Issues with Sustain

[Touc]

[Words]

Thank you for saving me from making a long, long effortpost. I'm still going to post, though.

One of the other problems that I don't think anyone has identified is the fact that against a sustain user, you need to play *perfectly*, because otherwise they'll regenerate through your damage. Miss a swing, miss a beam, whiff a combo? That's your rotation down, and the less time you have to deal damage to them, the more time they have to just keep healing, and healing, and healing. This was exemplified perfectly through Caliel and Gnash's fight, where because Gnash missed two important attacks he died when by all rights he should have won.

Leading on from that, sustain prolongs the amount of time that you have to play perfectly because of their healing. Even if you keep landing your hits and getting good combos in, the likelihood of you messing up and either walking into their own combos or messing up your own heightens simply due to the fact that the battle is taking longer.

Sure, you can say 'skill issue', but when your enemy is 
1. Making a conscious effort to dodge and block through stutterstep-blocks and 
2. Making the battlefield akin to 'nam through a bunch of traps and summons and AOEs and attacks of their own
it's not as clear cut as it might initially seem.

[NikolaNeiju]

I woke up to see that everyone is (mostly) nice to one another, that's v.nice!

On that note, I wanted to elaborate further on the issues with sustain but everyone else did it for me better than I could have. It feels like I unearthed some repressed, traumatic memories out of you guys.

I love democracy.

[Cotillion]

If we're nerfing sustain for it's lack of fun, and due to it's supposed lack of counter-play of which nature is ironically the least of an offender towards. Then we should also be nerfing a majority of auto-hit functions in the game. They provide the same skill ceiling, if not lower and are even less fun to experience. With sustain I get to actually play out the fight, and it's a longer fight.. Whereas with a majority of auto-hit builds you're left unable to do a whole lot for half the fight, but circling back to my prior mention;

Nature is the least offensive of sustains in the game, if only because it has clearly defined spots of counter-play. Yggdrasil is placed on the floor, it has to form and the user has to hang around it. This makes them easier to hit with abilities if they decide to utilise that healing, and a simple large AoE placed on top of the tree counters virtually the entire duration.

Ingrain it self-stuns the user for long enough to hit them with virtually anything, this is quite literally an exemplar example of counterplay in sustain. The biggest offenders of sustain without counter-play aren't even in nature and yet people circle back to nature. It's a bit confusing to be honest.

[Raihex]

remove sustain from everywhere.
lol

[Detective100]

The nature tree is actually decent offensively currently with vine whip, spores, and rolling vines. Add deadly blooms, and you have a "drop and forget" 3X3 AoE that shoots spores at the enemy from time time.

You can effectively go as a non-sustain build with nature if you want, or be a more kite-sustain build by getting the right moves from nature and other trees. Even Ingrain's self root can potentially be worked around by using the skill when you are far away from the enemy or while they are CC'd, avoiding retaliation.

The reason why many sustain builds flock to nature is because it is flexible and "easily splashable", so to speak. It is a base magic tree with heals, a homing charge move that slows which lets you potentially combo it with something else, and a summon with vines. Nature is a good tree overall.

The least offensive sustain tree in my mind is probably wellspring.

[8245R]

The nature tree is actually decent offensively currently with vine whip, spores, and rolling vines. Add deadly blooms, and you have a "drop and forget" 3X3 AoE that shoots spores at the enemy from time time.

You can effectively go as a non-sustain build with nature if you want, or be a more kite-sustain build by getting the right moves from nature and other trees. Even Ingrain's self root can potentially be worked around by using the skill when you are far away from the enemy or while they are CC'd, avoiding retaliation.

The reason why many sustain builds flock to nature is because it is flexible and "easily splashable", so to speak. It is a base magic tree with heals, a homing charge move that slows which lets you potentially combo it with something else, and a summon with vines. Nature is a good tree overall.

The least offensive sustain tree in my mind is probably wellspring.

they didn't mean offensive attack-wise.. they meant of all sustain builds, nature is the least to blame because of the conditions around its sustain spells providing counterplay vs. something like wellspring aura passively ticking away

agreed w cotillion though, autohits are garbage gameplay as well and are just ''i need some consistent dmg even if im playing with my feet'' slots that exist purely to lower the skill required to play your build

[Iceshadow]

make bleed work like grievous wounds

bleed = healing cut
fatal strike? healing cut
entire blood tree? unfortunately anti-heal
bone? a lil bit of healing cut with bone blades

actually reward offensive gameplay instead of me having to force an uneven trade every single time i want to go in and i get absolutely grasped by vines and mandrakes

EDIT: you could also make supporting trees have anti-heal, i.e. scald? also anti-heal

maybe mud but that seems extra, nerf earth while we're at it

[portogoz]

Even as a non-combatant I find sustain to be a bit unpleasant to watch. Especially when paired with damage resistance.

But it is nowhere near what it was that time when myself and a couple others are why we fight in magically appearing boxes now...

Long live the kite sustain build of 2016...

Ahh yes, those were certainly not the days. Back when fights could take place through an entire village. I'll will never forget my fight with Slojanko that had me running LAPS  around Frostvale. (although tbf that might've been before 2016 now that I think about it.) Back when Flurry, Bubble and Bolt had infinite range. Good God that was awful, I'm not even sure how I managed to win that fight but that was straight cancer. 

Then not long after that, there was the Holy Ground Sustain builds DR stacking with Obelisk. Just thinking back on that hurts my head but honestly Sustain has come a far way since then.  It's gradually getting more manageable but of course with new races and abilities comes new synergies and builds which quite frankly should be locked in Pandora's box.