As someone who spent $80 USD for Ankou, I would like to make a case for improving Ankou. Currently he is a very expensive bench warmer with a ton of potential.
And I acknowledge that Ankou is almost viable for PvP and PvE. almost
But i would like to point point out 3 issues and then 3 improvements to make Ankou worth the money and worthy of a starting spot on almost any team.
Problems:
He is slow. His 300s suicide makes it so that he is almost required to start on the FL. Also, the FL gives him the most potential reincarnations to take advantage of his best move. The problem is, he is too slow for the FL. He often cannot get any move off on the FL before he is knocked back, slept, or outright killed (to be again later killed or slept and suicided before eternal revenge, thanks to that slow speed) Heck, @Yakuza didn’t bother disabling mine, he just killed it 4x in a match and Ankou was unable to do anything at any reincarnation point thanks to his random spawn and slow speed. So, his design means he should be an FL superstar but he’s too slow for the FL, and it also relies on subsequent respawns and he also dies before using his key move from those respawns.
He respawns at random. This is so often a liability more than a benefit. In PvE i want my team in a precise and predictable sequence. Usually shocker/stun bomb into a sweeper/sleeper/protector setup (hordes the exception as poison HG/shiva is generally better). When Ankou shows up in place of my sleeper or protector, it means my sweeper dies and my strategy goes out the window because in comes slow ankou instead of the planned protector. Not worth running for the chance of 1 single eternal revenge vs a reliable and sustainable sweeper sleeper protector setup.
And in a PvP strategy where team flow is essential, that disruption can be catestrophic. Heck, it can completely end your chances in a single spawn. If you need an autoprotect to come out and defend a charged BB and instead you get the Ankou that died quickly on the FL, then you can kiss BB goodbye.
Immensely limited moveset. As stated in point 1, he is really only an FL monster, and assuming he gets a turn, he can only protector kill or link kill. At random respawn he can slowly eternal revenge but good luck getting that off. He doesn’t even have ultrablight. Situationally this makes Ankou as bad or worse than Nox. At least Nox can stay alive from HG and link bloodthirst doesnt damage him and time doesn’t kill Nox in 300s.
So, given these 3 issues, I propose all or any 1 of the following.
Up his speed. Up his speed a ton. Like to 70+. Let him get a protector killer off or an eternal revenge off before he is slept, KB or killed. As mentioned on the FL his fellow shadow monsters are killed before he can link death sentence, or he is incapacitated or killed before he can do anything. So let him get link death or PK off before hes incapacitated with a higher speed.
Make him respawn next. Simply put, this keeps him from interrupting his own team combos and gives him more chances to respawn. Its immensely frustrating to not know when he is coming back, and can be catastrophic to his team when you neee a protector and he shows up. And when he shows up at 14-16 it’s practically useless.
Give him instant sleep killer, instant toxic killer, or instant single retribution instead of instant accelerate. Any of these would actually give him a viable chance to charge bloodcrave, and would make him useful in a variety of situations even if the shadow link were broken.
I will also point out that he is only usable in link teams. While one might say that it’s good to promote link teams, I personally don’t think that it’s right for ankoudragon to be the one to be promoting it.
I would add “remove link restriction” to the potential buff list.
Agreed unless your team is all dark. It will be a liability when respawning. Never been a threat but can be annoying to deal with when respawning especially towards the end. I would try running him with a Throw team and aura tbh. Rockoids at the end would defend him constantly. I could see how it would be a threat then.
I think increasing speed too much would make him op with the eternal revenge.
I don’t have him so I can’t testify usability but a think a little speed boost would benefit.
Also instead of protect, Assasinate would make him more viable. Just a thought.
Increasing speed would make him an absolute nightmare with eternal revenge as well as horrible on the front line with link death sentence (which kills in only 100TU)! I highly oppose that.
Respawn next is a weird one. It could actually be used against you to disrupt your team in some cases. Although, I guess they’d have to see 2 back in your team to properly know where to disrupt your flow. I think this would be a nice design change.
A change to the secret skill HAS to happen. The current secret skill is embarrassingly bad. It literally just helps in the front line to make it a bit more threatening.
Personally I think with a better secret skill and a change to the revenge making it spawn next in line (behind the new monster that just came in as it died) Ankoudragon will function just fine. I’m not a huge fan of protector killer being changed to assassinate because the design seems like it’s a move to charge bloodcrave rather than a move to sweep through their team. However, what could maybe happen is a damage increase to the protector killer so it puts all protectors to HG (if it doesn’t already).
Still not as bad as spending 80$ for Staticsphere. I really think recently released monsters, you have to pay a lot of money to even obtain them in the first place, should all be at least on par with eachother strengthwise, but for some stupid reason they aren’t.
I have ank, and i think a 70 speed and/or respawn next will make him OP as hell, so im against it. I would make his speed 50% first of all, because yes - he is slow as hell.
Also, the best change that can be made for him: let the own death sentence triggered only AFTER THE FIRST RESPAWN. Thats meen he can be used outside FL.
This is another brilliant idea I think got mentioned in the last “buff Ankou” conversation.
I really hope the Devs improve Ankou with some of these changes and DO NOT increase his speed. If he starts working fine as a monster then he won’t need higher speed. He’s got some freaking OP things about him that would get made horrible with a speed buff.
Ankou should get some sort of change but not too drastic.
Change PK to slayerbane. Higher chance of getting a kill.
Let eternal rebirth be triggered after the first respawn. Makes it usable midgame.
Personally, I find its SS fine. After a rebirth it can accel and sweep at low tu. I believe it only gets it an extra kill before dying though. Not to mention all the rebirths can do this. However change this if you want, I don’t really care.
Speed. Increase it slightly for it to be better in the frontline. I can’t remember if the rebirths have half speed. If they do, then increase the speed a bit more. Eternal revenge at high speeds is extremely strong.
Rebirth placement. Next in line makes it harder to kill than revenarchion. I understand the placements need changing but there still needs to be a downside in using ankou. So i suggest after its death it respawns randomly in the next 1-3 slots. It can’t die normally, so it would be cruel to have to kill it constantly from the fl.
Removing link from death sentence is fine, but shouldn’t be applied to a high speed ankou that constantly respawns next in line. If it’s going to be viable midgame then the ds trigger timer might need to be slightly increased to balance with it being non-link. Maybe 150-200 secs.
If it got something like slayerbane then maybe ds should remain linked. Securing kills too easily with an unkillable respawning mon would be a bit unhealthy.
Rebirth next in line? So if he is ran in front and we have to kill him first to stop him killing a protector I have to then potentially kill him every other monster. Doesn’t sound broken at all
Increasing his FL speed and halving the clone speed is a pretty solid idea.
If their speed was lower then having them spawn next reinforcement wouldnt be terrible, but guaranteeing a 1-3 respawn would probably be a happy medium.
As everyone always yells at me when i complain about magma or tort- you can always knock ankou back.
And as for what we expected, we expected something that would actually work. Ankou is almost totally absent from PvP now whereas his release counterpart, malware wing, is the bane of so many’s existence.
A link mon with an op passive that restricts it to the fl, which no one likes because it’s a featured mon.
So is azra; without link it’s rather poor. Hardly a midgame mon as well. This got nerfed because of link abuse and now it’s pretty much dead. Why should ankou get a major buff when it has a similar use to azra? I know azra was better but it doesn’t have a op passive like ankou.
Ankou still deserves a buff, just not a big one. A better move to secure kills than pk would be a good start…
