Buffed champ review

Dave7099

Is there a metric that is looked at after characters are buffed to let developers know they hit the mark? Or any kind of review process? Similar to the review for new champs.

I ask this because champs like Jane can't have much more usage then before their buff

Terra

Jane is alot more useful after her buff.
Although perhaps the number of people who use her increased by like 50%.
Now she has 3 people using her.

I think the community and Kabams mind on a "successful" buff is vastly different.
Look at OG Guilly.

Ercarret

Guillotine is such a funny case because I always forget that she's in the game until Kabam comes out with another round of "you need a mystic who can heal a lot" and Guillotine is one of the only options, so she gets an artificial upswing for a month in EQ before I forget about her again.

As for a metric of how well champs perform, I'm certain that Kabam has that for every champ in the game. As much as I have at times wanted Kabam to look back at already buffed champions, I think that, at the end of the day, it's better if they look at the whole pool of champions rather than those they've already polished once. If an already-buffed champion fails to meet a certain criteria, I'm sure that they can fall into consideration for another buff (we've seen it with a few champions over the years), but generally speaking I think their focus is better spent on the unbuffed ones.

Drake2078

Personal, I liked Hawkeye better before his buff.

MaxtheSilent

So I’ve thought about this a lot and I think it depends on what you perceive to be the goal of a buff. I was disappointed in a lot of buffed characters until I realized the buff wasn’t to make them useful to people with an expansive roster but rather make them relevant and viable to people who are developing their roster or early in the game. If you have a Nimrod you aren’t going to use Yondu any more than you did but if you don’t then he’s going to go from useless to useful. So in that regard a Jane Foster might be very nice to have for a player with no 5 or 6 star mystics who now can handle a pesky Hyperion or Vision Aarkus.

willrun4adonut

Drake2078 said:

Personal, I liked Hawkeye better before his buff.

Magrailothos

MaxtheSilent said:

If you have a Nimrod you aren’t going to use Yondu any more than you did but if you don’t then he’s going to go from useless to useful.

In principle, you're absolutely right. Yondu can cover a lot of the ground Nimrod does; Jane and Maw can do some of what Doom does; Rocket is a pint-sized Warlock when Awakened.

And I think you're right that making champs useful second-string options seems to be an aim of the buff programme.

On the other hand, I'm going to stand up for Yondu a little more than that. I have both him and Nimrod and Yondu comes in handy more than you might think -

Whether it's War or BGs: Nimrod gets banned. Yondu doesn't.

Yondu is pretty much as tanky as Nimrod or more so, if he's Awakened. Stacking weakness on the opponent, especially if he's able to generate Armour, makes him very tough.

Yondu can steal Armour (and Prowess) through block: pretty useful in the last round of Battlegrounds. True, his damage hasn't been good enough to regularly kill opponents, but he's ground out wins for me against Armour-Break-immune opponents like Doom, Thing, and Nimrod himself. And in environments where speed isn't the defining characteristic of a winner, he's pretty good against these kinds of opponents.

Yondu damage is all physical and bleed, whereas Nimrod's is Energy/Shock. This makes him a better option for opponents with high Energy resistance or Shock immunity (Doom, iDoom, Korg, Yellowjacket, Havok, Hulkling, CMM, Nebula, Shuri, Silver Centurion, Super Skrull, Thing, Terrax) or get loads of armour. Nimrod will also find he gets punished by Human Torch, since he builds Smoulders fast. Yondu doesn't, and bleeds prevent him getting Incinerated.

Sometimes it's better to be a #Mercenary than a #Robot: Sure Yondu bleeds, but he's not #Metal, he can heal through Willpower, and is good option against Nebula or when a Cav EQ or Variant rewards #Mercqenary options.

#TeamYondu!

Shadowstrike

Magrailothos said:

MaxtheSilent said:

If you have a Nimrod you aren’t going to use Yondu any more than you did but if you don’t then he’s going to go from useless to useful.

In principle, you're absolutely right. Yondu can cover a lot of the ground Nimrod does; Jane and Maw can do some of what Doom does; Rocket is a pint-sized Warlock when Awakened.

And I think you're right that making champs useful second-string options seems to be an aim of the buff programme.

On the other hand, I'm going to stand up for Yondu a little more than that. I have both him and Nimrod and Yondu comes in handy more than you might think -

Whether it's War or BGs: Nimrod gets banned. Yondu doesn't.

Yondu is pretty much as tanky as Nimrod or more so, if he's Awakened. Stacking weakness on the opponent, especially if he's able to generate Armour, makes him very tough.

Yondu can steal Armour (and Prowess) through block: pretty useful in the last round of Battlegrounds. True, his damage hasn't been good enough to regularly kill opponents, but he's ground out wins for me against Armour-Break-immune opponents like Doom, Thing, and Nimrod himself. And in environments where speed isn't the defining characteristic of a winner, he's pretty good against these kinds of opponents.

Yondu damage is all physical and bleed, whereas Nimrod's is Energy/Shock. This makes him a better option for opponents with high Energy resistance or Shock immunity (Doom, iDoom, Korg, Yellowjacket, Havok, Hulkling, CMM, Nebula, Shuri, Silver Centurion, Super Skrull, Thing, Terrax) or get loads of armour. Nimrod will also find he gets punished by Human Torch, since he builds Smoulders fast. Yondu doesn't, and bleeds prevent him getting Incinerated.

Sometimes it's better to be a #Mercenary than a #Robot: Sure Yondu bleeds, but he's not #Metal, he can heal through Willpower, and is good option against Nebula or when a Cav EQ or Variant rewards #Mercqenary options.

#TeamYondu!

And these are the kind of testimonials we need.

As the common element in this thread has been, people make the mistake that a buff automatically equals ridiculous amounts of damage and then get disappointed.

When the reality is that it's about filling in gaps in either their utility and/or giving people more options for either their limited rosters or giving workarounds to dangerous defenders (ex: Yondu against torch vs Nimrod against torch).

Now that being said, is there an argument for cranking up damage up to 11 on most (esp older) champs? Easily.. But I don't go by the metrics that the buff team look at (the big picture), all I have are just memories of me complaining how fighting someone in war is super hard (the small picture).

So much like others have said in the past, it's easy to write off a buff if I don't see the big yellow numbers but without the benefit of hindsight, you'll be kicking yourself when you realize their value later on.

Chatterofforums

The problem on buff feedback is people commonly jump to initial reactions before fully learning a champ or just have unrealistic crazy high expectations.

I've seen many times when champs who got pretty darn good buffs got tore up because a few YTers rushed content without fully learning them post buff just to get views and then called them trash and people who watched these vids just fell in line with the knee jerk reaction and labeled them as trash without fully trying or learning them.

Kerneas

Chatterofforums said:

The problem on buff feedback is people commonly jump to initial reactions before fully learning a champ or just have unrealistic crazy high expectations.

I've seen many times when champs who got pretty darn good buffs got tore up because a few YTers rushed content without fully learning them post buff just to get views and then called them trash and people who watched these vids just fell in line with the knee jerk reaction and labeled them as trash without fully trying or learning them.

The trouble is, that it often requires a serious investment to learn a champ. First, that champ needs to be on a high enough rank. Then the player has to invest time to learn that champ. In some cases, this easily climbs to hours of gameplay, which may still be in vain (if the champ really is bad). And lastly, it may also require resources. Energy and/or revives may easily have to be spent, because the right matchup can be found deep within a quest. And at any point in this process, you may end up realising that the champion indeed does suck. And for f2p, it is quite a risky investment

Chatterofforums

Kerneas said:

Chatterofforums said:

The problem on buff feedback is people commonly jump to initial reactions before fully learning a champ or just have unrealistic crazy high expectations.

I've seen many times when champs who got pretty darn good buffs got tore up because a few YTers rushed content without fully learning them post buff just to get views and then called them trash and people who watched these vids just fell in line with the knee jerk reaction and labeled them as trash without fully trying or learning them.

The trouble is, that it often requires a serious investment to learn a champ. First, that champ needs to be on a high enough rank. Then the player has to invest time to learn that champ. In some cases, this easily climbs to hours of gameplay, which may still be in vain (if the champ really is bad). And lastly, it may also require resources. Energy and/or revives may easily have to be spent, because the right matchup can be found deep within a quest. And at any point in this process, you may end up realising that the champion indeed does suck. And for f2p, it is quite a risky investment

I can't disagree with that, but the thing is, those rushing to call them trash should slow their roll a little bit until they know for sure. There is nothing wrong with saying your not sure yet or still undecided on a champ buff.

Initially, what I do use new champs or buff champs that I'm learning on content that's not super hard but not super easy that I'm doing for exploration or something like that. I especially us AQ or side events for testing out buffs or new champs to me. This means I'm not wasting energy or time as it's content I was going to do anyway, I'll just use different champs along the way.

Key thing is this slows down the opinions and feedback on a champ while many rush to be "first" to provide content and don't care a whole lot of they are correct or not as long as they get views or whatever they are going for.

I remember back when I did a post buff tutorial on punisher 99. I had it out within about a day after buff to ensure I learned him well. I really enjoyed the champ and found the buff to be good overall. Is he op, well no, but not every champ can or should be op broken amazing. I got trolled so hard on that vid as everyone kept saying that others said the buff was trash so he was trash and it was clear they didn't bother forming their own opinion, they would just recite rushed and inaccurate content from YTers rushing to be first.

Shadowstrike

Kerneas said:

Chatterofforums said:

The problem on buff feedback is people commonly jump to initial reactions before fully learning a champ or just have unrealistic crazy high expectations.

I've seen many times when champs who got pretty darn good buffs got tore up because a few YTers rushed content without fully learning them post buff just to get views and then called them trash and people who watched these vids just fell in line with the knee jerk reaction and labeled them as trash without fully trying or learning them.

The trouble is, that it often requires a serious investment to learn a champ. First, that champ needs to be on a high enough rank. Then the player has to invest time to learn that champ. In some cases, this easily climbs to hours of gameplay, which may still be in vain (if the champ really is bad). And lastly, it may also require resources. Energy and/or revives may easily have to be spent, because the right matchup can be found deep within a quest. And at any point in this process, you may end up realising that the champion indeed does suck. And for f2p, it is quite a risky investment

Exactly. We know there'll be beta events to really test them out but at was said, it requires extensive testing and most people don't care about that. They just want to see big yellow numbers and write it off of they don't see it.

Chatterofforums said:

The problem on buff feedback is people commonly jump to initial reactions before fully learning a champ or just have unrealistic crazy high expectations.

I've seen many times when champs who got pretty darn good buffs got tore up because a few YTers rushed content without fully learning them post buff just to get views and then called them trash and people who watched these vids just fell in line with the knee jerk reaction and labeled them as trash without fully trying or learning them.

And therein lies the other issues, a lot of Youtubers who pride themselves as being the best don't always put the work in to have a comprehensive breakdown of abilities and strategy, so it's more of the same instead of realizing that someone like Vulture is a great counter to Sunspot, Havok, Kitty, or Bishop but instead only care about Nimrod even though... Not everyone has a 5 or 6 star version.

Magrailothos

Shadowstrike said:

Magrailothos said:

MaxtheSilent said:

If you have a Nimrod you aren’t going to use Yondu any more than you did but if you don’t then he’s going to go from useless to useful.

In principle, you're absolutely right. Yondu can cover a lot of the ground Nimrod does; Jane and Maw can do some of what Doom does; Rocket is a pint-sized Warlock when Awakened.

And I think you're right that making champs useful second-string options seems to be an aim of the buff programme.

On the other hand, I'm going to stand up for Yondu a little more than that. I have both him and Nimrod and Yondu comes in handy more than you might think -

Whether it's War or BGs: Nimrod gets banned. Yondu doesn't.

Yondu is pretty much as tanky as Nimrod or more so, if he's Awakened. Stacking weakness on the opponent, especially if he's able to generate Armour, makes him very tough.

Yondu can steal Armour (and Prowess) through block: pretty useful in the last round of Battlegrounds. True, his damage hasn't been good enough to regularly kill opponents, but he's ground out wins for me against Armour-Break-immune opponents like Doom, Thing, and Nimrod himself. And in environments where speed isn't the defining characteristic of a winner, he's pretty good against these kinds of opponents.

Yondu damage is all physical and bleed, whereas Nimrod's is Energy/Shock. This makes him a better option for opponents with high Energy resistance or Shock immunity (Doom, iDoom, Korg, Yellowjacket, Havok, Hulkling, CMM, Nebula, Shuri, Silver Centurion, Super Skrull, Thing, Terrax) or get loads of armour. Nimrod will also find he gets punished by Human Torch, since he builds Smoulders fast. Yondu doesn't, and bleeds prevent him getting Incinerated.

Sometimes it's better to be a #Mercenary than a #Robot: Sure Yondu bleeds, but he's not #Metal, he can heal through Willpower, and is good option against Nebula or when a Cav EQ or Variant rewards #Mercqenary options.

#TeamYondu!

And these are the kind of testimonials we need.
....

....So much like others have said in the past, it's easy to write off a buff if I don't see the big yellow numbers but without the benefit of hindsight, you'll be kicking yourself when you realize their value later on.

Thanks! 😉

Just to appreciate another buffed champ: I found Yellowjacket an Amazing option for this week's Side quest, particularly for Mr Sinister. I've always used Warlock or Nimrod for him before, but I wanted to keep Warlock in reserve for Havok. Actually YJ is a fantastic Sinister counter, with access to Slow, impressive mitigation of Sinister's regeneration, and a large chunk of damage as Direct 'little red numbers' which bypass Sinister's defenses.

Having messed up using Warlock to take down Havok, Yellowjacket took the second half of Havok's health too: his Energy resistance meant he tanked Plasma Detonate about four times, and his Damage reduction on Unblockable hits helped on a couple of SP1s.

He's a solid champ now. For an even stronger advocate of him, take a look at this thread by @pseudosane: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/295837/yellowjacket-guide-ode-to-a-forgotten-buff

Shadowstrike

Magrailothos said:

Shadowstrike said:

Magrailothos said:

MaxtheSilent said:

If you have a Nimrod you aren’t going to use Yondu any more than you did but if you don’t then he’s going to go from useless to useful.

In principle, you're absolutely right. Yondu can cover a lot of the ground Nimrod does; Jane and Maw can do some of what Doom does; Rocket is a pint-sized Warlock when Awakened.

And I think you're right that making champs useful second-string options seems to be an aim of the buff programme.

On the other hand, I'm going to stand up for Yondu a little more than that. I have both him and Nimrod and Yondu comes in handy more than you might think -

Whether it's War or BGs: Nimrod gets banned. Yondu doesn't.

Yondu is pretty much as tanky as Nimrod or more so, if he's Awakened. Stacking weakness on the opponent, especially if he's able to generate Armour, makes him very tough.

Yondu can steal Armour (and Prowess) through block: pretty useful in the last round of Battlegrounds. True, his damage hasn't been good enough to regularly kill opponents, but he's ground out wins for me against Armour-Break-immune opponents like Doom, Thing, and Nimrod himself. And in environments where speed isn't the defining characteristic of a winner, he's pretty good against these kinds of opponents.

Yondu damage is all physical and bleed, whereas Nimrod's is Energy/Shock. This makes him a better option for opponents with high Energy resistance or Shock immunity (Doom, iDoom, Korg, Yellowjacket, Havok, Hulkling, CMM, Nebula, Shuri, Silver Centurion, Super Skrull, Thing, Terrax) or get loads of armour. Nimrod will also find he gets punished by Human Torch, since he builds Smoulders fast. Yondu doesn't, and bleeds prevent him getting Incinerated.

Sometimes it's better to be a #Mercenary than a #Robot: Sure Yondu bleeds, but he's not #Metal, he can heal through Willpower, and is good option against Nebula or when a Cav EQ or Variant rewards #Mercqenary options.

#TeamYondu!

And these are the kind of testimonials we need.
....

....So much like others have said in the past, it's easy to write off a buff if I don't see the big yellow numbers but without the benefit of hindsight, you'll be kicking yourself when you realize their value later on.

Thanks! 😉

Just to appreciate another buffed champ: I found Yellowjacket an Amazing option for this week's Side quest, particularly for Mr Sinister. I've always used Warlock or Nimrod for him before, but I wanted to keep Warlock in reserve for Havok. Actually YJ is a fantastic Sinister counter, with access to Slow, impressive mitigation of Sinister's regeneration, and a large chunk of damage as Direct 'little red numbers' which bypass Sinister's defenses.

Having messed up using Warlock to take down Havok, Yellowjacket took the second half of Havok's health too: his Energy resistance meant he tanked Plasma Detonate about four times, and his Damage reduction on Unblockable hits helped on a couple of SP1s.

He's a solid champ now. For an even stronger advocate of him, take a look at this thread by @pseudosane: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/295837/yellowjacket-guide-ode-to-a-forgotten-buff

His buff got better with age. The only thing that didn't help was that it came out the same time as kingpin, massacre and moleman and in comparison, the upfront damage wasn't there and people were underwhelmed.

GhostFace2022

Ercarret said:

Guillotine is such a funny case because I always forget that she's in the game until Kabam comes out with another round of "you need a mystic who can heal a lot" and Guillotine is one of the only options, so she gets an artificial upswing for a month in EQ before I forget about her again.

As for a metric of how well champs perform, I'm certain that Kabam has that for every champ in the game. As much as I have at times wanted Kabam to look back at already buffed champions, I think that, at the end of the day, it's better if they look at the whole pool of champions rather than those they've already polished once. If an already-buffed champion fails to meet a certain criteria, I'm sure that they can fall into consideration for another buff (we've seen it with a few champions over the years), but generally speaking I think their focus is better spent on the unbuffed ones.

Why would you take guilly if you have a Diablo hehe

Pikolu

GhostFace2022 said:

Ercarret said:

Guillotine is such a funny case because I always forget that she's in the game until Kabam comes out with another round of "you need a mystic who can heal a lot" and Guillotine is one of the only options, so she gets an artificial upswing for a month in EQ before I forget about her again.

As for a metric of how well champs perform, I'm certain that Kabam has that for every champ in the game. As much as I have at times wanted Kabam to look back at already buffed champions, I think that, at the end of the day, it's better if they look at the whole pool of champions rather than those they've already polished once. If an already-buffed champion fails to meet a certain criteria, I'm sure that they can fall into consideration for another buff (we've seen it with a few champions over the years), but generally speaking I think their focus is better spent on the unbuffed ones.

Why would you take guilly if you have a Diablo hehe

Diablo heals only twice per sp1, Guillotine heals every hit which permanently keeps the enemy power drained. She is a much better option than Diablo for thronebreaker EQ 3.2

pseudosane

Magrailothos said:

Shadowstrike said:

Magrailothos said:

MaxtheSilent said:

If you have a Nimrod you aren’t going to use Yondu any more than you did but if you don’t then he’s going to go from useless to useful.

In principle, you're absolutely right. Yondu can cover a lot of the ground Nimrod does; Jane and Maw can do some of what Doom does; Rocket is a pint-sized Warlock when Awakened.

And I think you're right that making champs useful second-string options seems to be an aim of the buff programme.

On the other hand, I'm going to stand up for Yondu a little more than that. I have both him and Nimrod and Yondu comes in handy more than you might think -

Whether it's War or BGs: Nimrod gets banned. Yondu doesn't.

Yondu is pretty much as tanky as Nimrod or more so, if he's Awakened. Stacking weakness on the opponent, especially if he's able to generate Armour, makes him very tough.

Yondu can steal Armour (and Prowess) through block: pretty useful in the last round of Battlegrounds. True, his damage hasn't been good enough to regularly kill opponents, but he's ground out wins for me against Armour-Break-immune opponents like Doom, Thing, and Nimrod himself. And in environments where speed isn't the defining characteristic of a winner, he's pretty good against these kinds of opponents.

Yondu damage is all physical and bleed, whereas Nimrod's is Energy/Shock. This makes him a better option for opponents with high Energy resistance or Shock immunity (Doom, iDoom, Korg, Yellowjacket, Havok, Hulkling, CMM, Nebula, Shuri, Silver Centurion, Super Skrull, Thing, Terrax) or get loads of armour. Nimrod will also find he gets punished by Human Torch, since he builds Smoulders fast. Yondu doesn't, and bleeds prevent him getting Incinerated.

Sometimes it's better to be a #Mercenary than a #Robot: Sure Yondu bleeds, but he's not #Metal, he can heal through Willpower, and is good option against Nebula or when a Cav EQ or Variant rewards #Mercqenary options.

#TeamYondu!

And these are the kind of testimonials we need.
....

....So much like others have said in the past, it's easy to write off a buff if I don't see the big yellow numbers but without the benefit of hindsight, you'll be kicking yourself when you realize their value later on.

Thanks! 😉

Just to appreciate another buffed champ: I found Yellowjacket an Amazing option for this week's Side quest, particularly for Mr Sinister. I've always used Warlock or Nimrod for him before, but I wanted to keep Warlock in reserve for Havok. Actually YJ is a fantastic Sinister counter, with access to Slow, impressive mitigation of Sinister's regeneration, and a large chunk of damage as Direct 'little red numbers' which bypass Sinister's defenses.

Having messed up using Warlock to take down Havok, Yellowjacket took the second half of Havok's health too: his Energy resistance meant he tanked Plasma Detonate about four times, and his Damage reduction on Unblockable hits helped on a couple of SP1s.

He's a solid champ now. For an even stronger advocate of him, take a look at this thread by @pseudosane: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/295837/yellowjacket-guide-ode-to-a-forgotten-buff

Ayy thanks for the shout out!!
Also YJ destroyed that annoying absorbing man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP2GBgvzDnY