War Machine's Prefights are absurdly powerful - if you're a 2* champion...
Magrailothos
Member Posts: 5,867 ★★★★★
I posted an old thread a year back, asking if War Machine's Prefights are bugged (here).
Anyway, it's been a year, and there's nothing on the Trello about War Machine. So, presumably, what I'm describing below is all fine...🤪.
Sadly, it would be against Forum rules to bump my own Bugs thread from last year, so I decided to make a new one in General Discussion, and take the risk that posting about this twice in twelve months wouldn't count as spamming...
The problem I saw back then is that War Machine's Prefights don't appear to grant the predicted damage boost. But actually, it's more complicated than that - they aren't as good as they're supposed to be for 6* or 7* champions. But they're amazing for 2* champions...
The headline abilities of the Prefights work just fine. Cleanse, Energy resistance and debuff duration seem to do what they're described as doing. So you can relax, if that's a concern for you.
But the Damage boost?
Well... the damage increase is definitely working a bit weirdly.
Placing any of War Machine's prefights on a Tech champion is supposed to increase their Attack by 10%.
Placing the Skirmish prefight is supposed to increase it by 'up to' an additional flat value, depending on the recipient's Armour Rating.
In my original thread (here), I tried it on different champions having realised the benefits were variable (usually less than 10%) for all the Prefights, not just for Skirmish (which is supposed to be the only variable one). But the Damage increase didn't seem to rise consistently with increasing Armour - in fact, I couldn't see a pattern at that time.
Well, now that we've got War Machine in the seven-star pool (and on my roster, tbh) he seems a bit more relevant to the game again, so I got around to doing a bit more testing.
I tried using varied Tech champs with different Armour ratings. Then I tried them in different rarities. The table below shows the damage from a standard non-critical medium attack on RoL Winter Soldier. If you look at the percentage increases in the last two columns, I think the pattern becomes fairly clear:
So, the Damage increase from all the Prefights (Support, Fortify and Skirmish) appears to rise inversely to the Attack rating of the champion. Armour doesn't seem to have much impact, and it's not related to their rarity - my (ranked up) 3/30 Warlock gets a much smaller enhancement than my (unranked) 4* Warlock.
But check out the damage scaling for the 2* champions! From +85% to a fairly massive +247%!
Just in case it was a weird interaction just for Warlock, I double-checked this with unranked 2* versions of 1/1 Viv Vision and Lady Deathstrike as well - it works for them exactly the same (both gained +250% Attack with Skirmish prefight), although Lady D's rupture damage doesn't go completely nuts, presumably because it's based on her Armour not her attack.
Other things I confirmed on testing:
It'll certainly be a handy ability to know about, for anyone who hasn't cleared Variant 4, yet 😉
Anyway, it's been a year, and there's nothing on the Trello about War Machine. So, presumably, what I'm describing below is all fine...🤪.
Sadly, it would be against Forum rules to bump my own Bugs thread from last year, so I decided to make a new one in General Discussion, and take the risk that posting about this twice in twelve months wouldn't count as spamming...
The problem I saw back then is that War Machine's Prefights don't appear to grant the predicted damage boost. But actually, it's more complicated than that - they aren't as good as they're supposed to be for 6* or 7* champions. But they're amazing for 2* champions...
The headline abilities of the Prefights work just fine. Cleanse, Energy resistance and debuff duration seem to do what they're described as doing. So you can relax, if that's a concern for you.
But the Damage boost?
Well... the damage increase is definitely working a bit weirdly.
Placing any of War Machine's prefights on a Tech champion is supposed to increase their Attack by 10%.
Placing the Skirmish prefight is supposed to increase it by 'up to' an additional flat value, depending on the recipient's Armour Rating.
In my original thread (here), I tried it on different champions having realised the benefits were variable (usually less than 10%) for all the Prefights, not just for Skirmish (which is supposed to be the only variable one). But the Damage increase didn't seem to rise consistently with increasing Armour - in fact, I couldn't see a pattern at that time.
Well, now that we've got War Machine in the seven-star pool (and on my roster, tbh) he seems a bit more relevant to the game again, so I got around to doing a bit more testing.
I tried using varied Tech champs with different Armour ratings. Then I tried them in different rarities. The table below shows the damage from a standard non-critical medium attack on RoL Winter Soldier. If you look at the percentage increases in the last two columns, I think the pattern becomes fairly clear:
So, the Damage increase from all the Prefights (Support, Fortify and Skirmish) appears to rise inversely to the Attack rating of the champion. Armour doesn't seem to have much impact, and it's not related to their rarity - my (ranked up) 3/30 Warlock gets a much smaller enhancement than my (unranked) 4* Warlock.
But check out the damage scaling for the 2* champions! From +85% to a fairly massive +247%!
Just in case it was a weird interaction just for Warlock, I double-checked this with unranked 2* versions of 1/1 Viv Vision and Lady Deathstrike as well - it works for them exactly the same (both gained +250% Attack with Skirmish prefight), although Lady D's rupture damage doesn't go completely nuts, presumably because it's based on her Armour not her attack.
Other things I confirmed on testing:
- it doesn't matter what rarity the War Machine providing a Prefight is - whether they're a 2* or a 7*, the results are the same.
- Also, the Support & Fortify enhancements always give the same results, whereas Skirmish gives a slightly higher boost.
- And finally, adding multiple Prefights doesn't grant any additional attack.
It'll certainly be a handy ability to know about, for anyone who hasn't cleared Variant 4, yet 😉
19
Comments
Here are 7* R1 prefight stats from AuntM.ai
It doesn’t look like you’re getting these stat boosts.
Dr. Zola
The extra benefit from Skirmish, seems to be ~10% of attack (in case of War Machine). Rather than scaling with Armor.
I may be reading the table wrong.
Certainly you get much less than a 10% boost if you're using the Support/Fortify Prefights on 5*/6*/7* champions - which are obviously the champions that most people will be interested in. The Skirmish prefight does a little better, and is probably achieving about what it's meant to, on War Machine himself; but not so well for Warlock/Guardian. There are a few other champions I've tested, in my original Bugs thread, who were only getting +3-4%
Definitely try WM out as a 7*, Dr Zola - just make sure you use the Skirmish prefight when you do...
It's kind of fun that the Prefights are ridiculously overpowered for unranked champions (if nothing else, this thread might inspire some entertaining YouTube videos), but on the whole, I'd really like it if the Prefights worked properly on the 6*/7* champions who are relevant for us, today.
If you look again, the Armour (and the Attack) for each champion decreases as you go down the table.
But rather oddly, as the Armour/Attack go down, the % Damage increase goes up. Which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen, as far as I can tell...
you get one point for each insightful, awesome, like, and agree you get on your posts and comments- disagree and lol don’t give you any points
and this is how many points you need for the next star level
1-Star - 1 point
2-Star - 251 points
3-Star - 501 points
4-Star - 1501 points
5-Star - 3001 points
excellent write up, as always. Maybe one day they’ll fix this
I don't think it seems that the Kabam team will have been all that interested in the original "People only get 5% Attack instead of the 10% they're supposed to" bug report.
Possibly they'll find the "Hey look, this ability gives champions up to +250% Attack" more interesting 🤔😉
If they don't, we can just look forward to using it in a future 2-star-gated event, if they ever do another version of 'Danger Rooms '.
Dr. Zola
The Howard thread has been the top page of that forum for most of the last month and has zero engagement or acknowledgement. Maybe it's a displeasure for previously buffed tech champions? It could also be that it's not anyone's job any longer to engage with the community in that way, but with this for over 12 months and Howard on 7 and counting it's not a particularly new development
I gained too many points for saying RNGesus was an already existing joke but wherever sadly im torch and torch is science so i can benefit from that
Great write up.
This looks like a massive @Seatin opportunity.
Would love to see him wreck Variant 4 with 2* war machine.
Bet a lot of other people would too.