Spiker Ball - Passive Ability Addition

[Pumking7]

Hello, I would like to discuss the "Spiker Ball" which is the unique striker found within the Splintershard Cavern Marketplace. The spiker ball has a unique skill for the striker which is "Seek". This skill launches the player a large distance towards the striker in a horizontal direction to where the striker is. When the player is seeking they move in the dodge+light attack towards the striker which does damage and stops the player if they hit a rot, prop, or the striker. The passive ability gives the player 40% DR when using the skill. Below is the description of the Spiker Ball.

 

Much like the previous "Shellshot Blunderbuss" the Spiker Ball feels quite underwhelming to what other unique weapons provide. The Spiker ball like all other unique weapons, changes the base aspect of the weapon in some way to be more beneficial to the player. In this case this striker provides a skill which allows reaching the striker much quicker, which tends to be one of the biggest issues of the striker. This only provides a slight benefit as you often hit something while seeking and can often hit the ball away from you. It also allows the Spiker ball to quick chip damage by seeking it amongst a crowd of enemies. This dmg tends to be poor though as it is often base unfocused striker damage. The seeking skill also doesn't provide any new interactions with the striker in regards to damage or combos, unlike arcing recall allowing a enemy to be used as a backboard to rebound off of. 

Regarding this I suggest the Spiker Ball receives a new passive abilities related to the seeking skill:

• A striker hit while seeking will cause an explosion (25%-300% weapon damage) upon contact with enemies or the ground
  • The explosion damage will increase depending on how far the player seeked the striker (Seeking exactly on the spot of the striker will give a explosion worth 25% weapon damage and a max distance seek will give the 200% explosion damage)

The main idea behind this passive ability addition is to work like a reverse boom ball. The boom ball gets passive aoe damage from utilizing recovery of the strikers and the hit and run aspect of the strikers. The spiker ball would work instead by getting focused aoe damage by positioning the strikers in a way which would allow for maximum damage. This ability would work to alleviate one of the core issues of the striker which is lack of aoe damage against large swarms. This would also use the strikers greatest weakness, losing the balls constantly, as a newfound strength as a lost juggled ball could potentially be used to set up a large damage burst. This would make for greater use of the different encounter environments and using them to your advantage to maximize damage. The damage increase with distance seeked would provide for more risky but fulfilling opportunities for damage, and would prevent the player just being able to normally juggle and maximize on the passive ability that way.

(Short Side Note: The Spiker Ball's art is bugged/unfinished as the spikerball's icon features it with its iconic spikes, but these spikes are only featured in the non-fighting hold shown below. In every animation using the spiker balls to attack the spikes are missing so it just becomes ball.)

Thank you for your time in reading this.