Quake and Magik - Reason for them to never be 6 or 7 stars
peixemacaco
Member Posts: 4,489 ★★★★★
Case closed
2
peixemacaco
Member Posts: 4,489 ★★★★★
Case closed
Comments
"...and to leave them as 5 stars"
1. The champ does something nasty that cannot be trivially balanced for normally.
2. It is impossible to remove this feature from the champion without fundamentally altering the champion on undesirable ways.
3. Whatever this thing is, it would be too high of a design burden to constantly account for it through special cases in the future.
All of these are judgment calls; what one person thinks is a reasonable change might not be seen that way to everyone else (see: Hood rebalance, Guillotine rebalance). Also, what the specific thing or things that create the problem in the first place may not be obvious or generally known. See: people who think “Hercules is not a good option for end game content” actually matters. From what I understand, some of which I can not share, there’s usually some general principle that makes a champ dangerous in general, but then there’s often a set of very specific situations that are exemplars of the problem that become the deciding factor(s). And the devs are not in general going to share those for a few reasons.
Let’s take Magik as an example. I’m not saying this is precisely why Magik is blocked by the devs, I’m just creating a credible hypothetical line of thought. A huge part of Magik’s utility is her power control: she is one of the few champs that has a very reliable power lock and power drain, giving her two bites at the apple so to speak. Her overall usefulness and the reason why people like to play her in general is heavily focused on that control. But there are circumstances where that power control becomes so powerful it becomes too strong for the content. We can take that into account by using nodes or defenders that partially neutralize that strength, but then we would have to do that for a lot of things forever into the future of the game, because it is not like absolute power control is only a marginally useful ability. We can weaken that control in the champion design, but then that nerfs the champion everywhere, not just in the few cases where we want it to be not as good. We can try to balance for it by evolving the game overall to account for it in new champion design and such, but once again that would be very difficult to do in ways that don’t have negative side effects for lots of other champions and situations. In that case, the only remaining option is to side line the champ so it isn’t released in higher rarities, so that she can continue to function in the same way but her impact on downstream content is mitigated by essentially running into a power ceiling.
As I said, this isn’t necessarily why Magik is blocked. There are probably specific reasons specific developers have to come to this conclusion, and in fact different developers might disagree on these things, but the overall consensus landed with her not being released at higher rarities.
80% of fights as defender she wins easily
And I didn't find Magik's explanation.
But Miike said about both 👍
For those worried about her Limbo being too strong on defense, that’s not why Kabam locked her. It’s never about a defensive potential—it was always about offensive capabilities. There are other champions with equally nasty defensive abilities, and some are even worse.
The main issue was that her power control was considered too strong. But is it still? Back then, if I remember correctly, there were hardly any champions or nodes with immunity or resistance to power manipulation. If anything, it was rare. That’s no longer the case. If Magik’s power control was deemed too powerful, then by that logic, Doom shouldn’t have been released either. Doom also has a strong power control and does about five times more damage than Magik.
Consider the supposedly “nasty” defenders that some might argue Magik could shut down with her power control. In most cases, she isn’t even the best option, and sometimes she won’t work at all:
• Bullseye: She has to survive until her SP2 with no real RPG counters. Limbo can mitigate some damage when timed correctly, but she also has to manage Bullseye’s ability to purify the power lock debuff. Would she be better than Mr. Sinister, Negasonic, Bishop, Dazzler, Storm, Onslaught, etc? Not in my opinion.
• Enchantress: Enchantress is immune to power lock and regains any power Magik tries to steal. Plus, there are better counters available.
• Serpent: He’s immune to power lock, rendering her power control useless. She also can’t do any meaningful damage due to her below-average attack, and she has no way to scale her damage throughout the fight. Would she be better than Chavez, Shathra, Isophyne, Spiral, Kushala, Symbiote Supreme, or Sorcerer Supreme? I highly doubt it.
• Attuma: Thorns damage would be a problem. Limbo could mitigate some of it, but she would still lose the power lock debuff due to Attuma’s purify. I’d rather use someone else. Even Juggernaut, despite having no counter to the thorns damage, has high enough damage to end the fight quickly and minimize damage taken as the fight drags.
• Onslaught: He has no immunity or resistance to power control, so she would work as intended. But would she be your first choice? Probably not.
• Maestro: She would work fine but wouldn’t be particularly special in this fight. Limbo would help mitigate some energy damage, and she wouldn’t have to deal with many specials.
There are also many champions in the Cosmic class against whom her power control won’t work, as well as others in the Skill class who will purify the debuff.
Yes, there are fights she can handle well, where her power control shines. But with over 250 champions in the game, will she really stand out with her below-average stats in most matchups? In scenarios where power control is crucial, she’ll definitely be one of the best, but those situations are limited.
I think it makes sense to make the most of her now because her relevance will continue to decline as new champions and abilities are introduced. This has been the case with other champions that were locked and later released—they became irrelevant. I don’t want that to happen with Magik, but I suspect it might already be too late.
2. Given my understanding of the reasoning, it is unlikely you would be able to change their minds unless you a) possessed the kind of game expertise that would allow you to deduce the full reasoning on your own and b) could then somehow explain why their reasons would no longer be valid (and as far as I am aware, they still are).