Make Orcane puddle/teleport weaker over time, without ever fully expiring#72

Short version:
I think puddle should become worse the longer it has been out to encourage re-deploying it more often, but cap at some amount so as to not force redeployment.
The primary nerf should be increased startup/recovery on up-b teleport, giving time for the opponent to hit Orcane out of its startup, or punish its recovery. This is so it especially nerfs Orcane’s disadvantage without nerfing advantage too much.

Full context:
There’s a fair bit I like about the Orcane Puddle nerf. Especially at higher levels it can encourage more interaction (more chances to parry droplet or punish Orcane for retreating, more chances to lock Orcane in a disadvantage that they can’t simply escape from..), and it’s a good way of nerfing specifically schmoovement-heavy Orcanes without nerfing the actual schmoovement (Previously, nerfing puddle would hurt trapper Orcanes even more, but leaving it as it made it way too strong for schmoovement Orcanes who don’t need puddle in neutral and could just keep it at the other side for a safe escape)

However, I think it has a few downsides that are a bit too harsh, especialy at lower/mid levels. It can be extremely mentally taxing on the Orcane to constantly have to remember the state if the puddle timer, and extremely frustrating when a single second can lead to the difference between surviving and dying even at low percents.
As some people have pointed out, this can then lead to even more campy play at mid-levels when their best bet is to frequently back off to re-deploy puddle(especially while the opponent isn’t great at punishing the retreats)

In their video, Last Stock suggested an alternate nerf of making up b teleport laggier the further away orcane was from the puddle. While I think this can work, I think it’d be very hard to balance (it can easily end up still being always good if the opponent can rarely punish it, or maybe always bad if the opponent can always punish) and I think it can end up removing some of the genuinely interesting and cool parts of Orcane’s gameplan.
It did make me think of a potentially good middleground solution though. What if Orcane’s teleport would become worse over time, but never fully unusable? This would balance the downsides at lower levels (Orcane doesn’t have to constantly think about the puddle timer, but can still be punished in disadvantage for uninteractive puddle), while also adding more depth at higher levels (Instead of the binary puddle/no-puddle, you can develop a feel for the whole range of properties depending on the puddle’s lifetime. There’d also be more interesting timings for re-deploying puddle, as the incentive to re-deploy would grow higher over time). This should be done primarily by nerfing the startup of the move (both pre-teleport and post-teleport-pre-hitbox), to make escaping disadvantage less easy, and make it easier to get punished after having teleported. It can also be done by increasing the recovery of teleport, but that would probably require more changes to the animation to justify him being unable to move after the hitbox.

The weaker puddle should still fully refresh upon special-pummel, even if the full timer has passed.

Optionally, the staleness of the puddle could also affect other aspects of Orcane’s kit, such as varying the strengths of empowered strongs, fthrow, up-b teleport hit, etc, but this would be more for flavor, and far less important compared to varying the punishability of teleport.

Hot take, but I don’t think it deserved any kind of nerfs or timers, and even hotter take, it deserved a speed buff instead of nerfs, it was already super slow and there were many situations where you could trick your opponent into whiffing their attack so you could “safely” puddleport, only to find out they were fast enough to whiff their attack, run across the stage and punish your regardless of you winning the mind games.

As a Maypul player, dying at 0 is a lifestyle choice and I welcome you to the clan with open arms.

@Dextercolt
My read on the situation is that this update focused across the board on making disadvantage and recovery worse for all characters. The changes (hitstun fall speed on lighter characters, more punishable parry ledge stun) all work towards this goal. The issue then is that Orcane puddle becomes an extreme outlier, allowing to completely bypass most of these mechanics. Orcane was already a fairly powerful character at higher levels, so nerfing other’s recoveries but not his was never an option. That said, they may have gone too far, and hopefully this post and others like this can help the devs move the nerfs to the healthiest state they can be in.

@Miscellaneous Shaun Admitedly I play neither Orcane nor Maypul, so I may not be the best authority on this, but I don’t think the comparison is entirely fair. At lower levels, Maypul’s recovery without mark/terry is a lot easier to understand and use than Orcane’s recovery without puddle.

@Cyan They just nerfed all of his recoveries last patch, what are you talking about?

I would argue a fair nerf, at this point adjustment, is to just give Puddle a distance restriction. Something relative to the stage size. This would make redeployment of puddle intentional with future edge guarding, but also discourage placing it far away with no counterplay.

For instance, if the puddle is in the middle of the stage, orcane can still do all of his regular edgeguard shinannigans, but if its on the other side of the stage(like Fire cap or Port) he can not teleport to the puddle.

A red X can appear on the puddle icon to indicate to the player that orcane can not puddle from there. That gives both players the ability to stay in the fight and stay informed.

I think we just need to remove Orcane at this point. The Iron Giant treatment, if you will.
/s