Cannon Fist Mini-Rework
by pristine, with inspiration from ClashMaster273 and Fluect
Let me preface this by saying I have ~100 hours of Warlock, Berserker, and Warlord PvP. I promise you that this isn’t coming from someone who doesn’t play FS, or someone who hasn’t used (more like attempted to use) Cannon Fist extensively.
Cannon Fist is a fighting style currently marred by its lack of identity and janky gameplay. Despite being the token ‘ranged’ fighting style, it performs terribly at range when compared to Thermo Fist. This is a list of smaller, more easily implementable suggestions to tide the fighting style over until a larger rework can go through.
- Cannon Fist M1 Charging
Proposed Change: Cannon Fist M1s should be able to be held, for the same duration that spells, skills, and techniques can. Instead of ramping up damage or size, this will only increase the speed at which the cannonball travels (should be fairly easy to implement).
Reasoning: Cannon Fist M1s are only used to shred targets who are in long endlag or AFK / standing still, rather than being usable in combat. Even with faster imbues or high attack speed, airstalling and M1s in general are relegated to near-prediction and don’t feel good to use, especially on lower speed modifiers. This change should give Cannon Fist’s airstalls more variability, which is fair due to the lower reward that M1s present.
Possible Cons: Could lead to very campy airstall-heavy playstyles with faster imbues that provide greater Crash range.
- Cannon Fist Smash
Proposed Change: Increase the range of Shockwave Smash by ~20%, and its speed by 10%. Reduce Shockwave Smash size by 10%-15% to compensate.
Reasoning: Cannon Fist’s Shockwave Smash, is, funnily enough, one of the worst in the game to use in practice. Though a very similar idea was proposed in the balance document, I’ve made some adjustments to further incentivize its use case and prevent abuse. This change would allow Cannon Fist’s Shockwave Smash to be a more reliable and easily dependable close-mid range tool, while ensuring that a semblance of aim is still required to prevent abuse with low size modifiers.
Possible Cons: May end up holding more reward than risk, though this is debatable.
- Cannon Fist Shot
[Same as on balance doc, ignore if you’re already caught up.]
Proposed Change: Cannon Fist’s Shot technique should have its range (attack speed) increased by ~25-40%.
Reasoning: Even when using lighter cannonballs and higher amounts of attack speed, Cannon Fist’s Shot doesn’t have superb range, easily being outranged and outrewarded by the likes of Thermo Fist in nearly every situation. Though I believe Cannon Fist’s Shot should be further modified in time, this change should be enough to tide it over for the time being.
Possible Cons: Same as M1 charging.
- Cannon Fist Focus
Proposed Change: Cannon Fist’s health affinity should be increased to 1.1x (up from 0.875x with Heavy Exploding Shells).
Reasoning: Despite being a fighting style based around chucking massive cannonballs made of raw steel and gunpowder, Cannon Fist a fairly terrible Resistance Focus and an egregiously awful Power Focus. This leaves Speed Focus as the only viable option in its arsenal. Implementing this change would lead to greater variety in choice of Focus, and less trouble in benefiting from it.
Possible Cons: Higher regeneration from Resistance mode could promote aforementioned air-camping, but shouldn’t be very impactful.
As with all of my suggestions, feel free to let me know your thoughts. I’m open to all discussion.