The Perfect Buff for The Destroyer
RockSlyde
Member Posts: 66 ★
I was fortunate enough to pull a 7* Destroyer a couple months ago and I've mostly enjoyed using him at r2. Defensively, he has been a consistent threat in BG and war. While I'm very happy with where he landed on defense, I feel like he lacks something special on offense (for reasons I will get into later in this post). While The Destroyer is in a balanced spot on both attack and defense, I believe a slight buff would help him establish a proper champion identity and become more than a Hulkling counter.
Here's what I'm thinking:
While the opponent is under the effect of a hinder debuff, The Destroyer is passively unstoppable while blocking
This does a lot to tie his kit together. Let me explain:
Essentially, this change only affects The Destroyer offensively. As a reminder, he inflicts a 20 second hinder debuff (decreasing the potency of new buffs by 75%) on the final hit of his s1. Since it's entirely melee and quite easy to bait and dodge, it will be pretty rare to be struck by this while attacking The Destroyer. Since his defense doesn't need any improvements, this change is meant to only benefit attacking Destroyers.
Many people have pointed out that The Destroyer's movements feel "clunky". To me, that makes sense since he is essentially an ancient magical robot. He's meant to be indestructible and resilient, but not particularly nimble. However, his neutral playstyle is very heavily focused on intercepts and punishing the opponent's attacks. Typically this intercept and punish playstyle is reserved for dexterous and nimble characters, like Kitty Pryde, Black Cat, and Tigra. The stark contrast between The Destroyer's animations and playstyle has made him feel weird to play. This single line of text being added to his kit would change all of that. Here's why:
Firstly, he would feel more resilient and in-line with his character. The Destroyer in Marvel canon is incredibly sturdy, so when he goes on the defensive he shouldn't even flinch. When the opponent is hindered, they're "weakened". Mechanically, it would make sense that The Destroyer would be even stronger in the face of a weakened opponent. As such, if he's blocking a hindered opponent, he won't be flinched or pushed back. Like I mentioned, this will make him feel tankier, despite not actually increasing his health pool or block proficiency. (I understand a champion should not be balanced around canonical powers, this paragraph is meant to explain why the buff would make sense for The Destroyer and feel good in the hands of players)
Additionally, The Destroyer would gain a lot of versatility with the "unstoppable parry". With being unstoppable while blocking he would gain access to the opening that was introduced by Mole Man, and is now heavily used by Juggernaut where they strike the opponent after not flinching from an incoming blocked hit. The extra opening option that this creates is nice, but the biggest benefit is that an unstoppable parry counts as an intercept. This means that any time The Destroyer performs an unstoppable parry against an opponent's dash, he gains 5 of his destruction charges. As a reminder, once he gets 100 he activates his big power gain.
Lastly, having unstoppable while blocking would allow him to stay closer to his opponents during special attacks that normally would be difficult to punish. This, combined with the unstoppable parry's intercept effect, would allow The Destroyer to ramp up a little faster. I don't believe this would be enough to push his damage too far outside of his current output, and would serve more as a quality of life improvement instead.
Currently, The Destroyer's primary offensive use has been against buff heavy opponents because ramping him up outside of matchups like Hulkling and Gorr can feel tedious and risky. This buff would allow him to function against more general matchups while performing well and feeling like the unique and durable champion that he is.
TLDR: This change would nicely mesh his tanky animations with his intercept-and-punish focused playstyle by allowing for unstoppable parries and easier special punishes all the while feeling like a walking fortress without outright increasing his damage output or affecting his defensive abilities in any way.
If anyone has any comments/ideas/criticisms about my concept buff, please leave them below. If anyone at Kabam reads this, I would love to hear their opinion as well! I'm not sure if The Destroyer is supposed to receive any tweaks with the rebalance program, but it would mean the world to me if this change was considered for the champion. Thanks!
Here's what I'm thinking:
While the opponent is under the effect of a hinder debuff, The Destroyer is passively unstoppable while blocking
This does a lot to tie his kit together. Let me explain:
Essentially, this change only affects The Destroyer offensively. As a reminder, he inflicts a 20 second hinder debuff (decreasing the potency of new buffs by 75%) on the final hit of his s1. Since it's entirely melee and quite easy to bait and dodge, it will be pretty rare to be struck by this while attacking The Destroyer. Since his defense doesn't need any improvements, this change is meant to only benefit attacking Destroyers.
Many people have pointed out that The Destroyer's movements feel "clunky". To me, that makes sense since he is essentially an ancient magical robot. He's meant to be indestructible and resilient, but not particularly nimble. However, his neutral playstyle is very heavily focused on intercepts and punishing the opponent's attacks. Typically this intercept and punish playstyle is reserved for dexterous and nimble characters, like Kitty Pryde, Black Cat, and Tigra. The stark contrast between The Destroyer's animations and playstyle has made him feel weird to play. This single line of text being added to his kit would change all of that. Here's why:
Firstly, he would feel more resilient and in-line with his character. The Destroyer in Marvel canon is incredibly sturdy, so when he goes on the defensive he shouldn't even flinch. When the opponent is hindered, they're "weakened". Mechanically, it would make sense that The Destroyer would be even stronger in the face of a weakened opponent. As such, if he's blocking a hindered opponent, he won't be flinched or pushed back. Like I mentioned, this will make him feel tankier, despite not actually increasing his health pool or block proficiency. (I understand a champion should not be balanced around canonical powers, this paragraph is meant to explain why the buff would make sense for The Destroyer and feel good in the hands of players)
Additionally, The Destroyer would gain a lot of versatility with the "unstoppable parry". With being unstoppable while blocking he would gain access to the opening that was introduced by Mole Man, and is now heavily used by Juggernaut where they strike the opponent after not flinching from an incoming blocked hit. The extra opening option that this creates is nice, but the biggest benefit is that an unstoppable parry counts as an intercept. This means that any time The Destroyer performs an unstoppable parry against an opponent's dash, he gains 5 of his destruction charges. As a reminder, once he gets 100 he activates his big power gain.
Lastly, having unstoppable while blocking would allow him to stay closer to his opponents during special attacks that normally would be difficult to punish. This, combined with the unstoppable parry's intercept effect, would allow The Destroyer to ramp up a little faster. I don't believe this would be enough to push his damage too far outside of his current output, and would serve more as a quality of life improvement instead.
Currently, The Destroyer's primary offensive use has been against buff heavy opponents because ramping him up outside of matchups like Hulkling and Gorr can feel tedious and risky. This buff would allow him to function against more general matchups while performing well and feeling like the unique and durable champion that he is.
TLDR: This change would nicely mesh his tanky animations with his intercept-and-punish focused playstyle by allowing for unstoppable parries and easier special punishes all the while feeling like a walking fortress without outright increasing his damage output or affecting his defensive abilities in any way.
If anyone has any comments/ideas/criticisms about my concept buff, please leave them below. If anyone at Kabam reads this, I would love to hear their opinion as well! I'm not sure if The Destroyer is supposed to receive any tweaks with the rebalance program, but it would mean the world to me if this change was considered for the champion. Thanks!
3
Comments
The debuff should be pause while they are on corner atleast if kabam doesn't want them to refresh or she should have pause like omega sentinel light attack 4 or heavy attack but considering many ccp youtuber gave the good response like Mcoc noob and simula with r3 iron heart videos kabam thought she is good so no buff for iron heart
On other side ccp youtuber gave bad response for silver sable I can guarantee she will get buff for sure
It looks like kabam listen only ccp youtubers and members not the community
Forget to say something happened with gladiator ccp youtuber gave bad response for him too so he got the god tier buff
Realistically, the only buffs you should expect this year are Sable and Arcade (and Arcade is pushing it), everyone else is just staying as is, mid.
The reason she's not getting buffed is because Kabam (being Kabam) keeps looking at the data from the bots in Bronze and Silver and her overall performance there. The fact that they even said some people have successfully used her on defense further proves this, only a Bronze noob would lose to an Ironheart on defense.
Arcade is a possibility but it's still pushing it a bit, the only one that has a pretty decent chance at being buffed is Sable since KMike already acknowledged the vision was 4/5 in damage and she's not even close to that. This however still doesn't mean Sable will be good, if it takes just as long as Northstar to ramp with Sable after her potential buff she'll still be pretty mid for BGs.
prolly not gonna happen, ute I’d love to se Kabam take your cue on this.
-Since the clunk factor can also be considered a reliable feeling that permeates through the Defensive tanks, it is unlikely that Kabam will care about how we "Feel" about the armors movement.
-I'm also unaware of a time where Kabam went out of their way to innovate during the rebalance program (adding an entirely new element to a character as a finishing touch) this will more likely become a synergy down the road (or even this month since Enchantress is apparently going to be the Batman of the mystic class)
That was the point I was trying to make, if they claim Ironheart isn't being changed due to her performance and them being happy with that they see then there is absolutely no way they buff Destroyer who is already performing waaay better than Ironheart and has been in a lot of decks because of the metas. He has outperformed Ironheart in every single aspect not just attack, defense too.