Let's Talk about Seer Hurell and Karma Burn
To refresh, Seer Hurell is an Epic Support Champion from the Orc faction. I wanted to open a discussion about her Skill 3, Karma Burn.
Here's the description for the skill:
Karma Burn Level 1 -- 6 turns cooldown
Removes all buffs from all allies and enemies, then attacks all enemies. Damage increases according to the number of buffs removed.
Lvl. 2 - Cooldown -1
Lvl. 3 - Cooldown -1
On the surface, this looks like a pretty cool skill. It's an AoE/multi-target attack and counters enemy buffs at the same time. It also appears to be balanced since the player using Seer's Karma Burn must also be willing to sacrifice all beneficial buffs active on the board in order to dish out big damage.
In practice however, this skill is underwhelming to the extreme!
Most of my experience has been focused in Arena play. What I've observed so far:
- The skill description lacks information: how is the damage calculated? Is it based on each unique, active buff or each instance of every active buff (per champion)? What is the probability for failure?
- Karma Burn does very little damage. We're talking so little damage that I've found myself using Knock Out (Seer Hurell's basic attack) over Karma Burn because it's far more consistent and hey, maybe I'll get an extra turn out of it. Karma Burn's weak damage ties in heavily with the skill's high rate of failure...
- Resist stat easily counters Karma Burn. Or at least I think it's the Resist stat. Many champions simply shrug it off: they not only DON'T lose their buffs, they take next to no damage from the buffs that are converted into the attack. I doubt Resist main stat or the Resist artifact sets are all that popular. I could be wrong about that, but even if I am, why is Karma Burn so easily blocked?
- The skill has guaranteed downside: what this means is if I decide to Karma Burn my opponent, I can 100% count on all of my buffs being taken away. But the enemy's buffs could all still stick around, or I deal paltry damage to a few units while the rest shrug it off. My team can't resist the effects of Karma Burn, ever.
In short, Karma Burn does more to hurt my team. By using it, I'm saying to myself "I'm willing to ditch all my beneficial buffs for a small chance at removing enemy buffs and a small chance of dealing some damage to some enemies".
What seemed like a unique, crazy Hail Mary kind of super attack turns out to be actually very bad.
Thoughts?