Does Rath Seem More Powerful?

Battleborn Rath
#26

I like how you only mention how I play tanks but don’t say anything about Caldarius. He is a “normal class with average HP and DPS output”, yet I never fear Raths when I play him. Never feared him when I played Reyna either, you also never mentioned her.

I think you forgot the roles of some of these characters. Rath is an assassin, meaning that he does an absurd amount of damage in exchange for low hp. Thorn is a sniper, she can do a significant amount of damage, but not as much as an assassin. In exchange for this, she has a better chance of survival when caught in a bad situation.

El Dragon doesn’t have life steal, but he does have enough HP to make up for it. You seem to think that Rath’s life steal means that he can face tank everything when in reality he has a base starting hp of less than 1000 and can die pretty quickly. Life steal only brings his abysmal hp up to Phoebe standards. Also you are aware that Rath makes this distinct trail of red particles that follow him everywhere he goes right? This actually makes sneaking around much harder than it seems to an observant player. El Dragon may have a larger hitbox, but he is by no means Attikus. I have seen a friendly El Dragon sneak up on unsuspecting players before. You just have to know when and where is a good moment to strike.

I never said that Rath requires more skill than Thorn or any Sniper character. I DID say that there is a clear difference between a good Rath and a bad one however.

Again I also said that Rath is definitely one of the better characters. At no point did I ever say that he is perfectly balanced, but at the same time I also said that we should wait a few weeks before demanding nerfs. You also never gave an argument against that claim either.

Last thing, petty insults. Seriously? We can be way more civil than that. I’d honestly rather just end it off by agreeing to disagree since I have a weekend-long vacation to go on, but if you want to continue this thread while I’m gone I wont stop you (I also play PC btw, so that might influence my experience fighting Rath a bit, but I still don’t think it’s enough to make too much of a difference.).

#27

So is Melka… and Deande… tell me more about their ultimates.

#28

I’ve also played Rath, and tested his movement while using dreadwind, with no equipment or movement upgrades. It is equal to his sprint speed. He is already a fast character. And once you stack speed gear and upgrades in his helix will boost this even further, by quite a bit. So good luck outrunning him unless you are playing a character with a leap, charge, or teleport. And that’s if he didn’t knock you in the air first, or silence you so you can’t. I’ve even played as Montana against a rath player, and my health was buffed so that I was above 3k health. Rath knocked me in the air, and killed me before I could even turn to run or charge him. No one else in the game, even other assassin classes in the game have an ultimate that deadly. If you want to leave his alone, then boost everyone else’s by 100% or more. I like playing Miko. Look at his crappy ultimate. A mushroom that has a couple hundred hit points and can be killed instantly. You want to bring it in line with something like Rath? Make it where it is invulnerable to damage and heals as much as his ability does in damage. Or lower the cooldown on it by 45 seconds. The characters aren’t balanced. I would have hoped they would have figured a lot of it out during beta, but apparently they didn’t.

#29

If a player uses Rath well its dangerous, I play as Thorn and win quite a few of the one on ones with him. When he ults me I jump up, and use my burst propulsion downwards which gives me extra height. More often than not do this twice his ults over.

Could be done with melkas spike too.
All that said, If you’re stuck and can’t jump, you WILL die.

#30

What if he just had a big movement speed reduction on his Ult (to like Omega Strike ISIC speeds).

Honestly it’s disgusting how much he can disrespect people with Cataclysmic Smash (silence) > Deadwind. Every other Ult can be played around in some form, but you are literally forced to eat the entirety of Deadwind unless you either have a stun, super-jump, or conveniently placed ledge to knock Rath off of.

#31

The only thing that says is that their ultimates need a buff, nerfing Rath’s ult doesn’t do anything to help those characters.

#32

Their ultimates are more in line with the other ultimates in the game. Rath is the outlier.

#33

Haven’t tried out either character much but from what I have seen with melka, hers is rather mediocre. When we have ults like ISIC’s, and Rath’s(not arguing that it is one of the best ults in the game, I just think that some people exaggerate it’s power), as well as very solid ults like Montana’s, Caldarius’s, Toby’s, etc, Melka’s just feels incredibly underwhelming in comparison. Maybe I just need to play her a bit more, but from what I’ve seen it just doesn’t have enough power to it.

Still haven’t unlocked Deande so I can’t say much about her.

#34

All this Rath hate is ridiculous…I am pretty rounded meaning I have spent a fair amount of time with each character and Ill be honest theres only a couple of characters that make me feel absolutely helpless against a Rath. For the most part each character has a counter to save them from a Rath Ult. Is Raths ult strong and easy to pull off…yes thats why it says “easy” in his desciption and he’s available immediately after the prologue so new users can use him and have fun. More advance players will take the time to branch out and learn a complex character and in doing so find different builds and strategies for every character every situation. Just an example anyone try using Orendi’s Nullify with the push buff? As soon as a Rath ults force push that MF’er away by the time hes able to close the distance again his ults ended and you have two shadow pillars primed to enter his face! And that just one example of how a supposedly slower and weaker character can 'nullify" the so called advantages of Rath. Same goes for Galilea.

So the next time we have a string of bad matches lets not jump on the forums and scream “Op Rath!” and “Galilea is so broken!” but rather go back to the drawing board and try something different. Thats Gaming. Anyway stayed quiet on the subject for the past couple days but had to get my 2 cents in.

#35

I don’t remember the exact number, but I’m pretty sure Caldarius’s ult only does like 300 damage, plus it has a charge time, and half the time you accidentally hit a ceiling. Haven’t played much Toby, but I heard that his ult was kind of underwhelming too.

#36

I’ve gotten out of some pretty sticky situations with Cald’s ult before, like when I’m surrounded by enemies for example. It’s also pretty useful for jumping into the middle of a big team fight since you can always double jump yourself out if needed and it can at least keep people distracted long enough for your team to get some good hits in. The ceiling glitch is kinda annoying, but I mostly play on paradise which is mostly open anyways. Toby’s ult just has a long start up to me. The damage is pretty impressive and as long as you can keep enemies at bay with arc mines and walls you should be able to stall them long enough to get the ult out.

#37

Ya, I agree that’s it’s definitely useful, but it doesn’t really come close to Rath’s spinspin. I guess I’d be less opposed to it if the movement speed was reduced, so you could get away with it (with characters that are not Caldarius) Right now, even if you see it coming, you’re kind of stuck in it, so you really just have to accept your fate, but if you had a reasonable chance at getting away, it wouldn’t be so bad. Plus, it would make Rath players be a little more strategic with how they use it.

#38

This is all it needs really. I agree that chasing people with the ult is kinda dumb. ISIC’s ult has stupid firepower combined with insane bulk at the cost of his speed, so why not Rath? I still stand by the idea that it is definitely manageable, but at the same it is character based. Characters like Montana can definitely deal with Dreadwind, but characters like OM are kinda screwed (especially if Rath picks up the 30% movement speed buff on his ult).

#39

Ya, the reason I don’t have a problem with ISIC’s ult is that it’s easy to get away from. Rath’s makes me feel helpless, and like I can’t really do anything about it, so if I at least had a real chance to get away, I would feel a lot better about it.

#40

I think Rath’s best strength is his burst damage due to being a melee character. When I played as Thorn and Montana, I regularly dominated the Raths that would just charge forward and try to use their ult, because he’s an incredibly squishy melee jungler even in late game. The only time Rath is ‘OP’ is when he’s doing what he’s supposed to: ganking.

It the same reason people call Loki in Smite OP. High burst damage and good ganks don’t an OP character make. He’s just good at his role, leaving that role will get you shot up easily.

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#41

I’m currently 19 wins 0 losses as Rath. Pretty fun, definitely powerful if you can do your combo without being ccd

#42

I really couldn’t agree more on this. Rath is very predictable. A quick melee, turn and sprint gets you out of his ult NP. I think the part that is broken is juggling a person after the knock up, preventing them from touching the ground. BTW, Orendi is a strong counter to Rath.

#43

I’m finding the ultimate to be possibly the biggest source of irritation in the game. For many characters it seems to be near impossible to defend against and spells certain death for the less mobile or tanky characters in particular. I’ve just come out of a game as Marquis where my only deaths came from repeated use of said ultimate and the Rath in question racked up nearly thirty kills by doing little else. Spoilt an otherwise really good match D:
Would be wonderful to either see the damage reduced or the duration reduced or perhaps see that, once activated, he’s limited in terms of movement and instead spins on the spot.

#44

After careful contemplation, I think the way to go would be to decrease the speed. It would mean it could still be really good, but it would take a more skilled player to use it as effectively, and every character would still have a fair chance to get away from it. I’m not opposed to a powerful skill; I just don’t like a skill that’s so powerful that a lot of the time, there’s nothing you can do to avoid being killed by it. Slowing the movement speed during his ult would just increase the complexity of Rath related strategies for both the people playing as him and the people playing against him.

#45

Overall I think Rath is in a good place at the moment, considering many CC’s totally wreck his ult since it takes several seconds to fire off the whole thing. and he is made of paper mache at best. When playing against intelligent players you need to be super careful both as him and against him.

A lot of people compare his ult to other high damage ults like ISIC, Thorn etc… without considering the fact he is a fragile melee character. If he could fire Dreadwind across the map I’d agree it was pretty OP.

If you are on a slow fragile character and he catches you off guard you already had your chance to counterplay him by not being in that situation and backing off. If your team communicates things get even more difficult for him since he essentially has to sneak past 5 sets of eyes to get to the battleborn he actually wants to fight.

Faster characters like Thorn and Orendi or tanky ones like Isic and Montana can all beat him easily while maintaining range even if he manages to close the gap. You are pretty much free XP to a well played Benedict as well.

If they lowered his Dreadwind’s speed everyone would just walk out of it and he would get shot to pieces every time.

All that said I think his kit is a bit backloaded into Dreadwind and they could likely remove some of his damage and put that power elsewhere. Which would keep him viable while lowering the frustration newer players have from his ult.