Cestus Utility Changes

[molten shoal]

I'll start by saying that the changes i am about to suggest, are not meant for an increase in dps, since Cestus is already a good enough weapon as is. they are purely meant for making Cestus a healthier and more fun weapon. I'll first explain my thought proccess for the changes i'll suggest. if you dont wanna read that, skip to the "Changes" part

Cestus is currently the only weapon that has two passives that basically have a low chance to increase his attacks damage (Pillar's bone fracture doesnt count), which means two passives that are completely RNG, and out of the players control, while having the ability to make a noticable difference in his dps outcome, mostly in normal raids, in which afew extra procs make up a bigger part of his overall damage.. Cestus also struggles alot from a problem that Spear Lann had, and they kiiinda "fixed". that being that it struggles when your attack speed goes up, because the faster you are, the less absorb frames everything has. Similarly to how spear lann's dodge is, and what they did to help him with that is give him iframes on his first glide, which makes it possible to dodge-glide for more iframes..
after that, there is a bug in one of Cestus's three passive buffs, in particular his Destroyer buff, aka blue buff, aka permanent critical buff. which pretty much makes it so that some times, instead of going back to four stacks after resetting it, it goes back to three stacs, messing up the players flow completely.
and "lastly" his hurricane active needs some changes, its currently not at all safe when you try to connect hurricanes back to back, as it leaves you wide open to bosses, and there is no way to even cancel out of it, meaning that sometimes even if you use it correctly, you are bound to get hit.

So now i'll give a few ideas on how to fix those main issues.

Changes:

For his two RNG passives, keep Stalwart, which is shared between both weapons, and rework Clean Hit.. my primary ideas are: 1)to make it a controllable passive, that has a cooldown, and everytime you absorb your next Smash/Blast/Active/(and maybe big bang for the memes) procs Clean Hit, maybe give it a way to also stack so you can Clean Hit back to back, if not, give it a low cooldown, probably around five seconds, to make it useful. or 2) make it a "countertype" passive, that gives bonus damage after succesful absorbs, like pillar's "pillar counter", or hurk's "revenge", maybe let it stack depending on the number of absorbs like hurks. i'd suggest keeping the second part of its passive though, that being it being able to proc randomly on multihits (brutal flurry, and maybe normal hits).

Next we have the attack speed problem, i'd suggest a small increase of absorb frames on his normal attacks, and maybe his forth smash, but primarily his normal attacks, tho when i say small increase i mean it, just enough to where playing with over 100 attack speed doesnt feel like you flip a coin everytime you try to absorb with a normal attack, even when you know that your timing is correct, since absorb are already finicky by their nature.

The Destroyer buff bug needs no explanation, just fix the damn bug please, its not something that is supposed to happen, some people believe it happens when you proc clean hit, but its not, its just a bug.

And lastly hurricane, Just make it link to itself without a big gap, i am fine with leaving a small gap, but the way it currently is, any cestus player knows that everytime you use multiple hurricanes, you are just playing with fire (and you will get burned). also maybe allow us to control it abit more? stuff like being able to delay the next link.

honorable mentions

Hulking fury : Reduce its sp cost, 750 sp for a flinch is too much, and its damage is not even that good. make it 500sp, some may say "but its a double flinch" yea no way, but its 2024 and flinches are useless. ty.

stugger animation : idk what to say about that, getting hit by multihits many times leads to you being comboed like a fighting game character. maybe fix that?

full force activation : give the full force activation to something else other than just big bang, in many fast runs we dont have enough time to get a second big bang off hense missing the full force.

Thanks for reading all'at, if you did, thats you ->

[ocean dawn]

God I would NOT love to see clean hit on Big Bang especially if Clean Hit becomes controllable. That would just put us back in prehistorical Big Bang meta. "Max buffs, Absorb, Big Bang- repeat"

For "some" of these changes, Pillar shouldn't exist, but it does. Remember: Cestus was almost not supposed to absorb at all, so I'd highly prefer if it's kept to be as a more active hybrid rather than counter focused.

For the optional trigger of full force I always suggested Pivot Strike. It's just functional: not used to spam Strong Blast after Sunday Punch, but used mostly for convenient moments.

I agree that both passive need to become somehow controllable, but not thanks to more counters
Stalwart could easily become on tallies for both weapon's convenience;
"On the tally of the 5th attack, the next one will ignore target's defence" this would easily let you plan when you want to dish out the heavies such as spear, dropkick, big bang and whatnot.

For Clean Hit I never had an idea. I already thought it to be one of those criminal buffs, but being able to apply it on big bang would straight up be illegal . I like the idea of being able to use it alla pillar counter, though without cooldown. Just to keep the theme of the character alive

[molten shoal]

i agree with you on those statements, i didnt think big bang clean hits would be good, thats why i said for the memes, that stalwart idea is something i thought clean hit could be, but i dont even know if thats something they can make to be honest