Limbo again. What is wrong with Rift Surge.

o/

It´s a bit complicated. I hope readers can follow me.

What´s the sense behind the charge that goes to the next mob (rhetorical question) - You kill a rifted and surged mob while in the rift. The single charge goes over to a single mob that is not in the rift. Now to trigger the AOE banish effect of that surged enemy in the material plane you need to do a AOE banish (which is also already an AOE :clem:) in the material plane OR do AOE cata. Which makes the skill complete senseless from a rift plane mechanic point of view because i need to do way more steps that can be done with just casting cata or banish.

Ok, the other situation, you surge a rifted mob, banish it back to the material plane while in the rift, it will trigger the AOE banish of the skill, ok fine, you banished many mobs - now you can surge again then cast banish casts for even more surge effect AOE banish... the thing is - the more you do this the more the field of banish targets gets stretched out that increases micro management and energy consumption due to repeated surge and banish casts to absurd amounts. If i would want this i could just cata and be done with it with WAY less hassle for the setup of multiple casts but it needs to be viewed in context with the next point.

If i would want to keep enemies in the rift while in the rift i need to recast surge and banish very often while keep watching like a madman that i never run out of rifted AND surged enemies. It´s stressing and way to complicate because of that the charge goes over to the material plane. While playing you will often encounter that you killed all rifted and surged enemies and are surrounded by material plane surged mobs. And what will you do now? Right, cast Cata to clear the mess and make the whole setup completely senseless. You could also change to material plane and banish them which is the error in this skill. You shouldn´t need to do that.

I think the intention of the devs was to give him a mechanic that automatically banish in a small area while he keeps fighting in the rift without leaving his plane since he has no other way to pull single enemies into the rift while in the rift. It´s either AOE Cata or use this clunky surge. It would be the saving grace for this frame if it would worked way more fluidly. Sadly they seem to didn´t play test rift surge enough for that cause or fear him to be OP or i simply can´t grasp the intention of the devs of this skill beyond the damage multi because everything it does for the rift plane mechanic is uber clunky and senseless.

A fix would be fairly easy. Instead of one single charge going to the material plane, killing a charged enemy should pull every mob in a small (modded to a mild medium) area into the rift and give charges with the rest duration to all those enemies so the surge will run out for balance sake, that way you can easily control the skill without any hassle while still remaining the utility combo of the Cata-Surge-CataOff formation. You could do your thing while don´t disturb other players. They can easily join you in the rift fight every dodge you do. You still are able to use and increase the damage multi from the augment with recasting surge and banish many times. You are now able to fluidly pull enemies into the rift while you are in the rift without Banish, without Cata. Cons? You´re pretty OP and unkillable in this situation considering Stasis since you automatically banish and time stop while killing everything in your melee range. The balance factor: duration based, small area of influence. But that´s exactly i think this skill should operate in these situation. Banish is still needed to initialise the chain and to rift Allies. Cata is still needed for the time you really need those big AOE rift area.