Slightly Improved Arbalest
TLDR: The arbalest can move back with Blindfire, her heal is slightly better and costs fewer turns to be effective, her stress heal is slightly improved, and her bola skill stuns instead of moves. These changes were made to help her seem less lackluster compared to other heroes. The Sturdy Greaves and Wrathful Bandana trinkets have also been changed in accordance with these alterations
This mod changes 4 of the arbalest’s skills:
Bola: Changed the damage modifier from -50% to -100%. Knockback 1 has been removed. Added a stun with a 100%/110%/120%/130%/140% chance of success at levels 1 through 5 respectively. Added a -2/3/4/5/6 speed debuff with a 100%/110%/120%/130%/140% chance of success, and a duration of two rounds. This skill can only be used twice per battle.
Blindfire: Moves the arbalest back one. The speed buff applied by this skill was decreased from 3/3/4/4/5 to 2/2/3/3/4 over levels 1 through 5 respectively. The -10% damage modifier has been removed.
Battlefield Bandage: Cures bleed. No longer applies a healing received buff, and instead applies restoration. The restoration has a magnitude and duration of 1/1, 1/2, 1/2, 1/3, 2/2 at levels 1 through 5 respectively. The direct heal has also been reduced from 2-3, 3-3, 3-4, 4-4, 4-5 to 2-2, 2-3, 3-3, 3-4, 3-4 at levels 1 through 5 resptively.
Rallying Flare: The stress heal of this skill has been changed from 1/2/2/3/3 with a 60%/60%/67%/60%/67% chance of success to 2/2/2/3/3 with a 67%/70%/80%/90%/100% chance of success.
This mod changes 2 of the Arbalest’s trinkets:
Sturdy Greaves: Have been renamed to Demoralizing Greaves. They now grant a +30% debuff skill chance, impose a -1 speed penalty, and apply a -10% debuff resistence debuff on hit.
Wrathful Bandana: Now grants a +25% damage bonus if in position 4, a +2 speed bonus if in position 4, and a -100% healing skills penalty (note that this doesn’t affect the restoration on the Arbalest’s Battlefield Bandage)
Rationale: The arbalest is considered by some to be a low-tier character. Her damage is respectable if she remains in ranks 3 or 4, but she has no skills to help her stay there. Her healing skill can do a tremendous amount of healing when she starts stacking the healing received buff on a single target, but this requires her to repeatedly use it on one character when other heroes might need her help, or when her turns might be better spent shooting enemies. Her Bola skill is somewhat awkward and inneffective. This mod aims to fix these issues, and hopefully in a way which is balanced.
Now that Blindfire moves her back one, she has a means of returning to the back ranks without wasting turns switching places with other heroes to get there. The changes to Battlefield Bandage make it heal more per use than is used to, but this healing is spread out over time. Thus, the arbalest only needs to spare 1 turn to heal a teammate instead of having to spend 2 to 3 turns stacking her healing received buff on them. The cure bleed effect is there simply because it makes sense that a bandage would cure bleed, but don’t worry: I balanced the healing amount with the bleed cure in mind. The changes to bola means that the Arbalest has almost no way of damaging the front ranks now, but in exchange, it becomes a potent stun skill. Finally, improving the stress heal of Rallying Flare makes it slightly more appealing to use. It’s still not a potent stress healing skill, but now it should feel like less of a waste of time to use it.
With the changes to Bola, the Sturdy Greaves had to be changed. They are now designed to facilitate the Arbalest’s debuffs instead of her move skills. With the Demoralizing Greaves serving as the dedicated debuffing trinket, and with the changes to battlefiled bandage, the Wrathful Bandana had to also be changed. In the base game, it halved healing done, but now that roughly half of the Arbalest’s healing is through restoration, the penalty had to be increased to 100% to maintain the prior balancing. Additionally, the debuff skill chance was replaced with a speed bonus since the Demoralizing Greaves are now dedicated to debuffing.
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
