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The 2024 champ problem
Emilia90
Posts: 2,435 ★★★★★
So I’ve seen a lot of discussions surrounding this and I wanted to get a clearer understanding of what Kabam is trying to achieve with some of these champs at this point. I’d also like to preface that not a single 2024 champ balance has been released yet, so this is a look at them before that. 2024 has had some solid releases, but it’s just been such a step down from 2023 that I have to wonder why they decided to just kneecap most new releases
Now first we have the defensive releases (Bullseye, Serpent). We’ve had a lot of champs that were good on defense but mediocre on attack in the past (Korg) and these defenders are good enough to draft in battlegrounds or to place in war regardless of their offensive potential. Overall I’m fine with these champs I guess? They don’t offer much on attack and I’d love to see them get tune ups, but they still have their place.
I have a 7* Ironheart and while she offers some unique utility, she also has mediocre damage output and if I wanted a faster miss counter I’d rather use Kate or anyone else that’s faster and more efficient. Oh look there’s destroyer! He has some nice damage right? If only it didn’t take 10 years to get going, require an sp3, and he doesn’t even destroy half the the buffs in the game so his ramp takes 10 years. He’s good against Hulkling I guess but literally anyone can take him at this point and everyone would rather use him on attack. Punk comes in with some great animations and unique utility only to have the most mid damage payoff ever. He’s grown on me after seeing MsD and Allison’s video, and I think he’d be fantastic if they just let him hit harder.
Silver Sable is a literal meme tier champion. It’s like she was plucked straight from 2016 or something and they just gave her a worse mix of champs that came before her. She doesn’t even have great animations. I don’t want to go in too harshly on Northstar since he’s a new release but I’ve seen a lot of videos from people I trust and I wanted to badly to give him the benefit of the doubt, but my god, what were they trying to accomplish with him? Mediocre utility and that weird quicksilver animation that makes him unfun to use. But hey he’s got good damage right? If you want to ramp him for a long time for mediocre payoff, sure! Sure he isn’t meant for battlegrounds (which is fine) but even if you wanted to use him for Everest content why would you? Ramping him that long for damage that I could get much easier with Aegon or Stryfe or Storm or Kate or Shuri or literally any other endgame based champ that actually sustains a good ramp and has a good amount of utility (also MsD clowning him is pretty funny, I’d go watch his vid)
The same thing applies to Arcade. He’s supposed to be defense based which would be cool if he had all the immunities that we thought he’d have, but I’m not going to judge his defensive potential too much rn. I have seen and heard a lot about his attack potential and to put it plainly, why? He takes a while to get going (times out against literally anything in battlegrounds) and even when he’s ramped he’s hitting like a r3 6*. His utility is fine, but again, why would you reach for arcade? He’s not an onslaught counter. In fact, he barely counters anything the mutant class has to offer at all.
I’ve seen a few people say that Prowler is hands down the best attacker to come from this year, and I’d have to agree. He’s still not perfect and I think his rotation could be a little less tight, but he’s the best we’ve got. Negasonic has skill countering potential which makes her valuable, but again, I’d agree that her damage is lacking. Dust once again has fantastic utility, but she could also use a numbers bump or a slight change to her rotation, though I think she’s fine for general content as is (just not battlegrounds)
I also want to say that I agree that not every champ needs to be OP/made for battlegrounds (cause this comes up all the time) but bumping some numbers to incentivize people to actually reach for them wouldn’t be making them OP. On top of that, we haven’t gotten a single phenomenal attacker for battlegrounds 6 months into the year (once again, Prowler being the best probably but still not phenomenal compared to others).
So yes, not every champ needs to be battlegrounds focused but they’ve missed the mark in general a lot of the time with the damage this year. On top of that, battlegrounds is important and idk why they haven’t even made someone close to 2023 in attack potential. A lot of these champs don’t need much other than an attack bump that lets them reach the same level of a lot of previous releases
Here’s my proposed solution for making these champs great:
Ironheart: Bump her damage up
Dust: Bump her damage up
Destroyer: Make his ramp faster, make him destroy more
Punk: Bump his damage up (slight numbers increase and he’d be sooo good)
Negasonic: Bump her damage up
Sable: Delete her from the game
Arcade: Make his ramp more practical, bump his damage up
Northstar: lmao idk but he needs a lot of help
Now first we have the defensive releases (Bullseye, Serpent). We’ve had a lot of champs that were good on defense but mediocre on attack in the past (Korg) and these defenders are good enough to draft in battlegrounds or to place in war regardless of their offensive potential. Overall I’m fine with these champs I guess? They don’t offer much on attack and I’d love to see them get tune ups, but they still have their place.
I have a 7* Ironheart and while she offers some unique utility, she also has mediocre damage output and if I wanted a faster miss counter I’d rather use Kate or anyone else that’s faster and more efficient. Oh look there’s destroyer! He has some nice damage right? If only it didn’t take 10 years to get going, require an sp3, and he doesn’t even destroy half the the buffs in the game so his ramp takes 10 years. He’s good against Hulkling I guess but literally anyone can take him at this point and everyone would rather use him on attack. Punk comes in with some great animations and unique utility only to have the most mid damage payoff ever. He’s grown on me after seeing MsD and Allison’s video, and I think he’d be fantastic if they just let him hit harder.
Silver Sable is a literal meme tier champion. It’s like she was plucked straight from 2016 or something and they just gave her a worse mix of champs that came before her. She doesn’t even have great animations. I don’t want to go in too harshly on Northstar since he’s a new release but I’ve seen a lot of videos from people I trust and I wanted to badly to give him the benefit of the doubt, but my god, what were they trying to accomplish with him? Mediocre utility and that weird quicksilver animation that makes him unfun to use. But hey he’s got good damage right? If you want to ramp him for a long time for mediocre payoff, sure! Sure he isn’t meant for battlegrounds (which is fine) but even if you wanted to use him for Everest content why would you? Ramping him that long for damage that I could get much easier with Aegon or Stryfe or Storm or Kate or Shuri or literally any other endgame based champ that actually sustains a good ramp and has a good amount of utility (also MsD clowning him is pretty funny, I’d go watch his vid)
The same thing applies to Arcade. He’s supposed to be defense based which would be cool if he had all the immunities that we thought he’d have, but I’m not going to judge his defensive potential too much rn. I have seen and heard a lot about his attack potential and to put it plainly, why? He takes a while to get going (times out against literally anything in battlegrounds) and even when he’s ramped he’s hitting like a r3 6*. His utility is fine, but again, why would you reach for arcade? He’s not an onslaught counter. In fact, he barely counters anything the mutant class has to offer at all.
I’ve seen a few people say that Prowler is hands down the best attacker to come from this year, and I’d have to agree. He’s still not perfect and I think his rotation could be a little less tight, but he’s the best we’ve got. Negasonic has skill countering potential which makes her valuable, but again, I’d agree that her damage is lacking. Dust once again has fantastic utility, but she could also use a numbers bump or a slight change to her rotation, though I think she’s fine for general content as is (just not battlegrounds)
I also want to say that I agree that not every champ needs to be OP/made for battlegrounds (cause this comes up all the time) but bumping some numbers to incentivize people to actually reach for them wouldn’t be making them OP. On top of that, we haven’t gotten a single phenomenal attacker for battlegrounds 6 months into the year (once again, Prowler being the best probably but still not phenomenal compared to others).
So yes, not every champ needs to be battlegrounds focused but they’ve missed the mark in general a lot of the time with the damage this year. On top of that, battlegrounds is important and idk why they haven’t even made someone close to 2023 in attack potential. A lot of these champs don’t need much other than an attack bump that lets them reach the same level of a lot of previous releases
Here’s my proposed solution for making these champs great:
Ironheart: Bump her damage up
Dust: Bump her damage up
Destroyer: Make his ramp faster, make him destroy more
Punk: Bump his damage up (slight numbers increase and he’d be sooo good)
Negasonic: Bump her damage up
Sable: Delete her from the game
Arcade: Make his ramp more practical, bump his damage up
Northstar: lmao idk but he needs a lot of help
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Comments
I think Sable just needs a Shuri style of buff where she can ramp faster, her shocks have added potency and she can refresh or pause them by intercepting or heavy attacks, or something like that.
Ironheart is fine, but I would like her DOT to be refreshed when you launch a special 1
Dust, her damage seems fine but could use some fine tuning
Agreed with Destroyer, he should be able to destroy more buffs, he’s the Destroyer after all.
Arcade, maybe increase the potency of his DOT slightly, and change the bleed to rupture
Negasonic: She pretty much hard counters every skill champ in the game but agreed, her numbers could be higher
Northstar, I am not sure about.
Yeah that’s a good shout on Ironheart. She has a lot of potential
Arcade is an interesting one because even when the opponent has zero immunities, his damage takes forever to get going and he’s mediocre. Add an immunity and he sucks even worse. I think the rupture thing could definitely help and his DoT definitely needs a buff
1) BG’s is the only mode consistently in play. The Everest and even story content is few and far between. SQ and EQ can be done with any half way decent champ. So BG’s will continue to be the measuring stick since there is no other relevant game consistently available. The quick fix is to add paragon/valiant levels to SQ and EQ so there might be some benefit to a ramp up champ.
2) BG’s - since it is the focal point - continues to be just nuke metas. This month will be no different. So again we will see the same rosters, the same nukes, the same defenders trying to stop nukes. All the while kabam keeps introducing kits that read like a novel that doesn’t surpass CGR’s SP2 on their best day in effectiveness
I have changed my mind on Prowler though and I do agree, he's the best one this year so far and the only one that is worth running in your deck, so there's that.
Obviously she is mid, but I don't think she's meme lmao.
Also it's interesting that every champ becomes better with a damage boost, which proves there isn't anything wrong with the kit itself, but kabam just undertuned them damage-wise for whatever reason. This also means tuning them up is really easy for them.
On the other hand, if new champions are too weak, there is no point spending the time or resources to acquire a rank up a new champion. If I have five strong techs, for instance, that cover everything I need, I would never need to focus on others.
What they have been doing lately is adding new mechanics in the game to change things up. Bullseye's killer instinct, Serpent's defense mechanics, Destroyer's destroying buffs, etc. The problem is that with an ever-increasingly complex system, it's more and more of a pain to remember every single mechanic, interactions, and animations.
All that to say, it's a juggling act Kabam has to do each month, and sometimes they nail it and sometimes they don't. I hope with the future rebalancing, that they make some of these new champs more enticing to use without becoming too game breaking
Also just take a look at the rebalances and the difference is night and day. Sinister has great utility and damage, NC is a nuke, and champs like Red Skull are the perfect balance between attacker and defender. That’s only mentioning the recent ones too.
Yeah Prowler is going to be the best in the Titan once Onslaught Bullseye and Red Skull are out. I don't know if I'd want the 7* though cause it seems the 6* sig 200 will be superior. An unawakened Prowler can't take champs like Onslaught and Bishop cause he has to apply that incinerate but I wonder if a sig 200 with the increased crit rating while falter is up can be used well against Onslaught and Bishop without that incinerate, cause if he can he might be top 10 tech for me. He definitely stalls a lot on defense no doubt about that
No complains about him
Here’s a screenshot of the 2023 releases. I’m gonna point out specifically the good attackers because that’s what’s been missing from the 2024 releases. Why can’t we have champs similar in strength to Wolf? Silk? Kushala? Adam? Shocker? Vox? Cassie? Etc.
I can understand them not wanting to introduce another Kate bishop or absorbing man into the contest, as they would have to become 7* champs and in the titan. But as for the champs I mentioned? A lot of them were in the titan and were considered great pulls, kabam had a great thing going. They found an awesome balance of strong but not broken with the majority of their releases and were applauded for it, which is why this sudden trend change is even more baffling to me.
The only 2024 champs that people have been mainly excited for are defensive based champs, nobody has had damage to be excited about. As others have said, prowler’s damage isn’t bad, it’s not anything ridiculous but it meets the mark and that’s fine. As the owner of a 7* white tiger, I actually think her damage is pretty solid as well, and I’ve seen her do fights in battlegrounds at some good speeds. And while I also don’t think her damage is particularly high, it does also meet the mark imho.
A bit of a yap sesh but yea, offensive releases have been pretty underwhelming so far this year, and it’s confusing to me considering they did such a great job with it last year.