**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.
Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.
Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.
Comments
But Guillotine is none of these. While there's some fancy mechanics in Guillotine, there's no attempt to take chances in a useful way. There's a lot of conservative behavior (Pain Link in particular) but that's also extremely difficult to justify when compared to OG Guillotine's known performance. And we just had a community-wide discussion of what to do and not to do in a champion update when Hood came up, so there's no way this should come as any sort of surprise or unexpected reaction.
The fact is, Kabam isn't incapable of producing a good update. Most are. They don't need to get especially lucky or take exceptionally long periods of time or produce exceptionally innovative changes. They don't need to make the champ into an ultra powerful champ to make players like the update. Colossus was fine. Hulkbuster was fine. Angela was fine. Howard the Duck was fine. Kingpin, Hood (eventually), Falcon were all great. Even Old Man Logan, who is not seen as a super star after his update, is at least fine. They don't all come out great, but Kabam isn't bad at it, and they aren't even totally random with it. Odds are very good an updated champion will turn out at least better, if not very useful. And when they fail, there's usually some reason for why they failed. But with Guillotine, there seems to be no rational reason for why she ends up where she does.
I will bet anything that if I were to have *suggested* Guillotine 2.0 as a champion design, both the playerbase *and* Kabam would have been highly critical of it. It doesn't make sense for a mystic champion. It doesn't have interesting "RPG" utility. The mechanics are simultaneously complicated enough to be worrisome and yet not especially useful compared to peer champions. It would just look wrong.
Which makes this update almost uniquely inexplicable.
I only leave in the possibility of champions coming out worse due to the first iteration of the Hood and (potentially) this current situation. This one is just particularly disheartening due to both the community effort that went into it and the fact that so many better ideas have been tossed around on the forums just in the time since her spotlight went live (yours included).
I don’t even have Guillotine as a 6*. But she was one of my first 3* champions and she got me through RoL Wolverine back in the day. I have a soft spot for her and it’s deeply unpleasant to see such an anticipated buff fall miles short of the mark. The continued silence on the matter doesn’t help either, but the Kabam team seems to have more fires to put out every day, so I don’t expect to hear anything about this.
In this regard my point was that while I call Guillotine's update a miss, in fact Ebony Maw was a miss, Sentry was a miss, but Guillotine's update is the devs shooting in the opposite direction and hoping the bullet deflects off a tree and lands near the target. Which it did not.
Her damage did get better, but in my opinion it only went up to "somewhat above average." If that's the only thing you do, "somewhat above average" won't make you particularly useful compared to even high utility champs that outdamage you, much less actual damage-focused champs that blow you out of the water.
Spectre undeniably works better than before, but that is not as strong of a utility in the current content.
I was apprehensive even reading her abilities on paper.
Actually playing as her... I just have no words.
Guillotine was one of my first 4* champs, and one I took to r4 because I liked the character.
I want to like this buff.
I absolutely cannot.
Her healing has been drastically decreased from its original potential. While it’s no longer RNG based, it’s become more of a way to heal chip damage from blocking rather than an actual method of sustainability. The fact that it limits the healing to 2% of the opponent’s max health just means that it’s a matchup with a mechanic where you’ll constantly receive damage and you need healing, it’s not going to be of much help.
The update also does next to nothing to address her preexisting lack of utility. She does now have the ability to inflict ruptures on bleed immune enemies, however this ability only becomes 100% reliable at max sig. The other new ability that was added, her new pain link debuff accessible via her sp1, just has no aspect of practicality. While it does allow her to inflict any non-physical damage she receives on her opponent, it offers her no way to mitigate said damage. For opponents with high health pools, any major damage she would take wouldn’t really do too much to the opponent if reflected, making the ability pretty much useless.
As for damage, she has definitely gotten a bump in that department, as her damage now is about a little lower than pre-buff with full synergies, baring the sp3. The souls can now make her hit fairly hard, however they have lost the ability to increase her critical damage rating. While her bleeds can get more damage once she starts ramping up, at their base they deal less damage than before and now have less of a chance to occur unless facing opponents with multiple buffs. Her sp2 can get some nice damage, however the main problem I have is that her specials require her to sacrifice her souls and ramp up, which can take a while to get back depending on RNG. The sp3 was the other main point changed in this area, and seems to be a point of contention for many. It used to be an attack that allowed her to take large chunks off of enemies with large health pools, whereas now it just inflicts an okay degen.
All in all, this update to Guillotine just feels more like a sideways buff than anything else. I wouldn’t really say she was buffed, but I wouldn’t go so far to say that she was nerfed as a whole either. I’m just really disappointed, as she had potential to get a very impactful and exciting buff, but instead got the opposite. If I had any idea that the update would be so underwhelming, I wouldn’t have gone through the arena grinding in order to vote.
Also healing feels very underwhelming, almost nothing at all..
Anyway, my prestige gotten a little bump, that’s cool..
Because she badly needs it
From an objective point of view, her sustainability got worse, and in my opinion when taken as a whole Guillotine ends up at best a tie with her former self and arguably worse in terms of higher game utility. If you're a brand new player pulling her as one of your very first champs, she's arguably better than she was, mostly because of her higher damage. You don't need utility in the early game, and when you have a tiny roster anything that can kill reasonably fast is useful. But beyond a certain point, what you want is champions in your roster that can perform non-overlapping roles. Meaning: they do something useful, and it is something you don't already have tons of champs doing.
Guillotine 2.0 does not satisfy that requirement, in my opinion. And beyond a certain point in game progress, that's really the overwhelmingly most important thing, at least in terms of performance value. If you like Guillotine because she looks cool or you like large swords, she still satisfies those requirements.
I even find her base damage harder to access and ramp.. crit less often cause you can’t get as many souls, less Crit bleeds.. inconvenient requirement to heavy soam..
Extremely disappointing.. I was stoked to use a rank gem and a bunch of expiring iso now I have to find another option