Surface Slap

I hate it.

I hate it with every inch and fiber of my being and soul.

Right now we have to work through three layers of RNG. Bite time, whether it's (!) or (!!), and then the NQ or HQ roll and we're the only gather that suffers this frustrating setup.

Perhaps it's more of a "you're not using it properly" situation, but personally think this ability is WAY over the GP cost it should be at. 200 GP to scare away one fish type, for 15s or one hook...

Scrap this ability and make a new one-

Lure Jig/Lure Swish/Lure Dance/Spook/I Hate Whatever The Heck Just Bit My Bait or IHWTHJBMB for short (name it whatever is fitting)

Attempt to move the bait away from what bit it, lowering the chance you'll get a return bite from ((!) or (!!) whichever made the bite) thus giving some control of the RNG back to the player effectively giving them a chance at a second bite per cast. For balance purposes have it so that it can only be used once per cast. GP cost 50-100 and only useable under Patience or Patience 2.

Thoughts and opinions?

It's honestly not even on my hotbars.
Move is just hot garbo. I feel you OP, I hope it gets the ax / rework.

The 15 seconds are the time you have to activate the buff after you catch a fish. The buff itself stays active until you catch your next fish. So you already have as many tries as you want.

For exmple when you want to catch fish A with a (!!) animation then you use Surface Slap on fish B wich has the same (!!) animation. Now your chances that the next fish with a (!!) animation is fish A are increased - when there are only 2 fish with that (!!) animation in that fishing spot it's up to 100%.
As long as you don't catch any fish the buff stays active. That means you must not catch any of the fish with the (!) animation, just let them eat the bait and try again.

There are plenty of fish with a very limited other catches with certain bait/lures. Where the target fish has a like 30% catch rate with the others are 60% and 10%. This is where its really strong. If your using the versatile lure its basically useless. Also bite type can also useful to use with it too like tint says above.

Yeah. Surface Slap is very good at what it does, it's just not the all powerful "delete this fish from the pool" ability some people want. If you're farming then you're right, it's mostly useless. If you're targeting a single, specific catch it's amazing.

It's useful for a single specific fish. I've found it...semi...useful trying to get the pearl shells for the relic. That has two fish in !! and pearl is on ! so hitting that and then ignoring the other !! until I get the pearl's ! is useful. Though even then it can take the ! forever to come up.

I definitely wouldn't want it useful only under Patience or Patience II. I've gotten better results for the relic not even using those because I went entire runs without a single ! coming up.

I do think 200 for one catch is steep and they should low the GP on that to make it more useful, especially if you're utilizing Identical when you need more than one of what you want. Or keep it at 200 but make the fish bug off for more than one catch.