Absorbing Man Balance
MaxtheSilent
Member Posts: 835 ★★★★
I was fortunate enough to get AM from the new featured 6* crystal and after playing with him I have some feedback for the balance team. First, his play style requires a decent amount of skill to maximize outside of ideal match ups. For this reason alone I think he’s balanced on offense. People who invest in mastering his light intercept will get a lot out of him outside of buff heavy or immunity triggering fights. But most players won’t put in that investment and so I see little risk to overall balance in terms of attack outside of his target match ups.
Now I understand there are concerns about his balance on defense. I’m not objective , I have him and don’t want a nerf, but I get the concerns. I’m wondering if you couldn’t achieve balance by just reducing the cooldown where you can take him out of his form by heavy countering a special attack. If that was reduced from 20 seconds, even by half, I doubt people who have him would feel like their investment was wasted. More importantly it would give people on offense a means of countering him more reliably but not guaranteed. It takes skill to heavy counter but it’s doable. I don’t think reducing that cooldown ruins his defensive value but it does create a solution for people fighting him.
In conclusion AM is a great champ that takes a lot of work to master. His required skill outside of ideal matchups makes him balanced offensively and I think a fair compromise regarding defensive balance would be to reduce his cooldown for getting knocked out of form by heavy countering special attacks.
Or I’d personally be cool leaving him as is . I’d love to hear people’s thoughts.
Now I understand there are concerns about his balance on defense. I’m not objective , I have him and don’t want a nerf, but I get the concerns. I’m wondering if you couldn’t achieve balance by just reducing the cooldown where you can take him out of his form by heavy countering a special attack. If that was reduced from 20 seconds, even by half, I doubt people who have him would feel like their investment was wasted. More importantly it would give people on offense a means of countering him more reliably but not guaranteed. It takes skill to heavy counter but it’s doable. I don’t think reducing that cooldown ruins his defensive value but it does create a solution for people fighting him.
In conclusion AM is a great champ that takes a lot of work to master. His required skill outside of ideal matchups makes him balanced offensively and I think a fair compromise regarding defensive balance would be to reduce his cooldown for getting knocked out of form by heavy countering special attacks.
Or I’d personally be cool leaving him as is . I’d love to hear people’s thoughts.
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Comments
If his special 1 was hard to punish, I may accept a small tweak, but you can dex 1 time (when inputs are working) and then heavy punish to basically shut his abilities off. His abilities are more counterable (I made that word up) than Spot, Titania etc... that make them a pain.
Hopefully he does not get nerfed.
It's one of my favourite things, seeing Summoners get their hands on new champions and really explore their playstyles; seeing this thread laid out like this made me smile.
I'm not involved in the balance process in any way, so I don't have as intimate knowledge about it as I do with other topics, but remember that most of the analysis is data-driven. So, theoretically, even if we see a lot of reports of players claiming a champ is "perfect as is," if the data tells a story that that champ is missing the mark in some way... changes are explored.
@Yodabolt21 I found this... it is a word we all need.
- 20250 critical rating
- 9000 physical/energy resistance
- 9000 critical rating
- 300% critical damage
These numbers are just ridicules, they are not just slightly higher, but an order of magnitude higher than other champions, they should be seriously tuned.
I don't even know how he can be released with these numbers.
Not only that, Scorpion and Galan have damage that is just as bonkers as Absorbing Man's, easier to access and they didn't get nerfed.
Reducing his cooldown to knock him out of his forms is all that's really necessary, and maybe a slight bit on his regen (coupled with his insanely high physical and energy resist, it makes his regen even more overpowered).
When talking about nerfs, many crybabys already appear, I'm from the time of the Scarlet Witch nerf, I had it, I did practically everything with her, she broke the game. And when Kabam announced the nerf, there was no shortage of complaints and crying. I agreed with the nerf.
Little things like that could have given him a similar ceiling but made the damage slightly more difficult to access. But hey, it’s mot the end of the world that they left him how he is. Still love his overall design.
I've faced him a few times and it always took a while, I had no HT.
If it doesn't, the 20 second cooldown feels a bit arbitrary, and I'd probably feel like the cooldown should be done away with all together. Abs Man rewards for skilled play. In the same way, I think the same benefit should be given to an attacker against a defending Abs if they are consistently able to heavy counter his specials. A heavy counter isn't the most difficult maneuver to pull off, but it could be quite punishing if it's screwed up.
To reiterate, as I brace for the disagrees, I don't have an Abs Man and I am in no position to question designers that know far more about this game than I do. My intention is not to call for a nerf, but to understand the design behind this character a bit better. I do think he should be left alone offensively.
Take peni, I'm pretty sure everyone said the same about her when she was released, there was only a few counters to her at the time but now? Nobody cares
With maxed mystic dispersion he is busted on defence.
At AW he isn’t a problem since you can bring one of the few champs that counter him, but since BGs exist and you might won’t have on deck, and even worse even if you have a counter you need to be lucky to get it drafted, AM needs rebalance.
The problem is the 20 second timer, anything else on him is alright.