Immortal + Reaper defensive abilities

What are the current thoughts on this? I think they are unequal/imbalanced, but only a tad bit.

I would love to see a discussion about these abilties. I'll go ahead and give you my thoughts on it.

To me, the Reaper and Immortal have huge flaws in other areas and need powerful defensive abilities to compensate. Particularly the Reaper, having 0 health, he needs a way to survive a hit in order to be viable (though I admit this ability is pretty much a non-creative, literal manifestation of this). That being said, it does make the Reaper extremely powerful, especially in the later stages of the game where he moves so fast it's hard to score any hits at all. I've gone to increasing the cooldowns for his shield in order to balance it, but even at this point I can't say for sure if he's too strong--if there is widespread agreement that the Reaper needs to be nerfed more, I will certainly do so. I've toyed with the idea of his shield absorbing the first instance of damage, rather than absorbing the first dodgeball hit, which would make it much easier to dispel his shield. However, I felt that would give units who do direct damage (particularly the Immortal) too strong of a hard counter on it.

The Immortal is very strong with his Hardened Shields. Perhaps like the Reaper he is one of the best units, especially in the hands of a very skilled player. Unlike the Reaper, I can very directly nerf him by raising the cooldown on his Hardened Shields ability, which I have no problem doing if there is consensus that he's overpowered. I've also been wondering if his offensive ability is too powerful considering how strong Hardened Shields is. Originally, right-clicking an enemy unit wouldn't work with the Immortal or Mule's offensive abilities, but I've since changed how crossing into the other side of the field is handled and it's become very easy to score hits.

Long story short, I have no problem giving units very effective abilities, but I try to balance them with longer cooldowns. That being said, if they're still too strong, I am always open to tweaking the balance.

Please share your thoughts!

rut

I personally think that the reaper is currently a bit too strong with his defensive ability. I just played a match 3vs3 against a team which had 3 reapers, and it just wasnt very funny because we could hardly kill one of them. We scored 3 kills total, and they 10. In round 2 they were, thanks to the additional money the got, way way stronger and even more unkillable because they were abled to boost health and power where we couldnt. maybe you should make the reapers defensive ability last shorter, because now it feels like it lasts forever if they dont get hit, which wont happen very often because of their speed. the mutalisk is as fast as the reaper and doesnt have this you have to hit me 2x often then anybody else ability, and the muta isnt imba cause he can avoid most shots with his speed, just as the reaper. so i dont see the real need to even give the reaper such a strong ability.
the immo is just fine in my opinion, its defensive sebility needs at least some skill cause it defends the immo only for 1 sec, so youve gotta see the enemy shots coming and press the button at the right time. the immo also has more negative properties than the reaper, its slow and fat. that compensates his strong skills enough

Hey, i find the immortal quit balanced, and imo he is ok. But the reaper is overpowered, his defensive ability is way too fat. And the problem is that when we play with friends, or in ffa in pub games, it's always 6 reapers or 8 reapers cause he is OP. I think his defensive ability should be hardly nerfed cause it's sad we have to play it if we wanna win.

Thanks for reading.

Even with the recent nerf to the reaper's shield mechanics, are people finding it op? I'll go ahead and add another nerf in the next patch.

It's not OP.

Reaper really seems OP. I consider myself a pretty good player but i really dislike playing with or against reapers. And they are in the game A LOT! Please consider redesigning his defensive ability as the shield is really mediocre anyways. You could also make it lower the damage incoming to 25%?
If you redesign it, maybe try some ability that makes it possible to shoot flying balls and destroy them? That would be pretty cool and hard to pull off, so it might fit the reaper.

Great map!

The Reaper has been at what I would consider the highest "tier" ever since it was released and I've toned down the shield (and even the mines) quite a bit. From what I've seen personally, I think the Reaper is just starting to find the "sweetspot" of where its Freebie Shield should be.

At this point I think there are some more "subtle" ways I can nerf the shield if there is consensus that it is OP. Perhaps I could prevent it from stopping Masterball attacks, or even stop it from blocking a multiple hit (a point-blank ultraball that hits with all 5 shots will still only disable the shield atm).

What do you guys think?

rut