What Peni Parkers abilities show about how kabam is making new defenders
Erik_Killmonger1001
Member Posts: 427 ★★★
So the champion deep dive for Peni Parker just dropped and something stuck out to me, the way kabam appears to be moving in the creation of new defence metas. Now quick disclaimer I don't think this is currently a problem but I am starting to notice a trend, I don't know if it will continue but I do think it is problematic. My issue is to do with how existing defensive abilities are being implemented to invalidate old counters.
Peni parker has an auto-block mechanic, fine I have plenty of auto-block counters, except that true strike doesn't work, ah well killmonger doesn't work but their are still loads of options, except well neither does true accuracy, or true sense or AAR for that matter. So erm how do we counter this. Now this in itself is one champion it doesn't signal a problem, I am not trying to start a kabam witch hunt by any means.
But think back to the ultron buff, and the fact he was given slow immunity. (feel free to correct me) but currently I believe their are no places as an attacker you are inflicted with a slow and therefore a slow immune champion is a hard counter, therefore slow immunity is only their as a defensive ability and as a way to make players use another solution such as true strike.
I don't think this is new you always release new tough defenders then solutions a few months down the line, except it's the wrong way round this time. Players do not rank up champions in anticipation of a new defensive ability because, we don't know the new defensive abilities before they are released, the best we can hope is broaden our roster to have a good base of utility.
This new approach by kabam though (If it continues) forces you to have a true strike champ for the slow immune evaders and a slow champ for the true strike immune evaders. Hmmm that approach of we will show you some abilities you've seen before except now your counters don't work go find another is oddly similar of the attitude to pre-nerf act6/7 content. Rather than making new champs a better counter to X/Y/Z by making it longer or easier to access they are making the old counters flat out not work so you need the new counters.
To be absolutely clear I don't think this is where we are currently at but I think it is where we might go.
Peni parker has an auto-block mechanic, fine I have plenty of auto-block counters, except that true strike doesn't work, ah well killmonger doesn't work but their are still loads of options, except well neither does true accuracy, or true sense or AAR for that matter. So erm how do we counter this. Now this in itself is one champion it doesn't signal a problem, I am not trying to start a kabam witch hunt by any means.
But think back to the ultron buff, and the fact he was given slow immunity. (feel free to correct me) but currently I believe their are no places as an attacker you are inflicted with a slow and therefore a slow immune champion is a hard counter, therefore slow immunity is only their as a defensive ability and as a way to make players use another solution such as true strike.
I don't think this is new you always release new tough defenders then solutions a few months down the line, except it's the wrong way round this time. Players do not rank up champions in anticipation of a new defensive ability because, we don't know the new defensive abilities before they are released, the best we can hope is broaden our roster to have a good base of utility.
This new approach by kabam though (If it continues) forces you to have a true strike champ for the slow immune evaders and a slow champ for the true strike immune evaders. Hmmm that approach of we will show you some abilities you've seen before except now your counters don't work go find another is oddly similar of the attitude to pre-nerf act6/7 content. Rather than making new champs a better counter to X/Y/Z by making it longer or easier to access they are making the old counters flat out not work so you need the new counters.
To be absolutely clear I don't think this is where we are currently at but I think it is where we might go.
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Comments
well, guess what? he has new type of resistance that ignores true strike and true damage and actually makes it worse with them.
his resistance ability ignores abilities that ignore resistance ability
Now, we don't have offensive champions with some defensive abilities. We have defensive champions with some offensive abilities.
1. She needs high spider sense charges to reliably trigger autoblock
2. Most importantly autoblock triggers only when sync shield is active, you can knock sync shield down by hitting into block, like when ur dealing with Thing above 15 stacks but under a bar of power. Think of it like invisible woman but you want to chip her forcefield down first
However I do think the topic about the approach to counters is worth talking about, especially regarding the AW tatics, they gave us slow your roll attack tatic with intentions that it widens the options to counter evade, then follow it up next season by totally invalidating it by making slow benefit the evading defense tatic instead.
Peni looks better but that defensive cluster.... of things looks a bit overkill.
Design and animations are awesome but from what I have seen thus far, they don't seem fun to me from game play side of things. Maybe too soon to judge but at the first glance they just made 2 new annoying defenders for the sake of bringing more challenge to the game.
I prefer simpler champions, to each his own tho, we'll see I guess.
I am not saying there's something inherently wrong about it, but most new champions of 2021 have been defensive champions made for Kabam, not for the players. People are dropping out because those new champions have no value to them. Even Seatin doesn't whale every new champion anymore. We as players look at these fancy champions with poor performance with disinterest. Featured crystals are not worth it anymore. The best champions so far have been buffs, but most of the playerbase have those champions.
America Chavez was just released with a mechanic that didn’t have a readily applicable counter (wither debuffs remove her dimensional abilities).
Next month, SP2099 has easy access to a wither debuff. I’ll bet money that an upcoming reworked champ & other planned future releases will have access to wither debuffs.
As for Peni, we need to wait to see how her autoblock interacts with things like Cull’s Rout buff, Super Skrull’s Undermine buff, and general Unblockable buffs.
Cosmic champs that are immune to power drain/burn lock effects will probably be a great choice (Venompool buff?) too.
But I’m sure there will be a hard counter released in the following month. It makes less sense to release the hard counter to a new mechanic first, especially as a business.
Yaaay.
Just a doubt, since I didn't understand it from the deep dive, does hitting into her block to remove the shield when she has the required Spider Sense also trigger her autoblock?
Like this Penni Parker: we got a bunch of buffed skill champions who reduce Defensive Ability Accuracy (Falcon, Kingpin, Crossbones, Mole Man). Kabam just decided this won't work against Miss PP. Alright then, let's just use a Cosmic Champion with True Strike/True Accuracy/True Sense (Hercules, Odin, Red Goblin), except it won't work either for absolutely no reason (as she's a Tech and should be vulnerable to Cosmic champions). Even awakened Angela won't work, as her anti-AB is based on Ability Accuracy as well
The only thing I can think of so far is Magneto (who's anti-AB doesn't rely on his -70% AAR), which I luckily have as a R5 5*, but everyone else is pretty much... Well, RIP. Venom, Aarkus and Terrax won't stop the auto-block, but are either unaffected by the power burn or can mitigate it.
For Kabam you should at least three options to solve the same problem, as they can arbitrarily limit options with no logical explanation whatsoever, just to "shake up the meta". I think it's purely to favour those with broad rosters and lots of rank-up resources (aka whales).
Again, it isn't inherently wrong, Kabam does need to make a profit. But I don't like sneaky tactics which make no logical sense from a gaming balance perspective. I think these shady mechanics should be immediately removed on PP and SP2099. If not, this really becomes Marvel Casino of Champions, and you all know: the house always wins.
Would also be pretty terrible champ design for her to dump her ramp up after every parry since her kits pretty block centric