Undocumented Lyhr Nerf - The Death of Diversity

[Eurantien.4632]

Lyhr was working where if you healed someone and kept healing them then it reset lyhr. If Lyhr happened to fall off due to a tether break from distance or from not healing that person within the 5s window then you couldn't reapply it for 10s. It was THE most interesting change to support this game has ever had available. It's a pretty wild Relic because when you're tethered to someone you take 50% of the power damage that they are taking. High risk deserves high reward.  You can also tether up to 4 people which means if you use it poorly and your team eats an AoE you just get 1 shot.

This REALLY helped builds like support soulbeast arrive on the scene. Staff's small heals allowed it to keep Lyhr up on targets and allowed for a totally unique support role experience. Haters can hate, but until support chrono spawned into being, support soulbeast was arguably a VERY competitive support spec, if not the best support spec. However, the nerf hammer came. Removal of Shared Anguish (no more stab on pet swap) meant support soulbeast got hit rather hard. Fair nerf though, stupid trait design. More importantly the Lyhr change:

Lyhr is now whenever you heal ANY ally ALL allies in range get tethered? WHAT? WHY? If I'm healing one guy in front of me why am I getting tethered to the guy 600 units behind me im not healing? Doesn't make any sense. Moreover, you can't keep Lyhr up on a target anymore. It applies for 5s, falls off, and can't be reapplied for 10s. Why? This just changed the Relic from being a very interesting support option to becoming a suicide Relic you have virtually no control over.

It's not even IN THE PATCH NOTES!?

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Ally Targeting was a mistake.  They specifically go and make pretty much everything unable to ally target, then add Specter and as consequence make Staff ally targetable then further cause issues by opening it up to non-Druids. 

I say opening it up is an issue because they don't even properly balance Druid support traits anymore, just leave Grace of Land useless, Cultivated Synergy only somewhat useful, etc. when half the traits there were initially intended for support.  

Anyway, looks like Lyhr was kind of the final straw there.  Memey at best--guess now they went and just made it unusable so Ranger could be left off support duty again.  Because they want ranger to be sidenode bunker, not full-on support.

[Tycura.1982]

Obviously it was overperforming. Didn't you see all those invisible Lyhr supports winning your matches? I didn't either. Because they were invisible! *taps temple*

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 4/3/2024 at 11:58 PM, Eurantien.4632 said:

Lyhr was working where if you healed someone and kept healing them then it reset lyhr. If Lyhr happened to fall off due to a tether break from distance or from not healing that person within the 5s window then you couldn't reapply it for 10s. It was THE most interesting change to support this game has ever had available. It's a pretty wild Relic because when you're tethered to someone you take 50% of the power damage that they are taking. High risk deserves high reward.  You can also tether up to 4 people which means if you use it poorly and your team eats an AoE you just get 1 shot.

This REALLY helped builds like support soulbeast arrive on the scene. Staff's small heals allowed it to keep Lyhr up on targets and allowed for a totally unique support role experience. Haters can hate, but until support chrono spawned into being, support soulbeast was arguably a VERY competitive support spec, if not the best support spec. However, the nerf hammer came. Removal of Shared Anguish (no more stab on pet swap) meant support soulbeast got hit rather hard. Fair nerf though, stupid trait design. More importantly the Lyhr change:

Lyhr is now whenever you heal ANY ally ALL allies in range get tethered? WHAT? WHY? If I'm healing one guy in front of me why am I getting tethered to the guy 600 units behind me im not healing? Doesn't make any sense. Moreover, you can't keep Lyhr up on a target anymore. It applies for 5s, falls off, and can't be reapplied for 10s. Why? This just changed the Relic from being a very interesting support option to becoming a suicide Relic you have virtually no control over.

It's not even IN THE PATCH NOTES!?

 

Yeah, the removal of Shared Anguish hurt too many Ranger specs. That one trait allowed you to run Support specs and actually survive on node vs. multi man CC+s. You know those moments when a spectral ring appears around you, or a ring of ward or something. Shared Anguish stab on pet proc let you get out of it without needing to blow a big CD skill like Dolyak Stance or your elite. Ranger needed it. Most other classes nowadays, especially other supports, are pumping a lot of stab consistently, even party stabs. I don't know why they would remove Shared Anguish, which was the one small thing that Ranger actually needed to stay on node as a support.

It also allowed DPS variants that don't run stability utilities, to actually be able to turn and counterplay into something like a Staff Spellbreaker that has a lot of CC. That ONE little stab proc, when used wisely, was the only thing for many build structures, that allowed opening for counter play vs. things like Spellbreaker or Holo, that have a lot of CC. Without it, you gotta full ranged or --flawlessly perfectly-- plan your strikes. If you get CC'd at all vs. something like say Luxon's Holo, you have to turn and disengage because you won't have the resources to brawl into it without that 1x little short lived stab to get a freebie CC ignore when you go in for a burst. Bringing Dolyak doesn't replace it, it doesn't trigger frequently enough, still doesn't last long enough, and it's generally brought for & used best as a stun break AFTER you get CC'd. So it's not a good skill to pop for the stab prebuff in the way a pet swap was, as you turn to play into a burst like that. And then of course the elite utilities that offer stab, these definitely don't trigger frequently enough to replace Shared Anguish, and again they don't last long enough to be a reliable stab source to finish a 1v1 against a good Spellbreaker or Holo as example. You can't bring both stab utilities. If you try to do that, you just start losing too much DPS & other utility that you need to be functional. Removing Shared Anguish was a bad idea.

I told them not to remove Shared Anguish, but of course it happens anyway. They keep removing high skill cap traits/abilities and replacing them with passive skill-cap disabling abilities like Carnivore. With Shared Anguish, it made pet swapping a decision based move. Are you going to pet swap now because you want to use beast skills for offense, or are you going to wait to use it for the stab proc? <- These kinds of traits & abilities make the game cerebral. When you remove & replace those kinds of traits with passive stuff like Carnivore, it just dumbs the game down and lowers counterplay options, pigeonholing things into being a guaranteed counter or to get guaranteed countered. Makes the game less fun man.

As far as Lyhr is concerned, last time we talked, you were the only other Ranger player with enough experience who had noticed that Lyhr was actually good. It made some Ranger support specs not just viable, but arguably better than Guard/Ele support in certain situations. It also brought in a VERY REAL new archetype that we had never seen before, and that was supports that were arranged for targeting one thing and keeping that one thing alive, rather than just spamming no travel time massive AoE support all over the entire party in a team fight. It was a fair trade off as Ranger supports were less effective in a 5v5 mid fight but more effective in a 2v2 on a side as example.

THE CHANGE TO LYHR RELIC JUST NEEDS TO BE REVERTED. What they did there was no tradeoff or alteration that we can get used to. Nah, they made a serious error and destroyed the relic. It's actually unusable now in competitive modes or even pve. What they did there was as good as deleting the lyhr relic.

Edited April 7 by Trevor Boyer.6524