u/Irinless

I couldn't find it in accessibility options and thought I would ask here if anyone knows if they plan on adding it.

It's bait. It's surrounded on all sides by hostiles and has no greater strategic value to the galactic war. Going through Mox, Vega Bay, Wasat, Meissa: OR Choohe -> Matar Bay -> Meissa at the end is 1 planet longer through easier to liberate planets and will completely conquer the western front, as well as starving/cutting off Wezen and X-45's supply lines.

I know the blob is going to blob on Marfark but maybe, just maybe we can do this properly for once.

As an avid Haze Player with hundreds of hours on the character, having played all the way from September of 2024, I have noticed a trend with this character throughout the patches - Namely, the steady reduction in one of her abilities that should set her apart from others within her niche (That being, a relatively high-skill, aim-based gun character.)

TL;DR at the bottom

There has been a large amount of global changes that have affected her adversely compared to other characters - Global baseline gun fire rate nerfs, for example, impacted Haze significantly more than it did a character like Shiv or Ivy. Global Headshot nerfs impacted her way more severely than it did any of the hybrid characters or even other pure gun playstyles of the time.

On June 17th, 2025, Headshot multipliers were globally reduced from 1.9x to 1.8x, although in gameplay testing, the actual current headshot multiplier appears to be 1.6x on Haze despite not having any critical modifiers listed. (13-14 bodyshot vs 22-23 headshot, 40 fixation stacks, no items, Sandbox dummy)

On January 30th, 2026, a global fire-rate reduction to items hit the stores. This reduced all fire rate by 10%, and Fury Trance by an additional 6%, an item almost exclusively bought on Haze. Some items that used to be decent on this hero like Slowing Bullets lost its fire rate, making it unappealing and further pigeon-holding the character into very specific item setups.
On September 26th, 2024, Fire Rate was changed to stack diminishingly (In addition to one of the first major passes to nerfing fire rate on items.)

On May 8th, 2025, Tesla Bullets lost its fire rate passive, making it a worse pick for this character, limiting variety and power. Additionally, the cooldown of Metal Skin was reduced by 4 seconds this patch. Quicksilver Reload was also reworked this patch, making it a much worse pick for this character whom normally almost always ran it back then.

On May 11th, 2025, Spirit Power was globally nerfed by 7%, in addition to weapon tree investment getting stronger. As Haze only gets around 50% of the benefit of the weapon tree, she was adversely impacted here, likely unintentionally. With less spirit power came less wake-up time, ammo, lane power, smoke/ult duration, and dagger damage.
But that's not why I draw attention to this date specifically; With Weapon passive scaling from investment getting stronger (from 6/8/12/18/26/36/52/68/78/88% to 7/9/13/20/29/40/58/72/83/93), other gun characters got brought up substantially more than Haze did.

On July 4th, 2025, there was a GLOBAL 5% Cycle time increase on all guns. Most characters did not care, effectively a 5% sustained DPS nerf on weapons, but as Haze needs to build fixation, she was once more adversely affected, causing a larger drift between her and other gun characters that were not quite so affected. This, plus the may 11th patch combined, was already causing issues where Haze were starting to lose 1v1 gun fights against characters like Viscous, Warden, and Geist that she would normally win.
In addition, several items caught another fire rate nerf this fight, most notably Swift Striker and Ricochet.

On Octoboer 2nd, 2025, Weapon Investment caught another buff, which further'd the cleft between Haze (whom is relying on an ever-increasingly nerfed flat damage via Fixation) and other characters that just have better guns like Warden as weapon investment gets buffed to from; 7/9/13/20/29/40/58/72/83/93% to 7/9/13/20/29/40/60/75/95/115 (for 0.8/1.6/2.4/3.2/4.8/7.2/9.6/16/22.4/28.8k spent)
Notably, Warden also caught a fire rate buff this patch via a spirit scaling increase to his passive fire rate.

On November 25, 2025, Cultist Sacrifice, an item many people (including Haze) was relying on to expediate their farm, got changed - It now only grants weapon damage, instead of fire rate. This, again, is an almost direct Haze nerf, as other characters are still somewhat happy to take the damage, but for Haze, it's a near-useless stat.

And finally; With the most recent patches, a massive health inflation has hit Deadlock. Where once an Abrams might have had 3200 health in the lategame, now it is not uncommon to see Wraiths with 4000+ health, or Mo's with 6000. In effect, as scaling as has gotten stronger, flat damage like Fixation has gotten directly weaker. Where once a Haze could deal 2000 damage quickly, that is no longer sufficient for her, as an assassin, to fulfill her role. Mix this with the omnipresence of Metal Skin, and she is automatically in an extremely rough spot.

Mind you, we have yet to get into the actual changes to Haze or Fixation directly yet, but I will get there right after this, at this is the last true 'Stray' Haze has caught in her tenure. That's a whole lot of indirect nerfs to the character.

In terms of Changes that have affected Fixation and Haze's ability to function with her guns, we have our own separate list here. This will not go over every nerf Haze has received - That list would be way, way too lengthy.

On July 8th, Fixation was reduced from 0.25 Base to 0.2. (Max Stack bonus damage: +30 reduced to +27)

On July 18th, Sleep Dagger's wakeup time was severely nerfed, from effectively 0.45 baseline to 0.3.

On August 15th, Tier 3 Fixation was reduced from 0.25 to 0.2. (Max Stack bonus damage: +27 reduced to +24)

On August 29th, T2 Fixation was changed to grant +40 Max stacks, up from 30 for a total of 70. (Max stack bonus damage: +27 increased to +28)

On October 10th, Fixation gained +10 stacks baseline, for a total of 40 baseline and 80 with tier 2 fixation, but Tier 3 fixation was reduced to +0.15, from +0.2 (Max stack bonus damage: +28, to +28, unchanged, but it now takes longer to stack, effectively reducing Fixation DPS during ramp-up by up to 15%)

On November 21, 2024, Fixation damage was reduced by 40% vs Objectives, and still is.

On December 6th, 2024, T3 Fixation was reduced to +0.12 (Max Fixation damage of +25.6, reduced from +28.)

On March 6th, 2026, Sleep Dagger lost its stamina drain and stamina recovery nerf from its Tier 1 and Tier 2 upgrades, making it significantly harder for Haze to consistently land shots and hunt people, indirectly reducing the effectiveness of the rest of her kit.

At some date that the wiki is unsure of, Sleep Dagger also went from making someone completely immobile to letting them move, further reducing her effective damage by allowing them momentum to come out of sleep with.

And this is the state Fixation has been in since, despite changes back and forth, it has remained in this state, more or less.

In conclusion, between general gun buffs that affects everyone about twice as much as it affects Haze, since weapon buffs does not affect Fixation, a few un-named nerfs I forgot to mention like bullet resist shredder, targeted Fixation nerfs, mul,tiple global health buffs and counter-buffs (return fire, metal skin, rusted barrel, plated armor) Fixation has been left in an extremely sore spot. It's no longer an ability that lets Haze do MORE damage than other characters - It's now an 8 ability point tax, + an ability slot locked, in order to deal the same damage as more well-rounded gun characters do.

The death of passive fire-rate and the rise of Metal Skin in parralel has lead to a situation where Haze has to use several cooldowns in conjunction (surge of power + dagger, active reload, fury trance, burst fire) to deal enough damage to try and kill someone, but they can metal skin through it, leaving Haze helpless with severely reduced fire rate after the fact.

Right now, at 14.4k souls (Sufficient for all 3 4.8k spikes), a Venator (since he needs not the spirit spike) will deal more DPS passively with his gun than Haze will during full cooldowns. Lategame, Geist and Warden both absolutely demolish her in terms of gun DPS, deal hybrid damage, and they are way tankier with a much better kit to prop them up.

Haze with T3 fixation, at this point, deals around 280 average gun DPS, 390 if max fixation stacks, assuming she has FULL cooldowns going (surge of power, burst fire, fury trance, active reload)

A Venator in this same situation deals 350 DPS to the body from the start, and that's with him being built well into vitality. He suffers no penalty in doing this, no need to spend 8 ability points and an entire ability into doing this damage. He just DOES it. And he has more health, an inbuilt stun, snare, healing reduction aoe that also deals damage, and an excellent execute ultimate.

A Warden at this point deals 380 DPS to the body, Vyper deals well into the 500s, GUN SEVEN with NO points in Power Surge deals 360 during these tests, Gun Geist deals 330 scaling up to 410 with Malice (with no ability points spent on it), Wraith, with NO ability points spent, deals around 330, 360 with Full Auto- And reminder, NO ABILITY POINTS, just base cards and gun.

TL;DR Through global and targeted changes, Fixation has gone from an ability that defined Haze as a character to a forced tax you HAVE TO TAKE in order to deal the same M1 DPS as any other gun character in the game. The identity of the ability is dead. You spend 8 ability points to do the same DPS as a Venator early and less or the same DPS than any other gun character lategame. You have no in-combat mobility, very little utility, and little to no other avenues of damage or gameplay.

We need more passive fire rate on Haze, we need old Fixation damage back, we need it to ramp faster, hit harder, and actually compensate the 8 ability points spent in it.
We could revert most changes and leave Fixation in its strongest possible state with 0.25 base scaling and +0.25 on Tier 3, and it would not make her overpowered in comparison to characters like Infernus or Mirage, simply... Slightly above average in terms of gun damage compared to characters like Venator, in exchange for 8 ability points.

Finally; We really, really need to have some of the march 6th nerfs reverted. Spirit boon growth being reduced from 1.1 to 0.5 has pigeonholed this character a lot, as has the nerf to Smoke Bomb duration, as well as the nerfs to T1 and T2 dagger.