Chainsaw's Instant Kill should be removed

[Issaella]

I agree. I'm working on damage comparisons right now versus enemy HP percentage to better portray the numbers but it is incredibly awful in Frontlines. Ranged attacks are glorified LB chargers that tickle the enemy.

Bard power shot, their charged up shot that deals more damage at longer range crits for 4.2k damage which is 7%ish of someones HP on a crit.

The empyreal arrow which builds up 3 charges that expend all at once for 3 instant attacks was dealing 1.4kx3 for less than 5k damage total as well.

I just straight up stopped playing BRD in FL at all. When my big linear AoE cooldown hits the first target for maybe 10% of their health and a 3-stack Empyrean Arrow hits for 15% or so. Then I get to slow cast my basic shot while they pound on me. The 3 second snare + backstep is a joke, since they can just Purify and then gap-close me immediately. All BRD is is a glorified song-bot now that provides a barely relevant +10% damage boost combined with a giant "kick me" visual so all the melees know exactly who to dive.

[Latarma]

Player who died to Saw proc - "I just died to a super-rare insta kill. Reeeee! Nerf it now! Reeeeee!."

Ranged physical DPS - *cricket noises* (because they all just got gap-closed, stun-locked and stomped by a melee DPS)

if by melee dps you mean Nin, Mnk and Sam yeah because drg can't stun

[Leathium]

I mean in best case scenario I would say buff it to 10% chance if you are being chased by a melee or tank and they are close, because a mnk for example can just insta kill you with their stun lock combo and LB, what can you do about that? nothing, with the amount of health you have.

[Esmoire]

I agree that instant kill Chainsaw needs to go.

I don't really buy into the "it should stay because MCH need it to have a chance against melee". Coming as a melee player myself, I actually actively think there are times where our burst is a little too severe, and I do think that should be addressed, though not mutually exclusive with something where honestly in an environment where they standardized everything except AST cards, it's really strange and honestly stupid to have this element of RNG. So both yes to getting rid of Chainsaw insta-kill, but also yes to re-examining some of the interactions between MCH and melee.

[george357]

my favorite jobs are ranged and i for one like chainsaw it works well with my mch so i would say to keep it honored programmers.

[ThaCa]

The instant kill is worst thing to use analysis on, majority of the time it's a wasted use and those rare few times it's a game changing move. Top MCHs only use it in overtime when they are losing and need to pray to RNG gods to make a game winning gamble.

It should be something generally useful and less swingy, like a short dot, healing reduction or maybe a buff to machinist. Anything else that isn't straight up bad design like the current one.

[Sinstrel]

Would be better if it just did bonus damage and instantly depleted the targets mana pool instead.

[Leathium]

Well if you want that to go, then remove the SAM LB where it instantly kill anyone has the debuff with 100% chance, remove the nin instant kill LB on anyone that is lower than 50% health with a 100% chance. and rework the mnk LB to deal half the potency it does currently, how about that? sounds fair right?

[Vatom]

Up the chance or make it 20k with a 4k dot then I’ll shut up 3% is like a random oh cool moment not a dependable attack

When I get hit with it it’s like oh dam that happen can’t even be mad

Shocked how many people take FL seriously I just go in kill 20 people and leave not worth stressing over

[Shurrikhan]

Counterpoint: Insta-kill should be increased to 10-15% against melee and tanks since that is the only way MCH has any chance to kill anything other than ranged now. Spite hits for only ~25-30% of the health of a melee or tank with the changes to DR. Reassemble + Drill/Saw/AA comboed with Spite now maybe does 50%. At which point the tank or melee turns around and then stunlocks and curb-stomps you into the ground.

Meanwhile a NIN can still stunlock, burst you to 50% and then execute before you can clear the Stun with Purge and even if you could, it hits you through Guard.

The PvP balance team currently consists of a monkey banging on a keyboard with a coconut.

Wouldn't this better be a reason to convert some of Chainsaw's potency (literal and/or what's afforded by the rare, random instakill) towards making it immune to passive DR, or at least otherwise evening out its damage to melee and tanks?

It's a saw, after all. You can give it flavor excuse enough for such a mechanic.