**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.
Options
Rank down tickets for Zemo and Kraven…
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Their action, their precedent, not mine.
Please man make it make sense.
Who knows,they can fix anything saying it was bugged!?
In the middle of so many bugs & bigger issues ongoing right now they decide to fix this first or we say create one more issue to talk about for players! It's ok its up to them.
Players deserve rank down tickets for this. We need some kind of clarification by team !!!
Root is an ability that very few champions have. Since the release of Root, it has been able to be used for something I like to call Root Lock. This Root Lock worked because Root tampered with the Defender AI by making them no longer able to throw special attacks, as you can see from this 2 month old MSD video:
No dedicated Special Lock ability, the defender AI was just programmed in a way that it wouldn't throw special attacks and favored Heavy Attacks instead. The problem with this is that it stopped the AI from throwing a special 3, which allowed players to have an indefinite or unusually long, extended Root Lock. Kabam recently changed this ability by reverting the AI changes and adding a dedicated Special Lock, with the exception of the sp3, as you can see by the grey power bar here:
This makes Root Lock a lot less powerful, and by extension, the champions who have it as a major part of their kit. Normally this wouldn't be such an issue, but none of these Special Lock/Defender AI changes have been disclosed previously, nor are they currently listed as an ability anywhere in game. For clarity, here are screenshots of the Root ability description and all of Kraven's abilities:
No mention of Special Lock, but the Defender specifically is special locked while under the effect of Root and under 3 bars of power. This ability does not apply to the Attacker.
My personal belief of how this all took place is this: The original idea for Root was designed to adjust the AI and prevent them from throwing specials, as it would ruin the effectiveness of Root for attacking champions if the defender could just launch a special and cancel Root. Since it's an AI focused ability and doesn't apply to the Attacker, Kabam likely didn't see the need to define this in game, which I somewhat understand. But now, this ability has been changed to revert the AI changes and replace them with a dedicated Special Lock ability. I assume that they somehow thought that this change wouldn't require any sort of description update, which I disagree with.
This causes a multitude of future implications and current issues. Those AI changes played a huge role in the way the attacking champions functioned. Without disclosing those, a huge chunk of Zemo and Kraven's abilities went entirely unexplained and unmentioned. We've seen things like this before with Mysterio's constant desire to throw an unreasonable amount of Heavy Attacks on defense, but that isn't nearly as impactful. If Kabam is able to add abilities in game without giving players the specifics on them or even letting us know that they exist in the first place, that can cause a lot of major issues with champion design later down the line.
And now, a dedicated Special Lock ability is an active part of the Root mechanic without being mentioned in the Root description. This is a lot less forgiving due to Special Lock being an existing feature with a recognizable name and still not being mentioned as part of this ability. As well, the Defender now being able to throw a Special 3 ruins the Root Lock, making Zemo and Kraven a lot less effective. If any player uses either of them for the first time, this could cause a completely reasonable fight loss, as well as a lot of confusion. Since the Special Lock isn't stated to exist at all in the fight, players will only find out about it after applying root to a Defender for the first time. This also means that they are completely unaware of the fact that this Special Lock will fall off once the Defender reaches 3 bars of power. This wasn't as big of an issue before, since the AI not throwing specials while Rooted was consistent, with no exceptions. Now, that's not the case.
The only transparency we received behind any of this is a post to the Trello board describing the issue as a Baron Zemo champion bug, as you can see below.
This was also supposed to be mentioned in the recent Patch Notes, but wasn't, and would still cause problems if it were mentioned, seeing as this isn't a Baron Zemo specific change.
This issue can be fixed pretty simply.
Send Rank Down Tokens specifically for champions with the Root ability, as well as defining how this Special Lock aspect works in game. This could look like this:
"While Rooted, the Defending champion cannot activate a Special 1 & 2"
Pretty simple, this would be the best way to solve this wildly convoluted issue and allow players to just move on and leave Kraven behind us.
Also, I believe this somehow affected Spot. Since Spot is rooted while Portal Block is active, he is currently inflicted with a Special Lock for the duration of Portal Block, and this isn't mentioned anywhere in his abilities either.
What's the use of root mechanic if the defender can throw specials as they please
It's just free unstoppable for the defender
Remove it from the game...
And they do it silently instead of telling everyone that it's a bug??
I can't believe the lengths people go to defend Kabam...
Also this legendary duck up dawns on Kabam after they have made all the profit from selling champions which advertise root mechanic?
Are they gonna issue refund because they aren't delivering what they advertised...
Are they willing to do that???
Stop defending them
Everyone knew that root meant no special until now
Even their official channel advertised root like that and you are saying it was bugged all this time and they didn't know?
They advertised so many champions who use root mechanic but didn't notice it not working as intended until now??
My take - this is a big enough change that rank down tickets are warranted, especially for kraven.
Kabam definitely needs to expand the description in Root, if these changes are entirely intended.
An SP3 special lock during Root is definitely something that shouldn't exist, as it is too much of a cheese (even Doom's Doom cycle has a small level of risk). It is similar to how Shang-Chi's SP1 was changed so players couldn't just stun lock and make everything trivial.
But for Kabam to make a reasonable change but not communicate it either in Patch notes or in Root description, that definitely is reason to complain to Kabam.
For Kraven, this mechanic still required skill to setup and manage. You could easily mess up if you didn't play it well. Playing Kraven well reminded me of playing Magik well. Getting them to the corner isn't always easy. Putting them into the trap with a heavy, or Sp2, isn't always easy. Making sure you have enough power to make it to your Sp2 is key, and if you messed this up you could easily be punished for being greedy and unprepared.
It wasn't practical for every fight. I wouldn't even say it was practical for most fights. I will say it was fun. It felt good to have all the pieces fall into place slice up they prey you had so cleverly trapped.
I guess everyone can go back to using the same handful of clearly overtuned champions, that are too popular to change, in all content and stop deviating from that norm.