Some Gorr Rebalance Thoughts

I am not testing the new Gorr, but I reviewed the changes and have some input.

I will cut to the chase. I propose the following be added:
1) "All Gorr's Fury Buffs are paused during both Champion's Special Attacks." OR make Gorr's SP1 safe (from being hit by defender) on Block.
2) Special Attack 3: "This is increased by an additional 100% when fighting Tech/Robot Champions."
3) change the striking Block: ", but not Degeneration" to ", including Degeneration".

I will now explain the reasons for these suggestions.

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1-A) "All Gorr's Fury Buffs are paused during both Champion's Special Attacks."
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I think one of the things that makes Gorr neat, is the ability to play him a few different ways. Giving him a way to remain usable in scenarios where designers want to create exotic node combinations that might otherwise shut down 1 or more of his playstyles. And also giving him ways to play mix-and-match and alternate or stack different playstlyles throughout a match.

One of those playstyles is to stack Fury Buffs.

But I feel that with many of the Champions now having much longer SP animations, this eats too much time. And makes it much more unreliable for Champions that need to race the clock to successfully juggle maintaining Buffs. One of the reasons I stopped playing Captain Marvel (Movie), is that the longer animations really made trying to keep her Binary Ignition up much more difficult and unreliable and a pain to have to figure out and deal with.

Even Gore's own SP2 to place the Fury Buff in the first place takes 4 seconds. Which leaves Gorr 16 seconds to actually then try to build up meter, deal with the defender, and get off another SP.

I think this change would make juggling Fury Buffs much smoother. Where players could get used to a set clock across matches. And not have to track and juggle SP animation times and leftover fractions of power bars. And not be pushed out of using this Gorr playstyle because of its unreliability across Champions, and instead just choose to Rank up and use other more reliable Champions.

On a related note, I would also suggest changing Captain Marvel (Movie) to also have "All Binary Ignition are paused during both Champion's Special Attacks." Because it also helps her deal with the problem of trying to juggling Buffs while SP animations get longer and longer. So players can reliably play her, and designers and animators can create great animations without worrying about how they can break Champions.

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1-B) make Gorr's SP1 safe (from being hit by defender) on Block.
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An alternate option, might be to make Gorr's SP1 safe (from being hit by defender) on Block.

This would both (1) help a player to more reliably juggle SP usage to maintain their Fury Buffs, and (2) give Gorr an easy method for triggering many hits for striking Block.

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2) Special Attack 3: "This is increased by an additional 100% when fighting Tech/Robot Champions."
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SP3 loses out on a 100% boost multiplier to Tech Robots (because Bleed and Poison immunity means 1 less unique debuff). Cosmic Champions should not have a weakness to general Tech Champions (unless it's in their theme).

Giving Gorr an extra 100% when fighting Tech/Robot Champions, would patch that problem.

If you want to give Gorr an extra boost vs. Tech, then I'd suggest using the "100% when fighting Tech". If you just want to offset the Tech Robot groups, I would suggest using "100% when fighting Tech Robots".

For a little more review on this, you can read the following:

Of the 15 Champions with dual immunities vs. Gorr (Bleed/Poison/Shock), Tech Robots make up 10 of them (66%).

Dual Immunities notably limit Gorr's abilities:
1) SP3 loses out on a 100% boost multiplier (because Bleed and Poison immunity means 1 less unique debuff)
2) fewer debuffs off striking into block (because Degen Buffs won't trigger)
3) Fewer Furies off SP2 (because Bleed and Poison immunity means 1 less unique debuff)

That really hurts Gorr across multiple playstyles.

I actually am fine with having 15 Champions that make Gorr less effective. But not in those cases when Gorr is Cosmic and most those Champions are Tech.

Cosmic Champions should have an advantage over non-specialized ("Cosmic Counter") Tech Champions.

I know Gorr does have +500% on his Degen vs. Tech Champions. But is that enough to offset the big reduction in Gorr's playstyles?

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3) change the striking Block to inflict Debuff: ", but not Degeneration" to ", including Degeneration".
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Striking Block to inflict debuffs on Robots, loses out on 2 of the 3 Shadow Magic debuffs not triggering. Cosmic Champions should not have a weakness to general Tech Champions (unless it's in their theme).

Giving Gorr the ability to inflict Degeration on Striking Block, would patch that problem.

Or, you can just add ", including Degeneration vs. Tech Champions" or ", including Degeneration vs. Tech Robots"

Comments

zaspacer

On further reflection...

I would probably recommend not doing either change in listed in #1:
1) "All Gorr's Fury Buffs are paused during both Champion's Special Attacks." OR make Gorr's SP1 safe (from being hit by defender) on Block.

The reason being that Gorr is notably already a hard Defender. And either of these changes would make Gorr even more difficult (and confusing, and frustrating) for Attackers to have to deal with. And that is not worth it.

H3t3r

My main thing now his persistent charges are basically not useless but not really utilized very often. I do see him being a menace in incursions with the fury buff hacks and just spamming sp2s.

zaspacer

My main thing now his persistent charges are basically not useless but not really utilized very often.

Agreed. Good point.

The Hersey charges currently seem like an obscure, infrequent, side thing.

The Champion triggers for Heresy are only from 12 playable Champions:
Elder = Knull, The Champion
God = Angela, Heimdall, Hela, Hercules, Loki, Odin, Thor, Jane Foster, Thor (Ragnarok), Valkyrie

That's 12 out of 236 Champions. That's only 5% of the Champion pool. And most of them are not Champions that players will be placing as Defenders. Good luck running across many of them in the game.

And why would you bring in Gorr to try to beat those God and Elder Champions? Gorr does not seem like a good counter vs. most of them (correct me on that if I am wrong, I don't know those matchups well). Which also seems like an odd thing: Gorr should be like Magneto is to Metal Champions, Gorr should be a God/Elder counter.

Gorr does get a guaranteed Heresy for the final node in a quest. But this is strange too. What's the point of a "persistent charge" that is only really reliably gained in the last node? Other than Incursions. And is Gorr a dominant enough Champion with 1 Heresy that he's gonna be the Champion you want to bring for a final node on a non-Incursion Quest?

In addition, the Heresy only triggers AFTER the fight. So in modes like Arena and Battlegrounds it just doesn't show up.

I would suggest the following changes to Heresy, and fighting vs. God and Elder:

1) "Gain 1 stack of Heresy at the start of a fight against a #God or #Elder."

This would at least make Heresy useable in Arena and Battlegrounds. And also give a boost to Gorr in fights vs. Gods and Elders.

2) During fights against God and Elder, I'd add some way for Gorr to be a strong counter.

Lotta ways to do this. They could copy any number of things from Magneto, Human Torch, Nimrod, etc.

I do see him being a menace in incursions with the fury buff hacks and just spamming sp2s.

Yeah, seems like Gorr is very well suited to getting boosted in Incursions.

He can build up to 4 Heresy. Which:
1) increases damaging debuffs duration by 0.5 seconds for each stack of Heresy
2) increases his Regeneration Buff by 12.5% for each stack of Heresy
3) increases SP3 by 100% for each stack of Heresy

He gets boosted lots of Hacks:
1) by Fury modifiers
2) by added Buffs: striking Block to inflicts Debuffs
3) by added Debuffs (type or number): more Fury Buffs on SP2 per unique debuff, bigger SP3 damage, easier access to the Heavy power gain
4) by discount on SP cost

He can get boosted from both Odin and Galan Cross-Fights.

What else am I missing? Does that make him worth playing vs. other top Incursions Champions?

H3t3r

My main thing now his persistent charges are basically not useless but not really utilized very often.
Agreed. Good point.

The Hersey charges currently seem like an obscure, infrequent, side thing.

The Champion triggers for Heresy are only from 12 playable Champions:
Elder = Knull, The Champion
God = Angela, Heimdall, Hela, Hercules, Loki, Odin, Thor, Jane Foster, Thor (Ragnarok), Valkyrie

That's 12 out of 236 Champions. That's only 5% of the Champion pool. And most of them are not Champions that players will be placing as Defenders. Good luck running across many of them in the game.

And why would you bring in Gorr to try to beat those God and Elder Champions? Gorr does not seem like a good counter vs. most of them (correct me on that if I am wrong, I don't know those matchups well). Which also seems like an odd thing: Gorr should be like Magneto is to Metal Champions, Gorr should be a God/Elder counter.

Gorr does get a guaranteed Heresy for the final node in a quest. But this is strange too. What's the point of a "persistent charge" that is only really reliably gained in the last node? Other than Incursions. And is Gorr a dominant enough Champion with 1 Heresy that he's gonna be the Champion you want to bring for a final node on a non-Incursion Quest?

In addition, the Heresy only triggers AFTER the fight. So in modes like Arena and Battlegrounds it just doesn't show up.

I would suggest the following changes to Heresy, and fighting vs. God and Elder:

1) "Gain 1 stack of Heresy at the start of a fight against a #God or #Elder."

This would at least make Heresy useable in Arena and Battlegrounds. And also give a boost to Gorr in fights vs. Gods and Elders.

2) During fights against God and Elder, I'd add some way for Gorr to be a strong counter.

Lotta ways to do this. They could copy any number of things from Magneto, Human Torch, Nimrod, etc.

I do see him being a menace in incursions with the fury buff hacks and just spamming sp2s.
Yeah, seems like Gorr is very well suited to getting boosted in Incursions.

He can build up to 4 Heresy. Which:
1) increases damaging debuffs duration by 0.5 seconds for each stack of Heresy
2) increases his Regeneration Buff by 12.5% for each stack of Heresy
3) increases SP3 by 100% for each stack of Heresy

He gets boosted lots of Hacks:
1) by Fury modifiers
2) by added Buffs: striking Block to inflicts Debuffs
3) by added Debuffs (type or number): more Fury Buffs on SP2 per unique debuff, bigger SP3 damage, easier access to the Heavy power gain
4) by discount on SP cost

He can get boosted from both Odin and Galan Cross-Fights.

What else am I missing? Does that make him worth playing vs. other top Incursions Champions?

I feel if you brought in Herc with galan and Odin pre fights. Then did the same to gorr. Then brought thing you would have a pretty good trio. Herc for raw damage. Gorr for DoT and regen. Thing for protection. Would take a while to setup tho.

zaspacer

Does that make him worth playing vs. other top Incursions Champions?
I feel if you brought in Herc with galan and Odin pre fights. Then did the same to gorr. Then brought thing you would have a pretty good trio. Herc for raw damage. Gorr for DoT and regen. Thing for protection. Would take a while to setup tho.

Cool.

So?:

Zone 1................Hercules........Odin1.....Galan1
Zone 2................Hercules........Gorr........Galan1
Zone 3................Hercules........Gorr........Odin2
Zone 4................Hercules........Gorr........Galan2
Zone 5................Hercules........Gorr........Thing

Wouldn't it be better for the team to bring in Gorr from the start? So you can hunt down any spawning Gods/Elders, and take on an easier boss to activate his 4th Heresy slot?

Maybe something like:

Zone 1................Hercules........Gorr........Odin1
Zone 2................Hercules........Gorr........Galan1
Zone 3................Hercules........Gorr........Odin2
Zone 4................Hercules........Gorr........Galan2
Zone 5................Hercules........Gorr........Thing

zaspacer

Another possible change I would suggest considering for Gorr: "Indefinite Paused Shadow Magic Buff"

"Indefinite Shadow Magic Buff:
Gorr gains an indefinitely paused 1 Shadow Magic Buff when starting on or entering his current Shadow Magic. When Gorr changes to the next Shadow Magic, this pause ends and the buff lasts 20 seconds."

This would give Gorr a lot of things:
1) much easier to get into and maintain his Shadow Magic Buff buidup, especially if they all fall off
2) can just choose to stay in 1 Shadow Magic in order to just apply that specific Shadow Magic Debuff
3) can just choose to stay in 1 Shadow Magic Buff in order to trigger his stacking regen against a damaging Debuff that matches that active Shadow Magic Buff