Just some thoughts on DPS and the fear of “too much”
ESF
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Hi, all! Hope all is well!
As always, when new characters are released and new synergies are revealed where existing characters hit really hard, there’s always this rush to the forums asking for nerfs and rebalances because for some reason, we just can’t have characters doing “that much damage.”
So, with that in mind, I have a question:
Why isn’t Annihilus one of the most desired characters in the game?
Seriously. Do me a favor and simply read his kit. Seriously. Look at his kit. It’s absolutely amazing. I legitimately think it’s a top-three kit IN THE ENTIRE GAME.
But hardly anyone plays it.
Let’s also look at, say…Dragon Man. Another awesome kit with some interesting aspects. I do think you see a few more ranked-up Dragon Men out there in the wild — it’s hard to tell, as a solo player — but I did see a few more in Battlegrounds, which is all I have to go on as far as what real people are ranking up.
Just recently, I also posted about how Black Bolt’s Big Boi DPS is significantly easier to access with Quicksilver…while also cautioning that the kit requires Medusa and probably Hit Monkey as well as Quicksilver in order to do that, while reminding that even if you do, there’s no Regen or Power Control, and the buffs are active — personally, I have always felt that no character that is reliant on Active Buffs is OP, because they can be controlled by Nullified or have their DPS mitigated by simple, common nodes like Buffet, Pilfer or Tranquility.
That’s really the point of what I am getting at: I don’t know where this game is going, and maybe there are outliers introduced that make you raise an eyebrow, but I still believe down to my core that DPS is completely overblown in this game when:
1. You need to drag along at least two or more other characters to access it via Synergy
2. The character has no, or few, immunities to Damage Over Time effects
3. The character has no access to Power Control or Regen
4. The character relies on RNG/Critical Hits to access abilities
5. The character generates Active Buffs or Debuffs
This is why OG Scarlet Witch has always been somewhat of a pain in the ass for this game, because yes, by my metrics, the kit’s DPS has been easier to access without as many limiting factors as other characters have as hindrances.
But.
But.
I have a 6-star, Rank 2 Super-Skrull. I really like playing with the character. I am old, so I love Old-School characters like Super-Skrull and Annihilus. OG Vision. Characters like that. But it’s really hard to justify ranking them, or anyone else, up when their DPS is lacking.
That’s not saying, “OMG Scarlet Witch hits too hard, nerf her! Drag her back to the pack!!!!!!!”
That’s me saying that dragging random characters back to the pack doesn’t truly help the game when Big Boi DPS characters already exist — Hercules exists. Apocalypse exists. Captain Marvel Movie exists.
It doesn’t help Super-Skrull to nerf anyone, and to me, it’s always been the worst thing we talk about in this game: We focus on the ceiling too much and the middle and the floor far too little.
Instead of penalizing some random high-DPS kit or synergy, what really helps the game is when a character like Juggernaut is given a buff that allows for easier access to relevant DPS, or when Bishop is made easier and more effective with a solid kit that just needed some modification, or when Hulkbuster was buffed to have relevant DPS and utility.
I wish more people cared about characters like Annihilus and Super-Skrull and what the middle of the game looked like, because the middle and the floor being improved is what makes this game better.
Just my thoughts
As always, when new characters are released and new synergies are revealed where existing characters hit really hard, there’s always this rush to the forums asking for nerfs and rebalances because for some reason, we just can’t have characters doing “that much damage.”
So, with that in mind, I have a question:
Why isn’t Annihilus one of the most desired characters in the game?
Seriously. Do me a favor and simply read his kit. Seriously. Look at his kit. It’s absolutely amazing. I legitimately think it’s a top-three kit IN THE ENTIRE GAME.
But hardly anyone plays it.
Let’s also look at, say…Dragon Man. Another awesome kit with some interesting aspects. I do think you see a few more ranked-up Dragon Men out there in the wild — it’s hard to tell, as a solo player — but I did see a few more in Battlegrounds, which is all I have to go on as far as what real people are ranking up.
Just recently, I also posted about how Black Bolt’s Big Boi DPS is significantly easier to access with Quicksilver…while also cautioning that the kit requires Medusa and probably Hit Monkey as well as Quicksilver in order to do that, while reminding that even if you do, there’s no Regen or Power Control, and the buffs are active — personally, I have always felt that no character that is reliant on Active Buffs is OP, because they can be controlled by Nullified or have their DPS mitigated by simple, common nodes like Buffet, Pilfer or Tranquility.
That’s really the point of what I am getting at: I don’t know where this game is going, and maybe there are outliers introduced that make you raise an eyebrow, but I still believe down to my core that DPS is completely overblown in this game when:
1. You need to drag along at least two or more other characters to access it via Synergy
2. The character has no, or few, immunities to Damage Over Time effects
3. The character has no access to Power Control or Regen
4. The character relies on RNG/Critical Hits to access abilities
5. The character generates Active Buffs or Debuffs
This is why OG Scarlet Witch has always been somewhat of a pain in the ass for this game, because yes, by my metrics, the kit’s DPS has been easier to access without as many limiting factors as other characters have as hindrances.
But.
But.
I have a 6-star, Rank 2 Super-Skrull. I really like playing with the character. I am old, so I love Old-School characters like Super-Skrull and Annihilus. OG Vision. Characters like that. But it’s really hard to justify ranking them, or anyone else, up when their DPS is lacking.
That’s not saying, “OMG Scarlet Witch hits too hard, nerf her! Drag her back to the pack!!!!!!!”
That’s me saying that dragging random characters back to the pack doesn’t truly help the game when Big Boi DPS characters already exist — Hercules exists. Apocalypse exists. Captain Marvel Movie exists.
It doesn’t help Super-Skrull to nerf anyone, and to me, it’s always been the worst thing we talk about in this game: We focus on the ceiling too much and the middle and the floor far too little.
Instead of penalizing some random high-DPS kit or synergy, what really helps the game is when a character like Juggernaut is given a buff that allows for easier access to relevant DPS, or when Bishop is made easier and more effective with a solid kit that just needed some modification, or when Hulkbuster was buffed to have relevant DPS and utility.
I wish more people cared about characters like Annihilus and Super-Skrull and what the middle of the game looked like, because the middle and the floor being improved is what makes this game better.
Just my thoughts
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Comments
Utility
Damage
Practicality
Utility involves stuff like immunities, damage mitigation, or anything that helps you against annoying nodes (power control etc). Of the three pillars, this one is the most important one
Damage is pretty self explanatory. The goal is for the character to have enough damage to be realistically useable. Take champions like Mephisto: their utility is huge. Many immunities, buff prevention, big regen. But the DPS is very low, which makes fight long and since we are only human, longer fight statistically increases the chance you will make a mistake and get KOed
Practicality is mentioned in the post. It is how easy-to-access the champion's power is. I will try to compare Hit-monkey and BP (OG) here. It's a bad example, but it will help me prove a point. With Hit-monkey, you get to SP2, do MLM twice and the SP2 (I believe) is guaranteed crits. Whereas with BP you need to get 5 charges by interrupting your combo, get to 15 cruelty, heavy AND then intercept with your SP2 for a guaranteed crit. There you see that BP is a good champion, but requires a longer setup and is much more vulnerable to slipups, uncooperative AI or nodes that force you to heavily alter your playstyle. Another example of this could be CGR vs Herc I think.
And now back to DPS being "too much", most of the cases I have seen are either insanely highly skilled players with good champs (Kitty Pryde) or hugely impractical (Thing+Champion synergy). In other cases, champs that have the strongest DPS usually lack utility.
In other words DPS is overrated. It doesn’t mean however that nonsense like 600k-800k 5* scarlet which SP2 with Quicksilver synergy now is not game breaking or stupid.
Now about Dragon man. He is one of the best mystic champs in the game easily. Dual immunities, unblockable, unstoppable, power gain and a lot of dmg from cornering. With Kitty Pride synergy you can easily torch opponent for 6 incinerates and with 2 SP2 you can easily put 12 incinerates. With right masteries, that does not not only kill healing, but also reduce dmg by 36% or more. He is also is sometimes the best option for eternity of pain fights. In other words when things get tough and you need only one champ he is the go to. People don’t use him often, because he is not that easy to use, and also people who don’t really understand the game. He was mine one of the first 6* Rank 3 and I still use him to this day when needed.
Kabam has been pretty clear that they rely upon data, not emotional outbursts, for their decisions, which I agree with and is totally fine.
And yes, there are outliers — OG Scarlet Witch’s Awakened ability and Nuclear SP2 when it Crits has always been annoying for the game designers.
But we’re long past the point where that specific character’s ease-of-access to DPS should be a talking point — we’re at, what, 220 characters in the game? Something like that?
When you play Battlegrounds, you see what people think of these kits. People are telling you which kits they see as effective across all of the three tiers you listed, or via my metrics or any other metrics people have come up with that allow them to come to the conclusion that DPS is an extremely complex topic and that an outlier for massive DPS isn’t close to being more important than having more kits on the middle and the floor to be more competitive.
To be clear: Kabam has done a lot — seriously, they really have — to address the overall balance of the roster. It was really bad before the buff program started. Yeah, I understand that not all buffs have been perfect, because that’s not a reasonable expectation, but there’s no way people can look at the overall roster before and after the buff program started and say that it’s not improved, and in some cases significantly.
I just truly think that there are a few more characters who, with just a little more help, would do so much more to bring the overall roster into balance — for example, in my head, I always say that just say that duped Nightcrawler never gets a buff, but that kit winds up being the worst in the game, then you probably have a pretty awesome game with a lot of options for people to choose from to rank up and play
Here it is:
TL:DR: DPS is a complex topic that really doesn’t need calls for nerfs for outliers as soon as kits/synergies are released. Far more important is the strength and versatility of the middle and floor of the overall game roster, which I wish people talked about every single day, if I had my way.
Hope that is better!
And that's where the buffing comes in. If you look at tierlists as a gaussean curve, you can see a significant shift. It used to be pretty wide, but not too high, meaning that most champions were mediocre and only minority were extremely good/bad. Nowadays, the curve's peak is asymetrically high on the good side and the curve itself is much steeper, meaning that majority of champions are above average, there are more above average than under average and there are significantly less on the "worst" pile. This helps us players work better around the bigger healthpools I've mentioned above.
So far, I have mainly talked about DPS, but utility is exactly the same. Act 7 nodes give more value to utility and often the utility is downright demanded. And if you look at champion buffs, they mostly look like major utility upgrade (to give more tools to players, so that they can deal with more complex situations) and a minor DPS increase (to catch up with the current "DPS meta"). Prime example of that might be Angela or Nebula
One thing you also touched on earlier which doesn’t get talked about enough are the skill caps that limit DPS — Hela is a poster child for that. If you master the kit and are good enough, then yeah, you get the DPS. But it ain’t that easy to do or be both.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that yeah, Quicksilver is probably gonna have bonkers performance. Because it’s a tremendous kit and relatively accessible.
But. That doesn’t mean it’s completely accessible.
There’s a sneaky little skill cap in there where the best players who also master the kit itself will consistently see more DPS. Not everyone is gonna be hitting 50-plus Whiplashes. You gotta have some ability to hit that consistently — not saying it’s impossible. Just saying it ain’t Star-Lord simple, and people need to keep in mind that skill caps keep a ton of people from hitting Big Boi numbers and not enough people mention that
These "high skill cap" champs are imo very healthy for the game, because they keep getting better as players learn to play them. There aren't many "cheat code" champions, in fact the top 3 (Ghost Quake Kitty imo, but that's subject to discussion) are heavily affected by player skills. I was never able to learn Quake and I admire anyone who managed that.
And the others are also dependant of player skills. I can say without a doubt, that if I took Hercules and some very skilled player took Super-Skrull in the same generic matchup, I would lose. There are people who can play oddballs champs so well, that they perform better as the widely regarded best-in-class champs. And I love it.
The Moleman situation is much more of a nerf because it changes his fundamental playstyle, and was left alone for such a long time.
Along the same lines, I would consider taking away Herc’s immortality a “nerf” but doing something like capping Knull’s living abyss debuffs at 40 would just be an adjustment (a totally unnecessary one in his case, but not something that would totally remove a mechanic, make him unusable, or much less desirable).
I do agree though I feel like kabam has done a lot to fix things they’ve made mistakes on but they still have a ways to go. I’m not against some of their buffs just feel like some were a bit lazy. Guillotine, Jane foster, psycho man, nova (never even noticed a difference). I also do agree we don’t need magneto level buffs to every single champion like people in the forums scream about.
Taking Herc’s immortality so it lasts 0.5 seconds at sig 200 would of course be a nerf. Letting Knull only get 1 living abyss would be a nerf. Making Moleman have to get to 1000 monster mass to enter frenzy would be a nerf. All of these have the same mechanics and playstyle but are reduced in usefulness immensely. Aka Nerfs.