Why Dani moonstar needs to be rebalanced

WednesdayLength

I know that rebalance is a dirty word around here, but I got lucky enough to pull dani from her featured paragons and whilst I'm having a lot of fun with her there's a few very glaring issues with her kit that I genuinely think need to be addressed in her rebalance.

It all stems around her viability as a nick fury counter which is what she was primarily pushed as being. From some googling and scouting the forums, I understand that furies second life is coded in a way that is different from most other cheat death mechanics which is why it's so difficult to counter. Obviously it's unaffected by ability accuracy, and on paper dani seems like an incredible counter when awakened. But she isn't.

At first I thought as I'm sure many others did that the marked passive in her kit is what counters nick, but it actually isn't. All that does is reduce the ability accuracy of cheat death effects which obviously nick can't be countered by. This leaves the neuroshocks becoming passive when shrugged off, which is up to a 100% chance at max sig. When it procs its a perfect counter, just stops him healing and kills him when his lmd activates, the issue is that getting neuroshocks on him is like, almost impossible lmao.

The only way to get neuroshock debuffs on him is to phase his attacks when you have an illusion and then apply them back with her specials, the issue is that you're basically 1 unlucky combo or an sp1 from him away from not being able to phase him. I've played her a ton in battlegrounds and the luck it takes to not only keep him under 5 charges, but to also apply enough arrows that having a low sig will still give you a decent chance of them reapplying when he purifies them, and not even mentioning that you need this to happen at relatively low health so they're still on him when he dies. All this ignoring the battlegrounds timer which makes balancing all this a hell of a lot harder.

Don't get me wrong, when it works it works insanely well, bit given that she was touted as the hard nick fury counter it's kinda surprising how hard it actually is to counter him lmao. I've been thinking about how this could be addressed, idk how this stuff is coded so I don't really know if any of this would counter it, but I've got a few possible options. To my understanding the life model decoy us coded in a way that means its not that easy to just say that it doesn't proc if a marked passive is on him so I'll avoid that one.

1- take the ability to gain neural arrows on hitting the opponents block when you have an illusion that she has on defense and give it to her on attack too. I really don't get why this is a defense exclusive ability to begin with but it would allow her to reliably gain arrows against nick fury even if he has 5 charges.

2- apply a neuroshock passive on the opponent if the marked passive from her sig is purified (maybe a percentage scaling with sig). Idk how broken it would be to just have it completely shut down nick at sig 1, so maybe a sliding percentage would work, but honestly I don't think it's that big a deal.

3- possibly give her a guaranteed neural arrow on each special. This is another thay feels potentially a little too easy but given how vital neural arrows are to her kit I don't think a guaranteed one is that big a deal.

4 - potentially give her something like peni where if a skill champion heals more than 5% health in 1 tick you apply a neuroshock passive. Given thay peni hard counters nick at sig 1 I don't think this would be thay big a deal.

These are just a few ideas, I genuinely love dani and in most match ups she works exquisitely but it's just frustrating how hard it is to make her work against the match up she's supposed to hard counter.

BitterSteel

So I have given Dani a fair bit of testing (I loved her the second I did, and now have an R5) and I understand where you're coming from with this. She is a nick counter that requires a bit of finesse. I have a suggestion for you OP, or anyone else interested in playing her, and then I'll explain what I think she could benefit from in terms of tuning. I land somewhere in the middle of your take, and a take where she needs nothing at all.

My first suggestion is to play a little more MLM then parry. With Nick having a 25% chance against mutants it means on average, that combo gives him less than 1 tactical charge and then your parry removes it. If you proc 2, he's gained net 1, if you hit the 1% chance of all 3 proccing or if they're getting a little high, parry twice. You can do that until he gets to 1 bar of power, then use your first illusion to block bait a heavy or a combo.

So imagine you're on 7/8 hits he's on just below a bar of power, you've controlled his tactical charges so when you do this he's only one 1 or 2. You hit in with MLLL gaining an illusion but stopping before the last hit of your combo. If you start this when he's on 1 or 2 charges, the odds of him not being able to miss you here are incredibly low.

You then let nick either throw a heavy or a combo at you to build up NA (Neural arrows) and then you can keep on hitting him to push him to SP2, or bait another heavy if you didn't quite give him enough power. BG nodes that give you striker gauge are super helpful here, because you can also use the striker to push him above 2 bars as well. However, if you manage it right, MLLL pause, miss, MLLLM does push an R5 Nick from under 1 bar to above 2 bars. No chance to throw an Sp1.

Depending on the meta, or if you have a gambit relic, you may want to go Sp1, but usually an Sp2 should be ok for it. After baiting out his Sp2 you'll want to re-control any charges he got, so a few parries may be needed. If not, he will usually around 4 or 5, if he's above, remember that without a fury they drop off, so if you're just about to use a special and need a falter, you can wait a couple of seconds without triggering your miss.

In doing this method, I don't think I've ever had Nick go above 7 or 8 TC's and that's when i've pushed him to Sp2 with a combo and got bad RNG. Meaning I can just parry or wait a few seconds to get my miss counter back and grab some more Neural arrows.


A couple of other smaller points for Push Button In Case of Emergency situations, are that firstly, if you do find him with 5 charges and you absolutely need NAs there and then, trigger your falter with a block and then dex during the falter, that will give you a NA. But another thing, is that remember that Dani's sig doesn't only interact with NAs, if a skill champion purifies a stun they also get a passive neuroshock. So if you have a low health nick at like 2% and no way to throw a special or get NAs. Parry and Medium him, if you KO him during a stun he will purify it and then tick down with the passive. This also works for SP3s if you parry and throw during the SP3 with no NAs, but less useful.


As for what she needs for a change if at all, I actually disagree with your suggestions specifically, but I do think she could benefit from something.

1. I think is too powerful, it would make it so you never needed to balance her current loop with gaining NAs and Prowess, all you need to do is get an illusion then hit their block. Makes NAs far too easy to get.

2. Maybe? I'm not convinced on that one, I like the idea of having to work for the Nick counter. It makes Dani a slightly more high skill counter to Nick, which means if your opponent drafts a Dani for your nick, it's not a guaranteed 40 second KO, it means they have to do something to make it work. Which a) means you have a chance, and b) it means there's more of a feel good moment when you pull it off. Torch vs Meph? Easy match, anyone could do it and it's a guaranteed round loss most of the time.

3. Probably the most likely of all, but I do think her loop is intended to make your work for it at least to some regard. I think a more likely version of this one is to give her a NA when her falter is activated, so at least if you don't miss there's still a NA from it.

4. Again maybe, but I don't think they want to recreate Peni. Dani has other strengths aside from this against Nick, mainly easier controlling his Charges, so it's about balancing a counter not to be just completely and utterly hard countering. An issue with Nimrod for example, is he makes making a new mutant defender or content with mutant defenders so difficult because he hard counters everything the class does (prowess and regen). It's not impossible, see Bishop, but it's a warning to trying to make champs hard counter *too* hard.


My suggestion for Dani would be more along the lines of this. One of the biggest issues I've personally had is using a special and KOing Nick *during* the special. Because the neuroshocks on the last hit, if you KO during they haven't applied yet and nick will regen.

To me, Dani is all about a set up (NAs and Prowess) then a payout (Big SP2). It seems counter intuitive to want the payout to either not kill then tick down with Neuroshocks, or to only KO on the last hit, because that's immensely tight timing.

If Neuroshocks applied on the first hit of a special, and paused during specials meaning they can still tick down after the special as they do now, i think that would be a massively positive change for her. Obviously with a slight potency decrease so overall they deal the same damage.

I think with that, she would be fine. Because you then either KO with the Special, and he goes down. KO with the neuroshock debuffs/combo during that duration and he goes down, or if it's mistimed then you lose out on the intended loop (hence maybe not winning because of a mistake), but you still have the opportunity to parry and KO him apply a neuroshock passive to dig yourself out of a hole.