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I have been playing a lot of Bonewidow recently, in my personal opinion i find it to be extremely fun to use; clearly it has many issues and i wouldn't recommend using it during something like Eidolon hunts as the damage is not comparable at all, but its such a fun character to play.
So, how would i "FIX" it?TLDR: More of everything.
1) Meathook.
Ok, lets face it. Meathook is neither a Hook nor an useful ability, its there for the memes only. Meathook should not just have a more important functionality it should also have to be a big part of the play style of the Bonewidow.
- Meathook should have an arch, around 250" from the Left side of the mech and overlapping on the front of the Player. This attack would send enemies flying off their feet.
- For every enemy hit with Meathook, Bonewidow steals 10% - 20% (affected by Strength) of enemies' max HP to and transfers them to Shieldmaiden health's
- Meathook should be usable during Shieldmaiden.
Sketch i made to demonstrate this
2) ShieldMaiden
I think this ability lacks a lot of indications of which areas it is protecting and goes a bit against the idea of a front-line fighter, to fix them i would suggest following changes.
- Shieldmaiden should have two functionalities, when the player is using any arch-gun and is not aiming the shield only protects half of the Bonewidow's area. But during aiming it doubles (2.3x) the range area to from 100" to 230" on the front (Affected by range).
- Shieldmaiden should increase the armor rating of the necramech by 200 (affected by strength) when not aiming, and 400 (affected by strength) when aiming at the cost of 10%-20% (affected by strength) of movement speed. *Only during aiming.
- To all enemy units that approach the shield they will get the Cold status effect with no damage, slowing them down by 30% - 50% around 2m - 10m (affected by strength and Range) from the shield.
- When Shieldmaiden and Ironbride are active the protected areas are determine if you're holding Right click or not.
- Remove ability cool down.*
- ShieldMaiden has NO cap, you can keep collecting shield health.
For ALL ENEMY necramechs: Once Shieldmaiden is broken the Necramech is stunned for 5 seconds where it no longer targets the player. The player is not affected by the cold status effect.
3) Firing Range
Firing Range needs a lot of changes and functionality, i have, at this moment, only used it ONCE.
- Firing range needs double the range and reach further back from the necramech, almost 200" - 230" (affected by range) to pull enemies from all around.
- The laser barriers should not stop parallel of each other, instead, they cross. Pushing all enemies closer into the player's melee and Meathook ranges.
- Firing Range now deals cold status effect for 10s - 25s (affected by duration) as well as stunning enemies for 5s (affected by duration)
- Enemies affected by the cold status effect of Firing Range have increased chance of dropping energy orbs by around 30% - 45% (affected on strength).
- Casting Speed increased by 30% (or more TBH)
- 5s cooldown on use.*
This would allow the player to kill the enemies on melee or hit them with meathook
4) Ironbride
As fun as Ironbride is, it is lacking on very important things, Damage and Damage scaling.
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Combo multiplier has to apply to Ironbride, instead of rising heavy attack damage it rises either Critical Damage
orCritical chance(right now I'm undecisive on which one would be better). -
Base damage increases from1500to3500scales with strength and arch-melee mods. This is for it to feelATLEASTa bit similar to the Voidrig's 4. - Recovery time from Ironbride's Attacks (combo finish, slam attacks And others) should be greatly increased as to not stall the player in place.
EDIT: Thanks to the feedback this post has received i decided to add an additional modality to the Ironbride, I would like to hear feedback about this addition to see what you think, Thanks in advance!
5) Bride's Wrath
Bride's Wrath is a new modality to the Ironbride kit.
- By Holding the Melee button (E) the Bonewidow will wind-up it's blade for a heavy strike with additional Crit. Damage.
- Maintaining the Melee button (E) for longer will start to channel Shieldmaiden's Health after a 0.5 seconds delay.
- The Ironbride will start to shine and release three burst of light indicating that it has finished the wind-up, this takes around 2 seconds and consumes 1% (for a total of 80 hp at 4000 shield health).
- Releasing the Melee button (E) will release three swipe attacks that surround it, it's Critical damage, chance and Status chance increased by 80% - 110% (Affected by strength) + Combo multiplier. afterwards the necramech will release steam and enter an overheated state for 2s where it wont charge another Bride's wrath until its ended. (This consumes combo multiplier)
Example: Base damage 2964, critical damage of 6.3x at combo of 12 plus 110% of Bride's wrath = 2964 * (6.3+12 * 110%) = 64 911 damage per hit.
Player Can move during Bride's wrath.
- Maintaining the Melee button (E) hold will consume more health, after a 0.5s delay, at a rate of 20% each second.
- depending on the amount of Health absorbed during that period it increase the
melee damage,Critical damage multiplierand Status chancea certain amount. - example: If Shieldmaiden has 4000 shields and you hold the button pressed for 5 seconds you would absorb 3000 shields. Based on ability strength, you would gain an additional 80% - 110% to Ironbride's base critical damage + Combo multiplier.
- Once released, Combo multiplier is consumed and the mech enters a cool down state for 5s where it wont charge another Bride's wrath.
This decision was taken as how shieldmaiden would react now, practically gaining more shield the higher the level the enemy is, consuming a percentage of the health and increasing the damage in relation on the amount consumed helps the mech deal with higher level enemies (100+).
Example: Base damage of 2964, critical damage of 6.3x and combo of 12 plus 220% from 3000 of shield maiden's health = 2964 * (6.3 + 12 * 220%) = 96 922 damage per hit.
each 3000 shield consumed grants 80% - 110% additionally, so the more shields the more damage.
The idea of a front-line fighter is to be able to strike as many opponents as hard as possible but at the same time to be capable of surviving such attacks. So to increase the damage out-put and most importantly the long term survivability of the mech is very important.
Right now it feels like you are swinging a massive log of wood rather than using a blade designed for heavy combat.
Some of the changes i suggest might not be exactly what you might think the mech needs, but the increment on survivability and damage out-put would be greatly appreciated in general. The mech feels like its lacking a purpose and i believe it should be endurance, To focus mostly on the mech's survivable capacities would fit better on a machine such as this.
If anyone would like to add or change something they are free to do so, even if so happens someone from DE is reading, i hope through discussion we can get a consensus on what role this mech could have. Thank you for checking my Ted Talk, have a good night every body, see you Soontm.
EDIT: Looks like some changes i did as feedback from the comments might have broken the pictures. It should be fixed by now!
EDIT II: Please comment regarding the addition of Bride's wrath as im not particularly versed on the critical damage system, Thank you!
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