Shadowling Icy Veins Power

[Machofish]

This is a bit of an "i ded, plz nerf" topic, so bear with me here.

 

For those of you who are unaware, one of the plethora of powers that Shadowling get is called 'Icy Veins'. The Paradise Wiki describes it as follows:

 

Quote

"Icy Veins is a formidable crowd control ability. Everyone within a short range will instantly have their body temperature reduced to freezing in addition to having it continuously lowered, similar to a cryogenic sting. Targets will also be briefly stunned."

 

Now, I'm not fully familiar with the specifics, but getting affected by a single Icy Veins causes the affected targets to be dramatically slowed down, and receive full-body burn damages enough to take them nearly into crit unless they have a way to immediately raise their body temperature. I understand that Shadowlings are supposed to be formidable enemies, but the issue is that this specific ability goes from 'almost lethal' to 'lethal' the moment the Shadowlings start working together. Essentially, when a team of security show up, one Shadowling poofs in, uses Icy Veins, then when the fight starts turning against the first Shadowling, the second Shadowling tags in and uses their Icy Veins power which not only messes up the security team harder, but it also allows the first Shadowling to escape and heal. Then if the second Shadowling isn't able to wrap things up in about 12-15 seconds (assuming they gave the first shadowling some time), the first Shadowling's Icy Veins power finishes cooling down, so the first Shadowling tags back in and hits their opponents with a third Icy Veins--this process is able to be rinsed and repeated until all threats to the Shadowling have frozen to death. Keep in mind that Shadowlings can also throw in abilities such as blindness smoke and sonic screech to further impede their attackers--which are formidable powers as well.

Other problems of the Icy Veins involve the fact that it eliminates any numerical advantage that the crew might have over the Shadowlings, since Icy Veins has a fairly large AoE and seems to affect everyone other than Draask, mechs, or Cyborgs. Keep in mind that Cyborgs are still stunned by Sonic Screech and Mechs take so long to research and produce that Shadowlings are entirely capable of ascending before robotics can even consider building a mech. Retreating after being caught by Icy Veins is also virtually impossible, since part of freezing to death is that the victims are also slowed down immensely--doubly or triply so when two or three Shadowlings coordinate the timing of their Icy Veins to continuously hit a group of Sec Officers between cooldowns. Even the unusual counters to freezing, such as Space Coffee, are more or less useless in this scenario, since the moment such a measure comes close to regulating a victim's body temperature, the next Icy Veins gets used and everyone is sent back to square 1 (just with more burn damage all around).

I think this is a mixture of two major issues:

1. Shadowlings are capable of going on the offensive against a larger number of enemies even when they're alone; if they're in pairs, then they're capable of outright ignoring any numerical disadvantage as long as they coordinate their area-of-effect powers.

2. Shadowling Icy Veins inflicts high amounts of damage from a single use, slows enemies, and seems to provide too many different uses at once for an ability that only requires 25 seconds of cooldown.

I understand that Shadowlings are meant to be abnormally difficult antagonists to fight. They are meant to be a great deal more deadly and fearsome than the average vampire, changeling, wizard or what-have-you. But at this point I feel like confronting a Shadowling is bland and predictable as there is very little that can be done to genuinely threaten a Shadowling aside from hoping that they'll teleport themselves into a hazard by accident. Flares and glowsticks are, to my knowledge, still finite resources that cannot be replaced once spent (and even less so as most of the time when Shadowlings are identified, I'll go for a flare only to discover that the vast majority of flares were already taken and burned off by the Shadowlings before they hatched), numerical advantages are meaningless if Shadowlings know how to use Icy Veins and Sonic Screech.

As far as suggestions for changes go, I'm not 100% confident that any specific nerf would address the problem. Icy Veins itself could be nerfed, but that would do relatively little in perspective to confronting Shadowlings working together as a tag-team. My tentative proposal is to make Icy Veins a single-target ability, so that it can prevent a validhunter sec from trying to solo the shadowling, or it can be used to take an exceptionally dangerous opponent out of a larger fight. To accommodate, Sonic Screech could have its thrall requirement removed and cooldown lowered to 25 seconds so Shadowlings still have a nasty surprise for escaping situations where they're outnumbered and surrounded.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Machofish

[Pckables]

I agree with Icy Veins needing a bit of a change, not in the sense of it being "OP", but in that it's honestly uncontrollably deadly for a conversion antag and often hurts more than it helps, except in very specific scenarios.
Shadowlings are supposed to be converting people into thralls, but a single Icy Veins in Line of Sight puts that potential thrall into crit, or even kills them in some scenarios. Its acted as a huge newbie trap with inexperienced slings using the ability in a panic when they see a lone threat, before thralling them as the victim dies from their wounds.

I also agree with it becoming a single-target ability, but preferably similar basilisk/watcher freeze beam (but stronger) thats fired like a wizard fireball. Drop-down menus are hot garbage and should be avoided.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Pckables