Redesigning Feng Mao's passive, "Precision Strike"
I LOVE FENG MAO
I have now put nearly 200 hours into Predecessor and most of that number, at the very least 90%, has been logged on Feng Mao. While I find him to be incredibly fun and engaging as a character, to this day I have one huge gripe about him, and that is his passive: "precision strike."
The passive, while dealing a noticeable chunk of damage, just is not something that you can consistently play around.
When playing Jungle, this passive is used once every camp and that's it. If you're able to get really good positioning, you can maybe gank someone and hit them with a Passive AA before blowing the rest of your kit, but more often than not, you're using Reaping Dash to get on top of someone, and because Reaping Dash deals damage, it disables the passive auto attack.
When in lane, it sees much more use, as you can bully people with your insane short trade potential by hitting them with the passive AA and using Hamstring at the same time, dealing very respectable damage early on and even mid game. The issue with this is if the enemy laner knows how this passive works, you probably won't get to use it most of the time.
It is quite difficult to put yourself in a advantageous position to use Precision Strike without an experienced player knowing what it is you're doing and countering by either attacking you with an ability to disable the passive without drawing minion aggro, or alternatively... just fighting you anyway?
There are quite a few Offlaners that just don't care lol. Grux, and Crunch for example are very potent at making you recognize the mistake you've made by walking into their melee range. Where Feng Mao wants to take a short trade and then get out, Grux and Crunch have the tools to turn a short trade into a long one, with Crunch having a strong CC tool, High burst damage, a long range dash that rivals that of Reaping Dash and Grux having multiple forms of CC to prevent you from escaping a short trade without him repaying the favor first at least somewhat. Don't even get me started on the fact that Greystone just IGNORES your passive entirely with his!
The bottom line is that even when in a position to use your passive more often, there's a possibility that it will barely see use most of the match. This inconsistency and lack of control on when you can reliably use it is why I feel the need for it to be changed.
The return of Crippling Strikes...
"Crippling Strikes" was an old iteration of Feng Mao's "hamstring" ability in Paragon. Quite frankly, calling it an ability is dumb, as it was just a passive effect.
This was quite a weird change on Epic's part, and kind of ruined his identity as an ability based fighter, and turned him more into an auto attack machine, but it is what it is.
The idea in reusing this would be not to replace his hamstring, but rather would be to give him a passive that he could not only use in many more situations than Precision Strike, but also allow Feng Mao alone to be the one to control when it's used.
Of course, I do not think Feng Mao needs another strong slow, so some rebalances of the effects provided might be in order.
or alternatively, a changing of how it works entirely:
My point is, Feng Mao could do with a passive that isn't locked behind strong circumstantial prerequisites like, ya know, every other character in the game right now.
Riktor gets a shield when out of combat, Greystone blocks basic attacks every now and then, Zarus gets stacking AD for fighting which then decays into max% hp healing, Sev stacks HP throughout the entire match, Grux gets bleed and Omnivamp when at max bleeds, etc etc.
As of currently, most of the time when playing Feng Mao, your passive isn't something that really factors into your power level more often than not.
Funnily enough, it's really hard to make use of the "resets on takedown" part of his passive, because most of the time, if you are in a position to use that reset on someone, it means you are mid fight, and you've probably already been damaged before you can use it again.
Below is a rough example on how Omeda could incorporate this kind of ability, featuring old Feng auto attack animations dug up from RGSace's alpha gameplay of Pred.
Lazy ass way to go about showcasing it, but it gets the job done.
tl;dr
Fang Mao's passive sucks because it's too circumstantial and easily avoided even when he's able to use it more often. The properties given to this ability make it hard to use more often than not and trying to force it to work in most situations just doesn't feel good nor work out most of the time anyway. He could use a new passive. I featured an old Paragon ability as an example.