I’m going to described “fixed coup” and “what coup needs to be more viable than light/heavies.” These are two separate problems. One is the fact that Coup is a net loss in it’s current state, and it needs to be brought up to “as good as if you didn’t take the talent.” The other is “now we need to actually add a talent”
Fixed coup would:
- 1 always connects
- 2 have the same potential to hit multiple targets that two lights and/or one heavy attack
- 3 leaves you less open to attack
- 4 does enough damage to be worthwhile
Problems 1-3 are pretty easy fixes conceptually (though coding wise it might be harder). Some ways of doing it is 1 make it leap farther, 2 make sure it still has some AoE to match a heavy attack, 3 it’s executed swiftly, 4: see below
More damage isn’t enough on it’s own, unless the we got to some possibly unfeasibly high damage numbers (250%+) to outweigh the cost of missing out on heavy/light boosting talents. In addition to an increasing the damage to 160-200% here are way to make it -equal- to just light/heavy attacks.:
- make coup count as a heavy attack for talent purposes (grant fortify, keep your consecutive heavy attack bonus, cooldown reduction). Fits the zoner tree heavy attack aesthetic.
- make both sweep and coup count as light attacks, so they count as a light attack chain. Since a lot of players ignore heavy attacks.
- add both effects together, where’s coup is both a light attack combo finisher -and- a heavy attack, note: you might need to add diminishing returns on CDR, or just make the highest bonus count. This option allows coup to have the lowest base damage increase (180% total would be my guess) and would need the least amount of “worthwhile” additions detailed below.
Remember, you have to give up the flexibility of choosing to light -or- heavy as long as coup relies on pressing the LMB.
All of these things “fix coup” by bringing it in line with the choice to heavy, double light, or dodge light. They do not “make coup worthwhile”
To make coup worthwhile after it’s “fixed” coup would still need one of these to justify the usage of a talent point:
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significantly more damage to justify it’s slot (+25-75% over it’s “fixed” state, based on just how good counting as a heavy and/or light attack chain works)
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an alternate status effect, such as disease. If it’s disease, rebrand the ability “Salt the Wound.”
Note: with how potentially powerful disease is in PvP, it’d be tempting to cut back too far in the “fixed” section of this post to allow disease, pushing coup back to being objectively worse in PvE, while mandatory for PvP, and that’d be a bad feel. A comprise could be that Coup triggers from pressing the ability keybind again, rather than LMB, so you could choose to disease with coup, or light/heavy and ignore this talent.
Or, just remove coup entirely, Replace it with some other effect. Rip a cool animation. While you’re at it, does sweep need grit? I don’t run that either, the knockdown CC does the work of Grit, so it’s really just a wasted filler talent. Grit is a trap.
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Tbh Sweep is so good you could just remove both upgrades and it’d be fine.
P.S. if you do remove Coup from sweep, it’d be hilarious to add it to javelin and increase the range to like 15m after hitting a target (make sure coup only activates by pressing the javelin keybind again, NOT LMB) Balanced? Probably not, but dammmmnnnnnn it’d feel good. Just make sure you no-clip when you’re flying, or people are going to use it to exploit up walls.
Or add it as an April 1st patch for one day.