I've been playing with Pendles quite a bit, probably my favourite character, I think it's a really inventive way to do stealth in this type of game. Most MOBAs tend to do it as simply a pure invisibility thing, but here it feels as though you need to be sneaky because of the cloaking effect, but also, you're less visible when standing still, so you can pull off a lot of neat maneuvers and kills through misdirection. It makes the moment to moment invisibility gameplay feel intelligent and rewarding rather than merely the result of a skill activation, with the next meaningful gameplay moment occurring when you decide to uncloak.
I didn't really get him in the fist game I played. I heard he'd be hit and run so I just tried to play him as I play my Phoebe, and ended up going 4 and 6, losing the game. Wasn't that happy about that and didn't really feel that the character seemed that valuable.
Decided to switch up the build, less focus on damage, put on a shard generator, a +500 HP item, and a damage/attack speed legendary and went running around the map taking all the shards and buildables, killing low hp targets as they went to retreat or shift lanes.
After that shift in playstyle, I first went 10-2, then 10-0, then 17-1 and finally 23-0. I was pretty happy with those scores, though we still managed to lose on of those games (team sucked, had a Kelvin that ended 1-14).
I also found myself ending matches with between 15 and 20,000 shards collected, most turrets destroyed, most turrets built, and of course highest score. I ignored minions, but managed to keep up on level by killing buildables and mercenaries. It was such a distinct playstyle to what I've been used to in Battleborn, but it's incredibly effective.
There were many instances where I'd start at their accelerator, and end up destroying 2x accelerators, 2x health generators and 2x thumper turrets, all in succession. It's crazy how he can take 4000+ shards worth of items from the opposing team, all in a matter of seconds, and at very low risk to himself.
In combat though I found him quite hard to play, really having to rely on dealing the finishing blows, and focusing down isolated enemies. Even when I could isolate them, the uncloaked movement speed was a killer. Even if you use items that grant minor advantages to movement speed, it's just not enough to chase after many of the cast. Someone like Alani can always just turn around, riptide you away, and run away. Even if you catch back up to her, the extreme slowing effect of your poison dash thing fades rather quickly (even with the 3s mutation), so she can just walk away. Similar situations with the rest of the cast, because of that I felt like I really had to focus on 'hit and run'. Dishing out as much damage as possible within the first couple of seconds, then just going invisible and running if they didn't die. It worked fine but it's a much less aggressive playstyle than the rest of Assassins can perform.
Yup. If you have the DD or season pass you can play Pendles.
He is pretty fun. Love his design. But I'm. It a fan of the meter focused characters. In multi they just he destroyed and everyone jumps around like maniacs making it hard to hit anyone.
Hard to read this but I think you meant that you're not a fan of melee focused characters and they get destroyed because of jumping?
It can be a pain in the ass, but they can't jump high if they're slowed, and Pendles gets an extreme slow on his poison Kama attack (forget the name). That keeps characters with high jumps (like thorn and caldarius) pretty grounded. If a regular character jumps you can still hit them in the air, they don't jump high enough to evade the verticality of most melee hitboxes.
But as I say, you really need to focus on weakened characters with Pendles. Focus on instances where they've chosen to fight one of your allies, because they believe it's a 1 vs 1, or even a 2 vs 2, and then you hop in when they've over committed with an extreme slow on your first target. It becomes a 3 vs 2, and they've missevaluated the situation, they either retreat, or fight a losing battle, if they retreat, you benefit from 25% extra back damage... easy kills.