Skill: Eyes of Death, Potential Nerf Ideas

[Mousus6]

In spite of having a Revenant with the skill it suffers from being so much better than any of the other target acquisition skills that it feels like it gets close to obsoleting them for a whole faction/arena alignment as they do so little compared to EoD at so little investment from the Revenant (once they have the skill). I am concerned that the start of the next breath being only one plane will potentially allow EoD to feel as oppressive in the main game as it does in the arena.

Comparisons are:
Tracking (including bloodhound) (60cp), 1 ap to pick up a target, have to follow their whole path, have no idea if they are dead already, have no idea whether they were on a massively long distance trip before you choose to start following. I gave tracking a try before bloodhound was added and it felt like a complete waste of time in an NPC containing environment, probably with bloodhound it is actually a valid target finding skill but with heavy limitations (particularly that you will (once bloodhound is working properly) generally only be able to start your hunts from the same places EoD would work)

Demon Hunter (free) Angel hunter (60cp), 1 ap 6mp to test whether any targets are present, actually narrowing down to a single square will take at least 4 casts and lots of movement between, probably better just manually searching after 2 pings since using it further involves actively walking away from the target, possibly pairs pretty well with tracking to catch whether they are close enough to be worth tracking and then track them.

Eyes of Death (60cp), always on, free to identify every single target on the same plane with completely live updates. For someone actively co-ordinating they can freely sit on the corpse of a target and then direct killers against them the moment they respawn which is probably a bit overkill (generally prevented by the standing order of "don't be a dick" but is a bit closer to prevalent in arena). Currently there are 3 options for counterplay to EoD, get the corpse actively raised by a lich, hide in the stronghold until the corpse decays naturally, move to another plane entirely.

My default nerf thought for EoD is to reduce the free information to a range and stronghold status and allow spending 1ap 5mp to focus on to get a current location with the same limitations as current. Doesn't make it appreciably worse for a Rev target hunting for themselves but increases the opportunity cost to provide the information to others speculatively, putting it along the lines of other classes support skills.

The second option that springs to mind for me is to only show the location of killers and only until they have next died. Means that the counterplay is to just not kill things near a revenant but any set of kills is only punished once. Having gotten killed somewhere where a revenant hangs out feels like it has already been punished by the first death.

Third one that stands out is heavily limit the range that it can actually track and outside of that range give a neighbourhood rather than exact co-ordinates (mostly runs into the issue of actually learning neighbourhood names).

I definitely prefer the first option to the second which feels possibly a little too severe. The angle I'm coming from is mostly that of the nerf to enhanced senses relative to the original Nexus War which was a very effective encouragement to the idea that you might be able to sleep outside a stronghold and possibly live. Current EoD feels very much a relic of NW (even if it's migrated from NC to Rev) with passive enhanced senses rather than the more secure version of current NC. I feel as though arena has thrown EoD into sharp relief to me relative to other target finding skills and given that the start of the next breath will not have other planes to hide on it will have a similar oppressive period where killing is everyone's objective to the state of arena.

[SkullFace]

Hard disagree with any nerf to Eye Of Death. It's a class-defining ability.

[Meric]

EOD at the start of B5 when we had no Strongholds was pretty brutal; I say that as the first EOD rev >.>.

But once pseudo-forts and strongholds popped up it wasnt that bad. The arena EOD just feels really potent as there is nowhere to run off-plane, no pet walls to hide behind, few ways to scrabble the result, a lot of bodies being generated overall, its a really small map and one side is really well coordinated with it (not unlike a faction). So in B6 I imagine it wont feel as oppressive as it does there.

I would prefer to see more counter-play to it tbh.

For example, give each T2 caster an ability to disrupt the EOD scan - maybe even within their free class ability. For example, for 1ap/2ap - Defiler's Desecration ruins the body beyond analysis (and they get a boon). Shephards Pray ability on the body shields it in divinity and scrambles the body information (either fully or localised). Sorcerers can... I dont know, using spellcraft summon the death servitor to take the body away? Ok, that last one sucks - but on principle, just more counters to it overall thats not a stronghold ward.

90CP Third Eye skill when?

[Mousus6]

More counterplay options would also seem perfectly reasonable, though I feel like the first option keeps things just as strong for self hunting for a Rev whilst requiring some cost to be full on eyes of god for everyone in your faction. I am saying this as someone who is definitely still planning to have a Rev next breath so I'm not just hating on Revs.

[Zanahoria78]

The second option sounds like an acceptable nerf. I think it's reasonable for EoD to display both the victim and killer, but only show the killer's location and only until they get killed. Once the victim is avenged, EoD could display a message like "Repaid" or "Avenged" instead of the killer's location. If that's too harsh, make it happen on a per corpse basis so that a mass murderer has more chances of being tracked down.