Does Rath Seem More Powerful?

Battleborn Rath
#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.

#46

Why on earth can’t you whiners just play the game the way it’s made,instead of crying about things that don’t go your way !!! They messed with Ambra post beta and I used to get a ton of kills with her now I can’t get one, but guess what … I’m not on here crying about it!!! Suck it up and JUST PLAY THE GAME!!! What if people like the way Rath is??? And the developers like the way he is??? I’ve played him and I get destroyed sometimes, but my wife kicks butt with him… The point is Gearbox worked hard to give us an Awesome game quit caterwauling about it and enjoy the game how it is!!!

2 Likes
#47

I’m with you man. I’ve never seen so many people cry OP. Just like we all predicted too, they will move on to every hero until they all get nerfed to the ground. Shut up. Learn the heroes pros and cons. And if you STILL have beef with a certain hero, then make constructive criticism about them on the forum, but for ■■■■■ sake, stop acting like getting smashed by a specific hero makes them OP. It doesn’t. I have played enough now that I’ve seen EVERY hero be completely garbage and completely Overpowered. They all have counters and they all have flaws.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for balance and we should be addressing certain abilites/heroes if enough people see a problem with it. However, nerfing in my opinion is a horrible approach. We need small numerical value changes. Not completely rewriting abilities/helix trees. That should be done much further down the road when numbers are further balanced.

#48

You guys do realize that Rath at top level play is a one trick pony? He’s not that useful compared to other heroes without his ultimate. If you’re going to nerf his ultimate then you need to buff him in other aspects. His dps isn’t that amazing to begin with. And yes before people start firing shots at me I am simply comparing what Rath brings to the table compared to others without his ultimate.

Let’s be honest. His ultimate is one of the only reasons why hes even still used. Please don’t take it away, that’s such a bad idea.

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#49

The developers have said multiple times that balance is a holy grail that no game can really achieve, but they are going to do the best they can to work towards it as the game matures. This means we, as the community, should be discussing balance to share our thoughts with the developers and help the game to be more balanced. It’s the forums. This is the place to discuss our thoughts on the game as a community and to share them with the developers.

#50

“They messed with Ambra post beta and I used to get a ton of kills with her now I can’t get one, but guess what…I’m not on here crying about it!!!”- Um that’s EXACTLY what’ you are doing lol and you just proved everyone’s point. She was OP’ed and got reduced and now you can’t get a single kill without being OP’ed. It was the same way with Gal players who actually had to learn how to play without a clear advantage. And now the same thing is happening with Rath. I feel a lot of good points were made about Rath being OP’ed. And the best counter arguments were ‘quite whining’, ‘use CC (which someone foretold was going to be used lol)’, and ‘he’s an assassin, he’s supposed to be like this’. Well play with phoebe or use Deand’es Ult in the same way some time and get back to me, cuz hey, they’re assassins…yeah def try doing that same crap with Deand’es ult. Id luv to see that.

#51

Dreadwing is fine. You can cancel it with various CC or use your offhand melee to push him back while you sprint away.

The only reason Dreadwing ever seems strong is because of his helix upgrade Catalytic Flash. Which makes his Catalytic Smash apply a 3 second silence, eliminating a lot of options for people to use to cancel his ultimate.

#52

I am very green to this game and still getting the hang of lots of characters. But I’d like add my initial criticisms of Rath.
I tried playing him and didn’t quite get it yet.
But I just played a lot of versus with multiple characters. The consensus I’m seeing from Rath players is quick swoop ins with the silencing or pop up and then ultimate spin while you bounce on his head.
This typically results in a minimum 1300 damage which was mostly instant death for my characters.
Just from the little I’ve played I have yet to see any other character with this powerful mix of control, speed, and burst damage.
At least as my last match as Reyna I felt like I was being singled out since I couldn’t counter the Rath player’s 2 hit instant death.

#53

CC cancels pretty much everything in this game, and if you’re close enough to use the quickly melee, you’re probably already screwed.