Act 6 Chapter 2 The Champion Boss battle - The most Unfair and Disgusting battle of the game

Eb0ny-O-M4wEb0ny-O-M4w Member Posts: 14,025 ★★★★★
in General Discussion
Hi there.

I'm creating this thread in order to give my personal, and honest thoughts about this specific fight in story mode. Now that the possible best counter for it has been changed, it created a wall in the progression of a player, and I think it's time to once again, talk about this here.
I will be talking about the abilities and interactions on this fight, so everything here will just be facts, as writted on the abilities and based on my experience with the game so far in the last years.

Finishing the introduction, let's talk about what happens during this fight.

- - - - - -

UNSTOPPABLE

Let's start with the most noticeable and stressful feature of the fight, the unstoppable mechanic.
As a base ability, The Champion is able to become Unstoppable every 13 seconds, for a total time of 5 seconds. But due to the Power Stone, this ability gets buffed, and so he becomes unstoppable every 10 seconds, for a total time of 7 seconds (NOTICE: Math is probably not entirely correct. This was based on calculations and from what I was able to see in videos of the fight itself).
So what do we have is a champion going unstoppable every now and then, that only give the player a period of a total 3 seconds in order to attack and cause damage to him, filling his power in order to able to take down his last 10% HP as well. Is this really okay to you? My opinion here, and I'm sure the devs will likely agree somehow with me, is that no champion in the game should be allowed to go unstoppable so many times and during so much time during the battle. This creates a scenario where you could take advantage of this ability in order to "turn off potential counter-play from the opponent".



REGENERATION

In addition to being an almost untouchable opponent, The Champion is able to regenerate HP during the fight.
Players would think that items and money would solve the previous issue. Even if only being able to land less than a combo after every unstoppable, at least the opponent would lose HP, and eventually get defeated at some point.
Now what prevents this from happening? Well, this champion is actually able to heal more HP than the damage you can deal in the fight. So let's say that after a couple of tries, you are finally able to take him down to 90% HP. You spend a revive, spend items to heal, enter the fight. And even after a good and long fight, The Champion is somehow at 100% HP, making your effort meaningless here.
So even if you are able to deal some damage in the short period of time you have, you won't be able to outdamage his healing ability. This once again creates a scenario where you could take advantage of this ability in order to "turn off potential counter-play from the opponent".



IMMUNITY TO PETRIFY, HEAL BLOCK, AND FATE SEAL EFFECTS

You already have to deal with so much unstoppable, and now you need to deal with the regeneration as well. Your bet now is on a champion that is able to stop both of these abilities on him.
Once again, is useless here. The Champion is immune to Heal Block and Petrify effects, which basically means you won't be able to cancel the healing without directly reducing his ability accuracy. On top of that, Fate Seal effects won't work as well, so your Ghost Rider sp1 or sp3 is out of the question here as well.



NULLIFY ABILITIES - DIRECT DAMAGE

And now that you know that Fate Seal effects won't really work against him, you might be wondering how will nullify abilities affect him. Well, the good news is that he isn't resistent to them, and you can actually nullify his buffs. But you are not safe yet, since The Champion deals 10% of his attack as direct damage every a buff on him is staggered or nullified.
And when you finally think that you found a solution for the fight, you will need to deal with the fun and interactive damage that comes out of it.



BLOCK PENETRATION, AND UNBLOCKABLE

Apparently, all of the above mechanics weren't enought already. When you were about to rely on a basic mechanic, the game founds a way to screw you once again.
This Champion has +750 Armor and Block Penetration during the entire fight. This means that blocking an attack is letal, and might get you down in a single blocked hit.
But it doesn't end there! During the course of the fight, The Champion medium and light attacks become Unblockable as well. Add this to the recent block and parry timing problems, as well as intercepting issues that player's are facing, and you get another scenario where you aren't able to do anything.



FINAL 10% - INDESTRUCTIBLE

Let's imagine that somehow, despite all the previous obstacles mentioned, you are able to push The Champion to his last phase, and you are about to finish him to finally feel accomplished for your efforts.
During this last phase, you need to trigger the Dexterity mastery against The Champion's special attacks, for a grand total of 5 times. After that is done, you are able to deal damage and finish him off with a special attack.
But how exactly do you do that, when he gets unstoppable every single time? You, as the player, need to attack him in order to fill his power up so that he can trigger a special attack, and so you can try to get a dexterity out of it and get 1/5 of the job done. But with so much freaking unstoppable here and there, you only have a opening of 3 seconds to attack him, which isn't enough for him to get a special attack ready. On top of that, you need to get lucky to get the opening. Remember, you can't block or else you will get defeated, and you can't rely on intercepting since it's a broken mechanic nowadays, as well as not being 100% trustworthy.
So how exactly are we supposed to get his thing done 5 times, when you are already cornered in the first 10 seconds of the fight?


- - - - - -

I'm sure I missed other stuff as well, but I think I was able to pretty much mention what's more important here.

In my personal opinion, I think that The Champion is already one of the most powerful defender's in the game when placed on the final node of a quest. And after his introduction, you just keep adding him there alongside other nodes and abilities, which pretty much makes it tedious, boring, stressful, and not fun at all to fight against him unless you have 1 or 2 character's that can counter everything he has.

Having said all of this, I can only think of 3x possible solutions for this specific fight, and none of them is even at a safe spot to fight him:

- Symbiote Supreme : able to nullify and deny his buffs for the entire fight if played agressively, and cancel the regeneration. Still, he relies on nullying the buffs, which then he suffers direct damage from The Champion ability. But even with that downside, this is probably the best solution for this fight.

- Captain America (Infinity War) : able to nullify his unstoppable buff, and has a good block proficiency and damage mitigation when you aren't dealing with the unblockable stuff. Still he relies on blocking, which then he needs to deal with the block penetration for the entire fight, as well as taking caution to avoid the unblockable scenarios. He isn't able to deal with the regeneration as well, so you will have a pretty boring and long fight, as well as being agressive. Otherwise, The Champion will just heal more than the damage you can do to him.

- The Hood : just like symbiote supreme, he is able to stagger the buffs, and avoid the healing ability from activating. Still he takes damage from every buff staggered, and so you will likely die at some point. And contrary of Sym Supreme, The Hood lacks some damage, which makes the fight longer and boring. You will also need to rely on intercepting to find the openings, which aren't safe with the latest issues around it.

I will not be adding mystic champions who rely on Mystic Dispersion, since I think that mastery shouldn't be a decisive factor to take when designing a fight.

- - - - - - -

It has been a long post already, but I think it was neccessary to bring this up again.
Kabam already knows that player's aren't happy with the design of act 6 chapter 2, and now it needs to know that this fight is a bigger problem than gathed paths are. A fight with only 3 possible counters to it shouldn't had been created in the first place, as it creates a wall in the progress of a player, and possible be there forever until luck comes around to pull those specific champion's.

All I'll be asking here, is to do the right thing. If possible, go back and re-evaluate this fight once again, and nerf it to a point where it doesn't block the progression as much as it currently is.


Sincerely,
A Player of this Community
«134567

Comments

  • IKONIKON Member Posts: 1,356 ★★★★★
    will-o-wisp said:

    Hi there.

    I'm creating this thread in order to give my personal, and honest thoughts about this specific fight in story mode. Now that the possible best counter for it has been changed, it created a wall in the progression of a player, and I think it's time to once again, talk about this here.
    I will be talking about the abilities and interactions on this fight, so everything here will just be facts, as writted on the abilities and based on my experience with the game so far in the last years.

    Finishing the introduction, let's talk about what happens during this fight.

    - - - - - -

    UNSTOPPABLE

    Let's start with the most noticeable and stressful feature of the fight, the unstoppable mechanic.
    As a base ability, The Champion is able to become Unstoppable every 13 seconds, for a total time of 5 seconds. But due to the Power Stone, this ability gets buffed, and so he becomes unstoppable every 10 seconds, for a total time of 7 seconds (NOTICE: Math is probably not entirely correct. This was based on calculations and from what I was able to see in videos of the fight itself).
    So what do we have is a champion going unstoppable every now and then, that only give the player a period of a total 3 seconds in order to attack and cause damage to him, filling his power in order to able to take down his last 10% HP as well. Is this really okay to you? My opinion here, and I'm sure the devs will likely agree somehow with me, is that no champion in the game should be allowed to go unstoppable so many times and during so much time during the battle. This creates a scenario where you could take advantage of this ability in order to "turn off potential counter-play from the opponent".



    REGENERATION

    In addition to being an almost untouchable opponent, The Champion is able to regenerate HP during the fight.
    Players would think that items and money would solve the previous issue. Even if only being able to land less than a combo after every unstoppable, at least the opponent would lose HP, and eventually get defeated at some point.
    Now what prevents this from happening? Well, this champion is actually able to heal more HP than the damage you can deal in the fight. So let's say that after a couple of tries, you are finally able to take him down to 90% HP. You spend a revive, spend items to heal, enter the fight. And even after a good and long fight, The Champion is somehow at 100% HP, making your effort meaningless here.
    So even if you are able to deal some damage in the short period of time you have, you won't be able to outdamage his healing ability. This once again creates a scenario where you could take advantage of this ability in order to "turn off potential counter-play from the opponent".



    IMMUNITY TO PETRIFY, HEAL BLOCK, AND FATE SEAL EFFECTS

    You already have to deal with so much unstoppable, and now you need to deal with the regeneration as well. Your bet now is on a champion that is able to stop both of these abilities on him.
    Once again, is useless here. The Champion is immune to Heal Block and Petrify effects, which basically means you won't be able to cancel the healing without directly reducing his ability accuracy. On top of that, Fate Seal effects won't work as well, so your Ghost Rider sp1 or sp3 is out of the question here as well.



    NULLIFY ABILITIES - DIRECT DAMAGE

    And now that you know that Fate Seal effects won't really work against him, you might be wondering how will nullify abilities affect him. Well, the good news is that he isn't resistent to them, and you can actually nullify his buffs. But you are not safe yet, since The Champion deals 10% of his attack as direct damage every a buff on him is staggered or nullified.
    And when you finally think that you found a solution for the fight, you will need to deal with the fun and interactive damage that comes out of it.



    BLOCK PENETRATION, AND UNBLOCKABLE

    Apparently, all of the above mechanics weren't enought already. When you were about to rely on a basic mechanic, the game founds a way to screw you once again.
    This Champion has +750 Armor and Block Penetration during the entire fight. This means that blocking an attack is letal, and might get you down in a single blocked hit.
    But it doesn't end there! During the course of the fight, The Champion medium and light attacks become Unblockable as well. Add this to the recent block and parry timing problems, as well as intercepting issues that player's are facing, and you get another scenario where you aren't able to do anything.



    FINAL 10% - INDESTRUCTIBLE

    Let's imagine that somehow, despite all the previous obstacles mentioned, you are able to push The Champion to his last phase, and you are about to finish him to finally feel accomplished for your efforts.
    During this last phase, you need to trigger the Dexterity mastery against The Champion's special attacks, for a grand total of 5 times. After that is done, you are able to deal damage and finish him off with a special attack.
    But how exactly do you do that, when he gets unstoppable every single time? You, as the player, need to attack him in order to fill his power up so that he can trigger a special attack, and so you can try to get a dexterity out of it and get 1/5 of the job done. But with so much freaking unstoppable here and there, you only have a opening of 3 seconds to attack him, which isn't enough for him to get a special attack ready. On top of that, you need to get lucky to get the opening. Remember, you can't block or else you will get defeated, and you can't rely on intercepting since it's a broken mechanic nowadays, as well as not being 100% trustworthy.
    So how exactly are we supposed to get his thing done 5 times, when you are already cornered in the first 10 seconds of the fight?


    - - - - - -

    I'm sure I missed other stuff as well, but I think I was able to pretty much mention what's more important here.

    In my personal opinion, I think that The Champion is already one of the most powerful defender's in the game when placed on the final node of a quest. And after his introduction, you just keep adding him there alongside other nodes and abilities, which pretty much makes it tedious, boring, stressful, and not fun at all to fight against him unless you have 1 or 2 character's that can counter everything he has.

    Having said all of this, I can only think of 3x possible solutions for this specific fight, and none of them is even at a safe spot to fight him:

    - Symbiote Supreme : able to nullify and deny his buffs for the entire fight if played agressively, and cancel the regeneration. Still, he relies on nullying the buffs, which then he suffers direct damage from The Champion ability. But even with that downside, this is probably the best solution for this fight.

    - Captain America (Infinity War) : able to nullify his unstoppable buff, and has a good block proficiency and damage mitigation when you aren't dealing with the unblockable stuff. Still he relies on blocking, which then he needs to deal with the block penetration for the entire fight, as well as taking caution to avoid the unblockable scenarios. He isn't able to deal with the regeneration as well, so you will have a pretty boring and long fight, as well as being agressive. Otherwise, The Champion will just heal more than the damage you can do to him.

    - The Hood : just like symbiote supreme, he is able to stagger the buffs, and avoid the healing ability from activating. Still he takes damage from every buff staggered, and so you will likely die at some point. And contrary of Sym Supreme, The Hood lacks some damage, which makes the fight longer and boring. You will also need to rely on intercepting to find the openings, which aren't safe with the latest issues around it.

    I will not be adding mystic champions who rely on Mystic Dispersion, since I think that mastery shouldn't be a decisive factor to take when designing a fight.

    - - - - - - -

    It has been a long post already, but I think it was neccessary to bring this up again.
    Kabam already knows that player's aren't happy with the design of act 6 chapter 2, and now it needs to know that this fight is a bigger problem than gathed paths are. A fight with only 3 possible counters to it shouldn't had been created in the first place, as it creates a wall in the progress of a player, and possible be there forever until luck comes around to pull those specific champion's.

    All I'll be asking here, is to do the right thing. If possible, go back and re-evaluate this fight once again, and nerf it to a point where it doesn't block the progression as much as it currently is.


    Sincerely,
    A Player of this Community

    You're definitely overstating the healing abilities. His sig only allows him to regen what he has lost during the current fight, and his sp1 heal is pretty weak.

    Nullify damage only occurs in one phase of the fight, the 40-10 range I believe.

    I did this fight with Magik + MD my first run through, was a huge pain, but doable. The bigger problem imo is the linked nodes, not sure why a fight that a very significant portion of the community is already going to struggle with also needs no retreat added on top.

  • Eb0ny-O-M4wEb0ny-O-M4w Member Posts: 14,025 ★★★★★
    Thebgj said:

    I haven’t done 6.2 yet, but would AA work against him?

    It would work for ability accuracy reduction, but not for the heal block.
    Archangel relies on debuffs, which The Champion becomes immune to mid fight, as well as stun debuffs.
    Also he needs to block a lot in order to place such debuffs and convert it in to neurotoxins. You won't be able to block that much or avoid his unblockable attacks, or it's game over.

    So in theory, he has a chance to do the fight, but it's so much complicate to keep up with everything that I don't think he is even a decent counter to it. And I don't really know how will he out damage the healing when The Champion becomes immune to DoT and stun debuffs
  • Duo_KulioDuo_Kulio Member Posts: 183 ★★
    Great post.
    I agree I only lost resources by trying to beat Champion
  • Tman0971Tman0971 Member Posts: 354 ★★
    @will-o-wisp First let me say that I completely agree with your assessment and conclusion... BUT...

    We all said this when the Collector first came out in ACT 5.2 as I'm sure you remember. Nevertheless, we ponied up our items/units/cash and did it anyway for the sweet, sweet, promised rewards of being UNCOLLECTED! Yet here the Collector still sits to this day with no new effective counters after all this time (save for Spider Gwen?), no diminishing whatsoever in his abilities, awaiting those bold newbies to the game to encounter and suffer the same fate!

    So in my estimation, if we use the Collector fight as the measure for what historically has constituted an "unfair fight", and what results we got for all our cries of money grab this, BS that, no matter how reasoned and concise (which were of course summarily ignored), and we then adjust for meta "inflation" and the next level of elite status (Cavalier) and all that comes with it? I see no option but to conclude that the Champion fight in 6.2 is... "working as intended".
  • Tman0971Tman0971 Member Posts: 354 ★★

    That is true, and I remember it as well.
    But if we are going to compare The Collector fight and The Champion fight, the second one is way more difficult than the first one. At least against the Collector, any champion would work, and eventually the HP would just go down and down until it got K.O.
    But against The Champion that isn't the case. Only a specific number of champions, not even in the 2-digit numbers, work against him, and you aren't even given the option to take down a little HP in every fight since he eventually becomes completely immune to damage


    I don't disagree but like I said, adjust for meta inflation (read: **** gets harder, champs get better), and the new illustrious title that goes along with it, it just seems to me that the new Champion fight is right on par.
  • Xyresic_LemonXyresic_Lemon Member Posts: 125 ★
    I love and agree with this post 100%. I haven't done the fight yet, but from what I've seen it is completely ridiculous. One thing I believe you missed in this post is that Quake counters him fairly nicely- I may be incorrect on that, and I know that she isn't good for the last 10% phase, but for the rest of fight she's fantastic from what I've seen. I may be wrong.
  • LormifLormif Member Posts: 7,369 ★★★★★
    will-o-wisp said:

    Tman0971 said:

    @will-o-wisp First let me say that I completely agree with your assessment and conclusion... BUT...

    We all said this when the Collector first came out in ACT 5.2 as I'm sure you remember. Nevertheless, we ponied up our items/units/cash and did it anyway for the sweet, sweet, promised rewards of being UNCOLLECTED! Yet here the Collector still sits to this day with no new effective counters after all this time (save for Spider Gwen?), no diminishing whatsoever in his abilities, awaiting those bold newbies to the game to encounter and suffer the same fate!

    So in my estimation, if we use the Collector fight as the measure for what historically has constituted an "unfair fight", and what results we got for all our cries of money grab this, BS that, no matter how reasoned and concise (which were of course summarily ignored), and we then adjust for meta "inflation" and the next level of elite status (Cavalier) and all that comes with it? I see no option but to conclude that the Champion fight in 6.2 is... "working as intended".

    That is true, and I remember it as well.
    But if we are going to compare The Collector fight and The Champion fight, the second one is way more difficult than the first one. At least against the Collector, any champion would work, and eventually the HP would just go down and down until it got K.O.
    But against The Champion that isn't the case. Only a specific number of champions, not even in the 2-digit numbers, work against him, and you aren't even given the option to take down a little HP in every fight since he eventually becomes completely immune to damage
    except the champion will go down and down again, as someone stated you are overestimating his regen.
  • Eb0ny-O-M4wEb0ny-O-M4w Member Posts: 14,025 ★★★★★
    Lormif said:

    will-o-wisp said:

    Tman0971 said:

    @will-o-wisp First let me say that I completely agree with your assessment and conclusion... BUT...

    We all said this when the Collector first came out in ACT 5.2 as I'm sure you remember. Nevertheless, we ponied up our items/units/cash and did it anyway for the sweet, sweet, promised rewards of being UNCOLLECTED! Yet here the Collector still sits to this day with no new effective counters after all this time (save for Spider Gwen?), no diminishing whatsoever in his abilities, awaiting those bold newbies to the game to encounter and suffer the same fate!

    So in my estimation, if we use the Collector fight as the measure for what historically has constituted an "unfair fight", and what results we got for all our cries of money grab this, BS that, no matter how reasoned and concise (which were of course summarily ignored), and we then adjust for meta "inflation" and the next level of elite status (Cavalier) and all that comes with it? I see no option but to conclude that the Champion fight in 6.2 is... "working as intended".

    That is true, and I remember it as well.
    But if we are going to compare The Collector fight and The Champion fight, the second one is way more difficult than the first one. At least against the Collector, any champion would work, and eventually the HP would just go down and down until it got K.O.
    But against The Champion that isn't the case. Only a specific number of champions, not even in the 2-digit numbers, work against him, and you aren't even given the option to take down a little HP in every fight since he eventually becomes completely immune to damage
    except the champion will go down and down again, as someone stated you are overestimating his regen.
    You can choose to fight against him until he is about to regen, and then quit to avoid it. But from what I've seen and tested myself yesterday, he is able to heal more damage than what is applied to him during the fight. The example I gave about him going from 90% to 100% actually happened to me
  • LormifLormif Member Posts: 7,369 ★★★★★
    will-o-wisp said:

    Lormif said:

    will-o-wisp said:

    Tman0971 said:

    @will-o-wisp First let me say that I completely agree with your assessment and conclusion... BUT...

    We all said this when the Collector first came out in ACT 5.2 as I'm sure you remember. Nevertheless, we ponied up our items/units/cash and did it anyway for the sweet, sweet, promised rewards of being UNCOLLECTED! Yet here the Collector still sits to this day with no new effective counters after all this time (save for Spider Gwen?), no diminishing whatsoever in his abilities, awaiting those bold newbies to the game to encounter and suffer the same fate!

    So in my estimation, if we use the Collector fight as the measure for what historically has constituted an "unfair fight", and what results we got for all our cries of money grab this, BS that, no matter how reasoned and concise (which were of course summarily ignored), and we then adjust for meta "inflation" and the next level of elite status (Cavalier) and all that comes with it? I see no option but to conclude that the Champion fight in 6.2 is... "working as intended".

    That is true, and I remember it as well.
    But if we are going to compare The Collector fight and The Champion fight, the second one is way more difficult than the first one. At least against the Collector, any champion would work, and eventually the HP would just go down and down until it got K.O.
    But against The Champion that isn't the case. Only a specific number of champions, not even in the 2-digit numbers, work against him, and you aren't even given the option to take down a little HP in every fight since he eventually becomes completely immune to damage
    except the champion will go down and down again, as someone stated you are overestimating his regen.
    You can choose to fight against him until he is about to regen, and then quit to avoid it. But from what I've seen and tested myself yesterday, he is able to heal more damage than what is applied to him during the fight. The example I gave about him going from 90% to 100% actually happened to me
    You do realize this is not how his ability works right?

    He can only heal that once, even in the same fight:

    While attacking or defending on the final node in a Quest, for each active Fury Buff and while his Unstoppable Buff is active, he regenerates 1.7% of the damage taken this fight per second, excluding the amount already regenerated by this ability. This ability can regenerate up to a maximum of 5% Health per second.

    So not only is it per fight, but that that damage still cannot be regenerated again during the same fight.
  • FF10FF10 Member Posts: 214 ★★
    100% agree. The Champion is BS 😑
  • CainCain Member Posts: 559 ★★
    Can we stop quoting the very long post 😂
  • ChrisA19978ChrisA19978 Member Posts: 55 ★
    It’s a pay to win game and with this you just don’t need to pay but get lucky as well it seems. Sounds like the key is to get him down to 10% quit and go back in and he will not go past that 10% mark on regeneration as he stated the fight at 10%. Yeah I don’t see myself trying this one at all. Most games make it difficult to beat but not impossible. Guess it’s another reason I will not spend money on the game. I have seen some of the top players play him and take days to beat.
This discussion has been closed.