Solving Ze Bird Problem

[whisperwalk]

In Endmage PVP rooms there is no question that birds are overpowered. Players know this, so most PVPers are birds, whether CTF and DM. Now lets get to the root of the bird infestation:

Evasion: 45% Dodge, 20s buff
With just 9 points, the fragile glass cannon turns into a tank no one can touch. 45% is better than actual tank buffs such as those possessed by bears and rhinos. For example 48 armor in Stoneskin with 32 second cooldown is a joke. No one would choose armor (partial defence) over dodge (total defence). Seeing that yes birds need to survive PVE i understand why devs put it in. However, the implications for PVP are dire....

Foxes, another high dps class, get a very short evade buff lasting only 3 seconds. Foxes are melee while birds are ranged. Birds get to stay out of trouble (because of range) and then they can continue staying out of trouble when surrounded (because of evade). Evasion is far more broken than it looks. With a single button, birds have a dodge bonus exceeding the whole Savage STR set!

No cooldown on casting multiple skills
There is apparently no cooldown in PL for casting multiple skills. This allows a bird to mash buttons and unload his entire arsenal at once. We are not talking about nibbling bites. We are talking about 100-400 high dmg blows coming in all at once. The result is an opponent dead within 0.5 seconds, only slightly higher than the ping rate of servers. It is so fast that you only see the dmg numbers pop up after u are fallen.

Just like a chess game is worthless if one could win AGAINST BEST PLAY in 2 moves, having super short fights make PVP worthless as well. The "one-shot" phenomena is not restricted to birds but extends also to bears and mages, both can kill before anyone so much as blinks. In a game like DOTA, nuking characters have long cooldowns of 1 minute or more. In PL, the "nukes" have 5 second cooldowns.

Long range without penalty
Birds are built to be long range and they do not suffer any penalty for it. For example, in most games, an archer will start to hit 1 dmg once the opponent has closed the gap. Not so for birds. They get to have long range and they function equally well at short range. Also, melee classes do not get any special consideration for being short-ranged. Foxes continue to suck because nearly all bird skills are strictly superior, while bears only have high dmg as long as rage is still active (it has a long cooldown).

Devs throw one or two "range extenders" for melee classes, and consider the problem solved. Not so.

So my suggestion for a bird nerf is very simple. I have 3 points to make:

1. Evasion should be switched with foxes. Foxes get 20 second and birds get 3.
2. Implement delay before skills can be chained.
3. Birds should be near-useless at melee range. Their dmg should at least be halved or minimums.