Explosive talisman broken?

[Ezz]

I've twice today lost to pvp teams where a single strike toon equipped with explosive talisman hit one of my allies and applied grevious burn to my entire team. Then all hell broke loose and my team starts exploding and getting stunned and Boom game over.
This is garbage, and to make matters worse only a few players have the talisman and can exploit the masses using them.
NF Please fix these asap and if they cannot be fixed maybe they should be removed from play.

[Coletrain]

Here's the text of the set effect for explosive talismans verbatim: "35% chance to deal additional physical damage to all enemies and then a 35% chance to inflict grievous burn and HP drain". It doesn't describe what grievous burn does, but here is that effect text, taken from Samurai Eddie's crimson strike skill: "Grievous burn deals physical damage over time with a 35% chance to reduce healing and stun the target every turn". From that text and your report, it sounds to me that they're working as intended. They're a great fit for single strike toons...assuming they proc.

I have a few sets of these but haven't used them in my PvP defense yet. Like the other 35% chance talismans, it's a crapshoot when it will activate. I used them while raising a toon from ground up to 5* in PvE, and the proc rate felt right. There could very well be a bug with these in PvP, but anecdotally I have found them to be working normally.

[Ezz]

Here's the text of the set effect for explosive talismans verbatim: "35% chance to deal additional physical damage to all enemies and then a 35% chance to inflict grievous burn and HP drain". It doesn't describe what grievous burn does, but here is that effect text, taken from Samurai Eddie's crimson strike skill: "Grievous burn deals physical damage over time with a 35% chance to reduce healing and stun the target every turn". From that text and your report, it sounds to me that they're working as intended. They're a great fit for single strike toons...assuming they proc.

I have a few sets of these but haven't used them in my PvP defense yet. Like the other 35% chance talismans, it's a crapshoot when it will activate. I used them while raising a toon from ground up to 5* in PvE, and the proc rate felt right. There could very well be a bug with these in PvP, but anecdotally I have found them to be working normally.

Well that would make these talisman very unique and arguably op then. None of the others work on all enemies when equipped on single strike toons. Freeze, paralysis, blind, etc. all only effect the enemy being hit.

[Tritium]

I've twice today lost to pvp teams where a single strike toon equipped with explosive talisman hit one of my allies and applied grevious burn to my entire team. Then all hell broke loose and my team starts exploding and getting stunned and Boom game over.
This is garbage, and to make matters worse only a few players have the talisman and can exploit the masses using them.
NF Please fix these asap and if they cannot be fixed maybe they should be removed from play.

It is quite weird how the effect is AOE for single-target attackers. On top of that, I believe it's incredibly broken how the talismans stun for TWO turns. That's like having an AOE Prisoner basic attack. Completely changes the tide of battle. Their stun duration should be one turn max IMO.

[Coletrain]

It is quite weird how the effect is AOE for single-target attackers. On top of that, I believe it's incredibly broken how the talismans stun for TWO turns. That's like having an AOE Prisoner basic attack. Completely changes the tide of battle. Their stun duration should be one turn max IMO.

It's important to note that these effects are not guaranteed to happen to all enemies all the time. There are separate chances for all of them. The talisman set could proc and deal additional damage to all enemies, but none of them could be inflicted with grievous burn/hp drain. It is 35% for the talismans to proc the extra damage; if the extra damage procs it is still an additional 35% chance for each enemy for each effect to proc. You could deal the damage and not activate the effects on any enemy, or have grievous burn and/or hp drain proc on 1, 2, etc. If grievous burn is activated on an enemy, there is an additional 35% chance for the stun on each turn. It is not a guaranteed stun by any means. The additional damage dealt is not an overwhelming amount (around 1k-2.5k). Perhaps the 2 turn stun for grievous burn could be looked at; this would also affect Samurai Eddie. And it sounds like we might want to confirm that the proc rates are correct.

Having used these talismans in 100s of PvE battles I didn't see anything out of the ordinary happen and it was not normal to have all effects proc on all enemies as EZZ describes. I have never used them in PvP so perhaps proc rates are different there? I do agree that the talismans are unique but to me Strike Talismans are still the more useful set.

[slauki]

i have to agree, make a single target enemy to a potential aoe stun machine? WTF!
the devs should look into them i think

[Tritium]

Both of my 2 legit losses (not caused by 3-tap bug) this week were due to explosive talismans going ape-shit with the stunning. I honestly don't believe any talisman should be able to stun for 2 turns. That should be an ability reserved for the Prisoner so he doesn't become obsolete.


Note: Any of you who are lucky enough to have explosive talismans, I suggest you level up a set and throw it on one of your defense toons and watch your hold rate increase. Make the most of it as many players already are.

[zdm-1083]

The big thing is also that this talisman set is not available anymore :]

[hold]

Both of my 2 legit losses (not caused by 3-tap bug) this week were due to explosive talismans going ape-shit with the stunning. I honestly don't believe any talisman should be able to stun for 2 turns. That should be an ability reserved for the Prisoner so he doesn't become obsolete.


Note: Any of you who are lucky enough to have explosive talismans, I suggest you level up a set and throw it on one of your defense toons and watch your hold rate increase. Make the most of it as many players already are.

Just for the record - they can backfire very bad as well. I lost a fight last week starting with my Warrior New Born that had them equipped. He took off the buffs of enemy A and hit all the others as well. Two of the others had revenge talismans equipped and they both triggered ... that wasn't planned like that and that's the reason I don't use them anymore. They caused more trouble than they did good in the end. I had multiple issues like those but when I finally lost a fight because of it - they went back in the cupboard.

Long story short: The counter for them is immunity and revenge

[Ian]

When Explosive talismans first appeared, they were useless. I kept one set by accident purely because I'd left them on an unused Eddie, otherwise I'd have sold them all. Then they stopped dropping. I played with them in PvE for a bit when they got fixed, and they were OK but they won't always proc, which makes them unpredictable, and they give no bonuses to anything. I don't see that they are overpowered at all - they do have their drawbacks and can be countered, they are also likely to be quite rare unlike the ubiquitous Strike sets.

Anyway, I think anyone who kept some of those old talismans like Explosive, Thorn, Cyclone, Resilience, etc despite the old inventory limits, deserves a little payoff for their foresight/patience.

We see a lot of whining when
a) people don't have things that other players do - and yes I have been guilty of that too
b) people cant figure out the counter to something

We had complaints about void talismans too but I note that's died down a bit now. they didnt needto be changed and neither do Explosive...

[angelkelly]

I agree, explosive talisman are way to op for there own good. Nowadays with more toons being able to remove beneficial effects.They can be really annoying.

Btw: How can you counter them if your immunity is remove or stolen by M.C.R?

Wrath,Vision, and so forth can make any toon vulnerable to either getting stun, taunted or frozen. So your point is invalid.. (Ian)

[BonFire]

Man, those things were so useless when they came out. I don't remember the cost, but it wasn't worth it for a shield. Just for yourself if I remember correctly as well.

[Ian]

I agree, explosive talisman are way to op for there own good. Nowadays with more toons being able to remove beneficial effects.They can be really annoying.

Btw: How can you counter them if your immunity is remove or stolen by M.C.R?

Wrath,Vision, and so forth can make any toon vulnerable to either getting stun, taunted or frozen. So your point is invalid.. (Ian)

Well by that logic, we should remove stun from the Prisoner and Corrupt General, freeze from Viking and MCR, etc etc, and get rid of paralysis and freeze talismans too - because immunity wont protect you from them either if its been removed. I'd guess more people have one or more of those toons or talisman sets, than they do Explosive sets.

Anyway. Visions can take buffs and is so popular people call him the new Mummy, Wrath has even better "remove beneficial" attack than Visions and will be profligating very soon, Magus CR has 100% to steal buffs (if fully sharded) and Newborns can remove beneficial effects with their basic attack/revenge. This never used to be a problem when immunity protected you from buffs being stolen but apparently that was a bug that persisted for 9 months... Now arena is who strips buffs and gets counter attacks.

[Tritium]

The only thing I believe should be changed regarding these talismans is the 2 turn stun. Stunning for one turn is fine as it adds some flavor to the set, but 2 turns? That's too much, even for an effect that evidently has a low chance of proccing (brings to mind all the theories that the AI gets a proc increase). There's nothing like seeing your whole team get stunned for 2 turns by ONE enemy. Even with the MCR's freeze, you can negate the freeze by killing her quickly so your frozen toons become usable again. You can't do quite the same thing with stuns (i.e. killing the toon with the explosive set equipped won't un-stun your toons). I don't agree with the logic behind explosive sets ─ giving one toon the potential to use an AOE Prisoner basic attack (minus the transferring of negative effects). Make the stun last one turn, and all will be well. They'll still be incredibly useful, as then it'll still be like having a CG basic attack in the hands of a warrior toon.


Edit: Then again, this is more of an issue with the effect of Grievous Burn itself and that explosive talismans can AOE apply the effect. In the hands of Samurai Eddie where he can only inflict one enemy with Grievous Burn, it's perfectly balanced. The effect only becomes broken when it can be applied AOE-style and stun more than one enemy toon for 2 whole turns. We all know how important 2 turns are in PVP.

[iPoop]

We see a lot of whining when
a) people don't have things that other players do - and yes I have been guilty of that too
b) people cant figure out the counter to something

We had complaints about void talismans too but I note that's died down a bit now. they didnt needto be changed and neither do Explosive...

I completely agree with you @Ian.

The Explosive Talisman are "perfectly balanced" they way they currently are. I have a set that I never use due to the same reason @hold mentioned.

[slauki]

oh the explosives can even stun harpies for two turns , totally reasonable strong, i have changed my mind.... ;)

[Tritium]

oh the explosives can even stun harpies for two turns , totally reasonable strong, i have changed my mind.... ;)

Lol what, really? Now that's just funny. :p The unstun-able gets stunned again!

[slauki]

Lol what, really? Now that's just funny. :p The unstun-able gets stunned again!

actually there was a prisoner in the team, so maybe it was due to him, sorry but it was early in the morning :D

[CanyptianFit]

I don't have a prisoner and I've stunned the harpies with the explosive talisman.

I shared this with Sparton a while ago, so he is aware.

[iPoop]

Sentinel Undead Rescuer's Escape move will make this talisman set useless too.