How would you nerf serpent?
Emilia90
Member Posts: 3,333 ★★★★★
So this is the month where they hopefully reveal that serpent will be getting a decent tune down on defense. I’ve fought him as a r5A all the way to a high sig r3 and it’s pretty apparent to most players that he’s way too overtuned and that he needs a decent defensive nerf
Now I’m not expecting them to turn him into a potato and I know it’s not happening since he’s supposed to be a hard defender, but even then, I have some ideas to tune him down within the realm of possibility that hopefully get implemented
For reference, there are only about 5-7 champs that would be able to take him out in a decent time in bg and everyone else is either fully useless or gets stalled way too much. Bullseye is annoying but he’s frail and doesn’t have res to everything (and any bleed immune with good damage can nuke him). Serpent on the other hand limits you to a few options that are still suboptimal at times since he has so much going on and even the good champs can’t prevent his death immunity which prolongs the fight by 8 seconds no matter what
To start with what makes serpent so hard (for anyone who’s not fully aware):
- Immune to fate seal, most forms of power control, ability power rate can’t be lowered past a certain point, heal block immunity
- Massive amounts of power gain and inexorable to stop champs like Tigra
- 125% AA means your neutralize can fail and that he can still gain all the stupid effects from his sig ability
- Your crit penetration and burst damage are lowered so much that you’ll barely be making a dent in him with champs who are dependent on either, massive energy res
- Turns off dex when he has true focus
- Causes evade and miss to fail
- Pierce coupled with a ton of block damage since he has power gain and you can’t dex
As if all of that wasn’t enough, his sig ability gives him even more broken abilities
- Turns off stun during specials (no Hulk)
- 8 guaranteed seconds of death immunity with massive power gain that’ll give him an sp3 and decent regen. Since you can’t even fully prevent this with neutralize, you’re essentially cooked regardless of what you do (either a mass time stall or eating an sp3)
Looking at this extensive list of really annoying abilities, I know a few definitely won’t be touched but there are a few that could be implemented to make him more fair while still being hard
- Reduce his burst reduction and crit resistance or get rid of it entirely. This gets rid of so many more options like Ham, lowers Tigra’s effectiveness, makes hood worse, etc. the crit thing makes any crit dealer way less effective. Take it away or lower it
- His AA should not be this high. Tune it down to 100% so there are reliable options and the limited neutralize champs should be better than they are now
- Tune the sig ability down. Guaranteed sp3 with heal and 8 seconds of stalling unless you get lucky with neutralize? Way too broken
- Remove pierce
Anyway these are my suggestions and I’m sure others will have more. Best to keep them realistic but I think these will make him way less hard at least and open up more options. Very fun to play offensively though (that’s the only bit of credit he gets)
Now I’m not expecting them to turn him into a potato and I know it’s not happening since he’s supposed to be a hard defender, but even then, I have some ideas to tune him down within the realm of possibility that hopefully get implemented
For reference, there are only about 5-7 champs that would be able to take him out in a decent time in bg and everyone else is either fully useless or gets stalled way too much. Bullseye is annoying but he’s frail and doesn’t have res to everything (and any bleed immune with good damage can nuke him). Serpent on the other hand limits you to a few options that are still suboptimal at times since he has so much going on and even the good champs can’t prevent his death immunity which prolongs the fight by 8 seconds no matter what
To start with what makes serpent so hard (for anyone who’s not fully aware):
- Immune to fate seal, most forms of power control, ability power rate can’t be lowered past a certain point, heal block immunity
- Massive amounts of power gain and inexorable to stop champs like Tigra
- 125% AA means your neutralize can fail and that he can still gain all the stupid effects from his sig ability
- Your crit penetration and burst damage are lowered so much that you’ll barely be making a dent in him with champs who are dependent on either, massive energy res
- Turns off dex when he has true focus
- Causes evade and miss to fail
- Pierce coupled with a ton of block damage since he has power gain and you can’t dex
As if all of that wasn’t enough, his sig ability gives him even more broken abilities
- Turns off stun during specials (no Hulk)
- 8 guaranteed seconds of death immunity with massive power gain that’ll give him an sp3 and decent regen. Since you can’t even fully prevent this with neutralize, you’re essentially cooked regardless of what you do (either a mass time stall or eating an sp3)
Looking at this extensive list of really annoying abilities, I know a few definitely won’t be touched but there are a few that could be implemented to make him more fair while still being hard
- Reduce his burst reduction and crit resistance or get rid of it entirely. This gets rid of so many more options like Ham, lowers Tigra’s effectiveness, makes hood worse, etc. the crit thing makes any crit dealer way less effective. Take it away or lower it
- His AA should not be this high. Tune it down to 100% so there are reliable options and the limited neutralize champs should be better than they are now
- Tune the sig ability down. Guaranteed sp3 with heal and 8 seconds of stalling unless you get lucky with neutralize? Way too broken
- Remove pierce
Anyway these are my suggestions and I’m sure others will have more. Best to keep them realistic but I think these will make him way less hard at least and open up more options. Very fun to play offensively though (that’s the only bit of credit he gets)
34
Comments
No nerf
People rank and invest knowing something might be tuned, after the balancing yeah its fair to pitchfork and torch you way to an RDT
Kabam has always said that champs are subject to being tuned up or down with the program. The aim of this isn’t to make him a dud defender, it’s to make him a fairer one. Regardless of who’s r3’d him and gave him stones, he’s blatantly unfair as a defender. They could hand out RDT’s ofc
1. Remove the dread mechanics completely and replace it with something else, the 60% reduction in burst damage and crit penetration is absolutely ridiculous. If they don't want to remove it though then at the very least make it so he only starts with one dread that way it's just 20% reduction.
2. Remove the ridiculous power gain he gets while the death immunity buff is active.
Ironically enough I don't have an issue with the block damage cause if you play it right you can be knocking him down against the wall constantly with some champs, my main issues are those two mechanics. One straight up prevents a ton of champs from working, and the other one causes you to eat an sp3 if AI decides to be a jerk.
With the first change you'd be able to use some champs like Red Goat, Ham, Scorpion and Rintrah effectively which is my #1 issue. Not only is his kit full of bs, you have very few options and even the ones that work, still can't nuke.
For each dread charge serpent has, he gains increased attack, increased critical penetration resistance, (crits don’t deal as much as they normally would) reduces the damage of incoming bursts, and his death immunity power & health gain scale with each dread charge he has. On defense Serpent automatically starts with 3 dread charges, and on attack he starts with 1, but gains one after winning a fight to his max of 3.
If you simply say that serpent will now start with 2 dread on defense instead of 3, all of the mechanics I mentioned above have their potency reduced essentially by 33%. (since going from 3 to 2 is a 33% decrease.) This is perfect imo since it does not affect him on attack whatsoever but lets us tweak him strictly on defense.
The main benefit is that serpent in his death immunity would now gain 1.6 bars of power instead of 2.4, (though I feel like he’s gains more than 2.4 right now so maybe I missed something in my math) and regen 20% of his max health instead of 30%.
The only other thing I’d want to change is his death immunity having 125% ability accuracy. Currently it means that if you bring a neutralize champ, his death immunity still has a 25% chance to trigger. Honestly not sure why this is here other than to completely screw you 1/4 of the time even when you brought a counter to his death immunity. Just make it a flat 100%, we don’t need rng here.
If these changes were made I think everything else about him would be manageable, he just has too many bs mechanics all at once right now, especially around his death immunity.
There is an uproar over anything, why would this be any different?
There’s absolutely no way that kabams data shows that serpent is fair. His win rate should be through the roof and all the last metas have boosted him. Archaos and Rich get Richer? Worst defender ever there on top of his already hard abilities. This meta he has 150% increases buff duration. I fought him earlier and he was gaining power for 10 years and his death immunity lasts for another 50 years.
Nerf everything I cant get and leave everything I ranked and leveled as it is.
If you hear opinions from celestial players, the grand majority of them think he needs a nerf unquestionably. The only one I’ve heard against the nerf is Andy who owns a duped r3 lmao. Lagacy, Nagase, trappy, and probably others all agree he’s overtuned. From an objective standpoint of how he performs in that data he is wayyyyyy too much.
Chavez is another great counter, as she can shut down his power gain and all those buffs on him just give her more damage.
Doom works, but Serpent’s sig does mess with the cycle since the sp3 stun won’t apply. Still doable with sp1/sp2 spam, but slow.
I don’t have a Kushala yet to confirm this, but I understand she can put in work.
I think there are more counters to Serpent than people typically think of, but if a tune down were necessary I think it would be in the unavoidable damage department. Make it so that only his projectiles can’t be dexed, rather than the entire special. Getting clipped by the edge of a melee feels bad
Comparatively, I counted all the counters for bullseye, and came out with 19. 13 were mutant, and iirc 17 of them were what I considered meta usable. That’s a fairly big difference, and it’s not like serpent is manageable without a counter, you just lose if you don’t get one. Bullseye is the same way, but he has essentially double the counters, and he isn’t tanky so he can actually be nuked, whereas serpent even with a perfect counter is rarely going down under 50s
1) Kits that go against the typical traits of the class wheel, in this case, immune to fate seal, high ability accuracy so neutralize can fail. This is such a purposeful "we're going to make this champion completely broken" move. You eliminate the pseudo-counters and limit actual counters.
2) Removal of Dex mastery leading to unavoidable chip damage. I'm not entirely against the disabling of masteries, if anything it could really help some older champions be effective (e.g, if OG Antman disabled willpower, because normally you leave that fight with more health than you started with), but a successful Dex is testament to practice and knowledge and you should be rewarded for it, you shouldn't be turning this off - ever.
It's silly when we hear terms like "All champs have X power distribution across their design" - if they all have the same amount of attribute points to be spread across their kit, Serpent got more. He has almost everything you could want any champ to have and more. Heal, power gain, immortality, Unblockable, shut down evade, what are we talking about here? I enjoy challenging myself with all champs in this game but I just don't interact with Serpent, he gets banned and my ally pick him out in war. Really needs a tune down.
1. Remove the crit resistance.
2. Remove the resistance to burst damage.
3. His signature ability needs to be fixed, similar to Vox’s degen. Duration cannot be modified in anyway. The GC meta node extend illustrates just how absolutely broken this interaction is.
Serpent has the 9th highest health in the entire 7* pool according to Auntm.ai. He has immunity to coldsnap, 90% reduced bleed duration, crit resistance, burst damage resist, and gets resistance up. Maybe if this was all he had it would be fine, but this is insanely tanky, especially when you compare it to the rest of his kit. He gets power gain buffs, is immune to fate seal and basically most power control, and his sig is immune to nullify, fate seal, and stagger. Then you have the constant attack increases with the cull force charges, inexorable, and pierce. So not only does he stall more than almost any other champ in the game, but he hits hard, penetrates your block, and you can’t push him back. DLL definitely wasn’t worried about overturning with this champ because he didn’t hold back at all. Don’t get me wrong, I like DLL and watching his videos and he’s very knowledgeable, but this champ is just way overtuned.