A Better Way to Mitigate Willpower in EoP

Mofugger

So while I don't think the Havok EoP fight is particularly difficult, I do think it continues a trend of laziness. When an opponent puts non-damaging debuffs on you as part of their kit (like Havok or Knull or Overseer), or because of added nodes (like Crumbling Armor), then anyone with the Willpower mastery has nearly infinite sustainability. This obviously makes the fights way less than the intended challenge.

But please find a solution other than adding a passive heal block node. It eliminates useful parts of character kits, like Angela's stacking regen, or every Iron Man characters' arc overload regen, or Guilly 2099, etc.

An argument can be made that this is ok because it's about making things challenging. Fine. But in this week's fight I think it detracts from an actually skill-based matchup toward one of higher health pools. This week you need to take damage. The only way to maintain an armor up is to parry (block damage) or block specials instead of evading (damage). Because of Crumbling Armor and a passive AI, you're often parrying multiple times before you can start landing your own hits. No amount of skill avoids this chip damage. If you've got a 6*R4 Hulkbuster, you can outlast the chip damage. If you've got a 5*R5 Hulkbuster, it's nearly impossible to outlast the chip damage.

Why not add a node that just shuts off Willpower instead of shutting down all forms of regen? Name it something corny like "Where's there's a will..." and just address that specific problem without shutting down all forms of regen.

Shiroihara

Completely agree. To add to that, I refuse to take suicides off for a single fight. I’ll brute force this one and feel depressed. Good job with the theme I guess.
Also the god + metal objective is unnecessarily restrictive.

Kabam Miike

Note to self: Add Heal Reversal instead of Heal Block.

Kabam Miike

Jokes aside, I'll note this for the team, but keep in mind that Eternity of Pain fights are supposed to be very difficult and require specific RPG counters.

Mofugger

Kabam Miike said:

Jokes aside, I'll note this for the team, but keep in mind that Eternity of Pain fights are supposed to be very difficult and require specific RPG counters.

Good enough. Thanks!

DrZola

Kabam Miike said:

Jokes aside, I'll note this for the team, but keep in mind that Eternity of Pain fights are supposed to be very difficult and require specific RPG counters.

Specific is fine. Razor fine isn’t (cf. Kree objective from last EoP).

Dr. Zola

Rebark

Mofugger said:

So while I don't think the Havok EoP fight is particularly difficult, I do think it continues a trend of laziness. When an opponent puts non-damaging debuffs on you as part of their kit (like Havok or Knull or Overseer), or because of added nodes (like Crumbling Armor), then anyone with the Willpower mastery has nearly infinite sustainability. This obviously makes the fights way less than the intended challenge.

But please find a solution other than adding a passive heal block node. It eliminates useful parts of character kits, like Angela's stacking regen, or every Iron Man characters' arc overload regen, or Guilly 2099, etc.

An argument can be made that this is ok because it's about making things challenging. Fine. But in this week's fight I think it detracts from an actually skill-based matchup toward one of higher health pools. This week you need to take damage. The only way to maintain an armor up is to parry (block damage) or block specials instead of evading (damage). Because of Crumbling Armor and a passive AI, you're often parrying multiple times before you can start landing your own hits. No amount of skill avoids this chip damage. If you've got a 6*R4 Hulkbuster, you can outlast the chip damage. If you've got a 5*R5 Hulkbuster, it's nearly impossible to outlast the chip damage.

Why not add a node that just shuts off Willpower instead of shutting down all forms of regen? Name it something corny like "Where's there's a will..." and just address that specific problem without shutting down all forms of regen.

Great idea, in a next fight they do that and I'll have to take out the suicides to make a fight

Savage123456789

This is a great idea. I just think they don't have a way to implement it now without risking bugs. But all the people using suicides in monthly EQ will thank you guys for implementing this, lol

AverageDesi

Savage123456789 said:

This is a great idea. I just think they don't have a way to implement it now without risking bugs. But all the people using suicides in monthly EQ will thank you guys for implementing this, lol

They do. It already exists

Mauled

It’s a balance that needs to be struck. For this fight having willpower would basically guarantee a yellow bar finish, and as Miike said, this is game mode is meant to be hideous, though the god/metal objective is a touch niche IMO.

Perhaps if there was a pay off it would be better, in this case such as parrying a projective special attack would deactivate the heal block for 10 seconds you’d get the reward for playing the node combination as intended and recover some of the lost health.

Moosetiptronic

As a suicides user, the issue is not the unavoidable damage, it's the hassle of changing masteries and the fact that I and vast numbers of others use willpower healing from suicides as the health top up for our lane clearers in AQ; herc, corvus, knull, Omega, angela, red mags, any horseman.

If kabam introduced one additional mastery load out at a cost of, for example, 4k units, I'd buy it. Even if it still cost units to change each of your two mastery load outs (ideally it would not cost to change between them).

Many paragons have full suicides, resonate, MD, deep wounds/assassin all unlocked, so would still need to occasionally change masteries even if they had two load outs unlocked.

EOP and roster check lanes in content, means it's time that kabam brought in one of, if not then most, requested quality of life changes.

Ercarret

I like the idea of an "anti-Willpower" node instead of just a flat-out heal block node. There will obviously be situations where heal block is perfectly fine (I'd actually argue that EOP is one of those, but that's kind of beside the point), but I do agree that it is often a node that is slapped on specifically to prevent Willpower healing. When that happens, it tends to feel as if champions healing through other means are punished for no reason.

I think the Superior Kang fight did a great job doing this exact thing. He has an ability that shuts down Willpower specifically, but you could still heal by other means. That was a great system.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Heal Block is removed from the game. It still has its place in various fights and is an obstacle like any other to overcome.

BitterSteel

Ercarret said:

I like the idea of an "anti-Willpower" node instead of just a flat-out heal block node. There will obviously be situations where heal block is perfectly fine (I'd actually argue that EOP is one of those, but that's kind of beside the point), but I do agree that it is often a node that is slapped on specifically to prevent Willpower healing. When that happens, it tends to feel as if champions healing through other means are punished for no reason.

I think the Superior Kang fight did a great job doing this exact thing. He has an ability that shuts down Willpower specifically, but you could still heal by other means. That was a great system.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Heal Block is removed from the game. It still has its place in various fights and is an obstacle like any other to overcome.

Exactly, it depends what the intention of the fight is. In the same way that the game designer who designed this fight wanted the challenge to be “Parry Havok’s specials and keep your armour up”, if the game designer wants the challenge to be “and also you can’t heal using champions like Angela, King Groot, Diablo etc”. Then heal block works.

But if the intention is “oh, and we don’t want people to willpower their way through the fight”, then an anti willpower node works better.

Squammo

As someone who runs LC/DE pretty much all the time I was a little annoyed at first when I saw yet another heal block node, but then I saw the “Cleaning Contact” node. I really hope you guys add that one more often, because it really makes things a lot more doable. All you have to do is hit into the opponents block and your bleed and poison are gone, which means no constant melting during the fight.

Magrailothos

Squammo said:

As someone who runs LC/DE pretty much all the time I was a little annoyed at first when I saw yet another heal block node, but then I saw the “Cleaning Contact” node. I really hope you guys add that one more often, because it really makes things a lot more doable. All you have to do is hit into the opponents block and your bleed and poison are gone, which means no constant melting during the fight.

That's good for the LC/DE. Although not so much the Plasma feedback debuffs: in Havok's case, every time you purify a debuff, you take burst damage. So not a completely benign and helpful node...

BitterSteel

Magrailothos said:

Squammo said:

As someone who runs LC/DE pretty much all the time I was a little annoyed at first when I saw yet another heal block node, but then I saw the “Cleaning Contact” node. I really hope you guys add that one more often, because it really makes things a lot more doable. All you have to do is hit into the opponents block and your bleed and poison are gone, which means no constant melting during the fight.

That's good for the LC/DE. Although not so much the Plasma feedback debuffs: in Havok's case, every time you purify a debuff, you take burst damage. So not a completely benign and helpful node...

You don’t take the burst damage if you get an armour up from the node

SuelGames

Has anyone beaten him with Hulk Ragnarok? Ive him at R3 while my Hulkbuster is 5* R4

Ive tried but i get blown into oblivion all the time while trying to bait specials that he never throws

TyEdge

Why wouldn’t a passive 50% petrify be the answer? Or a node that reduces regen rate for passive healing and doesn’t affect regen buffs.

Denslo500

I thought this fight was perfect.
Kabam got to limit healing without significantly punishing suicide users.
They gave us an Armor buff node, so you could use any champ against Havok.

The designers really went above and beyond to make this one good.

Qwerty12345

Kabam Miike said:

Jokes aside, I'll note this for the team, but keep in mind that Eternity of Pain fights are supposed to be very difficult and require specific RPG counters.

I believe Gwenpool and Rocket might be the only champs with a actual RPGs. We have many blades, guns, lasers, and many niche weapons...but I can't think of any other rocket propelled grenade launchers in the game.

Shiroihara

Shiroihara said:

Completely agree. To add to that, I refuse to take suicides off for a single fight. I’ll brute force this one and feel depressed. Good job with the theme I guess.
Also the god + metal objective is unnecessarily restrictive.

I have to take back part of this comment. Like a noob I failed to read the nodes.
I do think it would’ve been nice to have a few more options for that objective. Kinda sketchy with a rank
1 Angela but not too bad.