Silver Sable Balance Update Ideas
FrostGiantLord
Member Posts: 2,097 ★★★★
Silver Sable has been one of the worst new champion releases in recent memory, and I'm extremely glad she's finally getting a balance update to hopefully make her an usable champ. The Kabam team stated that they would be rebalanced to "empower her mine-focused playstyle". Any ideas as to how this might be achieved?
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Moderate buff: Silver Sable
Always active: S.I Bounty Hunter
Light and Medium attacks: 60% chance to inflict a Shock debuff for 25 seconds, dealing X Energy damage
When a personal Shock fails to trigger due to an Immunity, inflict a burst of X Energy damage instead.
Heavy attacks cannot Miss, each hit inflicts a 35% Disorient passive, against Science the potency is 50% instead.
So to start things off I increased the chance to inflict Shocks and slightly increased their duration. In addition each hit of the heavy inflicts the Disorient instead of the final hit. That way she can access her disorient with one heavy attack instead of two
Sable Mine
If the Opponent moves into a Sable Mine, it triggers, inflicting an instant Shock dealing a burst of X Energy Damage and refreshes all Shock effects. That Sable Mine then goes on cooldown for 6 seconds, deactivating the burst Damage and Critical Shock effect. Mines are not triggered during Opponent’s Special Attacks.
Remove all Sable Mine cooldowns upon performing an Intercept or punishing a Special Attack. Defenders become more aggressive when they are near the mines and are more likely to throw their Special attacks
As an Attacker, if Silver Sable passes over a Sable Mine, she’s granted a 3% Fervor Passive for 25 seconds and Purifies 1 Debuff.
Knocking Silver Sable into or over a Sable Mine via a Heavy Attack, Special Attack 1 or Special Attack 2 removes the Mine without triggering it
One of Silver Sable’s known issues is dealing with a passive AI who is blocking and unwilling to cooperate. By adding in some AI manipulation mechanics found on similar champs like the Leader, she is able to utilize her rotation much better. Also she can make up for her lack of immunities by using the mines to purify any Debuff on her
Special Attack 1 – ‘Bait and Trap’
On the final hit, set a Sable Mine in front of the Opponent that arms after 2 seconds and lasts until the next Sable Mine is set. Each subsequent Special Attack 1 sets an additional Sable Mine, up to a max of 3.
As a Defender, the Sable Mine spawns at Silver Sable’s location, arms immediately, and only 1 can be set.
On the final hit, inflict a Tracking Passive for 20 seconds as well as an Energy Vulnerability passive for 25 seconds.
The Energy Vulnerability is meant for those with higher base energy resistance, such as Photon.
Special Attack 2 – ‘Split the Bounty’
The first hit grants a non-stacking X Cruelty Passive for 25 seconds.
If the Opponent is knocked into a Sable Mine via Special Attack 2, convert up to 15 personal Shock Debuffs into that many Critical Shock Passives, multiplying their potency by Silver Sable’s Critical Damage Multiplier.
Changing her Cruelty to a Passive allows her to take more matchups that punish buffs, mainly Mystics.
Special Attack 3 – 1 hit – ‘Wrap things up’
Pause personal Buffs, Debuffs, and Passives for 20 seconds.
Deal a burst of X Energy Damage. Additionally, detonate all Sable Mines, dealing an additional burst for each Mine and setting them all on cooldown.
Since I allowed her to refresh her shocks via her Mines, this now pauses them.
Since she can refresh her Shocks with her mines, this now pauses them for a while.
Signature Ability – On the Hunt
Activating a Special Attack grants a X Cruelty Passive for each Shock effect on the Opponent for 15 seconds. Max stacks: 10.
Light and Medium Attacks that Intercept the Opponent have a chance to inflict a Precision passive for 15 seconds. Max stacks: 5
Currently, while building up to a sp2 a lot of her shock debuffs fall off and never get converted into the big damage shock passives. Giving her a pause specifically for her shock debuffs will help with setting up her sp2 damage loop.
Sable Mine: Triggering a sable mine also pauses her personal shock debuffs for 2 seconds. These pauses can stack and fall off one at a time.
Why a stacking 2 second pause instead of something like a 5 second not-stacking pause? I think this would encourage placing more mines and also reward maximizing the amount of mine triggers. Every time you go back and forth intercepting over the mines you can add 2 seconds to the pause timer *per mine*. Should add up nicely and reward skilled play.
Alternatively instead of pausing just shock debuffs it could also pause all her personal shock effects, or all her personal effects (like the disorient and cruelties as well). This could easily get too strong so my suggestion was just the shock debuffs to help her ramp and line up the big sp2 damage payoff.
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Currently if you keep the opponent in their corner (as you should), lining up your SP2 can be excruciatingly opponent reliant. You have to first back away and have the opponent move out of their corner over the mines (triggering them). Then you need to find a way to arm the mines again and have the opponent not trigger them. Finally you have space yourself and your opponent well to knock the opponent into the mines with your SP2. All the while your shock debuffs are falling off. You essentially get punished for initially doing well and keeping them cornered.
SP2: Additionally, if the opponent is knocked into their wall via special attack 2, detonate all placed Sable mines as if the opponent was knocked into them.
What this change would accomplish is that if you've managed to keep your opponent cornered, you can throw your sp2, it will trigger the mines, and it will convert the shocks debuffs you've built up into passives without having to rely on perfect opponent AI / animation spacing.
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Signature ability:
Either make it 1 cruelty buff with potency scaling with shocks, make it cruelty passives, or put the 10x cruelty buffs in her base kit and balance her around not faring well against mystics. It sucks that awakening her suddenly makes her near unusable in a lot of mystic match ups she'd otherwise be great for if unduped.
There should be a mechanic to refresh her shocks - like knocking opponents into a mine with her heavy attack, so that we have a loop of building up shocks and fervor, converting them to critical shocks with sp2, refreshing with heavy, and repeating. That would be a worthwhile payoff to follow-up on the 3 consecutive sp1's at the start of the fight to get all her traps out.
If they don't want to increase the damage of the shocks, (and I think they should), then we should at least get a significant increase on the burst damage when hitting the opponent over the mines, which would encourage a loop of intercepting with a combo into the mines and then dashing back to repeat..... If the AI would cooperate.
I do want her to be good
She is here to give you lousy pulls from your Titan