Cassie’s Damage Reduction Change
Polygon
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They’re changing it so that the taunt which currently applies 90% reduction will only apply a 50% reduction, and clutching on to the fact that with the inequity mastery combined with the power sting debuffs, that the user won’t experience much of a difference at all.
Theres two issues with this:
1. Inequity requires 3 mastery points to be able to have the 6% reduction per debuff (max 36). Nowadays given the mystic defender meta for AW/BG’s its hard to fit points into inequity when you might possibly be taking points from MD, despair, petrify, limber, DW (if you run bleeders). Not to mention, it would be completely out of the question if you’re running the suicide masteries
2. So assume you made space for the inequity masteries (ofcourse at the cost of missing out on other masteries), now you have the 50% + 36% for a total of 86%. But thats only if you have the power stings up. If the AI doesn’t co-operate and especially if they’re poison immune, the power stings can fall off entirely. I’ve already seen posts on the AI not cooperating sometimes even with the taunt applied.
Based on the above, a 50% reduction seems a bit stingy. 75% or at the very minimum 60% would be more reasonable.
Theres two issues with this:
1. Inequity requires 3 mastery points to be able to have the 6% reduction per debuff (max 36). Nowadays given the mystic defender meta for AW/BG’s its hard to fit points into inequity when you might possibly be taking points from MD, despair, petrify, limber, DW (if you run bleeders). Not to mention, it would be completely out of the question if you’re running the suicide masteries
2. So assume you made space for the inequity masteries (ofcourse at the cost of missing out on other masteries), now you have the 50% + 36% for a total of 86%. But thats only if you have the power stings up. If the AI doesn’t co-operate and especially if they’re poison immune, the power stings can fall off entirely. I’ve already seen posts on the AI not cooperating sometimes even with the taunt applied.
Based on the above, a 50% reduction seems a bit stingy. 75% or at the very minimum 60% would be more reasonable.
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It means a R5 Cassie will have 560,000 effective health. Effective health meaning base health multiplied by the benefit of the weaknesses. If a champion has 10 health, and a 90% weakness on the opponent, a hit that usually does 10 damage would now do 1, making it 10x longer to kill them.
Cassie has 56k health as an R5, so 10x 56,000 = 560,000 health
That is more than Winter Soldier realm of legends…
And it’s pretty simple to have a taunt up for an extended duration of the fight by spamming sp1, applying poisons etc.
The design intent of Cassie is not for her to have this at essentially no cost, no requirement for the player to invest in her. I don’t think it can be overstated how massive a 90% damage reduction is, and to just have that on her base kit is wildly powerful
Secondly, I disagree with your framing of it being hard to keep up 6 debuffs. The taunt is one debuff, so you only need 5 power stings to max inequity, that is pretty much shrinking and missing one attack. You can do this with very little fuel
Even 1 point in inequity, at 2% per debuff requires only 17 power stings - which is pretty easily manageable off one round of 300 fuel being used up.
Overall, to get the max weakness cap in the game, I think it *should* require mastery investment, and to try and find space on your build to accommodate it. Nick Fury doesn’t get max duration bleeds for free, Gorr gets extra potency on his DOT from willpower, Omega red doesn’t perform as well without the recoil tree, and plenty of mystics are built around mystic dispersion.
If you want to be able to multiply your effective health by close to 10x, a point or two in despair is not difficult to accommodate in my eye.
And if you want to run her without inequity, she will still be incredibly powerful with a 50% reduction in damage taken.
The war tactic was bugged and out of control . Would you have liked it if they just left it half fixed instead of reverting to original values?
I’ve had fights with her where the enemy was turtling up and being passive/not throwing specials even with the taunt applied. Several comments also elaborated on it in this thread below
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/331677/seriously-what-is-the-point
Going back to the masteries point, yes some of them are specifically tailored to the champions (NF for DW for instance), but there are still those mastery setups that are more universal for those playing in BG’s/War that want to maximize their defensive prowess (Max MD/Limber etc). Omega isn’t the only suicide friendly champion, a lot of champions benefit from the use of them. Even with just suicides , it can be difficult to run a lot of points in MD since both willpower and MD are gated behind having a minimum amount of points before you can unlock them. Now, add on inequity to that and the “divide” is further emphasized.
Taunt isn’t a guarantee to throw specials, it’s an increase in likelihood, but not to 100% chance of it happening.
And regarding your point on masteries. I picked a few example champions yes, but when you say “Omega isn’t the only suicide friendly champion” , I’d agree, but then I’d also use that logic to say that Cassie isn’t the only champion that benefits from inequity.
Any champion that can stack debuffs benefits from it, hitting the cap of 36% and only needing 6 debuffs benefits Tigra, Rintrah, Titania, Nick Fury, Zemo, Mr Fantastic, and any other champions you can name that stack debuffs.
What you’re saying is entirely the point of Cassie, to work in tandem with inequity and to require some player investment in 1) masteries, and 2) keeping debuffs up in the fight.
Saying that her intent was to be used with max inequity is almost like talking from hindsight bias, since that isnt what we we were told from the start and since somewhat similar to moleman (but less in duration) the change wasnt discussed until months later