#especially when paired with her paladin smite abilities

[corvidexoskeleton]

Im ngl i love that almost all of the female companions in bg3 are just stupidly strong. Karlach especially, but you could reasonably make a case for shadowheart, minthara, and lae'zel also being physically more built than their ingame models depict, because they All are heavy hitters in some way or another

[rystilsrants]

Item Shop Rework #2 - Green Items

I guess it makes sense to just move up from red to green, then yellow and blue, working up from the bottom since i started in the hellpit that is the red category. So now we’re on to the most situational item category in the game - Green (Healing) items. I’m not sure why we have an entire category centered around a single sustain mechanic, when there are other sustain mechanics in the game, such as shielding, damage immunity, and so forth, that aren’t given an entire category to themselves. Especially considering that two of the four green items, HALF THE ENTIRE CATEGORY, are nearly never picked, and the other two are situational. A single red item makes this entire category useless. Sure, the devs are gonna say “but in the event someone doesn’t buy Cauterize, these are powerful”. Which is a bullshit excuse and the entire REASON I see 5 max-tier Cauts rushed every single game - The devs have created a monster and won’t do anything about it. They won’t buff Rejuv because without Cauterize, healing is already busted. They won’t buff any of the green cards, which only require buffs because of Cauterize. Anyway, enough. Onward to the real rant. Kill To Heal: My personal favorite among green cards, I use it all the time. I rush it on a lot of characters, giving me early-game sustain that allows me to snowball; And it level of cheapness, combined with its usefulness, allows me to heal 900 per kill by the time the enemies have Caut 2. Even with said Caut applied to me, I’m still healing 360 per elim, without relying on a healer - I just burst and keep going, or otherwise participate in kills. I run this mostly on bursty chars and healers, allowing me to stay in the fight and keep on rolling. It only costs 200 credits, so I can actually buy this and Life Rip, giving me a ton of sustain that’s hard to overcome, but once overcome, leaves me with two useless item slots. But there’s one other thing that bothers me about K2H, and that is how it falls off on any beefy character. In fact, it is the only item in Paladins that uses flat numbers instead of percentages, with the exception of Illuminate. So, with these things in mind, I would: 1) Make it scale. Change it from 300/600/900, to 15%/30%/45% of your max health. On a character with 2,000 health, this is the exact same number, and thus is only worse on Maeve, Koga, Talus and Evie. On tanks, this gives them a viable option to use when they have no healer (Which happens too often, let’s be real), without having to invest an entire deck into healing. This means that Inara could get a 2,115 heal on elim, which could go up to 2,452 with her max health card, 2,961 with Earthen Guard up, and 3,433 with both. Insanely useful when you don’t have a healer; That’s very similar to having a Mega Potion Pip on your team, without taking up a team slot. However, with Cauterize (My version, from my Red Items post), this would be reduced by 75%, changing the numbers to 529, 613, 740 and 858, respectively. Makes Caut effective, and probably still a must-buy, but those are still respectable numbers.  2) Nerf the cost. Needs to bump up from 200/400/600 to 250/500/750 to accommodate the above change. Just to prevent it from being picked up alongside Life Rip right out the gate. Life Rip: This item used to be used so much, and now I see it very little, despite the fact that Cauterize’s duration has actually been nerfed since then, while Life Rip’s cost has been cut in half. And truthfully, it’s a bad item not only because of the numbers, but also largely because of the way the game works. You see, this item is useless on ability-based characters. It’s only useful on characters who are attack-based, because you only get the heal from landing attacks. So to begin with, you are only healing for a small percentage of your DPS, which... Is horrible, considering the number of characters out there with 600 DPS or less. Playing Nando? Fuck you, you’re only healing for 135 a second, which is probably cut down to 13.5 a second because of Cauterize. Subtracted from the DPS of the enemy team, that’s piss. That’s not worth the credits.  Worse, it doesn’t count against shields or deployables anymore (Oh, the days when Drogoz could buy Wrecker and Life Rip and get giant heals off shooting Torvald when the old man was first released...), and damage reduction of any sort also reduces the heal because it’s based on actual damage dealt. This means that Blast Shields would reduce Nando’s DPS from 450 to 355, cutting the heal to 107, which means this man is healing for 10.7 fucking health a second. WOW, GLAD I MADE THAT INVESTMENT. The worst part is that, unless you’re a sniper, you’re never going to get this heal without Caut applied, because you HAVE to be in combat to get healed, unlike Kill To Heal, where you can tag someone, dip out, and get the heal when your ally kills them. There isn’t a single situation where this is worth buying. Smite is actually far more balanced. There are many different ways of increasing survivability, and at least one way to counter each of those. You can increase your health, your health regen, your incoming healing, your damage reduction, and even give yourself lifesteal and shields - And Smite’s lifesteal (On Magical characters, anyway) works on abilities. You can flat-out increase your damage, penetrate enemy damage reduction, reduce enemy healing, and so forth - And even the penetration is useful without the enemy getting any defense items, because every god has base defenses built-in along with their built-in HP5. In the end, gameplay typically comes down to tactical choice in items, positioning, timing, resource management, and mechanical skill like aim, reaction time, and so forth, as opposed to ONE single solitary item in the ENTIRE GAME being the first thing EVERYONE BUYS because it’s just objectively better. Why not just... Give everyone Caut built in to save them an item slot, at this point, ‘cause they’re gonna buy it anyway. Anyway, so here’s what I propose: 1) Double the scaling. Change it from 10%/20%/30% straight to 20%/40%/60%, because Cauterize exists. True, we’re gonna have Sha Lin healing for 600 a shot, Kinessa for 650, but you must remember, these will mostly be reduced by 75%, reducing Sha Lin’s heal to 150 a shot, which is not bad and still respectable. 2) Change the way Lifesteal works. In my Gameplay Mechanics post(s), I’m going to propose, among other things, that anything that doesn’t count as a Weapon Attack will now benefit from Life Rip, Caut, Wrecker, and so on, but only at half rate. This means that Nando’s Fireball can now heal him for 150 per hit, apply 2(.5) Cauterize stacks on each target hit, and deal 875 damage against shields and deployables. Rejuvenate: The ally to healers everywhere, Rejuvenate is a good niche item for any tank or flank being pocketed by a support (Though flanks should only really go for it if the support is Jenos). What really annoys me about this item is the mindset around it; People like to act like it reduces Caut 3 down to Caut 2, but it doesn’t. Let’s take Khan’s heal, ‘cause it’s 1,000 flat and I’m lazy. Caut reduces it to 100 at Caut 3. Rejuv 3 only increases this by 30. Literally 30. Now, my version of Caut makes this less of a problem; With my Caut and the current Rejuv, it would only be reduced to 250 and 325, respectively, which is a lot better than 100 and 130. However, I have not changed the healing reduce cap, which means focused fire can still send Cauterize up to 95%, which reduces your heals down to utter piss no matter how much Rejuv you have. And, because of Cauterize, the healing numbers of many supports in this game are already over-inflated, which I will address in my champion-specific posts, along with the shield values I mentioned under the Red items post. So here is what I would do to Rejuvenate: 1) Change the way it works. Instead of increasing the healing output (Because Seris doesn’t need to be able to heal the tank for 4,300+ health over 2.5s every 1.5s, yet still be useless when Cauterize is used), instead it now causes 5%/10%/15% of healing received from other allied players to ignore healing reduction. This doesn’t inflate healing numbers when Caut isn’t applied, and also doesn’t pair with Life Rip and Kill To Heal to make a giant sustain demon that blots out the sun with green numbers, but it does still do its job. In the above case of the Khan heal, the difference between old Rejuv and my Rejuv against my Caut is old Rejuv heals for 325 and my Rejuv heals for 350, but against 95% healing reduction, old Rejuv heals for 65, where my Rejuv heals for 200, so overall the numbers are more stable. Veteran: The name alone strikes fear into the hearts of every person who has accidentally bought this item. It’s useless, it’s a meme, it reeks of legacy design from back when there was no out of combat regen (Since back then, you had to pick up health packs to heal, or buy Veteran to heal you over time when you weren’t in combat - Now the game’s mechanics themselves heal you when OoC. So, I would remove this item entirely; I have never encountered a single situation in this game where this would be a useful pick, because you can’t even get OoC healing while hiding behind your shield as Khan or Nando, ‘cause your shield taking damage keeps you in combat. I’ll replace it with a better item.

NEW! Siphon (300/600/900): A new green item to counter healing in a different way from Cauterize. This item creates a 60-unit radius effect around you which can be seen by yourself and enemies; It should look like an red/orange version of Grover’s heal radius on the ground. Essentially, you siphon the healing of your enemies - Any time an enemy within this radius is healed by anything except this item, you are also healed for 15%/30%/45% of the healing value. If your team has Cauterize on the enemy, not only will that enemy’s heal be reduced, but so will yours. If the enemy Khan shouts near you, you’ll be healed for 450, but if he has Caut 3 on him, he’ll only heal for 250, meaning you’ll only heal for 112(.5). The reason this item cannot siphon healing off of the enemy’s Siphon item is simple - This way you don’t have reverbing heals bogging down the server. Imagine; Khan shouts, healing himself for 1,000. You heal for 450, and he heals for 202(.5) off of that, which heals you for 91, which heals him for 41, and so forth until the heal reaches 0. That would be stupid.  NEW! Inspire (300/600/900): And now the positive version of Siphon. This creates a 60-unit green radius on the ground only you and your allies can see. Whenever you are healed by anything except Inspire, allies within this radius are also healed for 15%/30%/45% of the healing value. Buy this as a Flank, carrying heals from your Jenos to where they need to go. Buy this as a tank to help your healer spread her healing out, healing both tanks with one cooldown. Like Siphon, this has no reverbing; Can you imagine? 5 people buy this, clump together, and collectively heal to full off one measly Astral Mark. The thought makes me shudder. 

TL;DR

Kill To Heal needs to change from 300 HP/level to 15% max HP/level, and have the price increase by 50/level. Life Rip needs to double in strength (Going up to 60%) and be increased in cost for 50/level. Rejuvenate needs to change from up to 30% increase healing, to allowing up to 15% incoming healing to ignore healing redux. Veteran is leftover legacy design and needs to be removed. New item Siphon allows you to heal yourself for up to 45% of nearby enemy healing. New item Inspire heals nearby allies for up to 45% of the healing you receive.