Rabbit related thoughts and issues
Alright this is probably going to end up being a long winded post but with the Bun-Fu event coming up and the recent small changes to rabbit I figured now is a better time than most to take the time and formulate my ideas.
General skill wise Rabbit is one of those skills that true to its description is rather weak by itself for some reason only the developers know. Most of its abilities have a rather low base damage and lack of mods to change that in any meaningful way. What it does have going for it is the idea that the few things it pairs with the mods synergize or help strengthen the pairing skill well. Going to take this ability by ability below to expand on the above.
(TDLR rabbit has broken mods. Needs base damage adjustments and some of it's mods can't be utilized well due to lack of skills that offer the damage it affects or low numbers. Also buff indirect trauma it has)
Rabbit scratch
-The most basic a basic attack can get. Outside of unarmed trauma builds this just has nothing. It probably is true for a lot of basic attacks but any sort of love to at least make them marginally interesting would be appreciated. As is they either buff some other damage slightly or get slotted only for refresh which makes them feel utterly boring. Mayhaps in theme already of the trauma aspect allow it to be modded to actually cause a dot worth something? Rabbit could with minor number buffs actually be an amazing damage over time skill.
Thump
-This ability has lower damage and a total of one mod that increases its base damage by 31 but adds a knockback. Unfortunately for some reason both mods that increase a mobs ice vulnerability are attached to this skill. Thus you end up slotting an almost useless skill when you play ice/rabbit. Couple this with the fact these mods are placed on highly packed gear slots and it just becomes a giant lame mess. The 25% snare it comes with is negligible at best and the only other mods add trauma dot's that are so small it wouldn't even make a difference in low level content. It both needs love in damage and better mods. Considering how many of Rabbit's skills can cause trauma dot's why not just buff that aspect alone so it stays a weak to moderate direct damage overall skill with strong dot potential. Food for thought. (Please consider attaching the ice vuln skills to Bun-Fu Strike instead which I will elaborate on more shortly)
Bun-Fu kick(Formerly Blitz)
-Somewhat falls into the same category above but 'slightly' higher base damage and mods to a trauma vuln debuff so it at least synergizes well with rabbit/unarmed. As with other skills it also can reduce the cooldown on the ability thump when used/modded which adds a nice touch. Still weak damage and the base trauma dot it comes with is extremely low even when both mods are taken to increase said number. As per the above increasing the trauma aspect would go a long way here.
Rabbit's foot
-Overall I'm a big fan of this ability for general and group play but never use any of it's mods. It's just about the only group utility Rabbit brings. A few changes to the mods on this and a tweak elsewhere and Rabbit could easily turn into a solid support in ways. As per the mods it either gives power to the group(too low), health after a long time(consider it being instantly or maybe a heal over time) boosts combat xp( low number and waste of a mod slot) or adds burst evasion. Of the above everything else is too low a number to even matter except for the burst evasion.
Hare Dash
-Probably my second favorite ability in rabbit's toolkit and one of the better modded abilities Rabbit has. Honestly the only complaint I can give to this is the mod that gives armor back could be slightly higher and perhaps changing the on use mod that increases the next crushing attack used to maybe include more damage types or all damage in general. Would allow further build potential and use of these mods.
Play Dead
-An amazing ability and my favorite in concept but every mod for it is ruined by one simple fact. One cannot cancel the play dead animation and must sit 'stunned' for too long. Thus it makes keeping up the buffs that can be modded by it rather annoying and tedious especially considering you are wasting a defensive to get them for a short period of time. Point in case it can be modded to increase nice damage for 15 seconds. That's great except by the time one can attack again there is about 10 seconds left or so. Shortening the animation to 1 second or allowing movement to cancel it would go a long way to promoting the use of these mods. Also increasing the duration of the +psychic damage buff it gives to 60 seconds instead of 20 would clear up some tedium. My final nitpick is the mod that adds a psychic indirect to all affected mobs after 10 seconds. Beyond the fact the number is low considering how direct scales to indirect the 10 second aspect actually cuts the safety effect duration of the ability in half and renders everything about this useless. Plus using a defensive for a delayed low damage attack feels bad and rather dumb. While you could change or play with ways to make the indirect work I feel it would be better to remove from this ability entirely. Mayhaps add another rabbit skill than can be modded and is more geared towards psychic itself to help promote and enforce the rest of the psychic mods rabbit has but can barely take advantage of.
Snow hare mode
-Simple useful buff but consider making it longer than a 5 minute duration. All that adds is annoyance to constantly having to reapply it
Carrot power
-With the decreased chance down to 10% to use a carrot I couldn't be happier with this ability.It does make two of its mods useless though in which they could either follow suit with the other mods for this ability and increase maybe psychic damage done for a period after use or go a whole new route and open up the ability to make carrot power usable on others or the group via mod. This small change would allow rabbits to find a whole new use in support builds when coupled with rabbit’s foot and another option for animal players who want to support. Even just baseline allowing carrot power to be used on another would go a long way or allowing the % damage buffs from its mods to affect others.
Love tap
-This ability in almost every aspect is terrible and a waste of space. It's only saving grace is the animation is cute so that's something I guess. Long cooldown, virtually zero damage and the added effect it gives is covered by many other skills with much better abilities. Has very few mods and they are lackluster to the point it either functions as a deaggro to a skill that can't really generate much aggro or bad trauma over time that in game comes out as cold damage over time for some reason. It needs major buffing in almost every way to even function. The new mod addition that adds melee evasion while nice could go much further with a redesign of the skill. Instead consider changing the skill entirely to something that acts as a heal. Increases max hp and heals by that amount. Gives a unique flavor and reinforces a possible support role for Rabbit but at the same time can find use in almost any build a rabbit has. Bottom line this skill could be so much more and I want to see it have a reason to finally be used.
Bun-Fu Blast
-Absolutely no complaints about this ability beyond the fact all mods that add + damage are broken and only add the secondary effects. Outside of this I love the mods and especially the brand new increased damage every ice attack mod. My only suggestion is possibly adding a variant to this that affects it in base form of psychic damage. Would make for a nice addition to rabbit/psych or priest. Small caveat is this ability suffers from not having another rank due to how the level unlocks work and there being no bonus levels to rabbit.
Long ear
-I've used this ability literally once in all my time playing to try to retrieve my tombstone and it failed to even make a difference then. It's a wasted slot even on a sidebar and could use for a redesign. While it does have mods that increase projectile avoidance you are in essence using a useless ability and two mod slots just for that. Perhaps add in projectile avoidance baseline to the ability for self and allow the mods to give that avoidance to the group.
Bun-Fu Strike
-A weird ability being as its a delayed stun with very low base damage. Ice/rabbit is the only way to even make this ability worth much considering it can be converted to ice damage and the cooldown reduced by Bun-Fu Blast but even then it does low damage comparatively. Just a simple small boost to base damage would suffice to help bring it up to par. Mod wise a few of them are relatively pointless. There are two 20% damage done and 48 heal after 8 second mods that by and large are just utterly bad. As I suggested above moving the Ice vuln from thump to replace these two mods would make more sense with how the build works. It also comes with a single rage reduction mod that does little. Making the mod also cause strike to not generate rage itself would vastly improve the effect. The abilities last two mods decrease the cooldown of Bun-Fu Blitz(kick) and add a small amount of damage. While the damage is appreciated there is almost no build i can conceive of that would use Strike and kick together especially considering strike does slashing damage even though mods refer it to doing crushing. Strike is also not considered a kick so it does not benefit from many mods that give damage to those further making it's use outside of ice suspect. So perhaps scrapping those two cd reduction mods for something new would benefit the ability.
Afterthoughts:
-Please allow a way to craft the Controller helm that enables ice magic for Rabbit. Currently there is no astounding version and even getting a lv70 version itself is hard. There is a single mob type in the game that drops a upgraded 80 version of the amazing but the drop rate is so rare I have yet to see a yellow after weeks and weeks of farming. Also consider adding some other benefit to the helm. Non rabbits get access to the Masks which provide huge benefit where as the rabbit helm is literal trash. No secondary benefits and the way offpiece armor is balanced for metal is terrible. Leather armor helms end up with almost the same armor and armor refresh but yet still get other refreshes.
-It's hard to make use of rabbits indirect psychic damage % mods. Of the three skills that have that rabbit can only use two. Mentalism on agonize via mods but that is hardly worth a multi mod investment for piddly damage. The next is necromancy which has quite a few indirect psychic. The only problem being the numbers are so so so low it's barely worth the effort itself.
-We need more skills that deal in psychic, ice or trauma. They would go far in helping different pairings and the trauma one alone would benefit a lot of animals.
-Rabbits two +60 cold damage mods while pivotal to Ice/Rabbit pale in comparison to something like Fox's plus fire or darkness. Is there a reason theirs is almost double per mod?
For those that stuck through and read this I appreciate and hope my rambling made some sort of sense. I'm hoping with some love rabbit will one day be a more popular skill so the rest is developer fate. Also expect a giant blurb like this for Ice next so if you like reading chubby rabbit opinions just wait :)
