Weapon Blackfeather has perhaps experienced the greatest fall from glory in the history of the game, it’s been gradual but brutal.
Below I will outline the decay from Brokenfeather, 1.12-13, Balancedfeather, 1.14 all the way until 2.11, and the current state of Blackfeather which can now only be known as Spudfeather.
Rose Trail: Used to be teamwide speed boost for 4 seconds, now 2.2 seconds and only for Blackfeather.
Better for escaping after an engage, otherwise a nerf
Barrier: health ratio reduced from 15% to 5%, fat nerf to any builds employing health (every Bf will have aegis and boots inevitably as a minimum)
Execute: went from true damage % of max health, to higher % but now weapon damage = fair nerf to make Blackfeather counterable. Wp ratio now removed , entirely unfair nerf as Blackfeather no longer counters tanks, and certainly doesn’t counter squishies due to his lowered mobility. I honestly can’t think of a matchup where Blackfeather is superior to Krul, Grumpjaw or even Idris/ Glaive
On Point: This is one of the few things that has in any way been improved as it now boasts a 100% weapon ratio, but besides that the barrier is greatly reduced (especially as armour and shield have been nerfed and the value of each hp point decreased) and, CRUCIALLY, the slow has been removed.
Rose Offensive: Used to give an obscene quantity of armour and shield, now fortified health. Fair nerf so I approve, but I still think the fortified health could be increase a little.
Charge time also longer.
Essentially Blackfeather used to be sticky like an assassin and tanky like a bruiser: they could remove one but not both, and that is the crux as to why Blackfeather is now never the best pick, especially as wp.
He’s talking about WP Blackfeather’s fighting capabilities. WP BF is fairly squishy and has drastically less mobility and burst compared to before. Have you even played WP Blackfeather much at all?
The main reason he can be a “good” splitpusher is that his Rose Offensive makes him a bit harder to lock down. Then again, I haven’t seen anyone actually play Blackfeather as a laner successfully ingame for quite some time. Being able to dodge CC doesn’t alone make you a terrific splitpusher.
WP BF is power house late game. He still has one of the best dive and escape capabilities in the game. Sure if you dive into a group or get over aggressive early game you’re gonna get wrecked. However, BF has always been a late game hero, anyone who knows how to lane well and scale will destroy in either path.
I am a Blackfeather main, and for a long time too. I still believe he is viable as he was flat out broken at one point. You have to be good to succeed with him now and I still main him. And also, the biggest fall of all time would be CP Vox, though that path is better now, it went from broken to nonviable.
He’s viable, just late game. He’s more of a counter-pick than a first pick now, and as others have mentioned before, he’s a very good splitpusher since he can come out on top in most 1v1s.
He was broken and it was hilarious, I felt they found and mid ground but then by removing all his utility and tankiness he’s left as being reliant only on mobility
The secret to playing Blackfeather in 5v5 is basically this
Get a snowball and kick ass for the rest of the game
OR
Get countered in lane and get babysat for the rest of the game
OR
Repeatedly push one lane over and over until the enemy dies from stress (Note: Only do this with 2 RO charges up to escape literally anything as long as you don’t suck)
Most of the time though, the resources you would put into a WP BF could be put into someone like Gwen, who’s safer and does just as much damage as him from range.
OP BF has been broken for a number of patches, he was obscene a while ago, massive DMG and massively tanky with only two offence items.
He is still viable, I’ve seen him used to good effect, has he been nerfed too much? Maybe a little but he has been broken for a while so he deserves a little time in the non meta bench.
Cull was one of the best players in the game. I bet he could make anything work…
OT, I miss BF ;-; literally every bruiser and assassin out-duels him now, most carries can escape from him - used to be if a BF jumped onto you, you wouldn’t escape unless he died. He doesn’t even do a good job of countering squishies any more - any assassin does that better. In team fights, he gets burst down so fast because he’s one of the squishiest bruisers (is he even a bruiser now? I remember when he was considered an assassin because of the missing health % on his A but that’s lol now)
I don’t think the answer is to keep taking things away from his kit. Give him back his utility, nerf his ratios. Rose trail provided such great team wide utility, BF + Fortress used to be infinite dive. Now…
Which assassins? Except taka assassins aren’t a big threat to a bf played well. Bf could never outduel bruisers like rona or reim, glaive is the closest thing to a bruiser he can fight 1v1.
Taka beats BF at any stage, Koshka destroys him early, CP Alpha beats him at any stage of the game, WP Idris can late game, Reza kinda can if you poke to build up DE stacks and then go in, CP Kestrel can poke and kite him to death. Can’t think of any other assassins atm…
Yeah, bf was never good into bruisers, but he’s worse now.
Thats not true, while the bruisers were hard for him, late game he could out duel them, even Rona as BestChuckNA proved numerous times in his streamings.
Bestchuck playing Rona will beat bf 99/100 times 1v1. You are using player skill as an argument in hero kit counters, bestchuck can even counter Skye as a reim, that proves nothing about hero matchups
Alpha is kinda different, she is a tanky assassin. Idris? I am not sure about that, bf can outsustain idris late game with tanky build. Is cp kestrel an assassin? She play more like a mage with her skillshots