Gear is actually one of the few things that does boost Swiss Cheese. The things it ignores are crits, his passive, ranged damage falloff, physical shields, and Overdrive.
On topic…
As someone who has played a lot as Montana, I’m looking forward to another round of adjustments to him. If it were up to me, I’d reduce Montana’s base damage by about 20%, add weaken or an attack speed slow to Firestorm, double the effect of the level 5 regen helixes, and change The Cooler to CC immunity while Hailstorm is active. The goal behind these changes would be to make Montana more of a defender and less of a ranged DPS.
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Kelvin can stun the entire enemy team, but what good is that when your team can only focus down one player at a time? Stunning the whole team doesn’t do much besides allowing escapes for the most part. And as for Montana, who needs to run away to their team when they can use their stun to destroy a squishy character by themselves when they’re meant to be a tank. Montana is a giant man who can take a lot of damage, he’s the perfect tank in that department, but when he can go in and knock a character into a wall and focus them down with his machine gun getting crits and killing or almost killing a full hp character, he is longer a tank but a god. Montana would be in a better place if they revert the change to his spread and made it larger again and also look at decreasing his damage output. Galilea has a pretty low basic attack damage, I think she is the lowest in the game, and she is a melee character who is meant to control a lane. But Montana who is meant to tank has higher DPS on his basic attack than she does, it makes no sense.
I feel like Kelvin is in a pretty good place, he can tank and help support his team, but he isn’t a one-man army.
Galilea needs to have her stun removed. That’s right, I said it. If she is a territorial brawler, and has a pull, has a silence, I guess that all kind of fits into the description. Those things need to change in some way, but the stun needs to go. And this is from someone who plays her very frequently. It does not fit into her kit or her role.
I feel like a stun fits into her role pretty well, she’s territorial, you get in her area and you deserve to get stunned. But her stun shouldn’t be a projectile that she can throw down the lane, it should only work when you’re close to her, like Rath’s stun. Maybe make it so after the shield goes a certain distance the stun effect no longer applies if possible. Maybe have a glow emanating from here hand for the path the shield is gonna take, but it only goes as far as the stun can be applied and any further you need to guess the trajectory based on what you already are given.
As for the rest of what you say, I agree with it all. Except for Orendi, she needs to be buffed to the point where she can walk up to a sentry and look at it and it will die. Orendi is amazing and she should never know what a nerf feels like.
I will direct you to this 
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This is misleading. Montana does have more dps than anyone on his basic attack but he can only hit one target at a time until he gets penetrating shots. Gally has better wave clear with her spin and corruption. Once she hits level three her damage spikes with its dangerous to go alone and again at 5 with antihero. She also has native damage amp on desecrate. One thing they have in common is they both have a kind of “spin up”. If you just compare single target basic attack dps and nothing else, then yeah Montana looks like a god by comparison. I’m not going to run all the calculations to figure exact numbers but there is more to Galileas basic attack than just her basic attack.
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Yeah but he is also a tank, and a tank is meant to take damage but not dish it out like an assassin. Montana is essentially a god, he can take plenty of damage due to his high health pool and amazing damage reduction from hailstorm and Mansformation. And then to add on top of that, if he stuns you into a wall Lumberjack Dash, he can destroy every squishy character. He doesn’t always kill them but he doesn’t need to kill them when he can do so much damage they need to get out of the fight and go heal. When you look at someone like Montana who can take a lot of damage, you would think that they can’t deal out a lot. Since when normally scaling the stats, as your defense goes up your attack goes down and vice versa. Nobody should be a walking one man army, sure Montana is a large target and is taken down with a team attack, but that can be said about anyone.
The problem is Galilea kinda fits who she is though and her helix choices can help her dish out good damage because she is meant to dish out damage. But Montana is meant to be a tank he is supposed to distract the enemy and take damage. Tanks aren’t meant to dish out damage like assassins, which Montana and Boldur can do. They both can take heavy damage and deal heavy damage while being able to survive with their high health and damage reduction, along with Boldur’s shield. In the end in a 1v1 situation if Galilea can lock down an area but when a Montana comes in, stuns her into a wall and deal out so much damage that she is forced from the lane, does Montana seem like a tank or does he seem like an assassin? Galilea not having a high DPS is justified with her ability to do AoE damage, but nothing justifies Montanas high DPS.
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I think thorn actually has miles more survivability than whiskey and comes partly from the fact that I think it’s much easier to gear a thorn than whiskey. And while thorn gets increased jump height at 7 she gets the qm melee dodge at 3 which can put her from just a sniper role to mid range skirmisher really easy
Whiskey is a mid range skirmisher from level one. The shot pen at three is the way to go on thorn.
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What makes whiskey any more of a mid range skirmisher at level 1 than thorn then? I can have a syringe up on thorn at the start of a match that gives me an arguably better effect than whiskeys level 5 helix to help me stay in lane longer
Why would you ever take the penetration arrows? The qm is so incredibly more useful
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loving-hatred
(Gone off comms, will update this when i feel like)
#32
Toby/ISIC are 2 times I would strongly consider it
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I could see that I suppose but it doesn’t help you dodge there attacks. You might not hit Toby through his force field either depending on the angles. Can’t put much of a downside on ISIC tho
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There no downside to penetrating arrows. She is all about the cursed arrows. Being able to curse everyone in a line and then volley that same line.That qm push won’t save you from anything. Health Regen is a waste too imo. I focus on skill damage and CD. She is a sniper with high burst and good aoe dot. Her survival is dependent on staying at range and not getting hit much, health Regen won’t change that.
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The one of the best thorn players I know was once playing someone other than Thorn and he told me he was instinctively pressing the quick melee button as he would with Thorn, forgetting that it wouldn’t push him back. That’s how ingrained into his thought process Burst Propulsion is.
Regen is great on her if you are playing her as a mobile skirmisher and utilizing burst propulsion because the longer she’s dodging attacks, the better regen is.
I’ve always performed better with her when I was maximizing her strengths instead of trying to cover her weaknesses. I’ve played a lot of thorn. She was the first one I got to rank 20. Using defensive gear is even less effective on her than orendi because orendi is going to get hit more often.
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The upside to penetrating arrows is so incredibly minimal though. You can wave clear a bit better with it but that’s about it. You can hit multiple battleborn but unless there is a Miko healing someone it’s kinda random. You are better off trying to crit individual things than trying to get the value from the pen. How are you cursing a line then volleying the line? Volley spreads outwards.
I can’t even begin to accurately punctuate this though: I have lived and died based off of whether or not I could quick melee. It single handedly takes most melees out of the equation if you can knock them and yourself back. I think it’s actually more necessary to take then her jump height.
I stack 420 health 9.10 A/SD and 14 regen on her. This means that I almost never half to leave lane and can function not only as a sniper but a skirmisher getting the most out of point blank volleys and help guarantee unmissable wrath of the wilds. I think cooldown is prolly meh on her at this point and couldn’t imagine dropping any of the gear options from the build for it.
I have played matches where I not only do the most damage with my build but can manage taking the most damage. I pretty much played her from nothing to level 20 and continue to still play her cause she is so incredibly fun and powerful.
What do you consider her weaknesses to be then?
loving-hatred
(Gone off comms, will update this when i feel like)
#38
Not a character specific weakness. But I prefer sniper thorn over skirmisher thorn.(I had a long slew of red bar matches before I put down battleborn for a while and somehow could lead shots better than dodging them)
Habits. People in general tend to make habits(I’m no exception to this)
For example when I play Kleese(not using odd loadouts) I’ll build a rift network further away and out of sight and try to observe for a few seconds before engaging. If I notice anything I can use I’ll engage accordingly
Thorn specific example is attack from angles. Using my example earlier of ISIC. You can either aim to damage him or weaken his wards by slanting the shot +/- a few degrees.(hit as many wards as possible with each arrow, even if less than optimal i wanted to list other ways to use the arrow pen besides straight up fighting)
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Her weakness is low hp and no shield. Her role is similar to orendi and orendi has short cooldowns so I guess you could say that her cooldowns are a weakness and if so that would be the only one that I buff with gear. I mostly play incursion with a little meltdown on the sly. I can see where penetrating shots would be less effective in other modes of play but to say that the upside is incredibly minimal is pushing it a bit. It makes waveclear easier and means that you don’t need to use your skills on waves as much. It makes finishing runners easy because only environment can get in the way. It makes spreading curse easier and after 5 the dot that comes with it.
You can still knock back a melee attacker without pushing yourself backwards. Her sprint speed is high enough that she can outrun most of them. None of this is a big issue as long as I position myself well though.
Do marquis mains stack shield strength?
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These things are not exclusive. You can do both. With pen you might even get multiple crits. A crit does 1.5x to battleborn and 3x to everything else. If I’m hitting two of anything with each arrow, even without critting im doing 1/3 more damage than critting a single Battleborn. The best case scenario you can shoot through a whole wave+thrall+battleborn+sentry. You have to think about it as multiplying your damage by the number of targets you can get in a line.
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“You can still knockback a melee attacker without pushing yourself backwards.” I think you are missing the reasoning why people pick that pushback at 3. I can easily jump from the ground by shock turret to the sniper ledge on overgrowth, prior to level 7. I can also jump directly from behind my first sentry up to support station instead of having to run around into LOS to run up stairs. I can also jump from double thrall up to the old shard ledge. You can do a lot more taking advantage of the map on monuments. I can quickly round corners to clear LOS. I can quickly dodge a bubble, fetch, hook, hawkeye, etc… I can jump and stall myself in the air to dodge a sublimate, dread wind, boldur dash, etc… And then when you get 7, thorn is in the air the entire game. I can hard counter a Toby with thorn but I despise playing her against him because I have to miss out on the most fun helix and I spend half the game jumping in the air and melee’ing nothing looking like an idiot. I also think you are exaggerating quite a bit saying how you can curse everyone on a line. How often are people lining up in a single file line. I don’t need that to curse the entire team anyway. That’s why piercing volley is a thing, so that I can curse all the minions and whatever players were in the lane. Is penetrating arrows better for wave clear and achieving the highest damage output possible? Yes. But unless the opposing team has all big frame characters, or a Toby, I’d never choose it.
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This was in response to this.
How am I exaggerating? If they are in a line and I have my bow drawn, I can curse them. That is not an exaggeration.
If you are using volley as your primary source of curses then you are missing out on the curse bonus damage on volley.
Highest damage is what I aim for as thorn.
No no. My main target will get a cursed arrow first. Just so happens that the volley that follows will also hit every minion and player in that general area to take the curse and bleed. If there is nobody out in the lane for an arrow and volley. Then yes I’m going to volley the entire minion wave to get the bleed and damage amp towards my blight on them.
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