 What's up everybody, I am the Mangus, you are awesome and it's time for another edition of Call to Arms, trying to appeal to predecessor and core to fix some of the things that Epic did wrong. Today I want to talk about a hero that is near and dear to my heart, thick boy Rick. Now I of course thought Ricker was a great hero, he was my number one favorite followed closely by the Fae. I think a lot of people got the wrong idea for my Drongo video, I didn't think Drongo sucked, I just think he was released at the wrong time in Paragon's life cycle. Same with Ricker, I of course don't think that Ricker sucks, but I do think there is some room for improvement with his kit. Alrighty boys, let's get to it. The first thing I want to talk about is of course electrocute. I think I said it best in my honest hero review for Ricker. Electrocute is an ability. It was one of, if not the, most boring ability in Paragon. It really seemed like an afterthought on Epic's part, like uhhhh, this guy needs another ability. Um, fuck it, give him an AoE that he could toggle on and off. It really didn't do that much damage unless you went like full on ability damage Ricker and there was no reason to use it except for wave clear, which it didn't do well at either. It could provide a small amount of damage against enemy heroes, but no one was ever like oh shit, Ricker has electrocute toggled on, better stay back. It's a damn shame because the rest of his kit was awesome in one way or another. Now I toyed around with what could possibly make this ability more interesting. One suggestion I've seen Bandit about is to put a slow on it. That would be fun, but I think it would be really overpowered. Ricker is already the crowd control king, giving him another form of CC would just be over the top. I want Ricker to be fun and viable, not overpowered. Everybody in a match should have fun and feel impactful in some way. I loved Ricker, but I never want any of these games to introduce a hero that's overpowered to the point that it breaks the game. I don't want a hero that can win a game all on their own. If you made a hero like that, it would be so impossible to balance them that you would have to remove them from the game at some point just to attempt to address the issue. Why would any gaming company design a hero like that and give them more CC? That would never happen, right? Anyway, that's a conversation for a different day, let's get back to big dick, Rick. So if established that any kind of slow route or stun on electrocute would probably be too good, so what do you do? I propose that you turn Ricker into the anti-tank tank and put basic armor shred on electrocute. Nothing over the top, maybe each tick of damage shreds just a little bit of armor so no one wants to just stand in it. If you really wanted to make him a tank buster, you could make that damage percent based. Instead of shredding armor, each tick could deal like 1% of a hero's max health or something. Another thing you could possibly do with electrocute is bake an anti-heal into it. Kinda like Baneflesh where it would reduce healing effects. I think 75% may be a bit much, but 50% sounds right. Allow Ricker to counter heroes like Chimera and Kuang or just any hero that benefits massively from lifesteal. If you want to get really crazy with it, give Ricker the ability to toggle between the three so you can customize electrocute to the situation at hand. I'm not sure what direction electrocute needs to go in, but it needs something. Next up is Shock Therapy, Ricker's silencing ability. I really don't think anything needs to be done here. I actually liked it when they turned it into an instant cast punch instead of tying it to his basics. We can leave Shock Therapy alone. Now Rip Lash on the other hand could use some very slight tweaks, mainly in the mana department. A level 1 Ricker could only cast Rip Lash once and not have enough mana for another. I know it was a high impact ability that should cost a lot. A good hook should result in a kill and that needs to be balanced accordingly, but holy hell, more than half of your mana pull at level 1? No other ability cost that damn much, and Rip Lash had its own inherent drawback without making the mana cost prohibitive. It was hard as fuck to land. In my opinion, it was the hardest skill shot in Paragon, so why did it cost so damn much? Rev over there throwing obliterates out like candy, evaporating half your health with his eyes closed while Ricker can throw one Rip Lash. The other change I want to see for Rip Lash, and this is more of a quality of life thing, is the ability to cast it while in the air. You probably never realized this unless you played the crap out of Ricker, but you couldn't jump and use Rip Lash, nor could you jump off of stuff and use Rip Lash. Having the ability to 360 off a platform and then pull someone's B hole out their pie hole really doesn't add anything gameplay wise, but it would be cool and I want to add it. Moving on to Ricker's ultimate, otherwise known as the self destruct button. Any ability in Paragon that caused you to root yourself, no matter how powerful it was, was a death sentence. Yes I fully understand that it's up to the player to pick when it's appropriate to use your ultimate, and that's what separates the good from the bad, but damn man, skewer causing you to stand in one place for what felt like an eternity was a problem and anyone that has ever played Ricker knows it. I've seen some pretty good ideas on how to fix it, like giving Rick an armor buff during the ability, but I think I have a better solution. Make the chesticles absorb projectiles, kinda like Steel's Wall. I mean they're out there waving in the wind, there's no way anything is getting past those chains. Of course you could still damage him from the side and Guinea could still drop space turds on his head, but make him completely immune to frontal damage during his ult. That would still make skewer dangerous to use while rewarding good positioning. I think that's about all I have for my boy Ricker, other than a Sumo skin, I really want a Sumo Ricker skin. Anyway, let me do my real youtuber stuff and say, if you liked this video hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already. Even more youtuber stuff, I do have one piece of merch and it's fitting for this video in particular. It's the I Love Fat Hooker T-Shirt. Express your love for Ricker and be prepared to answer a lot of questions from your friends and family. Also, you will probably be propositioned by an obese prostitute. I'm outta here. Man goooo.