I was thinking: is starburst the worst node design ever?
lowlevelplayer
Member Posts: 4,292 ★★★★★
Its just unavoidable degen damage. Only 2 counters: hulk rags and max sig namor. If they placed this node on any 6.2/3/4 fight, pretty much every champ will die to degen damage. I wonder: what were they thinking when they made the node?
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Now I don’t care about starbust also cuz I have a rank 2 gladiator
Imagine a fight in act 6.4 with about 400k health, even with a 5* rank 5 gulk, you're gonna die to that degen.
There's some really challenging ones, but there's no single node that punishes you the same way Strength in #'s does. You have to play perfect for an entire path of 8 fights and then fight a relatively easier boss fight.
No Retreat is probably the worst.
I really hate all of the niche nodes. Like can't stop won't stop and the power sting paths. I just want to play the game, not sit any wait forever to pull a champ, rank someone up i don't want to, and then clear the path.
To me, a counter is a combination of champion and tactical play that lets you win the fight. And by that definition there are lots of other counters. Magik is a counter to starburst: I've seen her used with super-aggressive play to basically eliminate most of the starburst damage by using Limbo to unwind it. Captain Marvel can counter starburst by just being indestructible for most of the end of the fight when starburst damage is at its highest. And heck, I've used Blade against starburst and just healed back whatever damage I took.
In fact it is worth noting that Blade is often a good "counter" for a fight not specifically because of anything he does in that specific fight, but simply because whatever damage you take in that fight you can heal back in the next fight provided that fight allows you to do so. Blade might not be an explicit counter for one specific fight, but he might still be a good choice to take on that path as a whole *including* the fight he isn't the best choice for, simply because it is better if he takes that damage than anything else on the team. It doesn't matter if you take damage if you can heal it back reliably.
There are other ways to "counter" starburst. Recognizing that the damage is low at the start and higher at the end of the fight, you could use champions and tactics that backload damage. Champs that ramp up damage or have high burst damage can be good by limiting the time you're exposed to the low health/high damage conditions. Stark Spidey for example can be played that way, deliberately building poise and chipping away slowly until the fight is winnable quickly enough that starburst's damage is low overall. This attacks the mechanics of starburst as opposed to trying to find a brute force way to negate the damage of starburst.
Focusing on the "unavoidability" of the damage can cause players to overlook the actual mechanics of the damage, and forgetting the point is to complete the path, not to complete one fight without breaking a sweat.