My (fixable) gripe after playing around with Gladiator

Designed team did an incredible job. He’s really fun to play. Could be better though without being gamebreaking. Feels like they were scared of Herc 2.0 and played it a little too safe. When the vote was going, it said this:

My thought was he’d gain some usual cosmic buffs (fury, precision, cruelty) and that in gaining them, his confidence buffs would be like a new and improved version of aptitude. Maybe they’d be passive, stronger, whatever. Instead he only builds confidence, and those only increases his attack and armor rating. You can get vigilance off the sp2 but not a variety of buffs that could get stronger.

Other “problem” with that is it doesn’t really make him relic compatible as most of them focus on maximizing those specific buffs. Could be wrong, but seems like the Ms marvel relic is the only one that would really do anything for him.

It’s only day 1, so we’ll see if theres something I’m missing. He’s FUN to play. The unstoppable/unblockable combo for heavies is cool and I like that they have him solid range on the heavy. The hit during special seems to be the big singular damage payoff (everything else is more of a build/consistent damage), but with as often as you WON’T be able to use that, I wish that was the occasional cherry on top instead of it being the big payoff itself.

This could age like milk lol… but just initial thoughts/reactions after playing around with him.

Comments

Jarvisrei

He's a natural stagger immune without needing the immunity active because his confidence counts as a buff. He simply let's his confidence get nullified with it so his other buffs are safe. Pretty annoying as a defender since all he does his spam sp1 and literally impossible to hit without unstoppable counter.

Darkness275

I would actually love to see him take a page out of Silver Surfer's book.

Make Gladiator resistant (not immune) to bleed, poisons and MAYBE coldsnap. BUT it's tied to his confidence, so the debuffs actually continue to stack up on you and the amount of damage they do scales in relation to your confidence.

That ties in with Gladiator's whole theme perfectly and actually makes canonical sense.

ShoNuff29

I’m not gonna complain about lack of resistances or immunities because I don’t think he has any of that in his comic abilities. I run cides, so yea, it would be nice but that would’ve been adding something to him that I don’t think he has.

Darkness275

I’m not gonna complain about lack of resistances or immunities because I don’t think he has any of that in his comic abilities. I run cides, so yea, it would be nice but that would’ve been adding something to him that I don’t think he has.

In the comics his invulnerability is tied to his confidence, he's resistant to pretty much everything depending on his confidence levels, it would have been nice to see.

My thought process is that they would still impact him, but the damage scales up and down which could lead to interesting trade offs of maintaining max confidence in fights to gain resistances and healing (through willpower) or use the confidences for massive damage bursts.

There's no real trade off effect though so instead it would just be resistance going up and down multiple times in a fight depending on if Gladiator is hit or gaining confidence. Probably a nightmare to code.

Your original point stands though, would love to see some good relic interaction for him but as it is, there aren't many - and with them being on an indefinite hold, probably won't be for a bit unless Gladiator is changed some.

ShoNuff29

I’m not gonna complain about lack of resistances or immunities because I don’t think he has any of that in his comic abilities. I run cides, so yea, it would be nice but that would’ve been adding something to him that I don’t think he has.
In the comics his invulnerability is tied to his confidence, he's resistant to pretty much everything depending on his confidence levels, it would have been nice to see.

My thought process is that they would still impact him, but the damage scales up and down which could lead to interesting trade offs of maintaining max confidence in fights to gain resistances and healing (through willpower) or use the confidences for massive damage bursts.

There's no real trade off effect though so instead it would just be resistance going up and down multiple times in a fight depending on if Gladiator is hit or gaining confidence. Probably a nightmare to code.

Your original point stands though, would love to see some good relic interaction for him but as it is, there aren't many - and with them being on an indefinite hold, probably won't be for a bit unless Gladiator is changed some.

Well in that case, I’d LOVE some resistances! Lol…The coding shouldn’t be too bad because he could literally just gain 1% resistance per confidence. I’d like to see other attributes, like crit rating and special damage go up with it. That would also make his special 3 more useful, with the additional confidence cap.

AMS94

I would actually love to see him take a page out of Silver Surfer's book.

Make Gladiator resistant (not immune) to bleed, poisons and MAYBE coldsnap. BUT it's tied to his confidence, so the debuffs actually continue to stack up on you and the amount of damage they do scales in relation to your confidence.

That ties in with Gladiator's whole theme perfectly and actually makes canonical sense.

The problem with this idea is that in most cases u need immunities or high resistances from the very first combo of ur fight, if not the first hit

Making him gain resistances over time might render him useless in most situations where such resistances are needed

It can work only if he starts with something like 80-85% resistance & slowly builds to 100 or even 100+
Anything below that might not be useful
Even 80 might end up being too low in many situations

WinterFields

He's a natural stagger immune without needing the immunity active because his confidence counts as a buff. He simply let's his confidence get nullified with it so his other buffs are safe. Pretty annoying as a defender since all he does his spam sp1 and literally impossible to hit without unstoppable counter.

Insert Claire

ShoNuff29

I would actually love to see him take a page out of Silver Surfer's book.

Make Gladiator resistant (not immune) to bleed, poisons and MAYBE coldsnap. BUT it's tied to his confidence, so the debuffs actually continue to stack up on you and the amount of damage they do scales in relation to your confidence.

That ties in with Gladiator's whole theme perfectly and actually makes canonical sense.
The problem with this idea is that in most cases u need immunities or high resistances from the very first combo of ur fight, if not the first hit

Making him gain resistances over time might render him useless in most situations where such resistances are needed

It can work only if he starts with something like 80-85% resistance & slowly builds to 100 or even 100+
Anything below that might not be useful
Even 80 might end up being too low in many situations

They wouldn’t go that high with any of his resistances even if they added them (which they won’t lol). I wouldn’t use it for the purpose of nodes or counters, more so just to make him slightly ‘cides friendly. Only takes about 20% resistance to mitigate most of that passive damage. Even then, I think most are gonna opt for the sp1 spam playstyle with him for that high uptime on unstoppable/unblockable, so he’ll still take plenty of recoil damage.

Darkness275

I would actually love to see him take a page out of Silver Surfer's book.

Make Gladiator resistant (not immune) to bleed, poisons and MAYBE coldsnap. BUT it's tied to his confidence, so the debuffs actually continue to stack up on you and the amount of damage they do scales in relation to your confidence.

That ties in with Gladiator's whole theme perfectly and actually makes canonical sense.
The problem with this idea is that in most cases u need immunities or high resistances from the very first combo of ur fight, if not the first hit

Making him gain resistances over time might render him useless in most situations where such resistances are needed

It can work only if he starts with something like 80-85% resistance & slowly builds to 100 or even 100+
Anything below that might not be useful
Even 80 might end up being too low in many situations

His confidence charges ramp pretty quickly, so that shouldn't be an issue. You also don't need 100% resistance right away if the purpose is to simply show his increasing durability and give him a little more longevity/survivability.

I made a separate thread with some more detail in kit changes I'd love to see for Gladiator: here and I altered the resistances I think would make sense for him. My response here I was using the standard bleed and poison as example placeholders but in that thread I think the ones I mention fit better.

@ShoNuff29 kind of nailed it, the point isn't to make him completely recoil friendly - he wants to throw his specials so you'll still be taking damage, but maintaining his confidence allows him to take that damage and recover. It's about mitigation and durability, kind of like his rushing into opponent specials playstyle.

Jarvisrei

I would actually love to see him take a page out of Silver Surfer's book.

Make Gladiator resistant (not immune) to bleed, poisons and MAYBE coldsnap. BUT it's tied to his confidence, so the debuffs actually continue to stack up on you and the amount of damage they do scales in relation to your confidence.

That ties in with Gladiator's whole theme perfectly and actually makes canonical sense.
The problem with this idea is that in most cases u need immunities or high resistances from the very first combo of ur fight, if not the first hit

Making him gain resistances over time might render him useless in most situations where such resistances are needed

It can work only if he starts with something like 80-85% resistance & slowly builds to 100 or even 100+
Anything below that might not be useful
Even 80 might end up being too low in many situations

I mean, it's better than nothing lol

Vanitelia

There's plenty of champs with combo meter abilities in their kits. Maybe having something where confidence builds as confidence meter builds. Have a combo shield mechanic. Once he loses a combo, then the power of his confidence drops. More hits mean more confidence.

Other option is tying it to opponent health inversely. As opponent hits certain health percentage (75%, 50% etc.) then gets a bigger boost of confidence. We have champs that have coding based on percentage of health remaining a la Elektra (gets assassin mastery benefits).

He is subject to balancing and I'd like to think that they'll adjust his numbers depending on the data. Only day one like other summoners have said.