Re: A random discussion about alternate abilities and how they affect healers.

@gametrieukNever been a fan of the bling stuff to be honest. Barring issues where they did (still do?) more damage than the basic version which shouldn't be a thing, they're just shiny. Didn't hurt anything, but not terribly interesting either.

Some alternate abilities aren't used that much or are too good or too weak. Most soldiers use rocket leap, since who doesn't want to lose a little height to get 2 uses?  I like Dark Flower but I don't actually use it all that often, as the healing is generally more useful.

I would like to have seen them do more with the upgrade system in BfN towards this end too. They do of course have some of this with stuff like you post and stuff like dolphin blasting and other abilities, but it could have been even better with more development. I still love that you can save multiple copies of a character in BfN with different outfits and builds, that would have been great in  the GW games too, could have builds to quickly swap to for alternate abilities. Was asking for it for years in GW2.

@gametrieukExcept dark flower sacrifices healing and doesn't benefit your teammates.

I agree that bling pylon shouldn't exist though.

Long bomb in bfn just goes 22.5% farther where the ability in gw forces all stars to learn the map geometry and the arc of the bomb which can travel much farther than it does in bfn.

Rocket leap in bfn just increases the distance your jump can go and doesn't force the soldier to learn how to deal with managing 2 jumps on a longer cooldown that sacrifice verticality for mobility.

Vampire spikeweed in bfn has no visual difference in its apperance so there is no reason for a zombie to treat it differently from a normal spikeweed and doesn't force the chomper to sacrifice damage for health.

It's 100% better than the base version and there's no reason to ever use stock over it in bfn.

Alternate abilities in gw forced players to be creative and syngerize it with their play style to overcome their weaknesses. In bfn there is no drawback what so ever in using these so you might as well just grab as many good upgrades that you can stack together and spam them every match.