u/AmazingDesigner209

Background: Celest 2 Angela one trick, 600+ hours on her easy. My name is System, hi Oregon server! Re posting here since this is where Angela's actually see it.

Anyone that plays Angela at Celest or above knows that in season 7, they added a shadow buff back to her that was removed a while back (along with the dash cool down nerf). As of yesterday, that is gone.

What this buff was:
By tapping shift with hold-to-charge active, you could imbue Angela with the properties of her Assassin's Charge (her dash / kidnap) until the next time you used her shift. This did 3 very important things:

1. It makes her spear charge 25 points a second passively, making it 2x as fast when flying forward and making her charge on the ground as well, giving her axes about 5% more damage when swinging constantly, plus lets them charge to full power if you are chasing. This was the most important part. You always needed buff up before ult to get the max potential from it.
2. Makes her grab WAY more consistent. It make it so when touching someone, they got grabbed the moment you started your charge as the kidnap hitbox became active sooner. This was super necessary after the 6 second nerf and the fact that she constantly no regs her charge hits (which is why I can only play on one server, it helps kinda). It also makes you charge way less, as to get the more consistent kidnap, you would have to wait a full 12 seconds after every kidnap attempt.
3. Lets you fly through destructible terrain without having to charge. This one is less useful but still super convenient. Not the biggest deal but very helpful when she gets clipped and stopped on geometry that isn't touching her when she tries to fly through holes in the wall. Again, this felt like a bug more than anything, but it was nice.

Overall, these things strongly discouraged the use of the kidnap unless it was a VERY good time to use it, and encouraged a more brawly, damaging neutral game. You had to make a choice, do I go for a grab and become weaker for 6 seconds and put my better grab on a 12 second cool down? Or do I stay in a buffed state that lets me poke frontline, harass out of position dps, and brawl better as a tank? This seemed like the best of both worlds for Netease, as it would discourage a CC based playstyle by buffing her if she doesn't use her kidnap, but still keep her identity as a kidnap / DPS tank.

With Dino in the game, she was already getting royally boned out of the meta. She already has some of the hardest counters of any tank. Playing her this season already felt like forcing a square peg into a round hole, there is just literally always better options, but now her potential for damage is basically halved. She just feels incredibly weak now, the only value she brings is displacement, which is so team dependent for follow up it hurts.

TL;DR: Angela had a situational buff ability that discouraged kidnapping but made her overall better when not kidnapping, and that was removed with no balancing buff, shoving her even further out of being a viable tank.

Background: Celest 2 Angela one trick, 600+ hours on her easy. My name is System, hi Oregon server!

Anyone that plays Angela at Celest or above knows that in season 7, they added a shadow buff back to her that was removed a while back (along with the dash cool down nerf). As of today, that is gone.

What this buff was:
By tapping shift with hold-to-charge active, you could imbue Angela with the properties of her Assassin's Charge (her dash / kidnap) until the next time you used her shift. This did 3 very important things:

1. It makes her spear charge 25 points a second passively, making it 2x as fast when flying forward and making her charge on the ground as well, giving her axes about 5% more damage when swinging constantly, plus lets them charge to full power if you are chasing. This was the most important part. You always needed buff up before ult to get the max potential from it.

2. Makes her grab WAY more consistent. It make it so when touching someone, they got grabbed the moment you started your charge as the kidnap hitbox became active sooner. This was super necessary after the 6 second nerf and the fact that she constantly no regs her charge hits (which is why I can only play on one server, it helps kinda). It also makes you charge way less, as to get the more consistent kidnap, you would have to wait a full 12 seconds after every kidnap attempt.

3. Lets you fly through destructible terrain without having to charge. This one is less useful but still super convenient. Not the biggest deal but very helpful when she gets clipped and stopped on geometry that isn't touching her when she tries to fly through holes in the wall. Again, this felt like a bug more than anything, but it was nice.

Overall, these things strongly discouraged the use of the kidnap unless it was a VERY good time to use it, and encouraged a more brawly, damaging neutral game. You had to make a choice, do I go for a grab and become weaker for 6 seconds and put my better grab on a 12 second cool down? Or do I stay in a buffed state that lets me poke frontline, harass out of position dps, and brawl better as a tank? This seemed like the best of both worlds for Netease, as it would discourage a CC based playstyle by buffing her if she doesn't use her kidnap, but still keep her identity as a kidnap / DPS tank.

With Dino in the game, she was already getting royally boned out of the meta. She already has some of the hardest counters of any tank. Playing her this season already felt like forcing a square peg into a round hole, there is just literally always better options, but now her potential for damage is basically halved. She just feels incredibly weak now, the only value she brings is displacement, which is so team dependent for follow up it hurts.

TL;DR: Angela had a situational buff ability that discouraged kidnapping but made her overall better when not kidnapping, and that was removed with no balancing buff, shoving her even further out of being a viable tank.