I voted for Guillotine buff, both on the forums and in the arena. I recently pulled a 6* Guillotine. But boy, she is one big disappointment.
I feel like Kabam learned nothing from The Hood debacle. Once again, we have a buff that isn't really a buff, because everything that was good about the champion was taken away to "balance" the changes.
Current Guillotine has per critical hit 50% chance to inflict a bleed debuff dealing 2,680.7 direct damage over 4.50 seconds. New Guillotine has per critical hit 35% (+5% per buff on the opponent) to inflict a bleed debuff dealing 1,734.4 direct damage over 5 seconds. The only reason why the basic bleeds were nerfed, is because she gains one soul per inflicted bleed debuff. Kabam could have chosen to lower the chance of gaining souls, but rather nerfed the basic bleeds.
To compensate (?), you're now required to chain special attacks from a heavy attack, as the heavy attack has this new bleed curse debuff for 10 seconds. This debuff inflicts a bleed debuff causing 2,233.8 direct damage over 5 seconds each time struck with a Special Attack. If my memory serves correctly, the SP1 has two hits and the SP2 three hits. You will lose this damage in any match-up where you can't use a heavy attack.
Her regen is heavily nerfed as well. When awakened and at max sig, current Guillotine has a 10% chance to life steal 55% of damage dealt per 4 souls, with a minimum of 55% under 4 souls.
Basic MLLLM combo has a combined damage of 3,801 (not taking resistances or armor rating into account). Let's do 50 of such combo's, that yields 190,050 damage over 250 hits, or average 760.2 damage per hit.
This doesn't take crits into account. Against challenger rating of 120 (R5 5* or R2 6*), she has a 26% chance to deal a critical hit which modifies the damage by 200%. So of these 250 hits, 65 hits are crits who deal 1,520.4 damage. 185 remaining hits are regular hits. In total, this means 98,826 damage plus 140,637 damage from regular hits, or combined 239,463 damage.
There is a 10% chance to life steal, so 6.5 critical hits have basic damage of 9,882.6 and 18.5 regular hits have 14,063.7 basic damage, or combined 23,946.3. damage. Per stack of 4 souls, you heal 55% of damage dealt, which gives:
- 4 souls or less: 13,170.465 health
- 8 souls: 26,340.93 health
- 12 souls: 39,511.395 health
- 16 souls: 52,681.86 health
- 20 souls: 65,825.325 health
New Guillotine heals 2% flat of all damage dealt (including bleed debuffs). She has a small damage increase of 1.85% (2,437 attack rating currently to 2,482 attack rating now). She also increases her attack rating by +148.92 Attack Rating per soul, with a maximum of 15. In the ideal situation, with no souls consumed and constant 15 souls, her damage is boosted by 91.66% (compared to current attack values). So the combined damage is boosted by 93.51%, or 223,926 damage.
For a combined basic damage of 463,389 damage, she heals 2% or 9,267.8 health. That's a fraction of what she has currently! But let's include the bleed damage, 26% critical hit chance times 35% bleed ability accuracy yields 22.75 bleeds. Each bleed deals 1734.4 direct damage, or 39,457.6 damage, of which 2% gives 789.52 health. Okay, the special attacks have potent bleeds as well, but no way will this be enough to compensate.
The life steal after her "buff" is nerfed so deep into the ground even Mole Man can't dig so deep!Next: the SP3. Current Guillotine consumes all souls, dealing 2% of the opponent's health in direct damage. At 10 souls, this is 20% of the opponent's health, at 20 souls it is 40%. In any match-up with no damage cap, this is by far the strongest SP3 there is. Current Guillotine inflicts a degeneration debuff (a debuff that can fail or get shrugged off), dealing 1,737.4 direct damage over 3 seconds. This debuff has its duration increased by 3 seconds for each soul she has. She has a maximum of 15 souls, so 15 x 1,737.4 = 26,061 direct damage over 48 seconds.
As 15 souls the current SP3 deals 30% of opponent's health as instant damage. In order for the current SP3 to deal the same or less damage as the new SP3, the opponent's health has to be equal or lower than 86,870 health points. In any meaningful content, health pools are much larger than that, and she deals a lot more damage. The fact remains that you need to wait 48 seconds for the same damage, that cannot be altered by AAR or purify ability, while the SP3 is instant and unaffected by AAR.
The SP3 after her "buff" is nerfed so deep into the ground that it reached the depths of Hela's Hell!But hey, at least the SP1 has an effect now, right? Well, yeah, this new "Pain Link Debuff" has some cool effect you just don't want to use in practice. Sure, you can deal all non-physical damage dealt to you back to the opponent, for a 10 second period, which you will heal back 2% (so still take 98% of the damage). Would you fight with Guillotine with a Biohazard or a Freezer Burn node? No, you will die before you can either launch the SP1, or die shortly after. That some of the damage is dealt back is a small consolation prize.
Besides her spectre debuff, which she already has but is simply doubled in duration at the cost of 10 souls, she has no utility. Sure, the sig is nice (in bleed immune match-ups she has up to 100% chance to deal a rupture debuff instead). Nothing was added that made her a better mystic (no buff control, no power gain), her SP1 is still pretty much useless utility-wise, her SP2 is still highly situational useful and her SP3 has nothing spectacular either.
While improvements in damage are clearly made, Guillotine's basic kit has been nerfed to the ground because of it. Guillotine has been changed into a generic damage-dealing champion with next to no utility or sustainability that doesn't meet the standards of 2021. For a community choice champion, I expected better.
