The Ice Gaunlet’s Ice Pylon is in dire need of revisions, buffs or reworks.
It’s problems are as follows:
-Unreliable target focus
-Underwhelming talents that do not synergize with gameplay
-Too vulnerable in PvP
-Endpoint talent not worth it
There is maybe 1 circumstance where Ice Pylon can be useful, and that is in the Lazarus Expedition, otherwise its ok for solo’ing, terrible for PvP, and pretty bad if there is more than 1 target and you are trying to focus fire.
Unreliable target focus:
While it’s damage can be consistent, the fact you cannot control what the Ice Pylon shoots at is perhaps the most damning evidence that this ability is awful. Being able to control your damage output is vital to being effective in all parts of the game.My solution would be applied as a baseline effect to the Ice Pylon ability. Ice Pylon would behave as normal until the player attacks a target with a Light or Heavy attack, at which point the Pylon will attempt to target and damage the last target hit by the player’s Light or Heavy attacks. If the target in question is out of range or is dead, then the Ice Pylon reverts to its default behavior.
This one change would exponentially improve the capabilities of Ice Pylon across the board and might even indirectly diversify the common ability usage of Ice Gauntlet. If nothing else comes of my post, I implore, even beg the devs to implement a system like this as right now IG’s Ice Pylon is a mostly dead talent line.
Underwhelming talents that do not synergize with gameplay:
In this particular instance, 2 talents on the Ice Pylon’s line stand out to me as being either unreliable or mostly worthless: Greater Pylon and Pylon Regen.
Greater Pylon increases the damage dealt by Ice Pylon to slowed targets by a measly 10%; That is only a 5% weapon damage increase as it does a baseline of 50% weapon damage. Considering how short this duration of slows are, this talent is awful and really doesn’t do much at all. I think this talent needs to be reworked entirely.
Some Greater Pylon rework suggestions:
- Ice Pylon will mimick your Heavy attacks, launching a Icy Spear for 80% weapon damage and dealing strong stamina damage
- After 3 successful Light attacks, Ice Pylon will launch a snowball at it’s target. On impact creating a 1.5 meter radius frozen area slowing all targets inside by 25%, that lasts for 5 seconds
Pylon Regen is also a pretty poor talent as you only see it’s benefit if a tank taunts an enemy off it or by some miracle an enemy stops attacking it. If an enemy is determined they will destroy the Ice Pylon outright, rendering this talent worthless. I think this talent should be replaced with one that makes the Pylon tougher, but a determined target will be able to destroy it.
The new Pylon Regen:
Renamed to Icy Shell, A frozen shell encases the Ice Pylon, protecting its frozen core from damage, upon breaking the Icy Shell, an cold wave will radiate outward briefly freezing all targets inside the Ice Pylon’s radius for 0.5 seconds (15 second internal cooldown).This would act like a stamina bar for the Ice Pylon and could regenerate after its shattered. The split second stun could be used to line up a Ice Spike if someone attempts to go after the Pylon but the cooldown is long enough that it won’t chain CC someone determined to break the Pylon. This would substanially improve the Ice Pylon’s lifespan and help it last in circumstances like PvP.
To a lesser extent, the issue “Too vulnerable in PvP” is addressed by my suggestion of reworking Pylon Regen.
Endpoint talent not worth it:
Look at the other Endpoint talent option, in the Frozen Tempest tree, its a 25% damage increase to everything if a target is caught in a slowing area like Ice Storm, or Ice Shower, even ironically also working with slowing area of the Ice Pylon. Compare that excellent talent with the self-serving talent of “Ultimate Frost” which only buffs Ice Pylon but not with damage, only it’s slowing area which presently not useful, more hp which is ok but if it’s getting hit by something other than boss mechanics that means it won’t last long anyway, and it buffs the effect of talents that only work if you sit right next to the pylon or in a slowing effect.
Ultimate Frost is horrible compared to Ultimate Chill and really should called, “Ultimate Pylon”. When I use Pylon in Lazarus I never take Ultimate Frost as I get a bigger boost from Ultimate Chill when I’m on boss mob 9/10 times. Ultimate Frost is in dire need of a rework.
Ultimate Frost rework ideas:
- Increase the weapon damage dealt by 15% of Ice Pylon and it’s range by 20 meters
- Ice Pylon applies a stack of “Permafrost” with every attack to it’s target, rending them 5% stacking up to 5 times for 10 seconds.
- Ice Pylon slowly freezes it’s target with each attack, at 5 attacks will cause your next Heavy Attack or ability to trigger a “Shatter” effect causing the target to take 50% additional damage of the damage dealt as frost damage.
- Ice Pylon can now be cast and placed an additional 2 times and will gain 1 charge every 20 seconds.
The proposed ideas should be considered separately for the Ice Pylon, but I stand by what I said concerning target focus, see the section: “Unreliable target focus”. Even if that is the only change made, the effect would be so positive it would make Ice Pylon actually worth using outside of very specific niche cases.
I want this ability to be good as both a mage player and a longtime MMO player, I know that variety is the spice of life. I’m hoping that this post is heard and is considered, until that time good day to you all!