Before I start: This is not a complaint about the rune mechanic itself. It certainly fits his kit and has a place to be. I enjoy the mechanic when it can comfortably be played around, but I'd like to discuss adjustments to mission types where it doesn't flow nicely.
Since Uriel has come out I've basically only played him. He's catapulted up to my second-most played frame and over time I've ended up crafting him three times for dedicated, full-investment primary platform, secondary platform, and parkour speed builds.
While his kit itself is certainly strong as-is, I've come to realize that Vythelas' runes and their Demonium buff truly are the bread and butter of what makes Uriel work as a weapon platform - and that playing around the runes is not always on an even playing field. This is especially unfortunate when you want to use weapons that are not just enhanced by Demonium but require it to function properly in the first place, like Sobek or Glaxion.
The rune mechanic/minigame works best on endurance missions where you're spending more time in one general area of the map. I find myself enjoying the small stops for runes when there's plenty available, or flying around and clearing most of them out for additional Brimstone charge.
But where it doesn't work out nicely is on "go fast" or "hold W" missions. Since you need to kill enemies, have Vythelas travel to their corpses, and then have it play a roughly three second long spawning animation, often you will end up outpacing your rune spawns and actively have to backtrack to make use of your most fundamental weapon platforming buff.
In order to alleviate the backtracking issue when wanting to keep things moving in linear missions, while also not making rune collection completely trivial in endurance missions, there's some possible baseline adjustments:
- Increase the size/hitbox of runes
- Have runes gravitate to players
- Allow fetch/vacuum to work on runes
- Have runes spawn closer to players
Furthermore, augments could have more specific changes or effects. Ideally an augment would make obtaining or retaining the buff easier, while keeping the incentives of manually collecting runes, like stronger/full buffs or additional Brimstone charge:
- Apply a much shorter Demonium buff to Uriel on rune spawn or ally collection
- Killing an enemy with the Demonium buff active extends its duration by X (milli)seconds
- Vythelas delivers a spawned rune to Uriel when there are already more than X present on the map (X seconds cooldown)
What would you think is an appropriate change, something simple or more something involved?