Discussion Annihilation Update - Riftwalker Radium

PASSAGE I - Statement

Riftwalker is extremely OverPowered when:
1) You're using it consistently with your clan/ group of buddies
2) X amount of people have riftwalker unlocked and understand what the gameplan is (when it's not a clangame but a team of randoms.)
3) The rift-target is not a total dungus and knows how to position himself for a safe and effective rift.
4) Most of the people who you want rushing with you are ready midphase 4 - starting phase 5.
5) Basically this kit is obnoxiously strong if you use it correctly.

PASSAGE II - Introduction:

According to what I've experienced these last few months, riftwalker became a more and more viable class and thus, people have begun recognising how crazily destructive it can be if used appropriately and unexpectedly. This, can especially be shown in the latest clan-war game streamed on youtube where the Japanese-Oriented clan, properly showed the other clans participating, how the current meta tramples over the prior ones, that may have worked properly in the past. Thus, I've come here with the proposition and intention to suggest or discuss how this class works, how it could be adapted to make it more balanced and blend it in so it works and coexists together with older metas.

PASSAGE III - Question:

I will not bother myself by creating a poll since I'm looking for critical feedback and wish to hear the thought-process behind this kits existing mechanics seeing whether or not we share similar ideas or i'm just basically hating on this particular class, hence the short and straightforward question;
Q: Does riftwalker need balance-changes?

PASSAGE IV - Advantages:

α) You can drag yourself and 3 teammates with you (4 people including riftwalker)

β) There is no sound or visible sign that appears after you rifted (=stealth x 100)
γ) The rift-target can either be invisible or fly around as vampire, which makes base-infiltrations a lot easier.
δ) Multiple rift-walkers can rift to the same target which allows you to drag X amount of people to one target almost instantly.
ε) The ability to go back to base from any location on the map.

PASSAGE V - Disadvantages:

a) Once the rift-target has been spotted, it's hard to pull off an unexpected rush, and defending it becomes a lot easier.
b) You can assume a rift-rush is incoming if the enemy team's base looks empty late-game or if you see most of them hanging around the nexus area (recently the nexus area rift has been abandoned due to people figuring out easily and hence, decided to rift in other locations)
c) Large cooldown depending on the amount of people you drag with you. (20s x amount of people)

PASSAGE VI - Changes:

During this section I want to recommend changes that pop up my head if I were to adapt the kit one way or another (not all of these are changes I personally agree with, I’m listing down things that pop up), hence:

1. When you open a rift, the riftwalker has a fair amount of radius where visible particles are floating around him. Whenever the riftwalker decides to rift to person A, person A receives the same particles showing that a portal is opening around him with possible a different colour representing opening A and B.
2. Just like how the transporter gives out a sound when going through it, riftwalker should probably give out a sound too when rifted to person A as a means to indicate that a rift happened around you.
3. Multiple riftwalkers are not allowed to rift to person A. When riftwalker 1 rifts to person A, person A is immune from being rifted to for X amount of seconds. Accordingly, those who rifted together with riftwalker 1 receive that same cool down or else it’d be easy for riftwalker 2 to rift to riftwalker 1 or the people he brought along. (This is an over exaggerated change but it depends on how much people want it to get nerfed or not nerfed at all).
4. Riftwalkers are unable to rift to invisible people.
5. Riftwalkers are unable to rift to vampires during bat-mode.

PASSAGE VII - Closing Statement

To answer my own question in passage III, I’d easily say yes. As it is now, it’s fairly ridiculous how easily it bypasses everything and how hard it is to catch a rift-target unless you have multiple people defending a nexus which is hard to accomplish since defending isn’t the most favourable thing to do in annihilation. Building walls used to be fun, and seeing whose wall would hold up better against rushes was a fun thing to witness, but with the current meta rift walker completely abolishes any structure built as a means to defend the nexus and I’d like to change that a little bit.

I really sincerely hope I’m going to hear some comments, critique or any other points I haven’t listed down below. Feel free to comment anything.

-soto

One, two and five!

Particles or a glowing effect are most needed tbh.

bro i think riftwalker is fine

Invis + TP would work just as effective, if not more effective because then more people could go Thor, Farmer, and pvp classes instead of having to have 3-4 rifts. I dont think Rift needs a change

Maybe a debuff for a few seconds after rifting?

Decrease the amount of players a rift can take with them from 3 to 2? , and maybe a debuff after having rifted

Yeah but you can just shift as soon as you come through the TP :v the noise is the only thing that might give you away. But in that case just put the tp a few blocks further away from the nexus..

I agree rift is WAY too stealthy, it needs a sound or particle effect when you rift to a teammate! Also think it should be nerfed from 3 to 2 players.

RIF need be nerfed from 3 to 1 or increased distance from nexus(RIF target).

I think that instead of these changes there should be a larger area of where you can't rift into, like on coastal the closest you might be able to rift should be the side towers or behind the initially map generated wall, this way you will see the rushers incoming without severely nerfing rift walker. Though Mission does bring up a very valid point that tp will just be more effective then, because you can hide it better and if it is far enough away from people they won't hear or see anything. I think that it is not riftwalker that needs a nerf but other classes that makes it so OP, such as alc not being able to brew splash, etc.

As far as I'm aware, the riftwalker himself gets weakness for X amount of seconds, but the ones rifting don't? (not too sure about that)

A valid proposition, nice suggestions.

Either way, at least it won't be as instant as it is with rift, and walls will become more viable because it's easier to spot a TP inside the wall's premises than it is outside the walls or underground.

I think adding particles or sound is a valid argument, it definitely needs "something" tweaked about it in my opinion.

Smart idea, maybe rift distance = outside defender teleport radius?

The reason why i'd prefer a TP meta over rift is because you still have a chance to a) break the TP before everyone goes through b) hear people teleporting/ breaking blocks under you c) it teleports people one by one and not in a pack which will give you additional time to either find them or prepare for a defense.

"The reason why i'd prefer a TP meta over rift is because you still have a chance to a) break the TP before everyone goes through b) hear people teleporting/ breaking blocks under you c) it teleports people one by one and not in a pack which will give you additional time to either find them or prepare for a defense."

But like this could easily be countered by just placing the tp like 5 blocks away from the nearest person in the other base. The actual distance that you can hear a tp is so minimal that everyone would just use the tp over rift walker instead, and if you've ever canyon rushed with rawr you can see how easy it is to also hide it on your bases side. I feel like as if this would be more of an unnecessary nerf because no one uses rift walker otherwise.

Let me rephrase it since I’m putting too much emphasis on the noise a TP makes. You will not be able to place a TP as close as inside the walls like a rift-target could. The actual premise here is hiding your TP safely and securely so everyone goes through it, for that to happen, most likely you still haven’t been able to breach the actual walls of the base. Another valid reason is the fact that you can prevent people from teleporting to your base by simply breaking the TP which is a highly impossible thing to do with riftwalker since all of them are packed up at their nexus. There’s a reason why riftwalker is above transporter for rushes and why it’s gotten to the point where it almost looks broken and it’s the broken part that needs balance changes in my opinion.

Yeah but what I'm saying is that this will just make tp the favored for rushing, as tp you can place as close as you want until block protection, whereas riftwalker still has a few more blocks where they can't be rifted to. And by placing on the enemy wall it would take them time to climb up the ladders when you could block the way they came and also block off the tp from the main walkway of the wall, then once all your team mates are through you can splash and rush. With this nerf, rift walker just won't be needed as it will become irrelevant and be replaced with tp. Either we keep rift walker the same and it stays, or we nerf it and people just tp rush instead and because no one uses rift walker, it would either become and unused class like hunter or just be removed from the game.

Speaking of though, can we get OG hunter back?

TP can be placed where there is no block protection, whereas riftwalker can only rift to those outside a certain radius of the nexus, they are different, you can test it. But I don't think riftwalker should be nerfed otherwise it will be ruled out useless, as a tp only needs one person as the transport class so it will be favoured over a nerfed rift walker which needs 1 for every 1-3 other people.

Let me mention some recent events that just shows what I'm talking about rather than typing it out.


Timestamps of visible rift rushes:
35:35 (actual rift at 36:38 + pre splash so there's no need to wait and it's rift & go within a split second)
42:02 (second visible rift rush with 99% of their team).
--> No delay, no waiting for someone who's left behind, no waiting for someone to splash at enemy location. This all happens within an instant and breaching a base makes it 100x easier if you have a mobility class. This is not a feat you'll pull off if you walk to a location as a transporter.

If you played last week's nature event where the nexus was locked down with an iron door, then you must remember how many people rushed the nexus at once due to riftwalker? It took one invis to walk to any base, a 10 second rift cooldown and we had 25 diamonds rushing every nexus within seconds. Twenty-five, potted individuals, all at once which is pretty much an unstoppable nuke. This all due to a couple riftwalkers and a well coordinated team. If you wanted to pull that off with a TP rush, you'd need 1) distance 2) a lot of time to wait for everyone to go through 3) make sure the TP isn't broken before everyone teleports through. I don't see how a minor balance change on riftwalker would remotely ruin the entire kit, which is why I made this thread.

Very well laid out and reasoned thread. Your suggestions for amending the class are also thought through and fairly balanced

It's a good thought but you fail to realise that tp rushing will not be much different from rift rushing and that if you nerf rift than tp rushing will be the meta. Rift walker is just easier to set up, but tp rushing will just end up as successful and will replacing rift walker. I feel like as if we are just running over the same points also and that we must agree to disagree, but when the admins do rule out this change, what I have said will probably end up happening.

Sorry but you are wrong.
Tps can never be placed onto a wall or even inside base for a rush. The invis for rift can! For a good tp you always need a tunnel, which is really time consuming and you still have to get through the wall which can be slowed down by a good defense and delaying blocks. The Tp rush gives the defending team from 0 seconds of preparation atleast 10 seconds if you placed delaying blocks. Not even to mention how hard it can be to get through a wall when ppl are able to replace blocks.

So we have rift: 1 invis + a good position or vampire and boots of grace = always getting in with no time to react vs
Tp: tunnel + hoping there are no delaying blocks + moving all ppl out of the nexus + waiting for all ppl to get through the tp + giving the defending team plenty of time to react = risky rush with more effort aka not viable atm

This relates to "last week's nature event" which I mentioned in my previous post before and a clear example on how riftwalker just absolutely breaks the system. Have a good look and if you still think riftwalker shouldn't be tweaked then I don't think there's anything else that'll convince you.