Ebony Maw barely needs a buff

Hammerbro_64Hammerbro_64 Member Posts: 7,463 ★★★★★
Before you dogpile me, hear me out. I feel like EM has almost everything he needs to be a great champion. The framework is there, but the only problem is what each effect does (deterioration, black tongue, etc). I really like his falter and power gain buff steal abilities, and his no-contact energy attacks. L3 power steal is solid as well. Where he kinda becomes the meh people talk about is when it comes to damage and reliable utility. So here are his problems and how I would change them.

His L1’s nullify is strangely unreliable: he only seems to nullify on hits if the buff was active on activation. I would just change that to nullify on each hit regardless if a buff existed at the beginning of the special.

L2 doesn’t really have much in the way of anything except as his only respectable-ish damage dealer. In Infinity War, when DS sling ringed the concrete spikes back to EM, they made him bleed, so I think a chunky bleed is a good move, but also, those strike a bunch of places, probably screwing up some tendons, so maybe it inflicts a handful of consumable falter stacks (like KM’s indestructible passives)

Inflicting (indirectly) weakness with deterioration is kind of irrelevant for any decent players who face content that any damage taken is probably fatal. Unless nobody has ever done the math and having 20 deterioration on your +0 fury buff and it reduces the enemies attack to zero, it’s just not a good ability.

Instead, a deterioration passive should give the enemy a 5% chance per stack for medium attacks and unblockable specials to be guaranteed crits (all non-science champs will miss). That would give him similar intercepting power as Ghost and special avoidance as SG. Not broken but still very good.

Black tongue is alright I guess, but 40% AAR for fully ramping is kind of meh. So I would say either let it stack up to twice so we can get 80% AAR, or change the potency to reflect how many missions were complete upon activation (0 missions: 10% AAR; 1 mission: 30% AAR; 2 missions: 50% AAR; All missions: 70% AAR)

So that gives him really good utility. As far as DPS goes, he is still very very meh. How about simply giving him a 1% base attack increase for each miss? That is the ability most stuff revolves around, so why not reward players for making the opponent miss as much as possible?

Did I miss any other lackluster aspects? I feel like the idea is there, but it was either rushed or set aside because they felt like they were already making Cull a big damage champ (so they opted for more utility)

Comments

  • Hammerbro_64Hammerbro_64 Member Posts: 7,463 ★★★★★
    shield456 said:

    He was buffed already in Feb when namor was nerfed

    Yeah but it was very minor. It doesn’t mean he is disqualified from further adjustment
  • Hammerbro_64Hammerbro_64 Member Posts: 7,463 ★★★★★

    I feel like EM has almost everything he needs to be a great champion.

    I don't like the fact that he loses his whole "Falter-Miss" mechanic after applying Black Tongue to the opponent.
    Yep I wholeheartedly agree. That’s why I’ve worked miss mechanics into his L2 and Deterioration abilities. It’s one of his biggest strengths that just vanishes after a short amount of time (especially considering his Dps)
  • Hammerbro_64Hammerbro_64 Member Posts: 7,463 ★★★★★
    I just went into RoL with my un leveled 6*, and he literally maxes his damage at around 8k on an L2 assuming everything crits (this was also with NF on the team and accounting for degen). His L3 doesn’t even break 3k. I know kabam stated they weren’t designing him as an attacker, but they also said he should be playable. A 6* should be able to pull off much much higher numbers. I stand by my ramp up by being missed mechanic.
  • Etm34Etm34 Member Posts: 1,667 ★★★★★
    Just up his damage 100% and he’d be fine. That’s really all he needs for me to use him
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  • Xander_1_1Xander_1_1 Member Posts: 13
    I think if he inflicted a degen on his SP3 for each persistent charge, that would give him the damage he is currently missing. So the rotation would involve using the opponent’s power against them (similar to Doom), and utilizing the SP3 for damage. Additionally, it would give players more reason to ramp up his persistant charges (as each one would apply an additional degen on the SP3 similarly to Mojo).
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,581 ★★★★★
    Diabolic said:

    Before you dogpile me, hear me out. I feel like EM has almost everything he needs to be a great champion. The framework is there, but the only problem is what each effect does (deterioration, black tongue, etc). I really like his falter and power gain buff steal abilities, and his no-contact energy attacks. L3 power steal is solid as well. Where he kinda becomes the meh people talk about is when it comes to damage and reliable utility. So here are his problems and how I would change them.

    His L1’s nullify is strangely unreliable: he only seems to nullify on hits if the buff was active on activation. I would just change that to nullify on each hit regardless if a buff existed at the beginning of the special.

    L2 doesn’t really have much in the way of anything except as his only respectable-ish damage dealer. In Infinity War, when DS sling ringed the concrete spikes back to EM, they made him bleed, so I think a chunky bleed is a good move, but also, those strike a bunch of places, probably screwing up some tendons, so maybe it inflicts a handful of consumable falter stacks (like KM’s indestructible passives)

    Inflicting (indirectly) weakness with deterioration is kind of irrelevant for any decent players who face content that any damage taken is probably fatal. Unless nobody has ever done the math and having 20 deterioration on your +0 fury buff and it reduces the enemies attack to zero, it’s just not a good ability.

    Instead, a deterioration passive should give the enemy a 5% chance per stack for medium attacks and unblockable specials to be guaranteed crits (all non-science champs will miss). That would give him similar intercepting power as Ghost and special avoidance as SG. Not broken but still very good.

    Black tongue is alright I guess, but 40% AAR for fully ramping is kind of meh. So I would say either let it stack up to twice so we can get 80% AAR, or change the potency to reflect how many missions were complete upon activation (0 missions: 10% AAR; 1 mission: 30% AAR; 2 missions: 50% AAR; All missions: 70% AAR)

    So that gives him really good utility. As far as DPS goes, he is still very very meh. How about simply giving him a 1% base attack increase for each miss? That is the ability most stuff revolves around, so why not reward players for making the opponent miss as much as possible?

    Did I miss any other lackluster aspects? I feel like the idea is there, but it was either rushed or set aside because they felt like they were already making Cull a big damage champ (so they opted for more utility)

    He is very decent as defender but definitely needs a buff he needs to be usable in attack too, I have diffrent opinion in this game I think characters in this game must be parallel (similar) to comics or mcu, and when I look to black order ebony Maw by far strongest member then I'm looking game and seeing him as weakest one and its bothering me, and I even don't have ebony Maw still he need a buff but be honest kabam should buff the old heroes first like Hawkeye, daredevil, iron fist, superior iron man etc
    The problem with that is it's virtually impossible to make them true to Comics and MCU within this framework.
  • shield456shield456 Member Posts: 1,980 ★★★
    shield456 said:

    He was buffed already in Feb when namor was nerfed

    shield456 said:

    He was buffed already in Feb when namor was nerfed

    Yeah but it was very minor. It doesn’t mean he is disqualified from further adjustment
    I agree he needs a buff but I was really sad and disappointed when namor was nerfed.
    I just loved him bef9re nerf. I still do but he is not that God now, his Regen and critical were super and Kabam removed the critical and halfed the regen.
    He was one of the highest regen champs in the game and the strangest mutant before Nerf right??
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  • DPXFistheGOATDPXFistheGOAT Member Posts: 727 ★★★
    I spend an egregious amount of time playing arena. From my experience, Ebony Maw is noticeably BY FAR the wettest noodle in this contest of soups
  • SneakyWarriorSneakyWarrior Member Posts: 853 ★★★★
    pls dont buff ebony maw. game too hard. i noob cant fight harder ebony maw. #thinkaboutthescrubs
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  • SneakyWarriorSneakyWarrior Member Posts: 853 ★★★★
    Brack1984 said:

    My GF stopped playing because she pulled him as her first and 2nd 5* haha. But yeah, he just needs a minor adjustment to be a good champ. Doesn’t need to be god tier, but just a champ where you can say, “oh, I’ll use him for this path.”

    flexing your gf on us i see.
  • TheHoodedDormammuTheHoodedDormammu Member Posts: 1,448 ★★★

    Before you dogpile me, hear me out. I feel like EM has almost everything he needs to be a great champion. The framework is there, but the only problem is what each effect does (deterioration, black tongue, etc). I really like his falter and power gain buff steal abilities, and his no-contact energy attacks. L3 power steal is solid as well. Where he kinda becomes the meh people talk about is when it comes to damage and reliable utility. So here are his problems and how I would change them.

    His L1’s nullify is strangely unreliable: he only seems to nullify on hits if the buff was active on activation. I would just change that to nullify on each hit regardless if a buff existed at the beginning of the special.

    L2 doesn’t really have much in the way of anything except as his only respectable-ish damage dealer. In Infinity War, when DS sling ringed the concrete spikes back to EM, they made him bleed, so I think a chunky bleed is a good move, but also, those strike a bunch of places, probably screwing up some tendons, so maybe it inflicts a handful of consumable falter stacks (like KM’s indestructible passives)

    Inflicting (indirectly) weakness with deterioration is kind of irrelevant for any decent players who face content that any damage taken is probably fatal. Unless nobody has ever done the math and having 20 deterioration on your +0 fury buff and it reduces the enemies attack to zero, it’s just not a good ability.

    Instead, a deterioration passive should give the enemy a 5% chance per stack for medium attacks and unblockable specials to be guaranteed crits (all non-science champs will miss). That would give him similar intercepting power as Ghost and special avoidance as SG. Not broken but still very good.

    Black tongue is alright I guess, but 40% AAR for fully ramping is kind of meh. So I would say either let it stack up to twice so we can get 80% AAR, or change the potency to reflect how many missions were complete upon activation (0 missions: 10% AAR; 1 mission: 30% AAR; 2 missions: 50% AAR; All missions: 70% AAR)

    So that gives him really good utility. As far as DPS goes, he is still very very meh. How about simply giving him a 1% base attack increase for each miss? That is the ability most stuff revolves around, so why not reward players for making the opponent miss as much as possible?

    Did I miss any other lackluster aspects? I feel like the idea is there, but it was either rushed or set aside because they felt like they were already making Cull a big damage champ (so they opted for more utility)

    I hope Kabam actually gave him a buff like he deserves and at least makes him god tier. Great idea!
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