The Transformers Forged to Fight community has officially moved to Discord. For all the latest news and updates, join us here!
Is Hot Rod missing something and is his decelerate stack broken?
Synthwave
Posts: 1,012
Not sure whether or not this should go under General Discussion or Bugs and Known Issues.
The recent thread about Galvatron needing a buff got me thinking about Hot Rod, who I personally think is missing something as well.
He's a great bot, but there is 1 of 2 things I'd like to see happen to make him more usable.
1. Make decelerate trigger 100% of the time, just like UM's nullify is supposed to do. I mean, it's a Time Bubble Gun. Do the time settings on his gun only work some of the time? The gun should work 100% of the time.
or
2. Increase the duration of decelerate. If we can't have it land 100% of the time, then the duration time it's there needs to double. At low levels, 3 seconds is not enough time.
My second point brings up the second part of the subject line. Is his decelerate stack broken? Because it says it's supposed to stack, but every time I hit an opponent with multiple shots of decelerate in a row, the only thing that happens is that the timer resets to 3 seconds; it most certainly is not stacking. The only time I can get it to stack is when I use his sp2.
Can anyone else confirm this potential bug? Because if it's a bug and his decelerate is in fact supposed to stack then disregard my suggestions to make him better. A decelerate that stacks should be fine.
p.s. seriously, fix UM's 100% nullify chance on ranged shots too. He's already not that great and needs all the help he can get.
The recent thread about Galvatron needing a buff got me thinking about Hot Rod, who I personally think is missing something as well.
He's a great bot, but there is 1 of 2 things I'd like to see happen to make him more usable.
1. Make decelerate trigger 100% of the time, just like UM's nullify is supposed to do. I mean, it's a Time Bubble Gun. Do the time settings on his gun only work some of the time? The gun should work 100% of the time.
or
2. Increase the duration of decelerate. If we can't have it land 100% of the time, then the duration time it's there needs to double. At low levels, 3 seconds is not enough time.
My second point brings up the second part of the subject line. Is his decelerate stack broken? Because it says it's supposed to stack, but every time I hit an opponent with multiple shots of decelerate in a row, the only thing that happens is that the timer resets to 3 seconds; it most certainly is not stacking. The only time I can get it to stack is when I use his sp2.
Can anyone else confirm this potential bug? Because if it's a bug and his decelerate is in fact supposed to stack then disregard my suggestions to make him better. A decelerate that stacks should be fine.
p.s. seriously, fix UM's 100% nullify chance on ranged shots too. He's already not that great and needs all the help he can get.
1
Comments
This is at rank 3/30 on a 3* bot, not even maxed.
Even though it says 60%, it probably gets close to 80% at rank 4.. and, in my experience it triggers nearly 100% of the time anyway, even if the opponent is blocking, much like barricades backfire. This alone offsets the "not quite 100%" trigger rate.
As for stacking... it doesn't actually say that deceleration stacks. It just says you disrupt power flow by x% per stack, which I agree is misleading.
Stacking would actually make this ability completely broken, as you could power lock an opponent absurdly easily if this were the case.
I can't tell you how many combos I've tried to start with Hot Rod by leading with a ranged shot only to have decelerate not trigger and he ends up lashing his opponents with wet noodles. The chances seem even worse when you're facing bots with higher PI levels too. So I do feel like he needs an uptick in some department, be it a higher chance of landing decelerate or longer duration.
But I do agree that the reduced power flow would get too OP if it stacked, so I wouldn't mind if they reduced the % of power flow reduction down to the single digits if it meant they could stack. Most players I know using Hot Rod don't sing the praises of his power flow reduction anyway (It barely even registers with me that it's in effect)
Players using Hot Rod are more interested in crit rate. So reducing the % of power flow reduction would remove the OP factor but would still give the player a longer amount of time to try and string a combo in while the decelerate debuff is still in effect.
I think that's a fair improvement. Thoughts?
The percentage on regular abilities a bot has go up with rank, not with bot level or Sig level.
The percentages in the Sig itself go up with Sig level (dupes)
It's a little confusing, but that's how it works.
The #1 key I found with Hot Rod is that once you get deceleration to trigger against an evade bot, do your best to back off and fire again to keep the timer at full charge when necessary. You'll find bots like Bee and sideswipe are rendered into easy targets this way.
The bot can't trigger evade so you have a better chance at landing a shot and resetting the timer.
As for your other suggestions, yeah he could use a bit of a buff in some aspects if done carefully.
Either way I'll end up r4ing him, but it would be nice if they tweaked a little bit more to bring up to par with some of the other warrior bots. He's a fun bot to use, kinda like Galvatron, just frustrating to use with the current stats Kabam has him at.
Also I don't have my 3* even super levelled, and the most glaring obvious test I can think of is expert grimlock in current event... but he'd dispel it anyway. But supposing it was any other bot hot rod should be great against that node. Should be fairly obvious in raids if anyone has one high enough to test real quick.
But seriously, deceleration should decelerate the opponents moving speed in the first place! Theres too few evaders in this game for him to exploit.
I will say, his decelerate seems really weak as far as power control goes, but if it stacked correctly then it would be far better.