Dev Diary: Cavalier Difficulty in 2021 and Beyond - New Buffs for February!

Summoners!

Everybody's favourite Balance Designer and sick beast of a gamer, Kabam John, has taken some time to jot down some thoughts on Cavalier Difficulty, what we've seen so far, and what's to come in the future! There's also a sneak peek at the new Buffs coming in the Cavalier Difficulty Event quest in February!

Read the post here!

Comments

xNig

Why is it so difficult to increase the rewards?
It is the easiest thing to do to increase rewards. Takes a couple minutes.

The hard part is justifying it. All you have to do is present an argument that the guy in charge of reward systems will buy. And none of them here appear to do so. Especially the one that goes "everyone knows the rewards are too low, so just increase them already." Historically, that one seems to have a very low success rate.

To be fair, most of them don’t see the big picture of rewards on a monthly basis in total. They’d rather choose to narrow their field to only a single aspect and complain it’s insufficient. Either that or they follow their favorite YouTubers (who tend to get more likes when they agree with dissenters), conveniently forgetting that it brings them money for getting more likes and views.

DNA3000

Could you imagine the amount of time and effort those quests would of taken without the “correct” champion? I have to believe that’s why most people are not doing it is the effort isn’t worth the reward and forgive me if I’m wrong but kabaam is actually wanting people to complete this quest I thought. I guess bottom line if you don’t have the champion don’t do it that’s where I’m at now.

I believe the difference between me doing a Cav path with whatever I thought was the best team at the time, and doing a path with a 4* team during the 4* challenge objective months, was about a factor of maybe two. So I'm guessing the difference between a reasonably good 5* team and a suboptimal 5* team is maybe 40-50% longer.

For me personally, a 50% swing in duration is not the difference between perfectly acceptable and definitely will not do.

BlackTuran

I know that you can bring in any champion that you want. However, to take advantage of the node it is required to bring in a mutant. If not then the time and effort to 100% this would not be with it. At least to me. Thank you

i've personally been using warlock with the ultron synergy, the fury you get from it is pretty potent

BarricadePrime

@Notsavage19 I have to somewhat disagree with your assessment that your not penalized for bringing the wrong champ. Diss track and buffed up both will cause you to do 0 damage unless the correct champ is brought. I know this is being picky but it’s true. Also, the new version of this will cause you to lose 50% of your attack (seems like a penalty) if you don’t have a science champ that applies a non damaging debuff. Or your penalized with a 50% chance the opponent will evade if you don’t have a the correct debuff applied....that sounds fun....it seems to me that every one of the new proposed nodes have a penalty for not bringing the correct champ. I hope I’m wrong and I’m sure I am. just looking for some education and advise really. Not trying to be difficult or argumentative...thanks

BarricadePrime

@DNA3000
Thank you very much for your reply. You are obviously way more skilled at this game then I am. I can not do the entire quest with 4 stars or this wouldn’t be a discussion. It isn’t just the duration it would be the difficulty as well and then having to spend resources to complete for me. Thanks

DNA3000

@DNA3000
Thank you very much for your reply. You are obviously way more skilled at this game then I am. I can not do the entire quest with 4 stars or this wouldn’t be a discussion. It isn’t just the duration it would be the difficulty as well and then having to spend resources to complete for me. Thanks

I suspect most players can't do Cav difficulty with 4* champs. But as a frame of reference, I suspect that even a good 4* team is going to be slower than a decent but not perfect 5* r4/45 team. So it bounds the effort required to do Cav with a good but not optimal 5* team.

Mr_Platypus

I have to somewhat disagree with your assessment that your not penalized for bringing the wrong champ. Diss track and buffed up both will cause you to do 0 damage unless the correct champ is brought. I know this is being picky but it’s true. Also, the new version of this will cause you to lose 50% of your attack (seems like a penalty) if you don’t have a science champ that applies a non damaging debuff. Or your penalized with a 50% chance the opponent will evade if you don’t have a the correct debuff applied....that sounds fun....it seems to me that every one of the new proposed nodes have a penalty for not bringing the correct champ. I hope I’m wrong and I’m sure I am. just looking for some education and advise really. Not trying to be difficult or argumentative...thanks

When they say no penalty, they mean no penalty for bringing a cosmic for diss track chapter or magneto for buffed up.
Of course you have to bring the correct champion to counter a node, that’s how the game works after act 4/5. It what makes it a challenge without giving all opponents 1mil hp and 30k attack.

DNA3000

@Notsavage19 I have to somewhat disagree with your assessment that your not penalized for bringing the wrong champ. Diss track and buffed up both will cause you to do 0 damage unless the correct champ is brought. I know this is being picky but it’s true. Also, the new version of this will cause you to lose 50% of your attack (seems like a penalty) if you don’t have a science champ that applies a non damaging debuff. Or your penalized with a 50% chance the opponent will evade if you don’t have a the correct debuff applied....that sounds fun....it seems to me that every one of the new proposed nodes have a penalty for not bringing the correct champ. I hope I’m wrong and I’m sure I am. just looking for some education and advise really. Not trying to be difficult or argumentative...thanks

What @Notsavage19 is trying to say (I think) is that it isn't fair to characterize not getting a buff as a penalty because then you can turn all situational player benefits into penalties. And situational buffs are actually a good thing when you compare them to the alternative. In the past, the devs made content harder by just cranking up the numbers, particular attack and health. So every fight would take longer and every fight would get more dangerous, higher and higher without limit. Eventually no matter how skilled you were, you'd eventually just die from the sheer numbers. There was something close to a player revolt during the first Act 7 beta for basically this reason: attack and health were scaled up even higher than (original) Act 6 levels to the point where many players were complaining that a single mistake, or even a couple missed parries that turned into blocks would kill you from block damage.

These situational buffs that you're calling penalties are much better than that kind of difficulty scaling, specifically because they offer players a way to improve their situation. The devs can now make the content "harder" but then offer the players an escape valve of sorts that allows the players to claw back some of that difficulty with better roster choices *or* sometimes just better gameplay.

Sure, it can seem tough when you can't find the "right" champion counter or don't have the skills to pull off the correct tactical gameplay, but you have to remember that the alternative is to have no such opportunities at all. With the old school difficulty scaling if you couldn't do it, you might *never* be able to do it. With this new kind of difficulty design, there's always hope that the next champ you pull or rank up will unlock an easier path through the content, or with practice you'll acquire the skills necessary to pull off the right tactic. When you're getting a couple thousand damage through your block and the only way to get through the fight is "just not get hit ever" the path forward is much more narrow.

The content is not penalizing you for not having the right roster. It is giving you the opportunity to improve your power against the content. It may sound like semantics, but it isn't just semantics when the choice is between having the option to get stronger against the content, and not having the opportunity. The former is what we have now, and the latter is what we used to have. And the difference is not just a difference of words. It is honestly game-changing.

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ItsDamien

"We love seeing videos of Angela dealing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack, or Scarlet Witch tearing through any obstacle in her path with massive Special Attack damage. That’s something that makes Cavalier Difficulty unique, and we won’t be changing that."

So is Angela still going to be doing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack?

Yes, when the current style of Cosmic node is in rotation. Just because they're adding more types of class specific nodes, doesn't mean they're removing the current ones completely.

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ItsDamien

"We love seeing videos of Angela dealing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack, or Scarlet Witch tearing through any obstacle in her path with massive Special Attack damage. That’s something that makes Cavalier Difficulty unique, and we won’t be changing that."

So is Angela still going to be doing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack?
Yes, when the current style of Cosmic node is in rotation. Just because they're adding more types of class specific nodes, doesn't mean they're removing the current ones completely.

Oh I missed that, thanks. So how often will Angela be useful? I literally only ranked her up for this.

I now have to also rank up a hulk, abom or man thing for science since beardo will be useless, falcon for skill since hit monkey and elsa will be useless, vision for tech since HB will be useless and probably a cosmic I haven't figured yet. I think there is nobody that useful for mystic.

No idea how often. Hell I'm not even sure if they're not just going to make each path have a different class specific bonus, as I haven't seen it mentioned that they will or won't do that.

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BlackTuran

"We love seeing videos of Angela dealing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack, or Scarlet Witch tearing through any obstacle in her path with massive Special Attack damage. That’s something that makes Cavalier Difficulty unique, and we won’t be changing that."

So is Angela still going to be doing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack?
Yes, when the current style of Cosmic node is in rotation. Just because they're adding more types of class specific nodes, doesn't mean they're removing the current ones completely.

Oh I missed that, thanks. So how often will Angela be useful? I literally only ranked her up for this.

I now have to also rank up a hulk, abom or man thing for science since beardo will be useless, falcon for skill since hit monkey and elsa will be useless, vision for tech since HB will be useless and probably a cosmic I haven't figured yet. I think there is nobody that useful for mystic.

Hit monkey and Elsa will still be very good for the skill quest

Tr_jorge_89

Will the science node now make immortal abomination useless?

gp87

Cavalier difficulty from day one is getting easier and easier. I respect that You aiming a differt target pf players: there are players who fighting to be thronebraker and there are players with 12 r3. Dont you want to buff up the rewards of cav difficult? I respect that, but its time for thronebraker difficulty. Cavalier difficulty just dropped that year? Yes, but it was to late. Throne braker difficulty has to come earlier.

xNig

"We love seeing videos of Angela dealing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack, or Scarlet Witch tearing through any obstacle in her path with massive Special Attack damage. That’s something that makes Cavalier Difficulty unique, and we won’t be changing that."

So is Angela still going to be doing over 20 000 damage on a medium attack?
Yes, when the current style of Cosmic node is in rotation. Just because they're adding more types of class specific nodes, doesn't mean they're removing the current ones completely.

Oh I missed that, thanks. So how often will Angela be useful? I literally only ranked her up for this.

I now have to also rank up a hulk, abom or man thing for science since beardo will be useless, falcon for skill since hit monkey and elsa will be useless, vision for tech since HB will be useless and probably a cosmic I haven't figured yet. I think there is nobody that useful for mystic.

Hulk/Abom will be useless with the new node unless you run resonate. Beardo is going to be still very useful.

Falcon will be of limited use but Elsa will be great.

Don’t jump to conclusions before trying to use them when the node is live.

Andrario

Hey everybody, thank you all for the feedback. Please keep it coming, as it will help us improve Cavalier Difficulty as we move forward.

One thing I want to point out: With the addition of the new Buffs, we are not doing away with the older ones. Our goal is to create a pool of buffs to pick and choose from for Cavalier Difficulty, but still not as wide as what you might remember from Uncollected difficulty.

Your Champions you've ranked up are still going to help you in these Quests, but maybe not the same Champions every month.

I hope this clears that up a little bit.

This is ridicilous
You have limited hero use in this one, escpecially some class like skill or tech one

What part of easy life you promise in dev diary kabam dont understand to implement ?

xNig

Hey everybody, thank you all for the feedback. Please keep it coming, as it will help us improve Cavalier Difficulty as we move forward.

One thing I want to point out: With the addition of the new Buffs, we are not doing away with the older ones. Our goal is to create a pool of buffs to pick and choose from for Cavalier Difficulty, but still not as wide as what you might remember from Uncollected difficulty.

Your Champions you've ranked up are still going to help you in these Quests, but maybe not the same Champions every month.

I hope this clears that up a little bit.
This is ridicilous
You have limited hero use in this one, escpecially some class like skill or tech one

What part of easy life you promise in dev diary kabam dont understand to implement ?

Skill and Tech?

There are so many decent counters for both.

Anyone with true strike for Skill will work, or anyone who can inflict disorientate, shock or incinerate. True strike is so prevalent for the skill class.

Tech, anyone who can heal block or armor break.

People need to stop regurgitating what YouTubers say and think of what suitable counters there are.

xNig

Will the science node now make immortal abomination useless?

Yes. The moment you dex or parry you’ll lose all your poisons. So you’ll gain the 300/350% attack boost but lose your base damage from the poisons.

Pulyaman

Hey everybody, thank you all for the feedback. Please keep it coming, as it will help us improve Cavalier Difficulty as we move forward.

One thing I want to point out: With the addition of the new Buffs, we are not doing away with the older ones. Our goal is to create a pool of buffs to pick and choose from for Cavalier Difficulty, but still not as wide as what you might remember from Uncollected difficulty.

Your Champions you've ranked up are still going to help you in these Quests, but maybe not the same Champions every month.

I hope this clears that up a little bit.
This is ridicilous
You have limited hero use in this one, escpecially some class like skill or tech one

What part of easy life you promise in dev diary kabam dont understand to implement ?

Skill and Tech?

There are so many decent counters for both.

Anyone with true strike for Skill will work, or anyone who can inflict disorientate, shock or incinerate. True strike is so prevalent for the skill class.

Tech, anyone who can heal block or armor break.

People need to stop regurgitating what YouTubers say and think of what suitable counters there are.

True strike is prevalent in skill class? Only champions I can think of with that ability are KM and Karnak. Don't even start about Karnak because his TS is almost useless with such a short timing without synergies.

That said, only champions I ranked up for the cav eq are 4 stars for the special objective. I am genuinely confused how players lack counters for some of the simplest nodes.

Monthly eq is not static and they will keep changing every month. We should stop getting outraged everytime the developers don't do what we expect them to do. It feels like they get shafted whatever they do.

When they made Act 6 roster specific, people were saying this is permanent content and it should be accessible by everyone. When they try to change eq, people are again saying this means I will have to rank up champs every month. Well, you need to rank up champs in the game. That is their intention with these changes. If you want to keep using the same 20 champs every month, I am afraid the game will become boring very soon.

Nameless_IW

Hey everybody, thank you all for the feedback. Please keep it coming, as it will help us improve Cavalier Difficulty as we move forward.

One thing I want to point out: With the addition of the new Buffs, we are not doing away with the older ones. Our goal is to create a pool of buffs to pick and choose from for Cavalier Difficulty, but still not as wide as what you might remember from Uncollected difficulty.

Your Champions you've ranked up are still going to help you in these Quests, but maybe not the same Champions every month.

I hope this clears that up a little bit.
This is ridicilous
You have limited hero use in this one, escpecially some class like skill or tech one

What part of easy life you promise in dev diary kabam dont understand to implement ?

Skill and Tech?

There are so many decent counters for both.

Anyone with true strike for Skill will work, or anyone who can inflict disorientate, shock or incinerate. True strike is so prevalent for the skill class.

Tech, anyone who can heal block or armor break.

People need to stop regurgitating what YouTubers say and think of what suitable counters there are.
You want to rank up some useless champ, know that kabam would likely to change this **** again in 2 or 3 month ahead ?
Go for it

i know lots of people unfortunate enough to NOT have Hyperion or Medusa, so they ended up ranking up Angela for the cosmic path/quest. Now she will not be viable for the upcoming cosmic global in February. So you will have to spend resources ranking up another champ.

xNig

Also, besides Hyp and Medusa, CMM Venom Phoenix Heimdall all can inflict armor break.

Not to mention the new node opens the possibility of Annihilus, Corvus, Cull, SIM, Thor, Terrax.

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Sarvanga1_

Both elsa and hitmonkey counter evade reliably if you use them properly.