**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Kabam never learns [Hawkeye Buff]
Colonaut123
Posts: 3,091 ★★★★★
Kabam has released the spotlight of the Hawkeye buff. If you haven't seen it, check it out here.
Before we get to the critical part of this discussion, I wish to repeat: the developers did a good job with Hawkeye. I wouldn't call it a nerf overall, like we had with Guillotine or The Hood. That would be dishonest and disrespectful for the work that has been done by Kabam.
By now, it should be a golden rule: do not fix or change what isn't broken. If for some reason the changes that have to be made to the champion are overpowered within the new kit, tune down those changes before touching the old kit. If they can't do anything else, this change should be motivated extensively, so we can understand why it was done.
Kabam violated that golden rule, again. They did it with Guillotine's healing and SP3, and they did it with The Hood's fate seal.
The nerf of Hawkeye's power control
Pre-buff Hawkeye had one very good thing: a powerful, consistent, reliable power drain of 40% of max. Power with the SP1. This is the equivalent of 120% of a bar of Power. He was a one-trick kind of guy, but the player base enjoyed it because of it. Let me repeat: powerful, consistent, reliable.
Post-buff Hawkeye power drains for only 75% of a bar of Power with the SP1, a reduction of 45% of a bar of Power, or in relative terms, -37,5% less power drain. In a fight, that stacks a lot. If pre-buff Hawkeye would have used 5 SP1's, he would have drained 600% of a bar of Power, or the equivalent of six SP1, three SP2 or two SP3. Post-buff Hawkeye will have drained 375% of a bar of Power, or 225% of a bar of Power less. That's two extra SP1 or one extra SP2 you have to bait and dex more than before!
As gods, Kabam gives and takes away. With a Perfect Release, there is a 100% chance to inflict a Suppression Debuff, reducing the Opponent’s Combat Power Rate by 50% for 8 seconds. How to get that Perfect Release? During Special Attacks, press the Block after the first hit Input to slow down time. Releasing the Block Input precisely when Hawkeye releases the arrow grants this Perfect Release bonus.
As Hawkeye hasn't been released yet, we don't know what this Perfect Release thing looks like. But we do know one thing: a powerful, consistent, reliable power drain has been replaced by a less powerful, but same consistent, reliable power drain and a less powerful, less consistent, less reliable Suppression Debuff. A Debuff that can be shrugged off, can fail due to an immunity and requires you to attack the opponent and giving it power, but to a lesser degree. A Debuff that won't even be inflicted if you fail to do a Perfect Release.
In any match-up where power drain matters (Hyperion, Power Focus, Energize,...), you'll notice that post-buff Hawkeye performs worse than pre-buff Hawkeye. Also the synergy with Hercules changes: as it requires passing the threshold of a bar of Power to gain a Fury Buff, it is more difficult to do with post-buff Hawkeye than pre-buff Hawkeye.
In my personal opinion, the balance of this change is tipping over towards a nerf rather than a buff.
The ambiguous changes in bleed damage
Pre-buff Hawkeye has a fairly potent bleed on the SP1 and SP2. A R5 5* deals 5,780.36 bleed damage over 5 seconds with the SP1, or 578.04 per tick. A R5 5* deals 6,088.33 bleed damage over 6 seconds with the SP2, or 507.36 per tick.
Let me remind you that Deep Wounds work best with short but potent bleeds. Max. Deep Wounds increases bleed debuffs with 5 ticks. With the SP1, that would amount to a total of 8,670.54 bleed damage over 7.5 seconds. With the SP2, that would amount to a total of 8,625.13 bleed damage over 8.5 seconds.
Post-buff Hawkeye has a 100% chance to inflict a Bleed Debuff dealing 2369 bleed damage over 10 seconds. Each bar of Power spent beyond 1 grants +1 bleed and +5 seconds duration.
For the SP1, this means the bleed debuff only ticks for 118.45 bleed damage, that's a reduction in bleed damage of 80%! The SP2 deals 236.9 bleed damage over 2 bleed debuffs, but this is over 15 seconds, which amounts to a total of 7,107 bleed damage. The SP2 improves, but at the cost of the SP1.
Deep Wounds become less effective. 5 extra ticks yields a total of 2,961.25 bleed damage for the SP1, and a total of 8,291.5 bleed damage for the SP2.
This is a clear nerf, right? Things are more complicated.
Basic attacks pause all Bleed Debuffs on the opponent for 1 second(s). So while being aggressive, you can prolong the bleed debuffs. As 1 second equates to 2 ticks, it can easily be calculated how long the bleed debuffs be paused to have the same potency as pre-buff.
With max. Deep Wounds, the difference between pre-buff Hawkeye and post-buff Hawkeye is 5,709.29 bleed damage, or 48.2 extra ticks. 48 ticks is equal to 24 seconds. So you need to attack the opponent 24 times before the post-buff bleed debuff of the SP1 deals the same damage as pre-buff bleed debuff.
But Kabam complicated things further.
Activating a Perfect Release bonus grants a Dialed In Passive increasing duration of Debuffs inflicted by Special Attacks by 10%. All Dialed In stacks are removed when failing to activate a Perfect Release Bonus. Max 5.
So with max. stack of Dialed In, the SP1 can increase the base bleed duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. With max. Deep Wounds, the base bleed duration is 12.5 seconds and this increases to 18.75 seconds (but the last 0.25 seconds do not count as it isn't a full tick). So 37 ticks of 118.45 bleed damage gives 4,382.65 bleed damage.
The gap between pre-buff and post-buff shrinks to 4,287.89 bleed damage, or equal to 36.2 extra ticks (or 18 extra seconds).
Let me remind you: you need to activate 5 Perfect Releases to get 5 Dialed In Passives, which amounts to 5 Special Attacks with at least 5 bars of Power.
But we're not done yet!
A Perfect Release also makes the arrow attack become a Guaranteed Critical Hit. The signature ability makes landing a Critical Hit with an Arrow Shot will cause any personal Bleed Debuff triggered to become a Critical Bleed, multiplying the Bleed’s Potency by Hawkeye’s Critical Damage Multiplier.
The SP2 has a 100% chance to inflict a 25 second Fragility Debuff. Attacking a Fragile Opponent grants +900 Critical Damage Rating and reduces Block Proficiency by 50%. If this is a Perfect Release, an additional Fragility Debuff is inflicted.
A R5 5* has 738 base Critical Damage Rating, against another R5 5* or R2 6* that gives a +180% Critical Damage Modifier. So bleed potency can be increased by 180%. With max. Cruelty mastery, this is increased to 1,213 Critical Damage Rating, or a Critical Damage Modifier of +233%. Ergo, the 118.45 bleed damage per tick becomes 394.44 bleed damage per tick.
Two Fragility Debuffs increase Critical Damage Rating by 1,800, or a total of 3,013 Critical Damage Rating (max. Cruelty included). This yields a Critical Damage Modifier of +345% or 527.10 bleed damage per stick. This comes close to the pre-buff damage per tick, but requires launching a SP2 and this is only for 25 seconds.
This is where I stop calculating. Point is that a very simple, potent, consistent, reliable bleed debuff of the SP1 is replaced by a very complicated, weaker, inconsistent, unreliable bleed debuff. The only thing that had a net benefit, is the SP2, who will have a much better bleed than pre-buff and twice the amount of damage than the post-buff SP1.
The SP1 spam: does it work?
Pre-buff Hawkeye was only good if you spammed SP1. Is this as good post-buff as pre-buff? That's a difficult to answer question.
I am not going to state that you will definitely lose bleed damage, but I will argue that it won't be as easily as just launching the SP1, thanks to the Perfect Release mechanic and the different effects and bonuses it gives. The power drain is significantly reduced in effectiveness, so the SP1 spam won't be as good as before.
Much depends if the bleeds of the SP1 can stack. If so, doing 5 SP1 in a row gives 5 bleed debuffs, which can be easily paused by basic attacks. That would be pretty good and in that case the bleed damage is superior to pre-buff Hawkeye. If they don't stack, well...
To conclude: while the Hawkeye buff is certainly one of the better buffs of last few months, the clear nerf in power control gives a sour taste in the mouth. It seems Kabam is still tone-deaf for the pleas of the community to not nerf or devalue existing strengths of champions.
Before we get to the critical part of this discussion, I wish to repeat: the developers did a good job with Hawkeye. I wouldn't call it a nerf overall, like we had with Guillotine or The Hood. That would be dishonest and disrespectful for the work that has been done by Kabam.
By now, it should be a golden rule: do not fix or change what isn't broken. If for some reason the changes that have to be made to the champion are overpowered within the new kit, tune down those changes before touching the old kit. If they can't do anything else, this change should be motivated extensively, so we can understand why it was done.
Kabam violated that golden rule, again. They did it with Guillotine's healing and SP3, and they did it with The Hood's fate seal.
The nerf of Hawkeye's power control
Pre-buff Hawkeye had one very good thing: a powerful, consistent, reliable power drain of 40% of max. Power with the SP1. This is the equivalent of 120% of a bar of Power. He was a one-trick kind of guy, but the player base enjoyed it because of it. Let me repeat: powerful, consistent, reliable.
Post-buff Hawkeye power drains for only 75% of a bar of Power with the SP1, a reduction of 45% of a bar of Power, or in relative terms, -37,5% less power drain. In a fight, that stacks a lot. If pre-buff Hawkeye would have used 5 SP1's, he would have drained 600% of a bar of Power, or the equivalent of six SP1, three SP2 or two SP3. Post-buff Hawkeye will have drained 375% of a bar of Power, or 225% of a bar of Power less. That's two extra SP1 or one extra SP2 you have to bait and dex more than before!
As gods, Kabam gives and takes away. With a Perfect Release, there is a 100% chance to inflict a Suppression Debuff, reducing the Opponent’s Combat Power Rate by 50% for 8 seconds. How to get that Perfect Release? During Special Attacks, press the Block after the first hit Input to slow down time. Releasing the Block Input precisely when Hawkeye releases the arrow grants this Perfect Release bonus.
As Hawkeye hasn't been released yet, we don't know what this Perfect Release thing looks like. But we do know one thing: a powerful, consistent, reliable power drain has been replaced by a less powerful, but same consistent, reliable power drain and a less powerful, less consistent, less reliable Suppression Debuff. A Debuff that can be shrugged off, can fail due to an immunity and requires you to attack the opponent and giving it power, but to a lesser degree. A Debuff that won't even be inflicted if you fail to do a Perfect Release.
In any match-up where power drain matters (Hyperion, Power Focus, Energize,...), you'll notice that post-buff Hawkeye performs worse than pre-buff Hawkeye. Also the synergy with Hercules changes: as it requires passing the threshold of a bar of Power to gain a Fury Buff, it is more difficult to do with post-buff Hawkeye than pre-buff Hawkeye.
In my personal opinion, the balance of this change is tipping over towards a nerf rather than a buff.
The ambiguous changes in bleed damage
Pre-buff Hawkeye has a fairly potent bleed on the SP1 and SP2. A R5 5* deals 5,780.36 bleed damage over 5 seconds with the SP1, or 578.04 per tick. A R5 5* deals 6,088.33 bleed damage over 6 seconds with the SP2, or 507.36 per tick.
Let me remind you that Deep Wounds work best with short but potent bleeds. Max. Deep Wounds increases bleed debuffs with 5 ticks. With the SP1, that would amount to a total of 8,670.54 bleed damage over 7.5 seconds. With the SP2, that would amount to a total of 8,625.13 bleed damage over 8.5 seconds.
Post-buff Hawkeye has a 100% chance to inflict a Bleed Debuff dealing 2369 bleed damage over 10 seconds. Each bar of Power spent beyond 1 grants +1 bleed and +5 seconds duration.
For the SP1, this means the bleed debuff only ticks for 118.45 bleed damage, that's a reduction in bleed damage of 80%! The SP2 deals 236.9 bleed damage over 2 bleed debuffs, but this is over 15 seconds, which amounts to a total of 7,107 bleed damage. The SP2 improves, but at the cost of the SP1.
Deep Wounds become less effective. 5 extra ticks yields a total of 2,961.25 bleed damage for the SP1, and a total of 8,291.5 bleed damage for the SP2.
This is a clear nerf, right? Things are more complicated.
Basic attacks pause all Bleed Debuffs on the opponent for 1 second(s). So while being aggressive, you can prolong the bleed debuffs. As 1 second equates to 2 ticks, it can easily be calculated how long the bleed debuffs be paused to have the same potency as pre-buff.
With max. Deep Wounds, the difference between pre-buff Hawkeye and post-buff Hawkeye is 5,709.29 bleed damage, or 48.2 extra ticks. 48 ticks is equal to 24 seconds. So you need to attack the opponent 24 times before the post-buff bleed debuff of the SP1 deals the same damage as pre-buff bleed debuff.
But Kabam complicated things further.
Activating a Perfect Release bonus grants a Dialed In Passive increasing duration of Debuffs inflicted by Special Attacks by 10%. All Dialed In stacks are removed when failing to activate a Perfect Release Bonus. Max 5.
So with max. stack of Dialed In, the SP1 can increase the base bleed duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. With max. Deep Wounds, the base bleed duration is 12.5 seconds and this increases to 18.75 seconds (but the last 0.25 seconds do not count as it isn't a full tick). So 37 ticks of 118.45 bleed damage gives 4,382.65 bleed damage.
The gap between pre-buff and post-buff shrinks to 4,287.89 bleed damage, or equal to 36.2 extra ticks (or 18 extra seconds).
Let me remind you: you need to activate 5 Perfect Releases to get 5 Dialed In Passives, which amounts to 5 Special Attacks with at least 5 bars of Power.
But we're not done yet!
A Perfect Release also makes the arrow attack become a Guaranteed Critical Hit. The signature ability makes landing a Critical Hit with an Arrow Shot will cause any personal Bleed Debuff triggered to become a Critical Bleed, multiplying the Bleed’s Potency by Hawkeye’s Critical Damage Multiplier.
The SP2 has a 100% chance to inflict a 25 second Fragility Debuff. Attacking a Fragile Opponent grants +900 Critical Damage Rating and reduces Block Proficiency by 50%. If this is a Perfect Release, an additional Fragility Debuff is inflicted.
A R5 5* has 738 base Critical Damage Rating, against another R5 5* or R2 6* that gives a +180% Critical Damage Modifier. So bleed potency can be increased by 180%. With max. Cruelty mastery, this is increased to 1,213 Critical Damage Rating, or a Critical Damage Modifier of +233%. Ergo, the 118.45 bleed damage per tick becomes 394.44 bleed damage per tick.
Two Fragility Debuffs increase Critical Damage Rating by 1,800, or a total of 3,013 Critical Damage Rating (max. Cruelty included). This yields a Critical Damage Modifier of +345% or 527.10 bleed damage per stick. This comes close to the pre-buff damage per tick, but requires launching a SP2 and this is only for 25 seconds.
This is where I stop calculating. Point is that a very simple, potent, consistent, reliable bleed debuff of the SP1 is replaced by a very complicated, weaker, inconsistent, unreliable bleed debuff. The only thing that had a net benefit, is the SP2, who will have a much better bleed than pre-buff and twice the amount of damage than the post-buff SP1.
The SP1 spam: does it work?
Pre-buff Hawkeye was only good if you spammed SP1. Is this as good post-buff as pre-buff? That's a difficult to answer question.
I am not going to state that you will definitely lose bleed damage, but I will argue that it won't be as easily as just launching the SP1, thanks to the Perfect Release mechanic and the different effects and bonuses it gives. The power drain is significantly reduced in effectiveness, so the SP1 spam won't be as good as before.
Much depends if the bleeds of the SP1 can stack. If so, doing 5 SP1 in a row gives 5 bleed debuffs, which can be easily paused by basic attacks. That would be pretty good and in that case the bleed damage is superior to pre-buff Hawkeye. If they don't stack, well...
To conclude: while the Hawkeye buff is certainly one of the better buffs of last few months, the clear nerf in power control gives a sour taste in the mouth. It seems Kabam is still tone-deaf for the pleas of the community to not nerf or devalue existing strengths of champions.
77
Comments
Lmfao agreed
Hawkeye requires hand on approach before a proper judgement can be made, especially if his release mechanics can be stacked or not
Here, we need to wait and see whether the power control is as good, better or worse. Sometimes things are black and white, sometimes they aren’t.
It's a FACT that Hawkeye's power control is getting a nerf, to compensate for the increase in bleed damage. The nerf isn't small, it's 37.5% less power drain than currently. Over a course of a fight that will have a significant effect.
The bleeds are, as I said, ambiguous. But what is a fact, that it requires more effort to have the same bleed damage as before. It all depends on if you can stack the bleeds, but even so, the current SP1 bleeds are so massive that it requires stacking more bleeds now.
You got lucky pal. That doesn’t mean that you’ll forever be right.
Also - does the sig ability scale anything? Physical resistance removal?
Always complaining before gameplay comes doesn't always end well
This buff seems rather like a better champ for newer players that pull him as an early 6*. Which I think is a paramount issue. Who is actually using him now as a go to power control champ? With, say, Doom on the table?
This is a great buff overall btw, be happy for once.
In any fight where you're going to be using power control, you're likely to be attacking continuously, or nearly so. In those circumstances where I was spamming SP1 and trying to attack a lot, in eight seconds my attacks were giving the opponent approximately a bar of power. So hypothetically speaking, a 75% of a bar drain plus an 8 second suppression that reduced combat power gain by 50% would be 75% + 50% = 125% of a bar of power.
However, perfect release also applies a dialed in passive which increases debuff duration. As suppression is itself a debuff, its duration would be increased by up to 50%. At the maximum stack of 5, suppression would be reducing combat power rate by up to 12 seconds, which could reduce offensive power gain by up to 75% net power. That would be a total of 150% power either removed or suppressed off the target. That's higher than the 140% that OG Hawkeye drains with SP1 now.
We are comparing a power reduction of between 125% and 150% to one with an effective strength of 140%. If we assume that the first dialed in passive buffs the first suppression, then it is actually 130% - 150% compared to 140%. How long would it take for updated Hawkeye to catch up and overtake OG Hawkeye in terms of overall net power control, assuming he doesn't lose his dialed in stacks? Its basically five SP1s. Five OG Hawkeye SP1s have the same overall power control potential as updated Hawkeye. Moreover, the difference is small: 10% of one bar of power at worst.
There's no question that OG Hawkeye's power drain is easier to use, but is there anything updated Hawkeye gets in exchange for having a higher skill threshold? Actually, yes there is. Having a lower drain plus suppression allows updated Hawkeye to keep a target below one bar of power. You can't really do that with OG Hawkeye for the obvious reason that you can't get his maximum drain potential if the target is below one bar. He can't "bank" the extra drain. Updated Hawkeye can drain *all* of the power of a target that is under one bar of power, and then suppress them for a long enough period of time to prevent them from going above one bar of power before he gets back to SP1, whereupon he can cycle that again.
The combination of power drain and suppression will affect different fights in different ways. In situations where power gain comes more from direct ability gain and not from combat power gain (Hyperion for example), OG Hawkeye might have an edge. Where more power comes from combat power gain (for example, Energize and Power Focus) it is possible updated Hawkeye would have greater power control impact on the fight, because suppression would have a proportionately larger impact.
So updated Hawkeye's power control isn't actually inferior to OG Hawkeye. It has a higher skill threshold, but he does get something for that higher skill: an overall more effective power control capability. Whether this is a reasonable trade, and what it looks like in-game has yet to be determined, but this is most definitely not a case of the developers taking something away for nothing. Hawkeye isn't a worse power control champ. He may be a harder to play power control champ, but the numbers say his power control isn't quantitatively worse, and arguably qualitatively better.