: Cautiously agreed. By the very nature of its effects, this ability stacks (as a power multiplier) with everything (because its the only ability which modifies the affected mob, not the hero) making it absurdly powerful when players are grouped up (eg. boss fights, ogre rushes). At the same time it should still be a useful ability to a solo player and its ineffectiveness on bosses prevents that.

I have no solutions to offer, but I don't think a resistance on bosses is an effective method of making it useful. You either hit the threshold of "useful", or you dont and it gets ignored.

Call to Arms: Strongly disagree, if only for the comparison to an ability which IMO, swings the other way (hero boost: next to no mana cost ramp, very strong primary effect). CTA is one of the abilities I would point to as an example of an ability that is effective and useful without being prohibitively difficult to use

Joust: Could always just remove the cancel if the blockage is an enemy...

I was thinking on making a similar thread.

RDB is well... just crap, and isn't useful even remotely(don't mind the pun) in any game mode that I can think of. What I'd like RDB to be changed as is somewhat of a Monk + Huntress Guardian combo that increases the rate and range of the towers being boosted, similar to the Guardian Boosts. In its current state, the Monk's Tower Boost is infinitely better than the RDB. This is one of the abilities that i find no use for, even Decoy is somewhat usable in getaway situations.
An alternate new suggestion for RDB would be to have it changed to DRB -- Defense Resistance Boost, which makes your towers take around 50-90% less damage depending on the stat points, 90% being the cap(maybe somewhere around 4k stats). This ability would of course stack up with any existing Strength Drain Aura or a Squire Guardian. And yes the Monk Tower Boost heals towers, but the heal rate for the main towers(Minions/Harpoons/Fireballs/etc.) is fairly slow, and they can be still be destroyed while you are boosting them.

Enemy Drain has a lot of potential but it is wasted currently. I'd like to suggest that Enemy Drain range/radius be increased significantly. I have a 4k Enemy Drain Initiate(which I made just for the lulz some years back) that I have been leveling up recently. While the Initiate is a fun character to play as, the small radius and crazy mana cost ramp-up just makes it more or less useless since you can do more damage as solo while using literally any other character. Having it affect bosses is that it won't be useful against some of the bosses, especially those that are non-land or semi-land based. Again, compared to Monk Hero Boost this ability seems like a dud as well. For regular mobs it is a great ability since it works well with Monk Boost.
Another possible change could be similar to the DRB suggestion, only in this case it temporarily boosts your Hero's armor resists by 15% at most. So if you have 89% 89% 89% 89%, you will only get a 1% boost increase. But if you are 75% 75% 75% 75% on armor, then you will gain 90% resists temporarily while under the effect of the Enemy Drain.
One more suggestion could be have yourself healed by a certain amount whenever an enemy is under the effect of this ability. Ideally, it should act like life drain, so have the ability do some kind of damage per tick to all enemies under the effect of it, and at the same time heal you by the amount of damage that is being done by the ability.


As far as CTA and Joust are concerned, i can't say much becasue I rarely play as the Countess.


As an added suggestion, Ranger's Invisibility Field has a pretty crappy mana cost ramp-up, compared to a Huntress which can remain invisible for waves upon waves, the Invisibility Field is just pure crap regardless of the fact that it makes other Heros and Towers as invisible or not(which is hardly useful). The current mana cost is just way too much for the ability to be useful, and the Huntress's Invisibility Cloak cool-down is significantly lower than that of the Ranger, that is another major downside to this ability.


All that said, some abilities definitely need to be worked upon, or completely re-vamped to make them usable.

Invisibility field is kinda anti-useful:

- It causes your towers/minions to lose aggro, so ogres will try to walk around your minions and go straight to your cores to kill them

- It can mess up the huntress's invisibility so she has to turn it off and on for it to work again (bug)

- It takes a lot of mana despite being less useful than huntress invis

Yep. I have had an occasional wipeout due to the Invisibility Field making towers loose aggro.
I'd much rather have it not affect towers and just heroes.
But given its crazy mana cost its just hard to justify using it over the Huntress's near infinite Invisibility Cloak. 

@Plane quote:

Invisibility field is kinda anti-useful:

- It causes your towers/minions to lose aggro, so ogres will try to walk around your minions and go straight to your cores to kill them

This is by design though... You're just using it wrong xD An example of where it is useful is on boss rush, you can make your whole team invisible. Useful against the krakens. I think it is fine as it is.

I am in favor of changing the initiate and countess abilities though, as I agree they are mostly broken. Please keep in mind that both of these heroes are supposed to be faster but worse for doing dps, making them ideal for building. They do not necessarily need to have abilities that are better than their more dps focused counterparts. I'd rather see them have support roles in dps, or have them be useful in specific situations. I like Black Mamba's suggestion of making RDB make towers more resistant to damage, for example, though 50% may be too much?

Pretty sure bosses can target you even if you are invisible.

I don't think 50% dmg reduction is too much it's just the base starting and increases on the basis of how many stat points you've got.
Of course making towers invincible would be OP, so perhaps rather than capping it at 90%, maybe 75% seems well balanced at lest say 5k stat points.
Even then considering the Monk Tower Boost can pretty much wreck the enemies before they even deal some damage, this ability again would be outclassed unless on extreme survivals. 
RDB needs a total re-vamp IMO.

@ThePoet424 quote:

 Please keep in mind that both of these heroes are supposed to be faster but worse for doing dps, making them ideal for building. They do not necessarily need to have abilities that are better than their more dps focused counterparts.

Agreed

Well both of them are already "ON PAPER" or "IN THEORY" support characters.
However in real-time game-play the Initiate is just not quite as good as it seems to be.
I mean the Adept can help a lot with upgrading and do massive AoE damage. Countess while being fast is quite Tanky. 
The Initiate however is just not quite as viable for end-game maps as these two because the abilities are not worth it, and her RDB is just a total waste. And the Enemy Drain is only good till a certain limit, Initiate as DPS or rather as support definitely needs some re-work.

1) Invis works on bosses (atleast the huntress version).

2) I disagree that enemy drain has a "limit" as a DPS ability if we aren't looking at bosses.

-- It's the only ability that can reduce incoming damage for all heroes and defences in an area
-- It's the only single ability that can boost damage for all heroes and defences in an area
-- It's an effective ensnare in a pinch (don't recall if that stacks with the real deal)

Hmm, might be that I play with AFK chars so it felt that the bosses attacked me while invisible. I'll re-check that with solo.
Btw when you say it works on bosses, does that mean if I go Invis on Old One and hit him, he won't do any attacks? Or the same thing for the Kraken / Spider Queen etc.? Either way if it works or not, that doesn't quite make a whole lot of difference. It's just that the Ranger's Invis-Field mana cost + cooldown is just crazy high.

Yes, I was talking about Bosses in the limit of its usability. While it can reduce the dmg input through the Enemy Drain, even at 2k stats the Monk Boosts, both of them, can ramp-up the damage output of your pets and towers so high that you won't even need any damage reduction.

I have noticed that it does stack with the Ensnare Aura. While I still love playing as the Initiate, I just don't see her as quite that good of a support character compared to Countess and Adept( <3 ). If anything at least her drain boost radius should be greatly increased.

Huntress Invisibility works fine on bosses... about Ranger's I'm not sure since I usually don't play with him because his invisibility field causes other players invisibility state to change when they are in or out of range. To read: Huntress Invis Always On... Ranger turns his field On... Huntress Invis turns immediately off and is visible to enemies....

Remote Defense Boost... well I do have tower heroes with resistances which benefit a lot by RDB... however mana costs are to heavy compared to Monk's abilities... Not even sure if I would miss RDB.

Enemy Drain is quite awesome, even more if it would work on bosses... (already mentioned in the past to make it work on bosses). Blood Rage and Hero Boost doesn't fully stack, something similar should happen with Enemy Drain and Hero/Tower Boost for Boss Fights and regular combat phases... fore more detailed numbers I would have to run DD. How Bloodrage and Hero Boost interact each other can be read in my guide 'Who's the best DPS hero on NM'

Call to arms... too expensive while we have Hero Boost running a whole combat phase... base cost should be adjusted... either monks higher or countess' lower to make both more similar... a stronger boost is not asked for...

Joust... completely useless, too low dps, too small area of effect... would be great if it would show a visualitazion of wider shield, dealing damage units left and right too while running in a direction...

You can use joust to kill ogres on the castle armory and endless spires. There is a great chance that you will join them if you don't aim correctley

@Black Mamba quote:

Btw when you say it works on bosses, does that mean if I go Invis on Old One and hit him, he won't do any attacks?

Huntress invis doesn't technically work on the Old One himself, but it's very useful because it works on the random enemies that spawn while you fight him.  Ranger invis is the same, but it's less useful due to the heavy mana cost and sometimes cancelling Huntress invis (bug).

Here's what I'd propose for the Initiate (personal thoughts only, not representative of the CDT):

• Make RDB stack with buff beams, similarly to how Monk's defense boost is
• Make enemy drain affect bosses
• Match mana drain to defense boost and hero boost, respectively

This would do two things:

• Initiate builders might actually see some game time in combat phase since you would be able to boost all your auras
• Initiate DPS chars, when paired with a monk, would be more valuable than a monk paired with a monk

This would fulfill their support role a lot better without being as blatantly overpowered as the monk.

I would also not be opposed to changing RDB to be a range+rate booster. That would further support her in a DPS role, though it would not convince be to bring out my builder in combat phase if that was the case. RDB is only useful for builders, since it only boosts the defenses that she creates.

[[31834,users]] quote:

I would also not be opposed to changing RDB to be a range+rate booster. That would further support her in a DPS role, though it would not convince be to bring out my builder in combat phase if that was the case. RDB is only useful for builders, since it only boosts the defenses that she creates.

Yes, and that's why it should be tweaked to a Range + Rate booster which stacks with Buffs and Monk Tower Boost -- FOR ANY TOWERS by ANY BUILDER whether active or not. In its current form where it can only boost your own + any active builder's towers, its pretty limiting and crippling in more ways than one.

having enemy drain affect bosses would be nice. Also having enemy drain deal like 15,000-20,000 damage per tick(1 sec or 2secs) to any enemies under its influence and heal you by some number say 1500-2000 per tick would be a fine addition to the ability. Ideally it would truly mean "enemy drain" as in you are draining life from enemies and healing yourself.

I'd just like to take a quick minute to remind everyone to be careful in how you wish Enemy Drain to affect bosses. Everyone seems to like the idea, but let us remember the effects of the change.

It reduces the enemies' defenses by.. a lot, and can more than double your damage. I don't know if we really want to let people 1 hit Akatiti with Hawk. Maybe we can only let certain aspects of the ability affect bosses. Just to have it down somewhere...

• Reduces damage resistances
• Removes elemental affinity
• Reduces damage output

Maybe only the second and third can be safely applied. Maybe the first can only be partially applied. Maybe all of them can only be partially applied.

I think Mamba has some interesting ideas, and would work considering Hero Boost also heals for small amounts as well.

Also let's leave Ranger/Huntress discussion for another thread, it's rather sidetracking the current conversation.

It reduces the enemies' defenses by.. a lot, and can more than double your damage. I don't know if we really want to let people 1 hit Akatiti with Hawk. Maybe we can only let certain aspects of the ability affect bosses. Just to have it down somewhere...

It's true, it's quite worrying.

Would it be possible to divide the damage resistance debuff by 2 but only on bosses ?

A damage output debuff wouldn't be as interesting IMO because we can and often do place strength drain auras for strong bosses.

By the way, here are some tests to show how enemy drain's damage boost scales right now:

  0 enemy drain - 17.5% boost to damage
  50 enemy drain - 35% boost
  100 enemy drain - 40% boost
  300 enemy drain - 50% boost
  600 enemy drain - 58% boost
  1000 enemy drain - 64% boost
  1500 enemy drain - 70% boost
  2665 enemy drain - 78% boost
  3705 enemy drain - 84% boost
  4303 enemy drain - 86% boost
  5755 enemy drain - 92% boost
  6743 enemy drain - 95% boost

So the damage increase is much lower than hero boost and it scales poorly, but it multiplies with hero boost without any reduction, which means it would be very powerful against bosses if it worked.  We could use pew's idea and make it so when you combine hero boost + enemy drain, it doesn't give the full multiplier.  We could also make it so the other effects of enemy drain don't affect bosses.

(tests performed on tavern dummy)

I think letting the enemy drain affect bosses would be a good idea, as it encourages teamwork. It means that taking on a boss with 3 players is potentially a whole lot easier than with just 1 or 2. With two players the best dps is achieved using a cat and a booster monk. Currently, adding a 3rd player does not improve on that a whole lot, just adds a third damage source. Therefore, two players can very effectively carry the rest. However, if we allow for enemy drain on bosses, now we can have teams of 3 that are more than twice as strong as teams of 2!

 We can already take down the akatiti boss in 3 seconds, won't that make bosses even easier for high end players? Yes it will, if they can even be bothered to optimally choose their heroes. Let's be honest, when is the last time you actually had trouble with a boss? It can also allow speed-running to be better on maps like Sky City, allowing high end players to one-hit the boss (maybe?). However, it encourages newer players to diversify their heroes and play more with friends.

Also, it would allow for some new bosses in the future to be incredibly hard, requiring actual teams of high end players to complete. I'm thinking of something like Polybius.

Finally, if you are worried about the place of the boost monk, it is still a lot better for dps than the initiate. Firstly it has better dps (duh), but the boost multiplier is a lot higher, as shown by Plane, and it boosts the players, not the boss, which means it is useful even for maps like Embermount and Temple of Love.

Well, that's a good point.

@Caimen0 quote:

I'd just like to take a quick minute to remind everyone to be careful in how you wish Enemy Drain to affect bosses. Everyone seems to like the idea, but let us remember the effects of the change.

That's why both abilities should not fully stack just like Blood Rage and Hero Boost does not stack fully.

Doing some testing today I noticed that DD's healing methods are pretty poor, and I think that, coupled with the enemy damage reduction on the ability2, a heal on Initiate ability1 could be a strong "raid" character (for example Temple of Polybius).

Current ways to heal:

1. Heal spell

   A modification to this spell was just turned down, and in order to heal, one must cease DPS and begin channeling, making themselves open for attack. (Unless you are Apprentice)

2. Hero Boost

   Raging dumpster fire of a heal that could be removed and nobody would notice a difference

3. Healing Auras

   7452 tower damage results in 711 healing per tick when the monk/initiate that built it is not in the game. At 5 stars with a 5 star buff beam of ~8.4k tdmg, it's around 2.3k. You also have limited mobility because you have to stay inside the aura.

4. Whell O' Fortune

   At 3726, it's a pretty obnoxious heal (75% max HP of ALL allies on the map), if you can land it. But much like the heal spell, it requires an uninterrupted channel which forces you out of combat for a few seconds.

5. Fairies

   While this is the most convenient to use, it is also the one that hurts your DPS the most. If you are a monk you would much rather have a DPS pet of some sort, and most other classes want a prop cat to deal as much damage as possible.

Merits of making Initiate AB1 a heal:

It adds a mobile heal zone to a boss fight. For boss fight like Old One, Phoenix, Temple of Polybius (Soon™), and hopefully sometime in the future, Mines of Moria, this would be a welcome addition for those who aren't on the very high end of stats.

If the enemy damage output part of the ability 2 is applied to bosses, it adds to the value of this function, strongly increasing the value of the effect.

Because this is an AoE aura, it would have high long term mana costs like most other buffs in the game, forcing a choice between genie for boost longevity and other pets for other distinctive uses. (DPS pets to take advantage of AB2 debuff, prop cat so other chars don't necessarily need to take one, etc.)

We've just got the fix for the adept's ab1 to work properly (it was broken since the class got released), are you sure you want to replace it with something new?

Also disagree on your #2, boost's heal is actually useful and noticeable in some cases like old one fight, if you get non life-threatening damage you can ignore it knowing you'll get healed during boost period.

This is not Adept. This is Initiate. And yes, because it is a pile of garbage. It is almost universally agreed upon that it is useless.

Also when you have 6.4k hero boost and heal for 853 per tick I find it to be completely useless. It seems to me that you think it helps due to placebo effect; as when you have 200k hp on your monk in the fight, 900 hp/s(?) isn't going to save you.