Who loves Mellka and can’t quite let it go? This chick right here.
So, first things first:
The venom nerf was aimed at her canisters (judged by the hotfix wording.) This move appeared to overlook that a host of helixes were adversely affected by the change as well.
I’m gonna bold this because it’s the crux of the problem:
Many of her helixes were designed around venom being a legitimate source of damage.
She used to do 35 venom DPS. After the back-to-back venom damage decreases, she does 6 venom DPS.
That’s 17% of its original damage.
There are many helixes that are designed around a damaging venom core (Frag Canister, Venom Contagion), but I want to focus on the one that is most blatantly underpowered after this massive damage decrease:
Parting Gift.
Venom was an indispensable portion of Parting Gift’s damage, as Parting Gift itself is woefully underpowered. This has become truly apparent now that venom is no longer a damage source.
Parting Gift enhances Spike with a DOT patch effect. It lasts five seconds, ticks per second, and the radius (until level 6, with Spike Burst) is very small.
Compared to other area damage pools in the game, this is how it stacks up. Some of these are helix ugprades, like PG, and some are on base skills. There were a couple I realised I missed later (like Dragon’s).
The kicker? Parting Gift is only one of two of these damage pool abilities that is deposited at melee range. It’s actually more dangerous to use than any of the above, but it pays off far less. (The other is Forsaken Ground, which pays off. Dragon’s is also melee range and, actually, is also fairly underwhelming - a base 33 DPS. Still significantly more than Parting Gift’s 21. Both these abilities also have much larger radiuses.)
If venom is no longer to be a meaningful damage source, Parting Gift needs to be buffed.
And if you don’t play Mellka or care, consider this - she almost entirely lost her wave clear ability overnight, in a hotfix, without warning. What kind of precedent does this set for balance?
