Lady Deathstrike’s scaling problem
SecondSkriller
Member Posts: 1,346 ★★★★★
I’ve been playing around with her and one of my alliance mates pointed out the armor scaling on her ruptures, which made me think of the implications…
It seems that Lady Deathstrike scales horribly with rank and proves to be quite the useless rank up… her damage barely changes:
6 star rank 3:
4 star maxed:
2 star maxed:
The diminishing returns on the armor scaling are off the charts, I think Kabam should smoothen this curve and buff the higher rank versions, since to be honest playing her is very stressful if you want some decent numbers and the first 50 hits of each fight are quite dead unless you’re up against Weapon X, but the biggest offender of them all is how easy it is to lose your ramp (block a hit).
I think they should give her the Mantis treatment and smoothen some curves with her kit, make her more enjoyable and less risky to play, otherwhise I wouldn’t use her too much since it’s just too damn dangerous to play without blocking at all and her utility doesn’t make up for that aspect, which in term makes her unreliable.
So yeah, in my opinion, she needs the buff route in the rebalance, her design is awesome and sadly she’s just a mutant killer, which is a category that I hate to see tech champs falling into, but that’s just a personal thing, don’t take it as preach
PS: Adam Warlock has a similar risky playstyle but he comes equipped with infuriate and losing ramp on him is just a 12 second waiting period and a cool buff that makes you unabke to get nullified, it would be great to see Deathstrike get a TAUNT,, so that enemies throw their specials and you don’t need to dance around and waste time, yeah, that’s a good idea
It seems that Lady Deathstrike scales horribly with rank and proves to be quite the useless rank up… her damage barely changes:
6 star rank 3:
4 star maxed:
2 star maxed:
The diminishing returns on the armor scaling are off the charts, I think Kabam should smoothen this curve and buff the higher rank versions, since to be honest playing her is very stressful if you want some decent numbers and the first 50 hits of each fight are quite dead unless you’re up against Weapon X, but the biggest offender of them all is how easy it is to lose your ramp (block a hit).
I think they should give her the Mantis treatment and smoothen some curves with her kit, make her more enjoyable and less risky to play, otherwhise I wouldn’t use her too much since it’s just too damn dangerous to play without blocking at all and her utility doesn’t make up for that aspect, which in term makes her unreliable.
So yeah, in my opinion, she needs the buff route in the rebalance, her design is awesome and sadly she’s just a mutant killer, which is a category that I hate to see tech champs falling into, but that’s just a personal thing, don’t take it as preach
PS: Adam Warlock has a similar risky playstyle but he comes equipped with infuriate and losing ramp on him is just a 12 second waiting period and a cool buff that makes you unabke to get nullified, it would be great to see Deathstrike get a TAUNT,, so that enemies throw their specials and you don’t need to dance around and waste time, yeah, that’s a good idea
30
Comments
I think you're right about the scaling appearing poor. And I'm sure that Diminishing Returns is involved. I've got another example of damage scaling 'poorly' in War Machine, whose Prefights are supposedly based on the recipients Armour Rating in this thread: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/342023/war-machines-prefights-are-absurdly-powerful-if-youre-a-2-champion#latest
TL:DR version: War Machine Prefights can give 2* champions up to a 250% damage boost.
However, given that Kabam is definitely aware of the War Machine 'issue' I've raised, but doesn't seem bothered by it, I don't think this is either unintended or unpredictable. I wonder if Kabam has the exact opposite perspective from us? They designed the champions, after all.
For them: Lady D's damage doesn't scale poorly - the damage is calibrated so that a high-ranked 6-7* champion ends up inflicting the damage that was intended. However less-powerful champions will see disproportionate benefits.
Hence, from Kabam's perspective, your 6* is working as intended; but the 2* is working excessively well...
I suspect that (1) your six-star champion is probably doing what she's supposed to do, and (2) 2* or 3* versions behave very differently - so much so, that they give an inaccurate perspective on what the 6*/7* will do, so (3) this is definitely a case for people to be careful and think hard before they rank up.
I wonder just how many Champions are affected by this?
(is it a case of Diminishing Returns causing effects to be way more pronounced when lower values are involved, and way less when higher values are? When using the free 3* I did notice that she was actually inflicting somewhat significant damage to RoL WS...)
my 3/30 3* Lady Deathstrike has armour rating of 200 (9.1%) and can get up to 1057.14 via her buffs.
According to the Crystal Vault:
maxed 3* Lady Deathstrike has base armour of 229 (10.3%) and can get up to something like 1109.97.
maxed 4* has base armour of 381 (16%), and can get up to 1333.37.
maxed 5* has base armour of 664 (24.9%) and can get up to 1664 armour
maxed 6* has base armour of 711 (26.2%) and can get up to 1782.43 armour.
maxed 7* (!) has base armour of 869, and can get up to 2178.54 armour.
75% of 1057 is about 765, and 75% of 2178 is 1633
Sadly, I only have a 3* Lady Deathstrike but this scenario is pretty strange indeed.
Adding to this:
With ONLY her normal Armour Up buff, my 3/30 Lady Deathstrike's Rupture from a light hit does 29/tick to Winter Soldier.
which is something like 58/second... or 348 total
...which kind of checks out - 75% of her armour rating is 342.8
Hopefully they learn from her kit and improve Lady D’s play style.
At max stacks (seven passives, one buff) her Ruptures were dealing 233 damage per second - or about 1398 total, making her total armour around 1864 (it should be 1857.14 if her info is anything to go by)
Knowing this, a "fully ramped" maxed awakened 5*
should deal... 1947 total Rupture damage
Not even double.
However, there is a 2* Lady Deathstrike.
And her "fully ramped" Ruptures? I estimate them to deal 1284 damage.
funny thing: a maxed 4* only has about 300 less total armour than a rank 3 6*, meaning that they indeed will see similar Rupture damage (1925 vs 1666)
tl,dr: 5* 5/65 awakened Lady Deathstrike's Ruptures are not even twice as strong as a maxed 2* Lady Deathstrike
But there should be some difference observed.
I think making her scale 50% with attack and 50% with armor is a good way to balance out the curve in the damage side of her kit
And since it scales with armor nodes that help you will pretty much be useless, I don’t think it’s such a huge pro-player move to make lower rating champs scale insanely, no one really benefits from 4 stars anymore :,)
Her dmg at 6* r4 unawakened was quite underwhelming, especially after seeing how her 5* awakened version could outperform it. I have since awakened her and she now sits at ~sig170. Her dmg is better now, but I would still like to see her get a slight buff.
Anyways, the comment was along the lines of:
Why not buff how her base armour rating scales instead of increasing her ability armour ratings. Currently, her base armour ratings are 103 [2* r1], 664 [5* r5], 711 [6* r5] and 678 [7* r2]. Her base armour ratings at 6* r4 and 7* r1 are literally lower than her maxed out 5* lol.
Why not make it scale with * rating and rank? So a 6* starts off where the 5* ends and 7* where the 6* ends. Thought process behind this specific change being: it increases her overall dmg output (obviously), but it also lets the higher rarities start ahead and stronger. Could potentially close the gap between a 5* r5 awakened and 6* r3/r4 unawakened dmg wise, though the 5* might outpace it at full ramp. Thoughts?
6* r1 having a base armour rating equivalent to a 5* r2 when it should be equivalent to a 5* r4 is quite odd. The 5* values are kinda overtuned though.
this is the first time a champ has used a stat like armour rating for a large chunk of their attack, so it's definitely under close review for her balancing. I love it personally, it's quirky and means increasing armour rating (say in incursions) gives you big damage boosts - and means it's not affected by weakness, taunt etc.
I’d take a champ who brings something different to the roster even if it makes them bad for, ahem, TB EQ.
It means they’re unaffected by inequity in BGs and AW, long distance relationship, class disadvantage and tons more. Is it really that big a deal if they don’t get a fury boost in event quest? I’ll just use a different champ who does.
Health being unimportant because you aren’t supposed to block is a bit of a disingenuous argument imo. Would you use a 3* Lady DS if that’s your opinion? Still don’t have to block, would you use a 2* if you got one? Don’t think so. Because firstly, part of her ability set is to eat specials and regen them back if you’re in ferocity instead of blocking, but if you have 5k health instead of 50k, the special might Ko you instead of being able to regen it back.
And not to mention, in BGs, about half or more of the fight is ramping up into ferocity, when you’re able to block. So having more health is important there. Also, when you use the sp2 you get 2 free blocks, so no, her playstyle isn’t just “never block”. I disagree with that massively.
ALSO also, her attack doesn’t only come from ruptures it’s just a big part of it. Lots of damage comes from basic attacks and specials in fights
In this 200k healthpool, rupture only did 80k damage. So if you were using a 3* (and assuming they had the same armour rating, which they don’t) your 3* that is “basically the same” as a 6* would only have done around half the healthpool. That’s because especially in shorter fights, Lady DS’s damage isn’t just ruptures. So the basic hits matter, and so does the rarity.