Anvil Rework Idea

Hey there,
I noticed that Anvil was lacking as a Hero, even under his perfect circumstances. After running him into Castellan + heavy shielders, Butter, Phalanx, Kobold, etc. He didn’t really do what I believe he should’ve. Not only that, but he lacks far too much damage and utility to be useful for either or both.
SO here’s my idea on how you should buff him!

Bronze: Scramble Grenade
Anvil fires a grenade that releases a charged gas in a small area. This ability deals Elemental Damage Per Second (unchanged), and all enemies within the area are Silenced and Disarmed. This effect lingers on an enemy for a brief moment after they leave the area.

Anvil’s Bronze is probably his best skill. It does its job well, but I think it should do slightly more just to bring him in line with some other characters. That being said, if you do make this change, I would make the AOE smaller, and make sure the disarm remains for a moment after they switch covers. Also, I imagine this ability would be pretty annoying, which will make him more of a faceless menace.

Silver: Arc Blast
I have two ideas for this ability;

Silver: Arc Beam
Anvil focuses an energy beam on a targeted enemy, dealing Elemental Damage Per Second. This beam permanently shreds elemental armour unless cleansed and deals 1.5x damage per second to shields.

Silver: Arc Blast
Anvil shoots an energy blast at the targeted enemy, dealing half Elemental half Physical Damage.
If the enemy is shielded, all the enemy’s shields are instantly overloaded, dealing a blast of Elemental Damage in a huge area based on a % of either the health of the combined shields or the strongest shield applied to the target.

I feel like this ability should be his strongest but is the most lacking. In his intro, you have him sweeping a giant laser beam over the camera. In game, it tickles enemies weaker than him in terms of power. Since it’s his selling point, it should be more impactful. The combined shield health damage might be too strong, though.

Gold: Counter Charge
I think Counter Charge can either be left unchanged or nerfed, depending on how you leave his base stats. Since Anvil is incredibly fragile, if you leave him this way, Counter Charge should stay how it is. If you buff his baseline toughness (which I will talk about soon), Counter Charge should be nerfed, as such:
Whenever Anvil damages a hero, he gains a flat shield for a quarter of his HP.
This ability has a 20 second cooldown, and if Anvil is already shielded, it is only refreshed.

Platinum: Arc Rounds
Anvil’s weapon deals additional elemental damage, multiplied by 1.5x versus shielded enemies.

Lots of heroes have passives that are just “You deal shitloads of elemental damage.” Anvil should be no exception, but he should keep his unique modifier.
Another idea for this is to make his weapon trigger the shield explosion in his Silver skill, let me know if you’d like me to expand on that.

Miscellaneous changes:
I think Anvil’s baseline is too out of place how it is. He’s an extremely fragile midliner with a shotgun hand cannon, and a DPS Ruby skill. I know that the change to his Plat will make him way stronger if his weapon remains a shotgun, so if you do that I suggest you change his weapon to be a traditional, bullet hand cannon, similar to Kurtz’. And if you keep his weapon as a shotgun hand cannon, you should buff his HP slightly, both Armour types by a reasonable amount, and give him the support Ruby skill, so as not to overload his gun with damage steroids, and make him reasonably tanky.

So, yeah! Those are my ideas. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you guys think.
Be excellent to each other!

4 Likes

One amendment I’d like to make is that Mag Shield should be considered “half shields” for the purposes of damage - i.e., he will only deal 25% extra damage when shooting Mag Shields using his Plat as an example.

Let me set you on point that anvil is fine, anvil can chew through shields thats all, if you find his damage to low either use castellan so you can clear the way for his rockets or use francoise to throw the drink and make him invincible

That doesn’t make Anvil fine. Francoise can make Heimlock deal decent damage and Kunoichi invincible.

4 Likes

@LONGBOY could not agree more Longboy. Anvil does not perform as advertised. It seemed to me that Anvil should have been a shield punisher. Arc Blast as described sounds like it would be a shielded hero’s worst nightmare. My 9* Anvil does something like 85k with the Arc Blast. At 300% to a shielded hero that’s about 255k damage. Lets say at 10* this all works out to 300k. That’s not punishing in my book, it’s mediocre. In my estimation Arc Blast on a 10* 0 bar Anvil should hit about 500k elemental damage on a shielded enemy and remove the shield no matter what the shield strength was.

I feel his bronze should be a larger AOE OR have lingering effects after leaving the AOE and should remove the shields from any shielded hero that is hit or enters the AOE. Arc Blast should be something like described above and also hit anything in it’s path, not just the one target. Counter Charge is good as is if it actually works as written AND Arc Blast is improved but I’d up the % to 100. Hit a shielded hero for 500k damage, get a 500k shield…now THAT’S punishment. Arc Rounds…the skill doesn’t describe shield penetration…and it should. He’s supposed to be a menace to shields so he really should ignore shields with his Plat skill.

I think Anvil should be mediocre at best vs. non-shielded heroes, but lethal vs. shields. It’s an extreme niche that should be rewarded with extreme results.

2 Likes

I’d like to avoid having another character in the game that has 500k+ shields in one go, I’d rather the punishment from damaging your team for using shields than making anvil invulnerable.
I’d also like to avoid having him ONLY be a shield-killer. He should be at least usable against enemies without shields, since he’s already weak to the element that has the least amount of shields and usually gets squished by them.
He should fit the baseline for being a usable DPS while having his specific counter, otherwise, there is literally no point in using him. Why? Because almost every other DPS can already break shields. Every other hero can already break shields with a decent support. See above, Francoise. Any hero with Francoise’s buff deals Tons of damage. A DPS with Francoise’s buff, well, you get the picture. The only time a hero will actually be bothered very hard by shields is if they’re a Chem hero, pure DPS team, or the enemy is 2+ healers/shields and/or a Castellan. Anvil should be able to steamroll heroes like Castellan and stand his ground against someone that isn’t Shivs.

yeah, that’s kinda what I was saying…he should be a nightmare for shield teams. I don’t think him being able to smack a shielded hero and gain a 500k shield is too extravagant. My 8* vanguard can put a bigger shield than that on someone and it gets eaten up pretty well by enemy DPS heroes. Castellan’s shield is way more powerful. But, at the end of the day I would be good with whatever could be done with him to bring him in line with what he is described to be which in my mind is a punisher of shielded heroes, a hero that both eliminates shields, damages you for using them, and shields himself in the process.

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Anvil is completely fine, just level him up.

Copy that, Max him out. Ruby Anvil here I come.

My Anvil was the highest levelled hero on my team until I started farming for Heronium, what is that supposed to mean?

Also, nice Godlante lego build.

Thanks. Things been intact for over a year, that’s a record for me.

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