It's time to change Dexterity and it's interaction with Mystic Dispersion and Mystic Defenders
A lot of things in the game has changed since it was introduced in December 2014. Back then there was no masteries, no synergies, there was no crystal shards, 5 stars weren't in the game, etc, etc.
So what has changed to cause mystic champions to over run defense running 5/5 mystic dispersion?
This change happened after the buff to Magik. Do you guys remember Magik before her buff? She was horrible, one of the worst champions in the game. After her buff she would do unavoidable damage when she gets a bar of power. When you play Magik as an offensive champion limbo's damage acts as a damage over time effect, a nice addition but not the defining feature of her as an attacker.
However when Magik was placed on Defense her Limbo damage was amplified by the increased attack of the node. For instance; if she did 200 damage a tic on attack, she would do 400 with a 100% attack increase node. This created a meta in the game where Magik soon over ran the defenses of higher rated alliances.
What this caused was a situation where not fighting a champion could be better than fighting the champion, as you didn't want to give up any defender kills. As we are all aware we've gone through numerous changes to Alliance War in the last few months to try and rectify this situation, and we are almost right back to where we were.
Similarly, Dormammu cause degeneration on you when he is awakened and you have a buff expire. The buff from dexterity counts towards this, so Dormammu punishes you for not getting hit. Not to mention he had a longer hit box on his medium dash attack than other champions, so you could get caught by it even if you evaded. This has since been patched but it was still in the game for months. This is a problem already addressed by you, hence why the Dormammu in Alliance Quest is unawakened.
I would like to illiterate that you are being punished for evading Dormammu's special attacks. Since the buff from Dexterity refreshes several times when you evade a special attack, you will be given a new degeneration debuff. Also each one will give up to 12% power to Dormammu, giving him another special attack at best, and at worst giving him enough power to hit his special attack 3, which almost certainly will kill you (unless you are using a champion that can survive l3's, ie. awakened Gwenpool, Iceman, both Magneto's).
In Mephisto's spotlight you mentioned that he was designed to be the ultimate defender. He procs an aura of incineration that will melt through most champions, has a really strong regen depending on his persistent soul count, and his special attack 1 will cause you to proc multiple dexterity buffs when you evade it. Giving him more special attacks when he has mystic dispersion.
Player's are currently being punished for skilled game play against these champions. As something that has been repeated a lot in the threads for all the Alliance War changes, attacking should be better than not attacking. Evading special attacks should be better than not evading special attacks.
So how could you go about changing this?
1. The simplest and easiest method that I can think off would be to remove the buff from dexterity, but since there is now entire game mechanic that relies on your dexterity buff to trigger regeneration, I don't see that happening.
2. You could stop dexterity from refreshing multiple times when you evade a special attack, this would still grant up to 12% power to a mystic defender and proc a degeneration from Dormammu. It would also continue to trigger Buffet for it's continued use in act 5 and Alliance War.
3. You could simply make dexterity not trigger mystic dispersion by reprogramming how it works and changing the description of mystic dispersion. In the description of M.O.D.O.K. you mention how his auto block cannot trigger parry (even though it does as evidenced in several YouTube videos), you could put in Dormammu's description that dexterity won't trigger degeneration.
4. You could change unavoidable damage to be based off base attack only. Or base attack + synergies + masteries. This would exactly mirror the changes to willpower and regeneration that you did (and subsequently ignored for buffet).
I know that not everyone has been playing this game from the beginning, and even I have only been playing since March 2015, so I feel it is necessary to go over changes to the game that led to a much greater experience.
1. Willpower was changed because in it's previous state it was a bit ridiculous. You were rewarded for being hit by special attacks that caused debuffs. The best strategy for fighting War Machine was to just let him stack up bleeds on you, you would heal up for 1.5% of your maximum health per debuff (it used to stack), not to mention the 15% increase to that from 3/3 recovery.
2. Perfect block teams: Double Dr Strange and Scarlet Witch; Magneto, Black Bolt, and Red Cyclops; Double War Machine and Hawkeye, etc. These specific teams defined the meta for attacking in any game mode. If you didn't have them you couldn't necessarily do what other people did. When map 6 was first introduced you added a node called greater block erosion that slowly reduced your ability to perfectly block all attacks, this node hurt every champion in the game.
3. Who can forget how dominating Scarlet Witch was with a critical rate synergy team prior to 12.0? She was so ridiculous in what she could do, that she lead to the closing of Labyrinth of Legends the day that it opened. She just blew through it and to counter her you added a node called dulled. Dulled hurt the damage output of any champion with a buff, or a debuff on your opponent. Labyrinth became much more costly for everyone and it made it nearly impossible for some champions to do it at all.
For my fellow summoner's who might be commenting on this, please refrain from having your comments becoming inflammatory, having a thread closed down without any real discussion occurring is just a waste of everyone's time.
To Kabam; as you have mentioned a lot, attacking should always be better than not attacking. Just as not getting hit should always be better than being hit.
Regards
Quickshot Gaming
