**WE ARE NO LONGER Temporarily Reverting Tier 1 War Ban System**
After further discussion, the game team has made the decision not make adjustements to the ban system.
The previously proposed fix would have resolved the issue for Summoners who are on the cusp of T1/T2 play, and negatively impacted Alliances more securely in T1. Instead, we recommend that cusp Alliances switch to Manual Placement to your members to place the allotted 5 Ban Champions limit there.
Apologies for the back and forth, and for any confusion.
After further discussion, the game team has made the decision not make adjustements to the ban system.
The previously proposed fix would have resolved the issue for Summoners who are on the cusp of T1/T2 play, and negatively impacted Alliances more securely in T1. Instead, we recommend that cusp Alliances switch to Manual Placement to your members to place the allotted 5 Ban Champions limit there.
Apologies for the back and forth, and for any confusion.
Options
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.