Removing Stubborn Defense Tactic

jay_says_hi

I really try not to make negative posts, but I've really gotta get this one off my chest. Why hasn't stubborn been removed from the game yet? EVERYONE hates it. It is truly terrible game design. Penalizing players for avoiding taking damage is essentially the same as penalizing players for dealing damage. Which means stubborn is roughly equivalent to creating a node that says "Attacking this defender causes you to lose x-percent health with every hit. This ability cannot be bypassed." Punishing players for using the FUNDAMENTAL mechanics of the game is the exact opposite of what people find enjoyable. It should never be done, under any circumstances.

Creating tricky nodes that can be played around with skill is fine, and I truly enjoy facing new, well-designed challenges, but that's not at all what stubborn is. It makes every fight affected by it less enjoyable for the players. And what confuses me the most is why Kabam is so unwilling to admit mistakes when they make them. What is the possible reason for not saying "Hey guys, we've noticed that none of you are fans of the Stubborn defense tactic, so starting tomorrow it will no longer be available for Alliance War"? The game designers tried something new, and it didn't work. It's not a big deal, just fix it and we'll all move on.

But if for some reason removing the node altogether is too much to ask, then fine, please just update it so it operates in a way that doesn't take fundamental mechanics off the table.

• Dodging an attack grants the defender a 6-second indestructible buff that can be removed prematurely by blocking a hit.
• OR
• Current description.... This ability goes on cooldown for 10 seconds after the indestructible buff is removed.

There. Fixed. Now a player has incentive not to trigger a dodge or a miss, but the node can be played around. With either of those modifications it wouldn't define the entire narrative of every fight it affects. It would operate just like Flow, Dodge, etc. Defense tactics as a concept are great, but they should never break the fundamental mechanics of the game that many of us have taken years to master.

Am I alone in feeling this way? I honestly want to throw my hands up and quit alliance war because of this one terrible node, and it's really sucking the enjoyment out of the game for me right now.

Agent_X_zzz

My biggest problem with it is you are forced to take damage no matter what to remove the indestructible

Colinwhitworth69

Stubborn does add a challenge, but we all have to face it, so I guess I have no problem with keeping it.

Erocks

What I hate most about it are the node combinations.
Stubborn Man-Thing on Vigourous Assault Mini on Boss Island means that he's almost always unblockable so you HAVE to dex his attacks. He then goes Indestructible that you can only remove by taking a blocked hit or getting hit... oh wait, he's Unblockable!
So then you have to either wait out the Regen buff while doing no damage, or take a hit (this is high tier war btw, so you're pretty much dead if that happens). There are like 2 real counters - Warlock and BWCV.
It's a tough fight even with them – check Karatemike's 1st War vid of the season.

Edit: Spacing. I realize now that the return key is my friend.

Wakandas_Finest

Still would rather face stubborn than flow but that’s just me

jay_says_hi

What is the fight flow even supposed to be when going up against a Thing on mini-boss node 53? If you attempt to parry him even once you instantly lose due to Stunning Reflection and Stupefy. So let's walk it through.

Let's say you're skilled at intercepting enough to avoid triggering any dexterity for three full 5-hit combos. Now you need to bait Thing's special 1 to get rid of his rock stacks. Even if you successfully avoid his (often fully-unblockable) special attack without dexing, you're backing yourself into the corner by doing it. And as we all know, the closer you get to the back wall, the harder it is to time your dodges to avoid triggering dexterity. You will inevitably be forced to trigger a dexterity to dodge a special or one of his heavy attacks (which on their own have a considerable reach). Once you have done this, in the vast majority of cases, the fight is lost. There is no established skillset that allows you to eat a blocked hit, THEN get out of the way of the rest of a combo (or heavy) without dexing. It can be done if the AI chooses to hold its heavy charge, but that is fully out of the control of the player. So 9 out of 10 times, as soon as you remove his indestructible by eating a blocked hit, he regains it when you avoid THE REST of his hits (reminder: you cannot parry a single time on this node. So parrying to remove indestructible and then counter-attacking is not an option).

Now conventional wisdom suggests this fight might be easier if you brought a champion with access to slow (preferably with class advantage too), so you don't need to worry about baiting specials and will have more control over the pacing/spacing of the fight. But you would be incorrect. You are only able to gain power on node 53 when a damaging debuff is applied to the defender. Thus, Stealth Spider-Man, She-Hulk and Spidergwen are not viable options. None of them apply damaging debuffs, so the entire fight would be done at zero power. Considering Thing's health pool AND protection shielding when awakened, you would time out before you could get him down.

Am I missing something? I've been playing this game for more than four years and have never seen something so ridiculous. I just told my alliance I'm quitting war because it's obvious no one thought through how all these interactions were going to work when these nodes/defense tactics were released. I'm seeing tons of resource usage from my alliance and our opponents and we're not even in a highly competitive tier (we've intentionally dropped all the way to Gold 2 from Plat 4 because we all agreed war season rewards still aren't even close to worth it for the effort/hassle).

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Lyra What were the designers expecting players to do in this scenario? Is there a counter outside of Red Guardian who PLENTY of players obviously don't own yet? Are we just supposed to spend resources on revives and potions until we pull Red Guardian? Is the game team aware of how much people hate this truly terrible node? As a long-time player (and also as someone who has spent entirely too much money on this game over the years) I'm just looking for some acknowledgement from Kabam that your team understands how broken and not fun this is and how much attrition it's going to lead to.

slacker

Or add another way to remove it like hit them, dot damage, etc,...

pseudosane

yeah stubborn really sucks. stunning reflection thing is effing terrible with only few viable counters

KnightZero

Stupidest thing about Stubborn is punishing you for doing one of the most essential techniques which is dexing. And then the only way to remove the indestructible is to take damage. That's utter rubbish.
Lagacy's video where he died to Stark is a proper example of this. Yes he was boosted for rage which isn't a good choice, but if needed, you can play the fight without Parrying or taking blocked hits. But since he faced a Stubborn defender, he had to die. That was all. Unless using an invul boost, there was a zero percent chance he could survive just because he had to take a blocked hit. Which makes no sense.

danielmath

Erocks said:

What I hate most about it are the node combinations.
Stubborn Man-Thing on Vigourous Assault Mini on Boss Island means that he's almost always unblockable so you HAVE to dex his attacks. He then goes Indestructible that you can only remove by taking a blocked hit or getting hit... oh wait, he's Unblockable!
So then you have to either wait out the Regen buff while doing no damage, or take a hit (this is high tier war btw, so you're pretty much dead if that happens). There are like 2 real counters - Warlock and BWCV.
It's a tough fight even with them – check Karatemike's 1st War vid of the season.

Edit: Spacing. I realize now that the return key is my friend.

Warlock was an asinine matchup and not one anyone should ever use. It’s a VERY simple quake parry fight. Believe me, we yelled at mike for that one 😛

danielmath

jay_says_hi said:

What is the fight flow even supposed to be when going up against a Thing on mini-boss node 53? If you attempt to parry him even once you instantly lose due to Stunning Reflection and Stupefy. So let's walk it through.

Let's say you're skilled at intercepting enough to avoid triggering any dexterity for three full 5-hit combos. Now you need to bait Thing's special 1 to get rid of his rock stacks. Even if you successfully avoid his (often fully-unblockable) special attack without dexing, you're backing yourself into the corner by doing it. And as we all know, the closer you get to the back wall, the harder it is to time your dodges to avoid triggering dexterity. You will inevitably be forced to trigger a dexterity to dodge a special or one of his heavy attacks (which on their own have a considerable reach). Once you have done this, in the vast majority of cases, the fight is lost. There is no established skillset that allows you to eat a blocked hit, THEN get out of the way of the rest of a combo (or heavy) without dexing. It can be done if the AI chooses to hold its heavy charge, but that is fully out of the control of the player. So 9 out of 10 times, as soon as you remove his indestructible by eating a blocked hit, he regains it when you avoid THE REST of his hits (reminder: you cannot parry a single time on this node. So parrying to remove indestructible and then counter-attacking is not an option).

Now conventional wisdom suggests this fight might be easier if you brought a champion with access to slow (preferably with class advantage too), so you don't need to worry about baiting specials and will have more control over the pacing/spacing of the fight. But you would be incorrect. You are only able to gain power on node 53 when a damaging debuff is applied to the defender. Thus, Stealth Spider-Man, She-Hulk and Spidergwen are not viable options. None of them apply damaging debuffs, so the entire fight would be done at zero power. Considering Thing's health pool AND protection shielding when awakened, you would time out before you could get him down.

Am I missing something? I've been playing this game for more than four years and have never seen something so ridiculous. I just told my alliance I'm quitting war because it's obvious no one thought through how all these interactions were going to work when these nodes/defense tactics were released. I'm seeing tons of resource usage from my alliance and our opponents and we're not even in a highly competitive tier (we've intentionally dropped all the way to Gold 2 from Plat 4 because we all agreed war season rewards still aren't even close to worth it for the effort/hassle).

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Lyra What were the designers expecting players to do in this scenario? Is there a counter outside of Red Guardian who PLENTY of players obviously don't own yet? Are we just supposed to spend resources on revives and potions until we pull Red Guardian? Is the game team aware of how much people hate this truly terrible node? As a long-time player (and also as someone who has spent entirely too much money on this game over the years) I'm just looking for some acknowledgement from Kabam that your team understands how broken and not fun this is and how much attrition it's going to lead to.

Omega and understand the spacing, you can take him in under a minute

Unknown

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bdawg923

Remove ALL defense tactics

pseudosane

danielmath said:

jay_says_hi said:

What is the fight flow even supposed to be when going up against a Thing on mini-boss node 53? If you attempt to parry him even once you instantly lose due to Stunning Reflection and Stupefy. So let's walk it through.

Let's say you're skilled at intercepting enough to avoid triggering any dexterity for three full 5-hit combos. Now you need to bait Thing's special 1 to get rid of his rock stacks. Even if you successfully avoid his (often fully-unblockable) special attack without dexing, you're backing yourself into the corner by doing it. And as we all know, the closer you get to the back wall, the harder it is to time your dodges to avoid triggering dexterity. You will inevitably be forced to trigger a dexterity to dodge a special or one of his heavy attacks (which on their own have a considerable reach). Once you have done this, in the vast majority of cases, the fight is lost. There is no established skillset that allows you to eat a blocked hit, THEN get out of the way of the rest of a combo (or heavy) without dexing. It can be done if the AI chooses to hold its heavy charge, but that is fully out of the control of the player. So 9 out of 10 times, as soon as you remove his indestructible by eating a blocked hit, he regains it when you avoid THE REST of his hits (reminder: you cannot parry a single time on this node. So parrying to remove indestructible and then counter-attacking is not an option).

Now conventional wisdom suggests this fight might be easier if you brought a champion with access to slow (preferably with class advantage too), so you don't need to worry about baiting specials and will have more control over the pacing/spacing of the fight. But you would be incorrect. You are only able to gain power on node 53 when a damaging debuff is applied to the defender. Thus, Stealth Spider-Man, She-Hulk and Spidergwen are not viable options. None of them apply damaging debuffs, so the entire fight would be done at zero power. Considering Thing's health pool AND protection shielding when awakened, you would time out before you could get him down.

Am I missing something? I've been playing this game for more than four years and have never seen something so ridiculous. I just told my alliance I'm quitting war because it's obvious no one thought through how all these interactions were going to work when these nodes/defense tactics were released. I'm seeing tons of resource usage from my alliance and our opponents and we're not even in a highly competitive tier (we've intentionally dropped all the way to Gold 2 from Plat 4 because we all agreed war season rewards still aren't even close to worth it for the effort/hassle).

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Lyra What were the designers expecting players to do in this scenario? Is there a counter outside of Red Guardian who PLENTY of players obviously don't own yet? Are we just supposed to spend resources on revives and potions until we pull Red Guardian? Is the game team aware of how much people hate this truly terrible node? As a long-time player (and also as someone who has spent entirely too much money on this game over the years) I'm just looking for some acknowledgement from Kabam that your team understands how broken and not fun this is and how much attrition it's going to lead to.

Omega and understand the spacing, you can take him in under a minute

You are talking about hundreds of alliances facing the same champ on that node.
Omega with suicides is not what "everyone" can run. And understand the spacing also depends on whether he throws specials, whether he gets stingy. I personally use void. I have soloed the thing boss multiple times now with void. But every fight, every fight is totally different. Omega/ void requires a more cooperative AI. Having to block to take damage for stubborn is totally ****. One missed shallow evade, just one and you need to take block damage. Not fun.

jay_says_hi

@danielmath Yeah, obviously Omega is a beast who can deal with almost everything in the game. My issue isn't that he's literally unbeatable, it's that the mechanics prevent the fight from being reasonably managed by any significant number of champions. Omega, Red Guardian... maybe Sorceror Supreme in spite of the class disadvantage because of her regen on block? But there are 185 champions in the game now. That ratio of viable counters is entirely too low. Especially in the context of war where there are now so many complex node combinations that you're not always able to bring a hard counter for just one fight on boss island.

The mechanic of "take a hit to accomplish something" isn't an established game mechanic, and NO ONE wants it to be. Especially if, after taking that hit, you can't THEN dodge to safety to avoid taking four more on your block or eating a heavy, without risking triggering another dex and needing to repeat the entire process over again. Look at the Abyss Cyclops fight. They made the mechanic that you are REQUIRED to parry every other special 1, but they set it up so you will take no damage when doing this. Perfect example of testing skill with a challenge, but understanding the game enough to know that the game mechanics needed to be modified to implement that challenge effectively.

Lvernon15

jay_says_hi said:

@danielmath Yeah, obviously Omega is a beast who can deal with almost everything in the game. My issue isn't that he's literally unbeatable, it's that the mechanics prevent the fight from being reasonably managed by any significant number of champions. Omega, Red Guardian... maybe Sorceror Supreme in spite of the class disadvantage because of her regen on block? But there are 185 champions in the game now. That ratio of viable counters is entirely too low. Especially in the context of war where there are now so many complex node combinations that you're not always able to bring a hard counter for just one fight on boss island.

The mechanic of "take a hit to accomplish something" isn't an established game mechanic, and NO ONE wants it to be. Especially if, after taking that hit, you can't THEN dodge to safety to avoid taking four more on your block or eating a heavy, without risking triggering another dex and needing to repeat the entire process over again. Look at the Abyss Cyclops fight. They made the mechanic that you are REQUIRED to parry every other special 1, but they set it up so you will take no damage when doing this. Perfect example of testing skill with a challenge, but understanding the game enough to know that the game mechanics needed to be modified to implement that challenge effectively.

To be honest, a miniboss in aw should always be taken with the best option, you have 10 members who can all go to the fight, my issue with stubborn is that you’re forced to take damage, a good change would honestly be to massively buff the attacker tactic so the perfect block means you’re hardly taking damage, it would keep it challenging in a lot of places but would significantly widen the options for a lot of fights, path fights cause the most issues imo

danielmath

you also don't HAVE to finish every fight at 100%, and that Thing mini is basically the last fight. We had a KM there this past war, he might be even tougher

Player1994

stubborn and flow should be removed stubborn kills skill and wastes time on boss node a boss like thing with stubborn is taking a life time

also u should get hit hit on block pay2win where is the skill in getting hit

Unknown

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jay_says_hi

@Captain_Zan haha no worries, I had those in mind when I wrote my post. My analogy definitely wasn't the best, but that's why I was sure to add in the line "This ability cannot be bypassed" when I wrote it. The number of counters to thorns and spiked armor has steadily increased over the last couple years with the introduction of champs that utilize non-contact attacks. But when they were first introduced a lot of players were furious about them also, and I was definitely one of them. There's an inherent problem with introducing nodes that do not have a viable number of counters available to deal with them. If Kabam's long-term plan is to continue introducing champions that don't trigger buffs from dexterity (Red Guardian), or heal when you hit their block (Sorceror Supreme) then this post might look dumb a couple years from now when we have a ton of champions that aren't affected by Stubborn, but in the meantime expecting us to eat a bunch of blocked hits for performing required dodges is extremely frustrating and doesn't fit with the state of the game currently.

Yngwie

I got problems with the node that if you repeat the same attack twice, opponent will evade your next attack. And they gain Prowess. People in AW abuse this node with Korg. He's so OP on that node. So annoying

Lvernon15

Yngwie said:

I got problems with the node that if you repeat the same attack twice, opponent will evade your next attack. And they gain Prowess. People in AW abuse this node with Korg. He's so OP on that node. So annoying

A good omega can obliterate korg there, I’ve done that fight the past 6 times I’ve seen it, haven’t had a single attempt finishing below 75% including against r3 6* korgs, and there are plenty of other options like corvus havok doom and quake who can take korg on that node

Chovner

I'll never play AW again while these type of Defense Tactics keep popping up. They're not fun, and not worth the hassle/aggravation for the little rewards at the end of the season and mass use of items and units.
REMOVE DEFENSE TACTICS