Current Champion Design Team
J0eySn0w
Member Posts: 940 ★★★★
I just want to start by saying this is going to be a long read, so thank you in advance if you spend the time to go through it.
There’s a problem with the current design team, and while many players may not realize it yet, they eventually will if things continue this way. The approach to defensive champions is flawed and unfair. I’ve described it as "bullying by the designers." It feels like they’re putting you in a cage to fight a bear with your bare hands, and when they’re feeling generous, they give you a wooden sword. They continue to introduce mechanics and interactions that are extremely punishing, while giving attackers no reasonable way to effectively deal with or manage them. There’s a clear intent to force damage at all costs, with VERY LITTLE to NO options for damage mitigation. Defenders like Photon, Bullseye, Onslaught, Serpent, and Enchantress have abilities that either shouldn’t exist in their current form or need to be toned down. These defenders are going to be difficult to handle in end-game content that fully explores their defensive potential. Either we’ll have nodes that assist attackers in countering their kits, or nodes that disable those kits entirely.
I started noticing this trend when Photon was released, or maybe it started with her. If you take Photon as an example – I want players to realize this – she has hard counters like Crossbones, Mantis, and Falcon. But is that truly how we should judge if a defender is fair? Keep in mind that these hard counters often shut her down completely from the root, preventing her abilities from ever activating.
So what happens when the hard counters don’t work? Is there any chance at all of beating the defender? Can skillful play at least make a difference? Or do you have to nuke them down before their abilities activate? What if it’s an Abyss or Necropolis-level health pool? Is there any balance or reasonableness in their kit?
Consider Photon’s defensive abilities:
- Her specials eventually become undexable, partly unblockable, and some fully unblockable.
- The parts you can block require a skill ask – a “well-timed” block can mitigate the damage. Fair enough.
- However, she reduces your block proficiency by a sizable amount. With her increased attack and the block proficiency reduction, it’s almost as bad as taking the full special damage. So, here’s your “wooden sword.”
- So, how do you avoid this inevitable damage if you can’t shut her down at the root? Is this fair or reasonable?
I won’t even start with Serpent; he deserves his own write-up, which I’ve already prepared. I’m still contemplating whether it’s even worth posting. We’re fortunate Bullseye was updated, etc.
If there were ever boundaries, the designers have started encroaching on our space, leaving attackers with very little room to maneuver. Our tools for tackling challenges are being reduced. Special attacks are becoming more difficult to evade, blocking them is becoming more costly, we can’t dex them, they’re becoming unblockable, and masteries are being nullified. What’s next? This is happening far too frequently. There’s no information on whether we’re receiving new tools or masteries to help us deal with these changes. New champions don’t seem to have mechanics or abilities that help either.
When enough people justify Photon, we get Serpent. When enough people justify Serpent, we’ll get something worse than Serpent.
I can’t help but imagine how this current design team, especially if DLL is involved, would have designed some of our old favorite defenders in 2023/2024.
Doom:
- While his aura is active, special attacks cannot be avoided with the Dexterity mastery.
- While his aura is active, nullified buffs deal an instant burst of Shock damage for X amount.
- While stunned, his aura is paused for 2 seconds.
Void:
- Intimidating Presence debuffs, once applied, can never be removed. Or, if they’re feeling generous:
- When Intimidating Presence debuffs are removed, they apply a combo deficit of 10 to the attacker.
I could go on about how many champions’ defensive abilities can easily be rendered unfair and unbalanced.
Anyway, thank you for reading. I hope Kabam reevaluates what they’ve been doing with regard to recent champions' defensive abilities. And I hope they reconsider Serpent’s rebalance decision.
There’s a problem with the current design team, and while many players may not realize it yet, they eventually will if things continue this way. The approach to defensive champions is flawed and unfair. I’ve described it as "bullying by the designers." It feels like they’re putting you in a cage to fight a bear with your bare hands, and when they’re feeling generous, they give you a wooden sword. They continue to introduce mechanics and interactions that are extremely punishing, while giving attackers no reasonable way to effectively deal with or manage them. There’s a clear intent to force damage at all costs, with VERY LITTLE to NO options for damage mitigation. Defenders like Photon, Bullseye, Onslaught, Serpent, and Enchantress have abilities that either shouldn’t exist in their current form or need to be toned down. These defenders are going to be difficult to handle in end-game content that fully explores their defensive potential. Either we’ll have nodes that assist attackers in countering their kits, or nodes that disable those kits entirely.
I started noticing this trend when Photon was released, or maybe it started with her. If you take Photon as an example – I want players to realize this – she has hard counters like Crossbones, Mantis, and Falcon. But is that truly how we should judge if a defender is fair? Keep in mind that these hard counters often shut her down completely from the root, preventing her abilities from ever activating.
So what happens when the hard counters don’t work? Is there any chance at all of beating the defender? Can skillful play at least make a difference? Or do you have to nuke them down before their abilities activate? What if it’s an Abyss or Necropolis-level health pool? Is there any balance or reasonableness in their kit?
Consider Photon’s defensive abilities:
- Her specials eventually become undexable, partly unblockable, and some fully unblockable.
- The parts you can block require a skill ask – a “well-timed” block can mitigate the damage. Fair enough.
- However, she reduces your block proficiency by a sizable amount. With her increased attack and the block proficiency reduction, it’s almost as bad as taking the full special damage. So, here’s your “wooden sword.”
- So, how do you avoid this inevitable damage if you can’t shut her down at the root? Is this fair or reasonable?
I won’t even start with Serpent; he deserves his own write-up, which I’ve already prepared. I’m still contemplating whether it’s even worth posting. We’re fortunate Bullseye was updated, etc.
If there were ever boundaries, the designers have started encroaching on our space, leaving attackers with very little room to maneuver. Our tools for tackling challenges are being reduced. Special attacks are becoming more difficult to evade, blocking them is becoming more costly, we can’t dex them, they’re becoming unblockable, and masteries are being nullified. What’s next? This is happening far too frequently. There’s no information on whether we’re receiving new tools or masteries to help us deal with these changes. New champions don’t seem to have mechanics or abilities that help either.
When enough people justify Photon, we get Serpent. When enough people justify Serpent, we’ll get something worse than Serpent.
I can’t help but imagine how this current design team, especially if DLL is involved, would have designed some of our old favorite defenders in 2023/2024.
Doom:
- While his aura is active, special attacks cannot be avoided with the Dexterity mastery.
- While his aura is active, nullified buffs deal an instant burst of Shock damage for X amount.
- While stunned, his aura is paused for 2 seconds.
Void:
- Intimidating Presence debuffs, once applied, can never be removed. Or, if they’re feeling generous:
- When Intimidating Presence debuffs are removed, they apply a combo deficit of 10 to the attacker.
I could go on about how many champions’ defensive abilities can easily be rendered unfair and unbalanced.
Anyway, thank you for reading. I hope Kabam reevaluates what they’ve been doing with regard to recent champions' defensive abilities. And I hope they reconsider Serpent’s rebalance decision.
11
Comments
Thing - Rock Stacks are no longer consumed on specials, also players are rooted when he’s unstoppable
Korg - after crowd level reaches 6, it can never drop below that number. Also Korg is granted a crowd charge whenever her purifies a debuff
Sandman - he is given Dust’s sand and sandstorm abilities, but he’s made incinerate immune.
at this point its being sold as "challenging" and "fun"... what the F is fun about that? its like pretending bidenomics has actually made inflation better and commodities cheaper... and actually wanting more of it...
The defenders that i have read about over the past several months, make me still want to stay away from the game. Which is disappointing, because i genuinely like the game, but the excessive combination of node conditions to EVERYTHING was getting exhausting... and to the loyalists that say well thats what makes the game fun... you must think agony is enjoyable then...
The addition of the latest set of defenders is just nutz from what i read on here occasionally... the only thing that comes to mind why kabam would do this is to increase the purchase of consumable revives... they are most likely planning to release another 3-4 stout defensive nightmare characters, then release one character that will destroy them, and figure out a way to charge a premium for him... then youre stuck with only one character you can use anymore, and 12 ridiculous defenders to use him against, while depleting your revive stash, because he is the only one you can use...
But the champions themselves? I don't think they are worse designed than older top-tier champs like Korg and Domino.
Even havok used to be a hell of a defender at that time since tech class was severely underpowered and there aren't many good champs who can gain armor up.
He probably wouldn't have burst, immortality pause on hits and long sp2 stun.
No other than serpent all of them are very much fair and have a ton of options. If you’re asking them to remove what makes them hard, that’s not happening lmao. Domino needs a hyper specific counter too, there have always been defenders like that
There was a time Ironman IW was consider hard defender then the blade era came then many other unique & hard champ gets released .so are the counters are there.
U were there when ROL was first introduced or not ?
Do u know how a game dies - it gets repetitive every content feels like same just run throw it ,no challenge ,no uniqueness ,then player don't play.
Instead, those great attackers will also make fighting serpent or enchantress or onslaught or photon easier giving them more purpose than steamrolling content that our roster can already do.
Let’s prepare ourselves for the inevitable
There are people behind Kabam, and like anyone else, they can make mistakes. But what some of you may not be noticing is how certain basic gameplay mechanics are being gradually encroached upon. Champions are starting to disable core functions like parry, willpower, dexterity, and combining that with unblockable attacks, etc. Some champions even have a combination of these abilities. Where does this lead? Is it just a one-off? Will we get new abilities or tools to help manage these increasingly upgraded defenders?
Masteries have remained the same for a long time, but now defenders are interfering with them easily. Is there an upgrade coming for masteries? We have no idea when or if that will happen, at least not to my knowledge.
I'm going to save this for when we're discussing what the game used to be like ten years from now. We used to have to walk to Act 9, in the snow, fighting bears with a wooden sword. And we liked it.
While some of the recently released defenders are annoying & have (imo)some unnecessary mechanics, where we disagree is with you specifically mentioning DLL. None of us know if he wanted the champs he released to be this challenging. He might of been tasked to do so. Are his champs challenging? To us, yes. To kabam, I guess not. He's not the only champ designer. If you're going to be frustrated, that's fine. Justifiably in your case. Singling out one designer could possibly lead to a witch hunt.
Creating defenders who require more skill than button mashing is probably their goal for how they want the game to go long term. You have to remember that they already have a idea on how the game will look a year from now while we can only see as far as this month.
I do think serpent needs a tune down but if you recall his balance update announcement, they expressed their happiness with the fact people have opted to use sorcerer supreme, a champion who would not be many peoples top choice in a bg deck. This obviously means that they’re happy people are opting to use previously disregarded old champs and bringing life into them. 10 years in and i think kabam is attempting a new adjustment in how they design and deal with defenders.
There are things i don’t like, like the mastery shut down. But we just have to see how the game develops.
And he also have crushed
Overall the game is moving in a really bad direction
@KabamDORK