The simple solution is to make inequity only affect defenders and not an attacker. The whole point of masteries in the first place is to enhance the players attackers, not hurt them. In this particular case the defending ai is able to hurt the attacking player based on that summoners (defending player) masteries which shouldn’t be happening because that defending champion is still on defense and being controlled by ai so the inequity should not be benefiting them. It has nothing to do with champs shutting down masteries or any of that jazz, because that’s not what’s happening, but more of an unforeseen negative interaction between a champion buff and pre-existing mastery that now create an otherwise unattended impact on the player. Kabam just needs to slightly tweak the inequity mastery and interaction to bring it into the original intended purpose.
Also Clobby I think you are overestimating the frequency of Inequity mastery. Like how many players actually run them? it is not too common like willpower or despair, it is even rare then deep wounds and assasin as well. I never looked at the way of inequity, Most of my allymates don't run it either. Maybe its more common than I think, I'm not sure. But still, There should be many players out there, who don't run that mastery. The majority won't run it, that is one thing I'm sure of.
When it matters we all run it in higher GC ranks. I don't think people without inequity will have a good time at those levels. If you are facing the sweaty BG pushers and you need the win, sinister will not deliver on attack. We are all running it. In my VT match I got timed out vs a r2 bullseye. I have him at r4a (I'm hoarding my t6cc for bigger purpose atm)
Most of my alliance don't run inequity, they all finish arcane and lower. Only few are up the 'sweaty' ranks. When he is needed, midnister will 110% fail to deliver on attack.
Yeah that makes sense, the highest I ever played was Gamma 3 where masteries won't matter much.Maybe that means sinister is for casual bg players, not competitive ones. Kabam ain't gonna change anything bout him anyways. We can only hope.
Yes, Sinister is for casual players who struggle against Bullseye, that's all he's meant to be. For competitive players Negasonic is going to be the way to go, which is why I'm a little annoyed. I really wanted to be able to use Sinister reliably but Inequity makes it too much of a gamble, no champ in the game should be completely neutralized by a single mastery like this imo it's just not fair. If it was just a hindrance fair enough but this isn't just a hindrance, Inequity cripples him completely and it's a guaranteed loss at high level.
Well that's a bit disappointing. I didn't want to buy Negasonic (after buying Serpent, Destroyer, and Punk bundles), so I r5 and ascended Sinister instead. Testing him after buff was awesome and seemed like a great attacker. Even using him in this month's EQ was pretty fun. I've currently only played 3 rounds of BGs this season. 1 which Sinister was banned, another was a forfeit on their end during banning, and the last match I used Sinister against a r6 Thing. I did notice his damage kind of lacking in that match. I actually ended up timing out. Thought it was just cause of his Protection proc'ing, but now I know it must've been Inequity. I run the mastery myself, so I guess I gotta take the good with the bad, but it does kind of bum me out that one of only 7 Mutants I'm running right now isn't going to be a big contender. Guess I'll have to wait a few more weeks in hopes of pulling Negasonic instead.
Yeah same here, it was nice using him for questing and testing him on rol even without synergies or suicides but now, using him in BGs has become more of a gamble. I agree that there should be a downside to his damage because of his survivability but like I said, this is straight up neutralizing him completely not just hindering him.
This match here was against my sig 40 r1 Thing, my friend was using r4 ascended sig 200 Sinister: Look how long the match was, I asked him if he tried throwing sp1 while protection was off and he said he did but the damage was still extremely low. Checks out cause I run Inequity 2, the damage reduction is ridiculous, I agree.
I’ve in general thought inequity was a bit too strong, and sinister is just the most extreme case of that. The fact that it can make a champ a full 100% slower (based on the times you mentioned) is wild to me. It hurts champs like kingpin as well and makes defenders such as photon even more of a pain. Often forcing you to wait out an entire pure light form instead of just being able to nuke her down. But yes, sinister is hurt pretty majorly by it.
This was a r2 Serpent without Inequity This was a r5 ascended Maestro with Inequity: Yeah, pretty big difference and I really don't know how else they could change it so it doesn't hurt him as much other than making him shut down Inequity while he's bleeding.
Yeah in this case not exactly 100% slower but still more than enough to where it seems excessive. I’ve hesitated to rank sinister for this reason in particular. If I can’t reliably use him on attack and he gets hard countered by any robot on defense, I’m not sure if I wanna invest into him. If inequity was out of the picture I would’ve at least r4 him by now.
I am regretting r5 ascending mine a bit tbh, and I think I will replace him with Negasonic if he doesn't get a tune up cause that Inequity damage reduction is brutal. Good for you for holding it until people tested him, I probably should've too.
I waited because I wanted to see how he’d age in bgs specifically. His buff went live right before bgs ended so everyone was testing him in RoL, with no limber and often synergies which he benefits from a lot more than other champs. I didn’t even think about inequity until I heard others mention it, but also thought “maybe the damage reduction will go away right before the degens are applied so he bypasses it,” but evidently not.
I also feel like he’s just gonna get easier on defense to where we won’t need robots, you can basically just bait sp2s. Yea the concussion is kinda annoying but it’s also willpower. And if you have someone who doesn’t crit much or not at all, the regen isn’t gonna slow you down. I wouldn’t feel too bad about taking him up tho because you still have possibly the best bullseye counter in the game.
He's not that good on defense either tbh, even champs who can crit but don't crit often like Hulkling can obliterate him in under a minute. I'm not gonna get my hopes too high but I do hope they do something about Inequity, if they don't I can guarantee he's going to fall off at high level as soon as Negasonic comes to the featured.
He seems like a decent defender atm, but like any new champ as soon as we get used to him I don’t see him being difficult. I dont know much about negasonic just that she’s also a hard bullseye counter and really just a skill class counter.
Thing is Sinister looks like he’ll be an amazing quester but it sucks that we can’t get a similar effect in bgs.
Make these bleeds passives like OP Man Logan. Healing gone and inequity gone. Both positive and negetive. Balanced
This is actually not a bad idea @BitterSteel what would you say to this? You seem to be worried about the healing being too strong, wouldn't this solve that issue?
Two reasons I don’t think this is an elegant fix. 1) you try explaining to the people who don’t care about BGs why their sinister can’t heal and be sustainable anymore in questing and war over an optional, high cost mastery. Try to persuade them that it’s not a nerf - we’ve seen the community up in arms over less. This is the main reason.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
Make these bleeds passives like OP Man Logan. Healing gone and inequity gone. Both positive and negetive. Balanced
This is actually not a bad idea @BitterSteel what would you say to this? You seem to be worried about the healing being too strong, wouldn't this solve that issue?
Two reasons I don’t think this is an elegant fix. 1) you try explaining to the people who don’t care about BGs why their sinister can’t heal and be sustainable anymore in questing and war over an optional, high cost mastery. Try to persuade them that it’s not a nerf - we’ve seen the community up in arms over less. This is the main reason.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
You have some valid points there, can't argue against some of them cause it does sound like a lot from a design standpoint, I do however disagree with having to make the playerbase understand why a champ got changed. Sure, most games that constantly receive balancing updates explain why certain changes happened, but if a player refuses to understand that then it isn't really the dev's fault. I said this before when people suggested a Quake nerf and I'll say it again here, it's not the dev's job to make people understand, if they explain it once and you refuse to understand why the changes happened then whose fault is it?
Anyways that's a different topic, my question is what would you suggest then? You can't possibly tell me he's fine as is when the damage reduction is so massive you even risk timing out.
I’ve in general thought inequity was a bit too strong, and sinister is just the most extreme case of that. The fact that it can make a champ a full 100% slower (based on the times you mentioned) is wild to me. It hurts champs like kingpin as well and makes defenders such as photon even more of a pain. Often forcing you to wait out an entire pure light form instead of just being able to nuke her down. But yes, sinister is hurt pretty majorly by it.
This was a r2 Serpent without Inequity This was a r5 ascended Maestro with Inequity: Yeah, pretty big difference and I really don't know how else they could change it so it doesn't hurt him as much other than making him shut down Inequity while he's bleeding.
Yeah in this case not exactly 100% slower but still more than enough to where it seems excessive. I’ve hesitated to rank sinister for this reason in particular. If I can’t reliably use him on attack and he gets hard countered by any robot on defense, I’m not sure if I wanna invest into him. If inequity was out of the picture I would’ve at least r4 him by now.
I am regretting r5 ascending mine a bit tbh, and I think I will replace him with Negasonic if he doesn't get a tune up cause that Inequity damage reduction is brutal. Good for you for holding it until people tested him, I probably should've too.
I waited because I wanted to see how he’d age in bgs specifically. His buff went live right before bgs ended so everyone was testing him in RoL, with no limber and often synergies which he benefits from a lot more than other champs. I didn’t even think about inequity until I heard others mention it, but also thought “maybe the damage reduction will go away right before the degens are applied so he bypasses it,” but evidently not.
I also feel like he’s just gonna get easier on defense to where we won’t need robots, you can basically just bait sp2s. Yea the concussion is kinda annoying but it’s also willpower. And if you have someone who doesn’t crit much or not at all, the regen isn’t gonna slow you down. I wouldn’t feel too bad about taking him up tho because you still have possibly the best bullseye counter in the game.
He's not that good on defense either tbh, even champs who can crit but don't crit often like Hulkling can obliterate him in under a minute. I'm not gonna get my hopes too high but I do hope they do something about Inequity, if they don't I can guarantee he's going to fall off at high level as soon as Negasonic comes to the featured.
He seems like a decent defender atm, but like any new champ as soon as we get used to him I don’t see him being difficult. I dont know much about negasonic just that she’s also a hard bullseye counter and really just a skill class counter.
Thing is Sinister looks like he’ll be an amazing quester but it sucks that we can’t get a similar effect in bgs.
Yeah questing and AW is all he'll be good for if he doesn't receive any changes, I'll probably remove him from my deck if he stays as is.
Make these bleeds passives like OP Man Logan. Healing gone and inequity gone. Both positive and negetive. Balanced
This is actually not a bad idea @BitterSteel what would you say to this? You seem to be worried about the healing being too strong, wouldn't this solve that issue?
Two reasons I don’t think this is an elegant fix. 1) you try explaining to the people who don’t care about BGs why their sinister can’t heal and be sustainable anymore in questing and war over an optional, high cost mastery. Try to persuade them that it’s not a nerf - we’ve seen the community up in arms over less. This is the main reason.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
You have some valid points there, can't argue against some of them cause it does sound like a lot from a design standpoint, I do however disagree with having to make the playerbase understand why a champ got changed. Sure, most games that constantly receive balancing updates explain why certain changes happened, but if a player refuses to understand that then it isn't really the dev's fault. I said this before when people suggested a Quake nerf and I'll say it again here, it's not the dev's job to make people understand, if they explain it once and you refuse to understand why the changes happened then whose fault is it?
Anyways that's a different topic, my question is what would you suggest then? You can't possibly tell me he's fine as is when the damage reduction is so massive you even risk timing out.
I understand your point, but I’m saying that changing them from debuffs to passives would likely be taken by the majority of the playerbase as a nerf. Most players don’t play BGs seriously, and of those, many don’t come up against inequity.
So you’d need to explain to the majority of the playerbase why you nerfed their champion because a small percentage of high tier players didn’t like it for one game mode. And made him overall in the game worse, worse in incursions, worse in war, worse in every aspect of questing. And even made it worse for a high percentage of BGs players who don’t play BGs against those with inequity. That feels elitist to me.
As for what to actually change if anything. I’d bring in a term called levers, which is used a lot in MCOC game design. It’s what part of the kit can I tune to make them stronger/weaker. What lever in their kit can I turn to change them. Herc is an obvious example, his levers are immortality duration, number or potency of crit buffs, cruelty buffs, burst damage etc. Levers are changes you can make that aren’t drastic ability changes.
This is what the balance program is for. It’s not for ripping up the lever and throwing it away, which is what changing the bleeds to passives would be, it would change sinister’s dynamic with the archetype of the mutant class (think about how many mutants before him have the precedent of benefitting from bleed debuffs. Omega red, gambit, domino etc. So you have the real balance implications of changing that precedent. Along all the other reasons we’ve spoken about with willpower/inequity etc.
It’s why Dani’s balance pass tweaked numbers (levers) instead of letting her bypass skill champs miss (not a lever).
So with that in mind, what levers does sinister actually have in this context. Assuming the balance pass came back and said “yeah, sinister is being hit too hard by inequity”. What can the balance team do?
First thing I’d look at is number of debuffs, that’s a small lever to change. Not making it passive, not changing any big part of the kit. Keeping the bones, but moving a lever.
So instead of the genetic manipulation passive giving a debuff every 0.7 seconds, make it 1.4 seconds. And now double the damage of the degen he inflicts by throwing sp1. You’ve now halved the number of debuffs he usually has on himself, and kept his damage the same.
One caveat is that non-personal DOTs now do double the normal damage, so chuck on a 50% penalty for non-personal debuffs if that’s possible to do from an engineering perspective where they can tell the source of the debuff.
Not saying any of this is necessary, likely or even possible. But that’s an idea of what balance passes are intended for. Not the more drastic changes suggested here
Make these bleeds passives like OP Man Logan. Healing gone and inequity gone. Both positive and negetive. Balanced
This is actually not a bad idea @BitterSteel what would you say to this? You seem to be worried about the healing being too strong, wouldn't this solve that issue?
Two reasons I don’t think this is an elegant fix. 1) you try explaining to the people who don’t care about BGs why their sinister can’t heal and be sustainable anymore in questing and war over an optional, high cost mastery. Try to persuade them that it’s not a nerf - we’ve seen the community up in arms over less. This is the main reason.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
You have some valid points there, can't argue against some of them cause it does sound like a lot from a design standpoint, I do however disagree with having to make the playerbase understand why a champ got changed. Sure, most games that constantly receive balancing updates explain why certain changes happened, but if a player refuses to understand that then it isn't really the dev's fault. I said this before when people suggested a Quake nerf and I'll say it again here, it's not the dev's job to make people understand, if they explain it once and you refuse to understand why the changes happened then whose fault is it?
Anyways that's a different topic, my question is what would you suggest then? You can't possibly tell me he's fine as is when the damage reduction is so massive you even risk timing out.
I understand your point, but I’m saying that changing them from debuffs to passives would likely be taken by the majority of the playerbase as a nerf. Most players don’t play BGs seriously, and of those, many don’t come up against inequity.
So you’d need to explain to the majority of the playerbase why you nerfed their champion because a small percentage of high tier players didn’t like it for one game mode. And made him overall in the game worse, worse in incursions, worse in war, worse in every aspect of questing. And even made it worse for a high percentage of BGs players who don’t play BGs against those with inequity. That feels elitist to me.
As for what to actually change if anything. I’d bring in a term called levers, which is used a lot in MCOC game design. It’s what part of the kit can I tune to make them stronger/weaker. What lever in their kit can I turn to change them. Herc is an obvious example, his levers are immortality duration, number or potency of crit buffs, cruelty buffs, burst damage etc. Levers are changes you can make that aren’t drastic ability changes.
This is what the balance program is for. It’s not for ripping up the lever and throwing it away, which is what changing the bleeds to passives would be, it would change sinister’s dynamic with the archetype of the mutant class (think about how many mutants before him have the precedent of benefitting from bleed debuffs. Omega red, gambit, domino etc. So you have the real balance implications of changing that precedent. Along all the other reasons we’ve spoken about with willpower/inequity etc.
It’s why Dani’s balance pass tweaked numbers (levers) instead of letting her bypass skill champs miss (not a lever).
So with that in mind, what levers does sinister actually have in this context. Assuming the balance pass came back and said “yeah, sinister is being hit too hard by inequity”. What can the balance team do?
First thing I’d look at is number of debuffs, that’s a small lever to change. Not making it passive, not changing any big part of the kit. Keeping the bones, but moving a lever.
So instead of the genetic manipulation passive giving a debuff every 0.7 seconds, make it 1.4 seconds. And now double the damage of the degen he inflicts by throwing sp1. You’ve now halved the number of debuffs he usually has on himself, and kept his damage the same.
One caveat is that non-personal DOTs now do double the normal damage, so chuck on a 50% penalty for non-personal debuffs if that’s possible to do from an engineering perspective where they can tell the source of the debuff.
Not saying any of this is necessary, likely or even possible. But that’s an idea of what balance passes are intended for. Not the more drastic changes suggested here
I'm not arguing that anymore, I understand why there could be a lot of game design issues if they went with any of our previous suggestions and now I agree, they're not viable. I was just curious as to what your actual thoughts (or suggestions if you had any) were since I think most of us agree that the damage reduction from Inequity is actually pretty big and not as insignificant as a few people have tried to make it seem on this same thread.
So how much does he do without inequity and how much with it?
Same rank fights without Inequity 40ish secs, same rank fights with Inequity 1:20ish secs. Pretty big difference if you ask me.
A solution would be to make Sinister's self-inflicted bleed passive, yet allow you to regen. Ex: If duped, Kushala inflicts passives, she doesn't benefit from despair, rather for each effect she reduces their regen rate. Similar idea for Sinister
Make these bleeds passives like OP Man Logan. Healing gone and inequity gone. Both positive and negetive. Balanced
This is actually not a bad idea @BitterSteel what would you say to this? You seem to be worried about the healing being too strong, wouldn't this solve that issue?
Two reasons I don’t think this is an elegant fix. 1) you try explaining to the people who don’t care about BGs why their sinister can’t heal and be sustainable anymore in questing and war over an optional, high cost mastery. Try to persuade them that it’s not a nerf - we’ve seen the community up in arms over less. This is the main reason.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
You have some valid points there, can't argue against some of them cause it does sound like a lot from a design standpoint, I do however disagree with having to make the playerbase understand why a champ got changed. Sure, most games that constantly receive balancing updates explain why certain changes happened, but if a player refuses to understand that then it isn't really the dev's fault. I said this before when people suggested a Quake nerf and I'll say it again here, it's not the dev's job to make people understand, if they explain it once and you refuse to understand why the changes happened then whose fault is it?
Anyways that's a different topic, my question is what would you suggest then? You can't possibly tell me he's fine as is when the damage reduction is so massive you even risk timing out.
I understand your point, but I’m saying that changing them from debuffs to passives would likely be taken by the majority of the playerbase as a nerf. Most players don’t play BGs seriously, and of those, many don’t come up against inequity.
So you’d need to explain to the majority of the playerbase why you nerfed their champion because a small percentage of high tier players didn’t like it for one game mode. And made him overall in the game worse, worse in incursions, worse in war, worse in every aspect of questing. And even made it worse for a high percentage of BGs players who don’t play BGs against those with inequity. That feels elitist to me.
As for what to actually change if anything. I’d bring in a term called levers, which is used a lot in MCOC game design. It’s what part of the kit can I tune to make them stronger/weaker. What lever in their kit can I turn to change them. Herc is an obvious example, his levers are immortality duration, number or potency of crit buffs, cruelty buffs, burst damage etc. Levers are changes you can make that aren’t drastic ability changes.
This is what the balance program is for. It’s not for ripping up the lever and throwing it away, which is what changing the bleeds to passives would be, it would change sinister’s dynamic with the archetype of the mutant class (think about how many mutants before him have the precedent of benefitting from bleed debuffs. Omega red, gambit, domino etc. So you have the real balance implications of changing that precedent. Along all the other reasons we’ve spoken about with willpower/inequity etc.
It’s why Dani’s balance pass tweaked numbers (levers) instead of letting her bypass skill champs miss (not a lever).
So with that in mind, what levers does sinister actually have in this context. Assuming the balance pass came back and said “yeah, sinister is being hit too hard by inequity”. What can the balance team do?
First thing I’d look at is number of debuffs, that’s a small lever to change. Not making it passive, not changing any big part of the kit. Keeping the bones, but moving a lever.
So instead of the genetic manipulation passive giving a debuff every 0.7 seconds, make it 1.4 seconds. And now double the damage of the degen he inflicts by throwing sp1. You’ve now halved the number of debuffs he usually has on himself, and kept his damage the same.
One caveat is that non-personal DOTs now do double the normal damage, so chuck on a 50% penalty for non-personal debuffs if that’s possible to do from an engineering perspective where they can tell the source of the debuff.
Not saying any of this is necessary, likely or even possible. But that’s an idea of what balance passes are intended for. Not the more drastic changes suggested here
That is a great explanation on how the balance process will work. The buffs in last year and so, not just the old champs but the balance program in itself has been an overall W (except psycoman, rip).
Champion have their niche and disadvantages, but in case of sinister, its rather disappointing that inequity makes him a guaranteed loss in competitive BGs.
He kinda need some loving from the devs. Lessening the numbers of bleeds might help him. But then reducing it to 4 in place of 8 will still have 24% reduction in place of 32%. In this case, willpower will remain the same with fewer bleeds as he is not effected by despair.
The simple solution is to make inequity only affect defenders and not an attacker. The whole point of masteries in the first place is to enhance the players attackers, not hurt them.
So you don't want your defenders benefiting from Masteries you've unlocked for them?
You don't want them having Deep Wounds, Stand your Ground, Mystic Dispersion...?
100% no. I choose my standard Masteries to enhance both defenders and attackers; and now I've got a War Defense setup that's even more helpful to my defenders.
So how much does he do without inequity and how much with it?
Same rank fights without Inequity 40ish secs, same rank fights with Inequity 1:20ish secs. Pretty big difference if you ask me.
A solution would be to make Sinister's self-inflicted bleed passive, yet allow you to regen. Ex: If duped, Kushala inflicts passives, she doesn't benefit from despair, rather for each effect she reduces their regen rate. Similar idea for Sinister
No I think BitterSteel is right anything that has to do with passives or changing his kit entirely would cause even more problems and it wouldn't even be easy to design. I think the changes he suggested with the amount of bleeds so you don't get that much attack reduction would be a better idea overall. Doubt they'll do anything though, so I'm just gonna let Sinister gather dust on my roster and forget about him completely cause I hate this whole gambling with masteries thing, I want champs that can reliably and consistently be good.
The more I read the replies in this thread, the more I am starting to lean towards no because although inequity does essentially neuter him in BG's if your opponent is running it, he still has a ton of utility otherwise and can come out at a full yellow bar pretty well wherever you use him.
Sure, he won't be the best option in bg's, but he's hella good in alot of areas of the game regardless.
He reminds me alot of other champs who have tons of utility, but not crazy damage like BWCV, Anti Venom (either you get utility or damage), Dust, among others that are similar in that regard.
He reminds me alot of other champs who have tons of utility, but not crazy damage like BWCV, Anti Venom (either you get utility or damage), Dust, among others that are similar in that regard.
And for a fact His damage ain't as bad as anti venom or claire, Even with inequity his damage is decent. While inequity cripples him in bgs, as you said, his pros outnumbers his cons.
@Rayven5220@captain_rogers the issue here is champions like Hercules and Claire still exist for questing and war, what value could Sinister potentially bring to questing and war that these other top questing champs don't already bring? Nobody's gonna want to use him over Hercules, let's be realistic here lol. The only game mode where he will have a huge impact is Incursions, that's it, and imo that doesn't warrant Inequity completely neutralizing him like this. Also no his damage is absolutely terrible with Inequity, 1:30 for a same rank defender is as bad as it gets, a 7* Hawkeye is probably quicker.
As nutty as they made this champ, I can't see them making him ever better.
Also, I would guess this mastery has the same impact on lots of champs.
The only other champ that gets affected by Inequity that's somewhat relevant is KP and he's not as meta relevant as he used to be precisely because he's too slow.
Wouldn’t an easy fix be that his personal bleeds are transferred over with the first hit of your sp1 (this will be your Inequity affected hit) and the second hit (the blast wave) converts them to degen at normal damage?
Not all champions need to be just as effective in all game modes. In fact there is already a long list of champions who are effectively pointless anywhere. At least Sinister has some use now.
I really don’t get the percentage of this community that doesn’t want anything to get changed ever, even when it’s an actual good change they just say no to everything because they don’t know how to balance a game or create an enjoyable experience but when a creator says it should be changed then they hop on the bandwagon, when he gets changed i want all of you to keep the same attitude.
Looking back at this, the newest champion, Patriot can reduce inequity mastery potency by up to 100%. I’m not sure why this wasn’t applied to Sinister
Well, there's still hope since they said they will check champs again after they get buffed. Wouldn't hold my breath cause he would be too strong if it was the same as Patriot but maybe they could just make it so he reduces the potency by 30% or something🤞
Make these bleeds passives like OP Man Logan. Healing gone and inequity gone. Both positive and negetive. Balanced
This is actually not a bad idea @BitterSteel what would you say to this? You seem to be worried about the healing being too strong, wouldn't this solve that issue?
Two reasons I don’t think this is an elegant fix. 1) you try explaining to the people who don’t care about BGs why their sinister can’t heal and be sustainable anymore in questing and war over an optional, high cost mastery. Try to persuade them that it’s not a nerf - we’ve seen the community up in arms over less. This is the main reason.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
You have some valid points there, can't argue against some of them cause it does sound like a lot from a design standpoint, I do however disagree with having to make the playerbase understand why a champ got changed. Sure, most games that constantly receive balancing updates explain why certain changes happened, but if a player refuses to understand that then it isn't really the dev's fault. I said this before when people suggested a Quake nerf and I'll say it again here, it's not the dev's job to make people understand, if they explain it once and you refuse to understand why the changes happened then whose fault is it?
Anyways that's a different topic, my question is what would you suggest then? You can't possibly tell me he's fine as is when the damage reduction is so massive you even risk timing out.
I understand your point, but I’m saying that changing them from debuffs to passives would likely be taken by the majority of the playerbase as a nerf. Most players don’t play BGs seriously, and of those, many don’t come up against inequity.
So you’d need to explain to the majority of the playerbase why you nerfed their champion because a small percentage of high tier players didn’t like it for one game mode. And made him overall in the game worse, worse in incursions, worse in war, worse in every aspect of questing. And even made it worse for a high percentage of BGs players who don’t play BGs against those with inequity. That feels elitist to me.
As for what to actually change if anything. I’d bring in a term called levers, which is used a lot in MCOC game design. It’s what part of the kit can I tune to make them stronger/weaker. What lever in their kit can I turn to change them. Herc is an obvious example, his levers are immortality duration, number or potency of crit buffs, cruelty buffs, burst damage etc. Levers are changes you can make that aren’t drastic ability changes.
This is what the balance program is for. It’s not for ripping up the lever and throwing it away, which is what changing the bleeds to passives would be, it would change sinister’s dynamic with the archetype of the mutant class (think about how many mutants before him have the precedent of benefitting from bleed debuffs. Omega red, gambit, domino etc. So you have the real balance implications of changing that precedent. Along all the other reasons we’ve spoken about with willpower/inequity etc.
It’s why Dani’s balance pass tweaked numbers (levers) instead of letting her bypass skill champs miss (not a lever).
So with that in mind, what levers does sinister actually have in this context. Assuming the balance pass came back and said “yeah, sinister is being hit too hard by inequity”. What can the balance team do?
First thing I’d look at is number of debuffs, that’s a small lever to change. Not making it passive, not changing any big part of the kit. Keeping the bones, but moving a lever.
So instead of the genetic manipulation passive giving a debuff every 0.7 seconds, make it 1.4 seconds. And now double the damage of the degen he inflicts by throwing sp1. You’ve now halved the number of debuffs he usually has on himself, and kept his damage the same.
One caveat is that non-personal DOTs now do double the normal damage, so chuck on a 50% penalty for non-personal debuffs if that’s possible to do from an engineering perspective where they can tell the source of the debuff.
Not saying any of this is necessary, likely or even possible. But that’s an idea of what balance passes are intended for. Not the more drastic changes suggested here
So will we have a champion that turns off inequity soon?
Champions who do large parts of their damage as base attack already essentially do. Cassie Lang, Galan, Omega Red etc.
Unless you mean you want a champ that benefits from debuffs on themselves but don't get affected by inequity, in which case 1) seems unlikely, but we do have champs with very little downside to recoil so maybe it happens, but 2) if it did happen, you'd have to have them balanced around that - and sinister absolutely is not balanced around that.
So will we have a champion that turns off inequity soon?
Champions who do large parts of their damage as base attack already essentially do. Cassie Lang, Galan, Omega Red etc.
Unless you mean you want a champ that benefits from debuffs on themselves but don't get affected by inequity, in which case 1) seems unlikely, but we do have champs with very little downside to recoil so maybe it happens, but 2) if it did happen, you'd have to have them balanced around that - and sinister absolutely is not balanced around that.
So will we have a champion that turns off inequity soon?
Champions who do large parts of their damage as base attack already essentially do. Cassie Lang, Galan, Omega Red etc.
Unless you mean you want a champ that benefits from debuffs on themselves but don't get affected by inequity, in which case 1) seems unlikely, but we do have champs with very little downside to recoil so maybe it happens, but 2) if it did happen, you'd have to have them balanced around that - and sinister absolutely is not balanced around that.
Well we did lol
Lol he typed up all those novels just to end up being proven wrong in the end, must feel bad
There isn't many ways to fix the issue sadly, you either tweak inequity to be unique debuffs or non personal debuffs which would ruin a lot of defenders. Or have another champ that shuts down masteries which we also don't want too many of. But it does cripple him sometimes.
Comments
This match here was against my sig 40 r1 Thing, my friend was using r4 ascended sig 200 Sinister:
Look how long the match was, I asked him if he tried throwing sp1 while protection was off and he said he did but the damage was still extremely low. Checks out cause I run Inequity 2, the damage reduction is ridiculous, I agree.
Thing is Sinister looks like he’ll be an amazing quester but it sucks that we can’t get a similar effect in bgs.
2) but also as a minor point, think about how clunky a change this is from a game design POV, sinister doesn’t transfer passives across, so your new passive bleeds wouldn’t trigger the degen from his sp1. So you’d have to make it so that he does transfer passives, but that’s way OP, so you have to make it so that he only transfers his own passive bleeds over.
But then you’ve nerfed him because he can’t transfer debuffs over anymore, what about debuff matchups? And his defensive threat? So you have to change the line “transfer all damaging debuffs” to “transfer all damaging debuffs, and personal passives”.
As I said, this is a minor point, but I’m just trying to nudge towards an additional perspective when it comes to designing champions.
Anyways that's a different topic, my question is what would you suggest then? You can't possibly tell me he's fine as is when the damage reduction is so massive you even risk timing out.
So you’d need to explain to the majority of the playerbase why you nerfed their champion because a small percentage of high tier players didn’t like it for one game mode. And made him overall in the game worse, worse in incursions, worse in war, worse in every aspect of questing. And even made it worse for a high percentage of BGs players who don’t play BGs against those with inequity. That feels elitist to me.
As for what to actually change if anything. I’d bring in a term called levers, which is used a lot in MCOC game design. It’s what part of the kit can I tune to make them stronger/weaker. What lever in their kit can I turn to change them. Herc is an obvious example, his levers are immortality duration, number or potency of crit buffs, cruelty buffs, burst damage etc. Levers are changes you can make that aren’t drastic ability changes.
This is what the balance program is for. It’s not for ripping up the lever and throwing it away, which is what changing the bleeds to passives would be, it would change sinister’s dynamic with the archetype of the mutant class (think about how many mutants before him have the precedent of benefitting from bleed debuffs. Omega red, gambit, domino etc. So you have the real balance implications of changing that precedent. Along all the other reasons we’ve spoken about with willpower/inequity etc.
It’s why Dani’s balance pass tweaked numbers (levers) instead of letting her bypass skill champs miss (not a lever).
So with that in mind, what levers does sinister actually have in this context. Assuming the balance pass came back and said “yeah, sinister is being hit too hard by inequity”. What can the balance team do?
First thing I’d look at is number of debuffs, that’s a small lever to change. Not making it passive, not changing any big part of the kit. Keeping the bones, but moving a lever.
So instead of the genetic manipulation passive giving a debuff every 0.7 seconds, make it 1.4 seconds. And now double the damage of the degen he inflicts by throwing sp1. You’ve now halved the number of debuffs he usually has on himself, and kept his damage the same.
One caveat is that non-personal DOTs now do double the normal damage, so chuck on a 50% penalty for non-personal debuffs if that’s possible to do from an engineering perspective where they can tell the source of the debuff.
Not saying any of this is necessary, likely or even possible. But that’s an idea of what balance passes are intended for. Not the more drastic changes suggested here
I was just curious as to what your actual thoughts (or suggestions if you had any) were since I think most of us agree that the damage reduction from Inequity is actually pretty big and not as insignificant as a few people have tried to make it seem on this same thread.
Champion have their niche and disadvantages, but in case of sinister, its rather disappointing that inequity makes him a guaranteed loss in competitive BGs.
He kinda need some loving from the devs.
Lessening the numbers of bleeds might help him. But then reducing it to 4 in place of 8 will still have 24% reduction in place of 32%. In this case, willpower will remain the same with fewer bleeds as he is not effected by despair.
You don't want them having Deep Wounds, Stand your Ground, Mystic Dispersion...?
100% no. I choose my standard Masteries to enhance both defenders and attackers; and now I've got a War Defense setup that's even more helpful to my defenders.
Doubt they'll do anything though, so I'm just gonna let Sinister gather dust on my roster and forget about him completely cause I hate this whole gambling with masteries thing, I want champs that can reliably and consistently be good.
Sure, he won't be the best option in bg's, but he's hella good in alot of areas of the game regardless.
He reminds me alot of other champs who have tons of utility, but not crazy damage like BWCV, Anti Venom (either you get utility or damage), Dust, among others that are similar in that regard.
Also, I would guess this mastery has the same impact on lots of champs.
Also no his damage is absolutely terrible with Inequity, 1:30 for a same rank defender is as bad as it gets, a 7* Hawkeye is probably quicker.
At least Sinister has some use now.