Hey all,Balance Team here again with an update on the latest round of Champions up for review, Lumatrix and Spider-Woman!
Lumatrix
The Battlerealm’s 2nd Eidol in Lumatrix had the goal of being a hard-hitting Critical Hit focused Champion, with their Misdirection mechanic designed to supplement a high-tempo playstyle, while also disrupting Opponents defensively by restricting their openings. Across multiple Alliance War and Battlegrounds seasons, players have used Lumatrix’s Endurance and unique Immunity set effectively as indicated by their most popular and best performing matchups. Lumatrix’s attacker usage and performance overall continues to develop at a healthy clip, and we’re happy with what we’re seeing so far!
Defensive Lumatrix is all about restricting the windows when they can be punished, rewarding Opponents who can comfortably manage Miss and/or Evade. Lumatrix started off hot as a defender, notably in Alliance War where they benefited from the #Genesis Defense Tactic, amplifying their ability to disrupt the tempo of their Opponents and force mistakes. As the Tactics rotated out, Lumatrix’s defensive performance settled into a range more suited for their target, having found a few tricky spots on the map which have proven to be punishing, but answerable. Lumatrix’s defensive performance in Battlegrounds has trended similar to their performance in Alliance War, having settled into a healthy range over time. No changes incoming for Lumatrix!
Spider-Woman
Our latest Spider-Verse Hero has arrived in The Contest, and the impact of Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) is definitely being felt! Equipped with both familiar and new abilities, she’s dominating against top Mystic defenders like Enchantress and non-Mystic defenders, too. While her offensive performance is on the stronger side, it’s not something we feel warrants intervention on its own.
Defensively, and to get directly to a critical point, Spider-Woman has been more of a menace than we wanted for her Defender
Champion Attribute being a 3.5 out of 5. Therefore, we will be removing the Ensnare Debuff from her kit so that Attackers are not pressured with a long-lasting Ability Accuracy Reduction on a regular basis. We expect this change to free up Attackers to more consistently play around her other RPG threats like Severe Power Sting and Fumble.
While removing Ensnare will obviously have some effect on her Attacker power as well, we haven’t seen Spider-Woman need a solution to Evade across her matchup spread. Similarly, the Ability Accuracy Reduction isn’t potent enough to encourage using it as a solution to defensive encounters, but was strong enough to add confusing interactions across the game. Specifically in her Enchantress counter-matchup, this Evade answer didn’t have many opportunities to make an impact as Debilitate, her own Evade on Miss/Unstoppable, and general anti-Mystic abilities already allow Spider-Woman to control the fight from the beginning.
Overall, we believe this is an important update in our ongoing efforts to prevent too many strong Defenders from being introduced too quickly across the game.
What’s Next
With Spider-Woman needing a small change, we’ve added her to the upcoming Batch #2 in January, which consists of:
- Vision (Deathless)
- Falcon (Joaquin Torres)
- Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew)
- Toad
You can expect comms on YELENA BELOVA, CYCLOPS (BLUE TEAM), PHOENIX, AND DARK PHOENIX around mid October!
