@Dusklicious I see the new patch as a nerf to her. If the Kinessa player is insane, then Buck won't be a big problem unless he picks Bounce House. Even if he goes BH then you can just go Reposition to avoid getting farmed. And if you have a build with Calibrate V and Reconfigure 2+ along with Power supply 2+ then Kinessa will literally become an off flank using her carbine 50% of the time and can potentially be a viable flank once Cauterize and Chronos are maxed. On live I find Kinessa better than Strix but after the 3.4 patch, Strix might be better becuz Kinessa will lose one of her most dominant sniper maps replaced with one of her worst ones so she will then have 7 viable maps instead of 8 which is a big deal and make her a bit more situational.

@HeartQueen About Skye, what is a 5s cooldown reduction going to do when hidden has a cooldown of 15s? It's not a CD reset so I don't see how the card matters, Shadow Affinity is a totally garbage card despite the high pickrate Jay Flare told me it had, especially because of how she has many other better cards.
And what you said about Gold players not being comparable to that of masters, this is more of a half truth. And I wasn't really saying that all gold players are comparable to master rank players. Doesn't mean NONE of the Gold rank players can't be as good as the ones in masters and there are tons of lvl 600+ players that are in gold because of matchmaking and many of them almost never play in stacks. With how broken matchmaking is in paladins, You will never hit Grandmaster no matter how good you are if you play solo almost all the time. My statement about this, only really applied to the enemy players I went up against in the match I sent you. But yea, "most" Gold rank players are DEFINITELY not comparable to that of GMs. https://paladins-tracker.de/match/999567978
Look at the people I played with in this match. The corvus I played with healed for 180k using dark gifts( which is not considered his main heal talent) and he is in gold rank and is also kinda new to the game. He is a godly Corvus player but not as good with other champs which makes sense since he is new although his Corvus at that time was only lvl 4. Then there was also that annoying Dredge player that did a crazy whooping 175k dmg who is also a low gold player(also yes I played Skye again using Preparation with amazing results). Lower Elos shouldn't be underestimated and they don't actually define how good a player actually is. There is only one infamous player(from SEA server) that I know who reached Grandmasters and he barely ever played in a stack( he does play duos more often now), he mostly got that far by playing Ying Resonance as a solo support in more than 50% of his games, y'know her "worst" talent.
I totally agree on what you said about pro tier lists being total bs. If you still think that Preparation is bad, then I suggest you try it on yourself with my builds or make one of your own. Just make sure to always have Decrepify 3+ in all Prepraration loadouts.

@HeartQueen smoke screen is not good as an escape ability. Staying inside the 25 unit smoke isn't reliable and it only lasts a minimum of 3s which is too low. Hidden is much more reliable and Preparation resets the cooldown of hidden with a kill that's why this talent can't be mimicked either. The 500 heal is not the main point of Preparation and it isn't any good either unless you buy Kill to heal on top of this talent. The players in that match may not have had the same rank but that doesn't really mean they were bad. Their skill levels were high and roughly the same for the most part and even comparable to some master rank players. Off meta talents can be good sleeper picks, it all comes down to how good the player is and how much time he/she spends on mythbusting off meta builds so we can never know. Soul Collector Seris is a good example of "Throw picks" that turned out to be pretty strong according to Pro Players. Some of the famous pro players are also saying that Precision can be insane in some situations so....

@HeartQueen Lian Precision has some uses against tanks like raum, ruckus, makoa and can be stronger in maps like Brightmarsh with the right build. @Shadowpuppy has a good loadout for this talent and I tried the build. It can be very effective in some scenarios. Skye Preparation is insane. The only real problem with this talent is that it doesn't proc on assists and the lower DPS won't be a problem with great aim. If you have great aim and a balanced approach to riskier positioning then Preparation is a better Debilitate. Skye can already shred tanks in 1v1s because of their massive head hitboxes without needing Debilitate. Debilitate allows you to peel tanks safely and is much easier to use. Because of how Preparation works, people don't know which cards best support it so they just play it with the worst builds imaginable and just never pick it again. https://paladins-tracker.de/match/998838450
This is my first Skye game today with this talent and I did quite well. The elo was decently high and I play on PC.

Reasoning for some of the placements:

• Kinessa used to be situational and was ban worthy if she was viable in a given map. But now, she is not situational at all outside of two maps in the current ranked map pool which are BrightMarsh and Jaguar Falls. Her mobility is SO impactful in most of the maps and she is annoying to deal with for everyone other than flanks. When played by someone who is insane on her, flanking her won't be a walk in the park, its gonna be much harder. And with strix getting nerfed constantly, she is almost better than him now aswell.
• Ying as a main healer is WAYYYY overrrated. But that's not why she is so good in the meta. Other than the caut nerfs that made her much stronger with LE, she is mainly strong because of how she can replace a DMG/Flank slot with her off heal talents and she is so much better as an off healer.
• Viktor and Vivian are the best hitscans in the game. With Caut and Wrecker nerfs they are much harder to deal with now. They are both banned in pro play almost every time.
• Skye is quite underrated. She can counter flanks quite well with the healing talent and keep her team topped off while flanking at the same time. She is a strong pick in the current double support meta. Her other talents can be good too or better than S&D in big maps but are only effective in the right hands and those are quite rare.
• Seris is quite effective with Soul Collector as a solo support or as a 2nd healer. The main thing that stops her from being any higher/ as good as ying is because SC is hard countered by double shield and long maps+ it is like her best talent making her slightly situational since her other talents are outclassed by it. Seris can be played in long maps with SC but only if being played in a double supp comp however there are better picks to replace her as an off healer if enemy has double shield. But when this talent doesn't have any hard counters, she can potentially hard carry.
• Lian isn't as strong as most people think she is. Dmg is the only thing she has and she is outclassed by other champs but her ult is insane. She is pretty good but not op anymore after going through alot of nerfs. She is balanced now.

@Shadowpuppy I don't agree with Burst Mode not being a little OP or broken, like he is banned every time in the PPC along with Vivian for some reason like its rare for him to not get banned in tournaments which is interesting to me. Also, I like most of your changes to him but your change to Shrapnel seems clunky on paper. Anyway I've made some new changes to his other talents so what do you think about those? My rework idea on Cardio is inspired by you btw.
@Dusklicious I've made changes later on after reading your opinion. What do you think of the new changes I made?

Viktor's Burst Mode talent is seriously overtuned and needs nerfs. Imo the main problem with the talent is that it is too easily accessible on top of the massive sustain he gets from lifesteal cards with the heavy DPS increase. His other talents may not even be nearly as strong as BM but they are still competively viable because of how many good cards he has for the other talents which shows how overtuned it is. Edit: I've had a shift of opinion. His other talents are playable but barely viable in competitive.
Heres how I would nerf Burst Mode:
Old version- Switch your rifle to Three-Shot-Burst mode, increasing your effective range and firing three 220-damage shots every 0.4s.
New version- While Iron Sights is active, your rifle triggers a Three-Shot-Burst mode, which increases effective range and firing three 200-damage shots every 0.4s.
Here's how I would change Shrapnel:
Old version- Increase the radius of Frag Grenade's explosion by 40%.
New version- Frag Grenade will now instantly explode upon impact, ignore damage fall-off and apply a 400 knockback to all enemies in the AoE.
And Here's how I would change Cardio:
Old version- Heal for 300 per second while using Hustle.
New version- Hitting enemies with Hustle now applies a knockup while dealing 500 damage and healing yourself for the same amount. However, Hustle will now have a cooldown of 3s.
To clarify my changes to Burst Mode: So basically he will have to hold right click to get the effect of the talent and his high 1650 DPS is reduced to a more reasonable value of 1500 DPS because of how low the dmg fall off is in longer ranges.
Do you think his dmg every shot should stay 220? How would you like it changed to be more balanced? What do you of my new changes to his other talents?
Feel free to leave your F'Back/Opinion down below.

@U1322272759 With Preparation, Skye will have more trouble killing people because of their self sustain and mobility. You will need more ammo to kill them then without having to go through the long reload in a fight. Another important use of Decrepify is that Killing people will give you more ammo to chain more kills faster. My 1st variation of my Preparation build helped me alot. https://paladins-tracker.de/match/991469465 This was my last ranked match 2 days ago and although it was a loss, I held my own quite well.You could replay it ingame to see how I played without the speed. Not having consistent mobility never gave me too big of a problem when I could buy master riding later unless my ult has a ton of value of some maps with morale boost.

@Shadowpuppy Make sure to always have Decrepify 3+ in Preparation builds. If u max Poisoner 5 then Nimble Fingers is also an option because using poison twice will both reset the duration of reload and also make the 30% reload stack to 60% but Decrepify is still better(Nimble Fingers is best against zhin, koga). Also consider buying Morale boost and Master Riding. Skye ult can win point fights easily when contested by both teams or allow your team to rush the point safely when enemies hide or die. I have two builds for this talent.
1st variation(works anywhere):
Decrepify 3+, Poisoner 5, Victory rush 4+, Emergency exit 1(optional) and the other card is a filler and is based on preference.
2nd variation(works best if enemy has low self sustain/medium mobility):
Decrepify 3+, Victory Rush 4+, Healing vapors 4+ and the other cards are optional but i Recommend Poisoner 1 or 2 as one of them.
Also where do u post gameplay and how do i find you/your channel?

@Shadowpuppy Would 150 dmg really be busted? Like I nerfed the old S&D for a reason, which is to compensate the base weapon buff so that the dps with burst dmg talents are still the same/similar. And to compensate her buffed dmg potential in a duration longer than 1s/against beefy champs, I made Skye more squishier as another measure of counter balance. Like I said before, the 150 dmg buff was intended only to significantly affect Preparation.