ASCENSION LAUNCH POOL - SKILL AND SCIENCE!

Kabam (Osaurus) Rex

Greetings Summoners!

In last week’s livestream, we announced a few of the Champions for each Class who will make up the Ascension Base Pool. We are excited to continue sharing more information now, this time with a focus on our general selection guidelines and the Science & Skill classes!

How We Picked Champions for the 7-Star Ascension Pool

When the 7-Star base pool debuted a few years ago, we gave Summoners reason to prioritize some Champions who hadn’t been as valuable lately - overall, this evolution of value was positive, and we aim for the same to be true with the 7-Star Ascension base pool now. In addition to their individual desirability, we’ve also spent even more time setting up a group of Champions who are interesting because of how they operate as a group. Questions like “Who are Champions that haven’t really been prevalent at the same time but who play well together?” and “What are some simple Class identities on which we can build the next level of Power?” ultimately led us to the goal of establishing an RPG ecosystem that is rich with interaction and novelty.

In providing the value of more stats to a subset of Champions, we also aimed to present and preserve what we think is an interesting, alternative choice - continuing to invest in Rank 5 and Rank 6 for Champions who are not Ascendable but provide such universal value across the game right now that they are hard to ignore. As more new Champions release, more Ranks become accessible, and more Champions become Ascendable, we want this choice of whether to invest in 7-Stars who are or aren’t Ascendable to allow for even more player expression than the choice of 6-Star or 7-Star investment did.

Another goal for the Ascendable base pool was simple but important: ensure each Champion who can be Ascended is valuable in some way, and ideally in multiple ways. For examples:

• High Evolutionary has incredible Prestige, is a highly relevant defender, and possesses many Science RPG keys that equip him to go questing in situations where a quick fight time isn’t critical
  
• Vision (Aarkus) is a tricky defender, versatile attacker, and features an offensive loop that ramps quite well over medium-to-long fights
  

As we continue to reveal the rest of the Ascension base pool, we look forward to you all finding the ways each Champion excels!

To give one final note on the selection process, we ended up with a sizeable suite of goals for each Champion to fit within. While we have 300+ Champions, things narrow down quickly when we apply so many constraints in the selection process. Along the way, we identified more than a handful of Champions who fit very well for the fun we are trying to provide, but who just weren’t quite up to modern Champion power and comfort - they need a tuneup. This led us to having an Ascension base pool where 11 of the 30 Champions would get a tuneup, large or small. With Toad, Korg, Lady Deathstrike, Vision (Aarkus), and Emma Frost already announced, who do you think the other Champions getting a tuneup will be? Keep reading to find out more!

Science

Spider-Punk
High Evolutionary
Mister Negative
Mister Fantastic
Sandman - BUFFED

In a typical Science way, these Champions all focus on applying their Debuffs and capitalizing on the resulting fight state. Offensively, most of these Champions have the tools they need to deal with an opponent who gains a lot of Power - with Sasquatch and Mojo already revealed, how will we see this threat represented in the Mystic Class? Look forward to a future update!

Speaking of updates, Sandman is the recipient of an important one! In addition to getting some quality of life updates for attack, we also want him to help reinforce some Science defender identities that enhance the value of Skill attackers. We intend to bring him up to the level of a moderate defender who can stall the fight, not someone who will roadblock and KO your attacker. Here’s his tuneup’s general change log:

• Increased Critical Resist base stat
  
• Increased Defender Resistance Ups gained when his Light/Medium is Blocked
  
• Reduced Resistance Ups lost when suffering a Skill DoT
  
• Changed Skill DoTs that remove Resistance Ups from Poison to Incinerate (Bleed and Shock unchanged)
  
• Increased Resistance Ups lost during Unstable when Hit/Blocking
  
• Changed all Defender Resistance Ups gained on Special Attack 1 and 2 to on activation
  
• Unstable paused during all Special Attacks
  
• Reduced Resistance Ups spent on Special Attack 1 and 2 knockdown during Unstable
  

The cumulative effect of these changes gives Sandman more freedom to execute his loop offensively, regardless of which Special Attack you are focusing on or how many your opponent is throwing. Specifically from the final bullet, if maximized to his full potential, he should be able to land one additional knockdown during his offensive loop, increasing his overall damage by a sizeable amount. Defensively, Sandman will actually be able to enter his Unstable state, but it can also be ended prematurely with half as many hits.

Skill

Baron Zemo
Korg - BUFFED
Black Panther (Civil War)
Patriot
Jabari Panther - BUFFED

In a similarly Skill way, these Champions all focus on removing Debuffs applied to them and, for the most part, using Critical Hits or Bleed to deal solid damage.

Jabari Panther’s tuneup focuses entirely on offense, in particular, some comfort in her loop and reliability against more Science Champions:

• Added a Huntress Charge gain on Intercept
  
• Separated the cooldown for gaining a Huntress Charge due to Miss/Evade/Cleanse from other methods of Huntress Charge gain
  
• Removed Attacker limitation on gaining Huntress Charges from Purifying Debuffs above 5 Charges
  
• Increased Huntress Charge threshold for automatic Hunt activation from 10 to 20
  
• Added the ability to manually trigger the Hunt with a Special Attack while having at least 10 Huntress Charges
  
• Added an automatic trigger to the Hunt when the Opponent would Evade or cause an attack to Miss while having at least 10 Huntress Charges
  
• Reduced Potency of Precision during the Hunt
  
• Slightly Reduced Bleed Potencies both on Critical Hit and Heavy during the Hunt
  
• Added a Cruelty replacement against Bleed Immune Science Champions
  

Generally we try to have tuneups like this consist exclusively of “number go up” and “all effects get better” types of changes because those are usually easier to implement and understand. In this case however, there were some quality of life changes around her Huntress Charge gain and Hunt activation that we feel are critical to helping her feel like a fun, versatile Champion. Those changes lead to some LARGE effective damage increases between ramping more quickly and Jabari having more autonomy over when to deal her damage, and for that reason it was appropriate to tune down some of her other effects that she can now better leverage. The net result is undoubtedly a higher practical damage output in more fights, and especially so when she can hunt debuffs to Cleanse!

That wraps up today’s information about our Ascension base pool guidelines as well as the Science and Skill pool! Look forward to another post next week with the MYSTIC and COSMIC Champions!