**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Options
Grading the IWD Boss Rush designs
If you're looking for a guide on how to complete the International Women's Day Boss Rush, this isn't that. This is my impressions of how the fights work, and how well each fight was designed. I did this once before when I had the opportunity to design a Boss Rush fight and I thought I would give it another whirl for this one, as first I had the time to play through and test the fights multiple times already (the last Boss Rush event I had less time to do it or think about it early on) and second I thought there was some interesting and perhaps unobvious things going on in these fights.
First, my overall impression of the Boss Rush overall. Overall, I think the *average* difficulty is slightly higher than previous Boss Rushes. I think the reason why some people have been saying that it is easier is because the individual fights themselves are more similar in difficulty than in previous Boss Rush events, so while the average difficulty is higher it doesn't have the same extreme fights seen in previous Boss Rushes (i.e. instakill Symbiote Supreme or the very punishing Rogue from the last BR). Also, I think a higher amount of the difficulty is due to the structure of the fights rather than the tactical skill required for the fights, meaning if you understand how the champions and nodes work the fights are a lot easier than if your knowledge of the game is lower. So veteran players who have wide rosters and a large knowledgebase of the game will probably find this Boss Rush easier, simply because the absolute hardest point in it is not as challenging as the absolute hardest point in previous Boss Rushes. But for average players, it is probably moderately harder.
And now, the individual fights.
Elsa Bloodstone by Starfighter0717
Elsa has Diss Track, Bleed Vulnerability, Life Transfer, Enhanced SP1, and Got a Light. For those not familiar, Diss Track basically requires you to have three debfufs on the target to deal damage, while Got a Light gives the attacker a chance to land an incinerate debuff.
I believe the thought process here was to combine Diss Track and Got a Light so that theoretically speaking (almost) any champ could do the fight as Diss Track requires three debuffs and Got a Light allows any champ to land incinerate debuffs. Life Transfer adds an element of aggressive fighting to the fight: since LT degenerates you, it rewards aggressive play and penalizes over cautious play, especially as if you don't have enough debuffs to land damage, Life Transfer won't heal you either. Bleed Vulnerability is the trick that also opens the door to a moderate amount of cheese. The trick is that Bleed Vulnerability will triple your damage allowing you to end the fight much faster (and also make LT's healing ridiculously high) but you need to be aware of Elsa's abilities. While bleeding Elsa inflicts a degen on non-mutant champions, and this degen also heal blocks them. Combine Elsa's degen with LT's degen and eliminate all healing and this is a tough combination to survive. So if you're going to take the bleed vulnerability path, you should probably bring a Mutant.
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, this creates an extremely obvious counter to this fight. You want a mutant that can inflict a lot of bleeds. One obvious option is Archangel, and this option was discovered pretty quickly by the playerbase. I'm not sure if this was specifically intended, but it was almost certainly generally intended that mutant bleeders were going to be the easy path through this fight. Apocalypse works, X-23 works, there are lots of mutant bleed champs out there. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better option than Archangel. This fight no question has the most obvious and most cruise control cheese option.
Overall, I think this is the easiest fight in the Boss Rush, assuming you're familiar with how the champs work and how the nodes work, and you have a decent sized roster. In terms of the probable target for the difficulty of the Boss Rush, I think this is somewhat too low. But as an easy appetizer to give lower players a taste of the rewards within the path, its fine.
Fight Complexity: 4
Skill Requirements: 3
Roster Requirements: 5
Cheesy Factor: Parmigiano-Reggiano: the King of Cheese
Overall Grade: B-
Sorcerer Supreme by Queen of Pawns
Sorcerer Supreme has Stun Immunity, Shatter, Arc Overload, Aspect of Evolution, and Under Pressure. Shatter causes you to take damage every time a buff is nullified off of you, and Under Pressure causes you to lose defensive ability accuracy and block proficiency when you dash back twice in a row within 1.2 seconds (think No Retreat from Act 6).
If I had to guess, I would guess the kernel of inspiration for this fight was something like this: if you can't evade SS's SP1 she'll murder you through your block, and if you can evade SS's SP1 she'll murder you by nullifying your dex. And it is a good idea: I believe a lot of players with less experience are having extreme difficulty with this fight. Pre-Uncollected players are less likely to have the tactical knowledge to deal with this combination of threats, or to think about outside the box responses.
The obvious counter to SS is Void: once Void builds up enough petrify he will greatly reduce SS's ability to throw specials and also reverse her Arc Overload healing. At that point the fight is under control and a relative cake walk. There are other counters: CapIW has a better than average block and with good play can block enough damage to stay viable (you have to try to not trigger Under Pressure for this to work) and can land petrify with the right team. And any high damage champ that can kill her quickly enough can work.
But there's also a skill component to the fight that only experienced players will likely know or stumble into that doesn't show up on paper. Sorcerer Supreme likes to throw heavies to break your block. If you hold block in her face she's very likely to throw a heavy and this creates an opening to counter her - which is important both because she's stun immune and also because she's less likely to throw SP1 and more likely to allow you to push her to SP2, which is vastly easier to evade (and also to evade without triggering Under Pressure). I figured that out half way through my first run, and it made this fight ten times easier on all successive runs.
Here's a wild unconventional option that works against Sorcerer Supreme that I don't see mentioned often: Sorcerer Supreme. I don't know if this is intentional, but let's look at the fight on paper. She's stun immune so intercepting is useful, and if you aren't an intercept god a champ with passive power gain would allow you to special-intercept which is much easier. You want something that can deal with a champ that lands heavy block damage. She has Arc Overload, so a champ that can nullify those buffs would also be helpful. A passive power gain champ with nullify and a good block ticks all the boxes for this fight, and that just screams Sorcerer Supreme. If you get into the right rhythm you can probably exit the fight with a full bar of health (in my one and only test I was basically at full health right up to the part where I stopped paying attention to her power bar and accidentally pushed her to SP3, when she was down to about 10%).
Overall, I think this is a challenging fight that will be relatively easy for veteran players with strong roster options, above average skill players with almost any roster, and very knowledgeable players. For newer or weaker players, this one will probably give them nightmares until they either figure out an appropriate counter or give up. But I think most players *can* do this fight with the right guidance, and for an event like this that's a pretty good design. You want to reward not just twitch reflexes, but also knowledge and determination. And you want to teach players that just because the first obvious attempts fail that doesn't mean the fight is impossible. Void kind of cheeses this fight, but you still have to play against SS for a while and other options are still effective.
Fight Complexity: 7
Skill Requirements: 8
Roster Requirements: 6
Cheesy Factor: Cheez Wiz: fun when you have it but not necessary when you don't
Overall Grade: A-
Black Widow by Lizer
Black Widow has Heavy Hitter, Enhanced Abilities, Stun Vulnerability, Energize 1, and Power Reserve. Basically, this is a "let's practice evading Black Widow's specials" fight until you forget she has heavy hitter.
This is an extremely straight forward fight. Bait specials, manage power, and don't get backed into the left wall. I think the bottom line on this fight is that it tries to lull you into a false sense of easy, but it does have two lurking gotchas. The first is Heavy Hitter, where you cannot counter her heavies or even punish them too quickly or you'll run into her unstoppable. If you don't manage the AI well, she could back you into the left wall and then the fight becomes somewhat harder. The second is that Stun Vulnerability might be there to bait you into trying to Parry-stun and immediately counter, forgetting that Black Widow has defensive ability accuracy reduction, and that includes parry stun. You could land a parry and try to immediately attack only to discover she isn't stunned and then you take a combo to the face.
Well, there's a third lurking gotcha: once in a blue moon BW will evade. I had some runs where she did that a lot, and some where she didn't evade at all, because RNG. Really, the biggest threat in this fight isn't Black Widow, its your own muscle memory. If you can handle both Heavy Hitter and playing the fight as if she's mostly stun immune while keeping the fight in the middle of the screen, this fight is no problem. But for less experienced players, trying to keep track of all of this while Black Widow throws specials every two seconds could be more than they are used to dealing with.
Honestly anything can do this fight, although anything with power control makes the fight less crazy. Also, after taking down Sorcerer Supreme with Sorcerer Supreme, SS went two for one by bringing down BW, because boy does BW like to proc buffs. Nullify champs should do well here, and this might be the place to whip out that Spider Ham because this should be a power sting bonanza.
Overall, this is a simple fight, but one where carelessness gets punished big time. I found it the least memorable of the fights, except for that one time where BW decided to move the decimal place on her chance to evade. Which makes me think replacing BW with Nightcrawler would have been more interesting. More lethal, but more challenging. Maybe Lizer isn't that cruel. There's no real way to cheese this fight that I'm aware of, unless you count power locking BW to be cheesing the fight. And I don't.
Fight Complexity: 3
Skill Requirements: 5
Roster Requirements: 2
Cheesy Factor: Velveeta: there might be cheese there, depending on your definition of cheese.
Overall Grade: B
Jubilee by Dragon
Jubliee has Conflictor, Feat of Energy, Rich get Richer, Minor Aspect of Death, and Disarray. Conflictor is like Masochism except it gives the defender energy instead of health. Feat of Energy gives the defender a power gain buff when the attacker reaches one bar of power. Rich get Richer gives whichever champ has more unique buffs 5% of a bar of power per second. Disarray gives both champs a random effect whenever a special is used. Which will probably be power gain. Or unstoppable.
Dragon likes Jubliee. Also, she hates you. The design is pretty obvious. Dragon likes Jubliee's special attacks, and would really like you to see them also. Especially special three, which is very pretty and also kills you instantly.
Actually, this fight is not as hard as it seems. Jubliee seems pretty aggressive in this fight and I never had a problem getting her to throw specials. Of course, you can always get unlucky, but it wasn't a problem for me. You do have to remember what her attacks look like, as she is a new champ. I got finger-shot to the face in several runs where I dashed in just a little too quickly.
There is a similarity to Black Widow in that in both fights the defender gets a lot of power and throws a lot of specials, and getting tagged by any one of them is going to ruin your day. Jubliee cranks up the knob by adding Disarray. I actually didn't mind Disarray; I felt like it added a dimension to the fight that the Black Widow fight was lacking: instead of just being both sides throwing specials constantly I was thinking more about if and when to throw a special, for example to keep a bad effect on Jubliee or redeal a better one to myself. But you do have to be careful with Disarray, because RNG is a harsh mistress and some effects like Unstoppable or Power Gain are very annoying when they pop up suddenly.
Power control is the best option in this fight. Magik works well, but anything that can keep Jubliee from throwing specials basically takes most of her threat away, removes the unpredictable danger of Disarray, and prevents her from getting to insta-death SP3. Interestingly, Symbiote Supreme also works very well in this fight: SS wrecks Jubliee because of all the buffs flying around in this fight and he eliminates 95% of the danger of Disarray. Otherwise, manage Jubliee's power gain, and keep a special in reserve in case Disarray goes against you.
Overall, I liked this fight. It was a toss up between Jubliee and Sorcerer Supreme in terms of me wanting to try more and more options for the fight. I wouldn't say this fight had an obvious cheese option, but it is certainly the case that some options are a lot better than others. I also don't think it is necessarily the best design on paper, but fun still counts for something and I had fun fighting this fight.
Fight Complexity: 7
Skill Requirements: 6
Roster Requirements: 4
Cheesy Factor: Gorgonzola: definitely a matter of taste.
Overall Grade: A
Tigra by Cat Murdock
Tigra has PULL!, Power Shield, Unblockable (specials), Combo Party, and Psychic Thorns. PULL causes projectile attacks to deal double damage while non-projectile attacks deal one quarter damage. Psychic Thorns causes contact attacks to reflect damage to the attacker while non-contact attacks heal the attacker much like life transfer. Combo Party gives you cruelty buffs for every ten hits on your combo meter, but causes you to lose those buffs and take damage when you lose combo.
Power Shield, PULL!, and Psychic Thorns combine to basically say that ranged special attacks hit really hard and heal you, everything else does basically no damage and hurt you. Unblockable and Combo Party combine with Tigra's intrinsically tricky special attacks to reward players who can consistently evade Tigra's specials and punish players who slip up. This is part three of the Keel You With Specialz series of Black Widow, Jubliee, and now Tigra.
For me Tigra seemed less intricate and more brute force than Jubliee. It comes down to being able to maintain proper spacing to evade Tigra's specials, and/or kill her as fast as possible so you don't have to face many of them. I saw a lot of people using Torch on this fight, and he worked well for me also, just because he kills quickly. Magik did not work well, because she doesn't have projectile attacks to counter Psychic Thorns. Hyperion of all things worked well simply because he could just stand back, passively power gain to SP1, and get a gigantic heal from his SP1 attack. Ditto Sorcerer Supreme, although she was slower for me than Hype. So from what I saw, the two main options here are something with both power control and projectile attacks - Dormammu for example - or something with just a gigaton of ranged/projectile attacks.
If there's a way to cheese this fight, I don't know what it is. I haven't had a ton of time to test it, but it seems to me a lot of the power control options aren't projectile attacks, so you still have to fight Tigra or Psychic Thorns will overwhelm you.
Fight Complexity: 6
Skill Requirements: 9
Roster Requirements: 4
Cheesy Factor: Unpasteurized Camembert: Kinda funky, and might kill you.
Overall Grade: A-
Storm X by Katy Candy
Storm X has Micro-reflect, Enhanced SP1, Long Distance Relationship, Performance Anxiety, and Superior Specials. Micro-reflect causes you to take damage back whenever an attack glances. Long Distance Relationship gives you weakness debuffs when you stand close. Performance Anxiety causes you to get a glancing debuff if you use another special within 15 seconds of another special. And superior specials gives the defender a prowess passive (doubling special attack damage).
I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate this design. On paper, there's some good ideas there. You have micro-reflect which synergizes with Storm X who has an intrinsic ability to glance. And you have a way to turn off glance, with power drain or power lock. And you have a way in theory to heal back glancing damage with Willpower + Weakness. That forms the basis of a good fight design.
On the other hand, as this was the last fight on the map, it is also a fight where you can just throw your whole team at it, specifically because it is the last fight on the map. The tension of the fight would have been much higher had this been in, say, Black Widow's spot where you can't just sacrifice everything to brute force the fight. For me, something like Torch was fine. I also found Hyperion to be great because of his passive power gain: you can't glance SP3 and he could just keep winding up and throwing it without taking reflect damage.
In fact, I have an admission to make: I completely misremembered Storm X's passive ability. I thought knock down *switched* passives but it only turns the other one on. I was so focused on managing the fight I didn't notice that glancing wasn't turning off after a knockdown, so for the first five run I was actually making things deliberately worse by knocking her down to try to turn off glance. I only realized my error on run number six. Which kind of makes me wonder how much influence the micro-reflect was having, as even doing it totally wrong I was still able to salvage those fights.
Overall I'm going to say this is a good design that is underappreciated by virtue of being in the wrong place. It has a very obvious easy path (if you remember to read StormX's abilities) in using any power lock/power drain champion simultaneously eliminates her dangerous specials and also turns off glancing. But otherwise, played well you can do this fight with any champion if you manage willpower healing well. I honestly have no idea if there's a way to cheese this fight, because I never had to. But if the event is extremely difficult for a player, they might limp into this fight with a battered or dead team, and then optimal choices might become important. However, I haven't spent enough time on this one fight to state what that is, because everything I threw at it more or less worked, with more or less effort.
Fight Complexity: 6
Skill Requirements: 7
Roster Requirements: 4
Cheesy Factor: Charcuterie. Cheese optional but enjoyable.
Overall Grade: B+
First, my overall impression of the Boss Rush overall. Overall, I think the *average* difficulty is slightly higher than previous Boss Rushes. I think the reason why some people have been saying that it is easier is because the individual fights themselves are more similar in difficulty than in previous Boss Rush events, so while the average difficulty is higher it doesn't have the same extreme fights seen in previous Boss Rushes (i.e. instakill Symbiote Supreme or the very punishing Rogue from the last BR). Also, I think a higher amount of the difficulty is due to the structure of the fights rather than the tactical skill required for the fights, meaning if you understand how the champions and nodes work the fights are a lot easier than if your knowledge of the game is lower. So veteran players who have wide rosters and a large knowledgebase of the game will probably find this Boss Rush easier, simply because the absolute hardest point in it is not as challenging as the absolute hardest point in previous Boss Rushes. But for average players, it is probably moderately harder.
And now, the individual fights.
Elsa Bloodstone by Starfighter0717
Elsa has Diss Track, Bleed Vulnerability, Life Transfer, Enhanced SP1, and Got a Light. For those not familiar, Diss Track basically requires you to have three debfufs on the target to deal damage, while Got a Light gives the attacker a chance to land an incinerate debuff.
I believe the thought process here was to combine Diss Track and Got a Light so that theoretically speaking (almost) any champ could do the fight as Diss Track requires three debuffs and Got a Light allows any champ to land incinerate debuffs. Life Transfer adds an element of aggressive fighting to the fight: since LT degenerates you, it rewards aggressive play and penalizes over cautious play, especially as if you don't have enough debuffs to land damage, Life Transfer won't heal you either. Bleed Vulnerability is the trick that also opens the door to a moderate amount of cheese. The trick is that Bleed Vulnerability will triple your damage allowing you to end the fight much faster (and also make LT's healing ridiculously high) but you need to be aware of Elsa's abilities. While bleeding Elsa inflicts a degen on non-mutant champions, and this degen also heal blocks them. Combine Elsa's degen with LT's degen and eliminate all healing and this is a tough combination to survive. So if you're going to take the bleed vulnerability path, you should probably bring a Mutant.
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, this creates an extremely obvious counter to this fight. You want a mutant that can inflict a lot of bleeds. One obvious option is Archangel, and this option was discovered pretty quickly by the playerbase. I'm not sure if this was specifically intended, but it was almost certainly generally intended that mutant bleeders were going to be the easy path through this fight. Apocalypse works, X-23 works, there are lots of mutant bleed champs out there. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better option than Archangel. This fight no question has the most obvious and most cruise control cheese option.
Overall, I think this is the easiest fight in the Boss Rush, assuming you're familiar with how the champs work and how the nodes work, and you have a decent sized roster. In terms of the probable target for the difficulty of the Boss Rush, I think this is somewhat too low. But as an easy appetizer to give lower players a taste of the rewards within the path, its fine.
Fight Complexity: 4
Skill Requirements: 3
Roster Requirements: 5
Cheesy Factor: Parmigiano-Reggiano: the King of Cheese
Overall Grade: B-
Sorcerer Supreme by Queen of Pawns
Sorcerer Supreme has Stun Immunity, Shatter, Arc Overload, Aspect of Evolution, and Under Pressure. Shatter causes you to take damage every time a buff is nullified off of you, and Under Pressure causes you to lose defensive ability accuracy and block proficiency when you dash back twice in a row within 1.2 seconds (think No Retreat from Act 6).
If I had to guess, I would guess the kernel of inspiration for this fight was something like this: if you can't evade SS's SP1 she'll murder you through your block, and if you can evade SS's SP1 she'll murder you by nullifying your dex. And it is a good idea: I believe a lot of players with less experience are having extreme difficulty with this fight. Pre-Uncollected players are less likely to have the tactical knowledge to deal with this combination of threats, or to think about outside the box responses.
The obvious counter to SS is Void: once Void builds up enough petrify he will greatly reduce SS's ability to throw specials and also reverse her Arc Overload healing. At that point the fight is under control and a relative cake walk. There are other counters: CapIW has a better than average block and with good play can block enough damage to stay viable (you have to try to not trigger Under Pressure for this to work) and can land petrify with the right team. And any high damage champ that can kill her quickly enough can work.
But there's also a skill component to the fight that only experienced players will likely know or stumble into that doesn't show up on paper. Sorcerer Supreme likes to throw heavies to break your block. If you hold block in her face she's very likely to throw a heavy and this creates an opening to counter her - which is important both because she's stun immune and also because she's less likely to throw SP1 and more likely to allow you to push her to SP2, which is vastly easier to evade (and also to evade without triggering Under Pressure). I figured that out half way through my first run, and it made this fight ten times easier on all successive runs.
Here's a wild unconventional option that works against Sorcerer Supreme that I don't see mentioned often: Sorcerer Supreme. I don't know if this is intentional, but let's look at the fight on paper. She's stun immune so intercepting is useful, and if you aren't an intercept god a champ with passive power gain would allow you to special-intercept which is much easier. You want something that can deal with a champ that lands heavy block damage. She has Arc Overload, so a champ that can nullify those buffs would also be helpful. A passive power gain champ with nullify and a good block ticks all the boxes for this fight, and that just screams Sorcerer Supreme. If you get into the right rhythm you can probably exit the fight with a full bar of health (in my one and only test I was basically at full health right up to the part where I stopped paying attention to her power bar and accidentally pushed her to SP3, when she was down to about 10%).
Overall, I think this is a challenging fight that will be relatively easy for veteran players with strong roster options, above average skill players with almost any roster, and very knowledgeable players. For newer or weaker players, this one will probably give them nightmares until they either figure out an appropriate counter or give up. But I think most players *can* do this fight with the right guidance, and for an event like this that's a pretty good design. You want to reward not just twitch reflexes, but also knowledge and determination. And you want to teach players that just because the first obvious attempts fail that doesn't mean the fight is impossible. Void kind of cheeses this fight, but you still have to play against SS for a while and other options are still effective.
Fight Complexity: 7
Skill Requirements: 8
Roster Requirements: 6
Cheesy Factor: Cheez Wiz: fun when you have it but not necessary when you don't
Overall Grade: A-
Black Widow by Lizer
Black Widow has Heavy Hitter, Enhanced Abilities, Stun Vulnerability, Energize 1, and Power Reserve. Basically, this is a "let's practice evading Black Widow's specials" fight until you forget she has heavy hitter.
This is an extremely straight forward fight. Bait specials, manage power, and don't get backed into the left wall. I think the bottom line on this fight is that it tries to lull you into a false sense of easy, but it does have two lurking gotchas. The first is Heavy Hitter, where you cannot counter her heavies or even punish them too quickly or you'll run into her unstoppable. If you don't manage the AI well, she could back you into the left wall and then the fight becomes somewhat harder. The second is that Stun Vulnerability might be there to bait you into trying to Parry-stun and immediately counter, forgetting that Black Widow has defensive ability accuracy reduction, and that includes parry stun. You could land a parry and try to immediately attack only to discover she isn't stunned and then you take a combo to the face.
Well, there's a third lurking gotcha: once in a blue moon BW will evade. I had some runs where she did that a lot, and some where she didn't evade at all, because RNG. Really, the biggest threat in this fight isn't Black Widow, its your own muscle memory. If you can handle both Heavy Hitter and playing the fight as if she's mostly stun immune while keeping the fight in the middle of the screen, this fight is no problem. But for less experienced players, trying to keep track of all of this while Black Widow throws specials every two seconds could be more than they are used to dealing with.
Honestly anything can do this fight, although anything with power control makes the fight less crazy. Also, after taking down Sorcerer Supreme with Sorcerer Supreme, SS went two for one by bringing down BW, because boy does BW like to proc buffs. Nullify champs should do well here, and this might be the place to whip out that Spider Ham because this should be a power sting bonanza.
Overall, this is a simple fight, but one where carelessness gets punished big time. I found it the least memorable of the fights, except for that one time where BW decided to move the decimal place on her chance to evade. Which makes me think replacing BW with Nightcrawler would have been more interesting. More lethal, but more challenging. Maybe Lizer isn't that cruel. There's no real way to cheese this fight that I'm aware of, unless you count power locking BW to be cheesing the fight. And I don't.
Fight Complexity: 3
Skill Requirements: 5
Roster Requirements: 2
Cheesy Factor: Velveeta: there might be cheese there, depending on your definition of cheese.
Overall Grade: B
Jubilee by Dragon
Jubliee has Conflictor, Feat of Energy, Rich get Richer, Minor Aspect of Death, and Disarray. Conflictor is like Masochism except it gives the defender energy instead of health. Feat of Energy gives the defender a power gain buff when the attacker reaches one bar of power. Rich get Richer gives whichever champ has more unique buffs 5% of a bar of power per second. Disarray gives both champs a random effect whenever a special is used. Which will probably be power gain. Or unstoppable.
Dragon likes Jubliee. Also, she hates you. The design is pretty obvious. Dragon likes Jubliee's special attacks, and would really like you to see them also. Especially special three, which is very pretty and also kills you instantly.
Actually, this fight is not as hard as it seems. Jubliee seems pretty aggressive in this fight and I never had a problem getting her to throw specials. Of course, you can always get unlucky, but it wasn't a problem for me. You do have to remember what her attacks look like, as she is a new champ. I got finger-shot to the face in several runs where I dashed in just a little too quickly.
There is a similarity to Black Widow in that in both fights the defender gets a lot of power and throws a lot of specials, and getting tagged by any one of them is going to ruin your day. Jubliee cranks up the knob by adding Disarray. I actually didn't mind Disarray; I felt like it added a dimension to the fight that the Black Widow fight was lacking: instead of just being both sides throwing specials constantly I was thinking more about if and when to throw a special, for example to keep a bad effect on Jubliee or redeal a better one to myself. But you do have to be careful with Disarray, because RNG is a harsh mistress and some effects like Unstoppable or Power Gain are very annoying when they pop up suddenly.
Power control is the best option in this fight. Magik works well, but anything that can keep Jubliee from throwing specials basically takes most of her threat away, removes the unpredictable danger of Disarray, and prevents her from getting to insta-death SP3. Interestingly, Symbiote Supreme also works very well in this fight: SS wrecks Jubliee because of all the buffs flying around in this fight and he eliminates 95% of the danger of Disarray. Otherwise, manage Jubliee's power gain, and keep a special in reserve in case Disarray goes against you.
Overall, I liked this fight. It was a toss up between Jubliee and Sorcerer Supreme in terms of me wanting to try more and more options for the fight. I wouldn't say this fight had an obvious cheese option, but it is certainly the case that some options are a lot better than others. I also don't think it is necessarily the best design on paper, but fun still counts for something and I had fun fighting this fight.
Fight Complexity: 7
Skill Requirements: 6
Roster Requirements: 4
Cheesy Factor: Gorgonzola: definitely a matter of taste.
Overall Grade: A
Tigra by Cat Murdock
Tigra has PULL!, Power Shield, Unblockable (specials), Combo Party, and Psychic Thorns. PULL causes projectile attacks to deal double damage while non-projectile attacks deal one quarter damage. Psychic Thorns causes contact attacks to reflect damage to the attacker while non-contact attacks heal the attacker much like life transfer. Combo Party gives you cruelty buffs for every ten hits on your combo meter, but causes you to lose those buffs and take damage when you lose combo.
Power Shield, PULL!, and Psychic Thorns combine to basically say that ranged special attacks hit really hard and heal you, everything else does basically no damage and hurt you. Unblockable and Combo Party combine with Tigra's intrinsically tricky special attacks to reward players who can consistently evade Tigra's specials and punish players who slip up. This is part three of the Keel You With Specialz series of Black Widow, Jubliee, and now Tigra.
For me Tigra seemed less intricate and more brute force than Jubliee. It comes down to being able to maintain proper spacing to evade Tigra's specials, and/or kill her as fast as possible so you don't have to face many of them. I saw a lot of people using Torch on this fight, and he worked well for me also, just because he kills quickly. Magik did not work well, because she doesn't have projectile attacks to counter Psychic Thorns. Hyperion of all things worked well simply because he could just stand back, passively power gain to SP1, and get a gigantic heal from his SP1 attack. Ditto Sorcerer Supreme, although she was slower for me than Hype. So from what I saw, the two main options here are something with both power control and projectile attacks - Dormammu for example - or something with just a gigaton of ranged/projectile attacks.
If there's a way to cheese this fight, I don't know what it is. I haven't had a ton of time to test it, but it seems to me a lot of the power control options aren't projectile attacks, so you still have to fight Tigra or Psychic Thorns will overwhelm you.
Fight Complexity: 6
Skill Requirements: 9
Roster Requirements: 4
Cheesy Factor: Unpasteurized Camembert: Kinda funky, and might kill you.
Overall Grade: A-
Storm X by Katy Candy
Storm X has Micro-reflect, Enhanced SP1, Long Distance Relationship, Performance Anxiety, and Superior Specials. Micro-reflect causes you to take damage back whenever an attack glances. Long Distance Relationship gives you weakness debuffs when you stand close. Performance Anxiety causes you to get a glancing debuff if you use another special within 15 seconds of another special. And superior specials gives the defender a prowess passive (doubling special attack damage).
I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate this design. On paper, there's some good ideas there. You have micro-reflect which synergizes with Storm X who has an intrinsic ability to glance. And you have a way to turn off glance, with power drain or power lock. And you have a way in theory to heal back glancing damage with Willpower + Weakness. That forms the basis of a good fight design.
On the other hand, as this was the last fight on the map, it is also a fight where you can just throw your whole team at it, specifically because it is the last fight on the map. The tension of the fight would have been much higher had this been in, say, Black Widow's spot where you can't just sacrifice everything to brute force the fight. For me, something like Torch was fine. I also found Hyperion to be great because of his passive power gain: you can't glance SP3 and he could just keep winding up and throwing it without taking reflect damage.
In fact, I have an admission to make: I completely misremembered Storm X's passive ability. I thought knock down *switched* passives but it only turns the other one on. I was so focused on managing the fight I didn't notice that glancing wasn't turning off after a knockdown, so for the first five run I was actually making things deliberately worse by knocking her down to try to turn off glance. I only realized my error on run number six. Which kind of makes me wonder how much influence the micro-reflect was having, as even doing it totally wrong I was still able to salvage those fights.
Overall I'm going to say this is a good design that is underappreciated by virtue of being in the wrong place. It has a very obvious easy path (if you remember to read StormX's abilities) in using any power lock/power drain champion simultaneously eliminates her dangerous specials and also turns off glancing. But otherwise, played well you can do this fight with any champion if you manage willpower healing well. I honestly have no idea if there's a way to cheese this fight, because I never had to. But if the event is extremely difficult for a player, they might limp into this fight with a battered or dead team, and then optimal choices might become important. However, I haven't spent enough time on this one fight to state what that is, because everything I threw at it more or less worked, with more or less effort.
Fight Complexity: 6
Skill Requirements: 7
Roster Requirements: 4
Cheesy Factor: Charcuterie. Cheese optional but enjoyable.
Overall Grade: B+
15
Comments
Overall, I found the 2021 IWD Boss Rush to be enjoyable. I struggled at first, and then as I got into the swing of it the fights became more interesting and enjoyable overall, and each successive run got faster and I found myself trying out different things just for the heck of it. I think I did nine or ten runs, plus a lot of intermediate testing. I actually did more exploring of the fights than the previous Boss Rush, although that's no knock on prior Boss Rush designers. I think veteran high tier players are mostly going to walk through this, but for its intended difficulty target - probably high UC to low/medium Cav players - the difficulty is reasonable and will probably challenge the gaps in players' knowledge and skill. It isn't as easy as it looks to make fights like this, and it is obvious the designers put significant thought into what they were trying to do. My overall grades are just one person's opinion, and shouldn't detract from their efforts to create content for the playerbase to enjoy.
There was no "pitchfork fight" in this Boss Rush, Sorcerer Supreme notwithstanding. All of the fights were doable at similar, although certainly not identical difficulty. The one genuinely easy fight was Elsa, and she at least took some thought to find easy mode (or copying everyone else, of course). Black Widow was like a softer Rogue, and Tigra and Sorcerer Supreme targeted moderate, not extreme skill levels.
During testing I was using Sorcerer Supreme to bring down Sorcerer Supreme when I had the thought that I wonder if the entire thing was doable using only the champions actually in the Boss Rush. In other words, could you pick five of the six and run the Boss Rush with those five? And maybe for bonus points, whichever five you choose, could you do those fights with the twin attacker? If I have time, I may try that at some point. For those bemoaning International Womens Day being celebrated by mobile game players beating up Marvel female characters, here's your chance to do it right.
Thanks to the designers, Starfighter, Queen of Pawns, Lizer, Dragon, Cat Murdock, and Katy Candy for their efforts to make an interesting and challenging Boss Rush event.
However, if you disagree then I encourage you to do your own review of the Boss Rush fights, and propose changes that would increase the difficulty to what you feel would be appropriate for the content. There are a lot of very strong very not lazy players on the forums who could judge those ideas and give you feedback on your opinion.
His sp2 counts as a projectile so using it heals you from 1-100 even when you don't have any kinetic charges or the heavy fury
Most of these fights have been designed with difficulty elements and "counter-elements" - parts of the design intended to make the fight easier under certain circumstances. It is a tough thing to make that kind of fight in a way that the "easy path" is not too easy, but also not so obscure that most people never find it or can't make use of it.
I'm picturing someone who just completed 6.1 and is now Cavalier. And for this person, 6.1 itself was moderately difficult - they didn't just waltz through it, but they didn't spend a ton of units doing it either. For this player at this moment in time 6.1 is a moderately difficult piece of content to complete once. For such a person, I think the Boss Rush would be moderately difficult, and possibly something that if they wanted to do it without spending might need more than one try at it, but within a couple tries would probably successfully complete it.
That's what I mean when I say that the content seems roughly geared for a very strong UC player (someone who could do 6.1 with an underpowered roster but just hasn't gotten around to it yet) to a early-mid Cavalier player (someone who is working on 6.2 through 6.4 and for whom that content is difficult enough they are progressing slowly through it).
Anybody higher than that or intrinsically stronger than that would probably have an easy time.
So a designer would have a difficult time showcasing a favorite defender (which is the easiest and safest decision they can make that will survive the design process), assembling a set of buffs that will create an interesting challenge, tuning the fight to allow the kinds of fight approaches they are trying to reward, and then tweaking it for difficulty, on top of trying to specifically highlight specific attackers without making the fight too narrow or too focused on a single option. It is not easy, and something I think would actually be an interesting exercise for anyone to attempt on paper.
It is usually easier to design a fight to *counter* certain champions than *reward* certain champions, and on top of that there are far fewer female champions and any attempt to try to target them too much could unintentionally cause another nearby male champion to be even better, which would immediately take the focus away from the attacker you're trying to highlight.
You're given a list of buffs currently available in the game that have been approved for the content, and you have to design your fight using some combination of those nodes. You're also generally limited to a certain number of them maximum, which is why the Boss Rush fights tend to all have similar or identical number of node effects. If you are given a limit, chances are you're going to use the whole limit in your design.