Taskmaster suggestion

Argygufdetlop

I think there is a slight flaw in taskmaster’s design that would be easy to fix and would really make the character work much better (and work as I think you meant for him to work).

I assume you would agree that a character that is skillfully used as intended should not suffer a small chance of randomly dying, but that is what you have done with TM’s heavy mechanic.

I love the heavy mechanic — where you are given 1 second of missed attacks to charge and release a heavy right after exploiting a weakness, resetting the exploit weakness cooldown. I assume the purpose of this is to let skilled players get off a heavy attack safely in this circumstance, making it faster to stack concussions, and normally it works. And it isn’t genius design! Except for one thing.

The problem is that there is a SMALL (but real) chance that the AI will luck out and dash away from the heavy, and dash in again to hit you after the evasion ends but before you can recover from the heavy. Some champs could also get off a special attack that happens to hit you in the 0.2 seconds you are vulnerable after the evasion ends and before the heavy ends. In a tier 1war or map 6, this means you die. There is no way to avoid it, other than only using the heavy mechanic when opponent is under 1 bar and on the back wall, which means you usually can’t use it. Risks like that are simply not acceptable in the hardest content, so you can’t use the mechanic that might unavoidably kill you.

To me, it feels like the character was not tested enough and that the developers did not appreciate that this flaw breaks the otherwise excellent and integrated design of the character. You can’t use a critical component of his intended attack sequence in the hardest content. That sucks.

There is an easy solution: extend the evasion from 1second to 1.3 seconds, or whatever the minimum time is for a skilled player with light speed reaction to complete the heavy and at least throw up a block. Please consider this in a future rebalancing! Surely your internal stats are telling you something is wrong with TM and he isn’t being used as much as you would expect. I am telling you this is what it is. And how to fix it.

MegaSkater67

I think the intention would be to use it when your opponent is in the corner, where they can’t dash away from you. The same would apply to other champs like kingpin or spidergwen even.

Argygufdetlop

Maybe — I did mention that. But neither kingpin nor spidergwen have the heavy attack as a core aspect of what makes them work. TM’s heavy should be integrated normally into his attack sequence because of his exploit weakness / concussion mechanics. The heavy is the engine that makes it all work together smoothly. But it is frustrating to play the character and have him work smoothly most of the time, and have it feel like a really well designed and well integrated character, except there is a small chance you randomly die. And if you don’t want him to randomly die you don’t get to play him the way that maximizes his other abilities and have to watch your concussion stacks fall off most of the time before they get to 5.

Argygufdetlop

Or let me try this: there was a design choice to make the TM heavy very easy to use in normal play, more so than any other character. Much more so than kingpin, etc. it isn’t an unstoppable effect or an evasion; it is more like hood’s invisibility where you take no damage nor flinch. It is INVITINGLY easy to use in your normal sequence and you are greatly rewarded for doing so. The window where you are vulnerable with perfect timing is truly minuscule.

To me, having used the character extensively, it feels broken to be invited and expected to use the clearly optimal attack sequence and then also randomly kill you when you do so. I doubt that the design choice to force you to play the character in a much less effective way in order to avoid a small chance of unavoidable death. I think it more likely that the timing for the safety window did not account for all AI behavior, and did not fully appreciate the way that any risk at all makes the mechanic unusable in endgame content.

AgentDoom9

I agree with this suggestion. I didn’t even realize he had this ability until I read his abilities for the 100th time. My Taskmaster isn’t duped so I don’t know the challenge of stacking 5 concussions but what I do understand is getting murdered at the end of a heavy once the miss timer ends. If he had a shorter heavy or they sped it up or if his miss timer was extended. I’m hoping they add a synenergy that extends the miss timer. But if they just added it, that would be the best.