05-14-2020, 02:07 AM
If you're familiar with how ghost hand works and how on-hit damage like armor of nails and bellplate affect multi hit weapons, and understand why they're in an unhealthy spot at the moment, you might enjoy going down to check out the TL;DR issues.
With the new enchant, I think it's a good time to put focus on a long- untouched hand item- Ghost Hand.
Ghost hand is very rarely seen in the meta despite glove slot items being very nice for two hand builds- at least, in my experience. This is because ghost hand doesn't really ignore that much. Here's the text on ghost hand.
![[Image: unknown.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/676293089761165322/710298745509773332/unknown.png)
The way it's written implies it affects on-attack effects. This isn't the case. It only bypasses on-hit effects. So, Riposte still activates, a leporidae's turning function still activates, Geist still activates, and a few other things still activate. What it does bypass is Fang-Faced Shield, Shield Enchant, Bellplate, and Armor of Nails. Aside from that, there's not really much of anything that procs on being hit. The retaliation damage from Armor of Nails and Fang Faced are very small and not worth building around for most melee basic hitters, so ghost hand isn't really of interest for picking up to them. Shield enchant isn't really used much, either, given its specific conditions and massive opportunity cost. Bellplate is stronger, giving some incentive to use ghost hand with bow weapons, but arbalests need their sub weapon slot for a special armament, and rangers will usually prefer to kite and autohit against a bellplate user to save their slot for something else, since it's just not that big of a deal for them.
Finally, you have guns- Guns are weapons that almost completely rely on basic attacks. They have a few autohits: Grenade launcher and flamethrower in engineer, and nitrogen drop and lead storm in Demon Hunter. Lead storm, notably, still suffers from bellplate, armor of nails, and other on hit damage effects since it's an autohit that procs on hits- and grenade launcher is easy to evade for someone slower than you, unless you spend extra momentum to use hand trigger. Flamethrower and Nitrogen Drop are also both notably bad as attacks for a couple different reasons; more often than not, nitrogen drop is meant as an anti-grindylow tool, or as a no-investment attack to be synergized with a mutated braver optimized for base weapon power. Nitrogen drop even has anti-synergy with guns since they can't upgrade their weapon power, making it difficult to do much of any damage with it.
More importantly- Magic Gunner, the class that FOCUSES on guns, doesn't have any autohits. So they NEED to use their basic attacks- and will always suffer from bellplate and armor of nails.
Usually, using either the +25 power from one shot wonder on shotties, or the massive crit damage from snipers, they manage to make their way out of this and just take minimal damage. Where this becomes seriously egregious is handguns, and the spirit hunter rifle.
Bellplate and armor of nails apply so many times per shot as a multishot gun user that you'll often be dealing more damage to yourself firing against someone who has either than you'll be dealing to them. This makes not using ghost hand as a multishot gun user always a gamble. If you go into a fight against someone who has these items, you are going to lose, almost guaranteed, unless you have ghost hand. The only reason you wouldn't is if you were far and above more powerful than them in not only damage output, but also health and defensive options. This makes ghost hand kind of, just... A must-have item if you expect anyone will take one of many options to deal on-hit damage to you.
The reason this is especially a problem is because handguns are meant for you to wield two at once- with the akimbo skill. It allows you to get one or two extra shots- for the chance at critting a second time, and comboing, to make up for the lackluster shell effects and damage output compared to other gun types. An entire style of play isn't reliably viable if someone just decides to use bellplate or armor of nails. You have to use ghost hand, or you will reliably lose, and it's kinda miserable. This is the big reason people don't use multishot guns much, especially in character- this is just what happens and it's really, really unfortunate and not satisfying for anyone involved.
To return things to the main point- this is why ghost hand is sort of a must-have item for a specific circumstance, but in a really unpleasant way, and is pretty much garbage otherwise. There are sort of- Two distinct problems here that I'm going to tl;dr in a more concise way than all that.
ISSUE 1: Ghost Hand is only useful in a specific situation as a counter to armors that invalidate classes of weapons. Aside from that, especially as a melee user, there's hardly any reason to touch it since it only applies to on-hit effects as opposed to either on-damage effects, or, like its text says, on-attack effects. The fact that its text currently says on-attack effects is of note.
Issue 2: On-hit effects are disgustingly detrimental to handguns, specifically, despite the fact handguns are, without a doubt, in the worst spot of any gun type- and arguably, any kind of ranged weapon, in the current meta. Akimbo, particularly, isn't usable in competitive circumstances because you need ghost hand to compete.
I think there's a couple different solutions, to each problem. I've heard the argument a lot of times that Issue 2 "shouldn't be fixed", but I've mainly heard that back in the days when Ryart prayer, Dark Claws, and Aerial Attacker affected handguns on each hit- in other words, when they had much more competitive damage output in comparison to their sibling weapons. Bellplate and Kensei deflect combined with cobra danger sense are absolute shutout tools for handguns, and people thought that was very acceptable because of the damage output that could be achieved with them. Given the nerfs that went through, I don't believe it's appropriate for handguns to continue suffering such detrimental treatment from on-hit damage return effects, at least.
Here are my solutions for issue 1:
1. Make Ghost Hand ignore all return damage.
This would make ghost hand much more viable, since retaliation damage is becoming a very strong effect with the new mirror enchant. I don't think this would be an overtuning, since already people can reduce their damage taken from retaliation effects by 75% with that same enchantment; this would be a slightly higher step up from that, that also would allow Cobra users to maintain their snake dancer charges against foes using retaliation damage. Currently, cobra has a very hard time standing up against that function, since even autohits will return damage and break your charges, making you vulnerable. Even what would've been one or two damage returned breaks those charges and makes you vulnerable, reliably, to anyone with return damage. I don't think that level of power with reflect damage is acceptable, to be honest.
2. Make Ghost Hand trigger off of on-attack effects, as well as on-hit effects.
I think this is pretty minor, and should already be part of the item. Avoiding an enemy's riposte or counter slice is way in line with the flavor of this weapon, and would not only be cool and thematic, but also a very nice tool to catch an opponent relying on such effects unaware and push them to adapt- without ruining their style, of course.
3. Options one and two.
I don't think either of these buffs are unreasonable, and I'd be perfectly fine with ghost hand receiving both of them.
Solving issue one makes those suffering from issue 2 a little less weary, but it doesn't change the base issue. Here are two solutions to that problem.
A. Make multihit attacks that proc enemy on-hit return damage effects spread the return damage over all the shots. This way, instead of taking 160 sound damage from targeting an opponent with bellplate as a multishot user, you'd still take 20. It'd still be a major counterplay to use bellplate, but it wouldn't make using multishot weapons unplayable, and would let akimbo exist much more comfortably.
B. Make a new shell skill to circumvent this issue. "Ghost Shell" Could have no on-hit effect, but instead, as its basic effect, nullify the on-being-hit effects that an opponent has. Charge effects could be a poison infliction or something of that nature, and an overcharge effect could be minor AoE dark damage and dark water tile application- probably around the same size as blaze shell's cinder spread; or, for something a little less impactful, the overcharge version could trigger an AoE teleport effect, similar to what Detogate does.
C. A new active magic gunner skill, probably main class only, similar to cripple arm- Cripple Armor. Either an autohit or basic attack that does minor damage and only one shot(for multishot guns) but strips opponents of the benefits of their armor- treating them as if they weren't wearing armor until they patch things together three(?) turns later. This is a sort of stopgap measure similar to how cripple arm handles fang faced shield, but it's something, at least.
Whatever the case, I think there definitely needs to be a change to these interactions. I'm in favor of option 3 for issue one, and option B for issue two. I'd like to hear what people who are less familiar with guns and ghost hand's interactions think about this, as well.
With the new enchant, I think it's a good time to put focus on a long- untouched hand item- Ghost Hand.
Ghost hand is very rarely seen in the meta despite glove slot items being very nice for two hand builds- at least, in my experience. This is because ghost hand doesn't really ignore that much. Here's the text on ghost hand.
The way it's written implies it affects on-attack effects. This isn't the case. It only bypasses on-hit effects. So, Riposte still activates, a leporidae's turning function still activates, Geist still activates, and a few other things still activate. What it does bypass is Fang-Faced Shield, Shield Enchant, Bellplate, and Armor of Nails. Aside from that, there's not really much of anything that procs on being hit. The retaliation damage from Armor of Nails and Fang Faced are very small and not worth building around for most melee basic hitters, so ghost hand isn't really of interest for picking up to them. Shield enchant isn't really used much, either, given its specific conditions and massive opportunity cost. Bellplate is stronger, giving some incentive to use ghost hand with bow weapons, but arbalests need their sub weapon slot for a special armament, and rangers will usually prefer to kite and autohit against a bellplate user to save their slot for something else, since it's just not that big of a deal for them.
Finally, you have guns- Guns are weapons that almost completely rely on basic attacks. They have a few autohits: Grenade launcher and flamethrower in engineer, and nitrogen drop and lead storm in Demon Hunter. Lead storm, notably, still suffers from bellplate, armor of nails, and other on hit damage effects since it's an autohit that procs on hits- and grenade launcher is easy to evade for someone slower than you, unless you spend extra momentum to use hand trigger. Flamethrower and Nitrogen Drop are also both notably bad as attacks for a couple different reasons; more often than not, nitrogen drop is meant as an anti-grindylow tool, or as a no-investment attack to be synergized with a mutated braver optimized for base weapon power. Nitrogen drop even has anti-synergy with guns since they can't upgrade their weapon power, making it difficult to do much of any damage with it.
More importantly- Magic Gunner, the class that FOCUSES on guns, doesn't have any autohits. So they NEED to use their basic attacks- and will always suffer from bellplate and armor of nails.
Usually, using either the +25 power from one shot wonder on shotties, or the massive crit damage from snipers, they manage to make their way out of this and just take minimal damage. Where this becomes seriously egregious is handguns, and the spirit hunter rifle.
Bellplate and armor of nails apply so many times per shot as a multishot gun user that you'll often be dealing more damage to yourself firing against someone who has either than you'll be dealing to them. This makes not using ghost hand as a multishot gun user always a gamble. If you go into a fight against someone who has these items, you are going to lose, almost guaranteed, unless you have ghost hand. The only reason you wouldn't is if you were far and above more powerful than them in not only damage output, but also health and defensive options. This makes ghost hand kind of, just... A must-have item if you expect anyone will take one of many options to deal on-hit damage to you.
The reason this is especially a problem is because handguns are meant for you to wield two at once- with the akimbo skill. It allows you to get one or two extra shots- for the chance at critting a second time, and comboing, to make up for the lackluster shell effects and damage output compared to other gun types. An entire style of play isn't reliably viable if someone just decides to use bellplate or armor of nails. You have to use ghost hand, or you will reliably lose, and it's kinda miserable. This is the big reason people don't use multishot guns much, especially in character- this is just what happens and it's really, really unfortunate and not satisfying for anyone involved.
To return things to the main point- this is why ghost hand is sort of a must-have item for a specific circumstance, but in a really unpleasant way, and is pretty much garbage otherwise. There are sort of- Two distinct problems here that I'm going to tl;dr in a more concise way than all that.
ISSUE 1: Ghost Hand is only useful in a specific situation as a counter to armors that invalidate classes of weapons. Aside from that, especially as a melee user, there's hardly any reason to touch it since it only applies to on-hit effects as opposed to either on-damage effects, or, like its text says, on-attack effects. The fact that its text currently says on-attack effects is of note.
Issue 2: On-hit effects are disgustingly detrimental to handguns, specifically, despite the fact handguns are, without a doubt, in the worst spot of any gun type- and arguably, any kind of ranged weapon, in the current meta. Akimbo, particularly, isn't usable in competitive circumstances because you need ghost hand to compete.
I think there's a couple different solutions, to each problem. I've heard the argument a lot of times that Issue 2 "shouldn't be fixed", but I've mainly heard that back in the days when Ryart prayer, Dark Claws, and Aerial Attacker affected handguns on each hit- in other words, when they had much more competitive damage output in comparison to their sibling weapons. Bellplate and Kensei deflect combined with cobra danger sense are absolute shutout tools for handguns, and people thought that was very acceptable because of the damage output that could be achieved with them. Given the nerfs that went through, I don't believe it's appropriate for handguns to continue suffering such detrimental treatment from on-hit damage return effects, at least.
Here are my solutions for issue 1:
1. Make Ghost Hand ignore all return damage.
This would make ghost hand much more viable, since retaliation damage is becoming a very strong effect with the new mirror enchant. I don't think this would be an overtuning, since already people can reduce their damage taken from retaliation effects by 75% with that same enchantment; this would be a slightly higher step up from that, that also would allow Cobra users to maintain their snake dancer charges against foes using retaliation damage. Currently, cobra has a very hard time standing up against that function, since even autohits will return damage and break your charges, making you vulnerable. Even what would've been one or two damage returned breaks those charges and makes you vulnerable, reliably, to anyone with return damage. I don't think that level of power with reflect damage is acceptable, to be honest.
2. Make Ghost Hand trigger off of on-attack effects, as well as on-hit effects.
I think this is pretty minor, and should already be part of the item. Avoiding an enemy's riposte or counter slice is way in line with the flavor of this weapon, and would not only be cool and thematic, but also a very nice tool to catch an opponent relying on such effects unaware and push them to adapt- without ruining their style, of course.
3. Options one and two.
I don't think either of these buffs are unreasonable, and I'd be perfectly fine with ghost hand receiving both of them.
Solving issue one makes those suffering from issue 2 a little less weary, but it doesn't change the base issue. Here are two solutions to that problem.
A. Make multihit attacks that proc enemy on-hit return damage effects spread the return damage over all the shots. This way, instead of taking 160 sound damage from targeting an opponent with bellplate as a multishot user, you'd still take 20. It'd still be a major counterplay to use bellplate, but it wouldn't make using multishot weapons unplayable, and would let akimbo exist much more comfortably.
B. Make a new shell skill to circumvent this issue. "Ghost Shell" Could have no on-hit effect, but instead, as its basic effect, nullify the on-being-hit effects that an opponent has. Charge effects could be a poison infliction or something of that nature, and an overcharge effect could be minor AoE dark damage and dark water tile application- probably around the same size as blaze shell's cinder spread; or, for something a little less impactful, the overcharge version could trigger an AoE teleport effect, similar to what Detogate does.
C. A new active magic gunner skill, probably main class only, similar to cripple arm- Cripple Armor. Either an autohit or basic attack that does minor damage and only one shot(for multishot guns) but strips opponents of the benefits of their armor- treating them as if they weren't wearing armor until they patch things together three(?) turns later. This is a sort of stopgap measure similar to how cripple arm handles fang faced shield, but it's something, at least.
Whatever the case, I think there definitely needs to be a change to these interactions. I'm in favor of option 3 for issue one, and option B for issue two. I'd like to hear what people who are less familiar with guns and ghost hand's interactions think about this, as well.
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