I’ve played Kelvin on PC, I’ve fought Kelvin on PC, and while Sublimate is a VERY good initiation tool, after it’s done Kelvin is left stranded, and just has to chomp and punch his way back to safety. In a team fight against a team with a Kelvin, staying mobile and not bunching together (bunching together is a dumb thing to do anyways, since it’s just asking for an AoE to ruin your day) is an easy counter to Sublimate. Kelvin cannot strafe while sublimating, and while this is countered on PC somewhat with the ability to quickly change aim directions, he still struggles somewhat to catch agile enemies.
The rest of Kelvin’s kit balances out this good initiation tool.
Chomp is a rather high damage single target ability that a Kelvin is slightly hesitant to use if it won’t kill the target, since he needs those health stacks to maintain relevance throughout the match, and it has the same range as his melee, so it’s essentially an increased damage melee attack that he can use every 5 or 6 seconds.
Ice Wall is a wall. And if you get hit by its rather unmanagable hitbox, you’re stunned, but not damaged. And it has a pretty long cooldown, like most ults. Quite possibly one of the worst ults in the game, unless you get lucky and all of your enemies line up in front of you. In which case they’re dumb.
Now, more on Sublimate:
When he’s not sublimating, Kelvin is one of the slowest characters in the game, and is huge and as a result easily body blocked and targeted. The speed boost is what makes it his escape option, since almost every character in the game has an escape option. And it isn’t the only non-ult multi-stun. ISIC has a helix option at I believe level 4 to stun every enemy he plasma dashes through, which allows him to stun everything in a decently long straight line. And he travels that distance instantly upon casting. El Dragon’s stun is bound to his ult, but it deals huge damage as well, so if used in a team fight (and he probably will), El Dragon can essentially guarantee a kill for every character hit by Dragon Splash’s rather large area. Sublimate has almost half the cooldown of El Dragon’s Ult, so having half of its capabilities (CC, but piddly damage), makes sense to me. Its 3 second duration is generally only able to hit 1 player per second in an optimal situation unless either A. He activates it with someone on top of him, in which case that person should have seen this coming, or B. the team is bunching together, which, as I said earlier, means your team is not playing very well. While he can boost its duration with a Helix upgrade, by the time an extended Sublimate is over, the first 2 people he stunned are no longer stunned. If your entire team gets killed because of 1 sublimate, I’m afraid your team just isn’t playing very well.
It’s a very good CC. But not too good. And it’s essentially his entire kit until he gets enough chomp stacks to tank. I also laugh at the fact that you think that a slow-based Kelvin can’t be an utter monster if helixed right. Being unable to outrun a Kelvin puts you in a very bad place…his stomach.
