Civil Warrior Buff Idea coming from his biggest fan

Civil Warrior is my favorite champion in this game, and he is going to be my first r5. I would be surprised if anyone has played him as much as I have. I’ve used him frequently in every area of the game, and have a great knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses. I think that he is incredibly underrated in today’s game, but I also completely understand why people aren’t using him.

I want more people to use him, and a buff is needed, but I don’t think a completely new kit is necessary or even ideal. I think that with the changes I’ve listed below, he would become far more relevant than he is now. My goal with this idea was to keep his current kit, but get rid of its problems and build upon its strengths.

The TL;DR of these changes is listed below, for further explanation please read through the entire post. Reading the list alone may not make sense without the additional explanation. The changes are listed in order of importance.

1. Substantial increase to his critical rating

2. Duration of fury buffs extended by 5-7.5 seconds

3. Pre fight abilities:
- Armor to fury conversion consumes all but 1 armor up buff (oldest remains)
- Armor to fury conversion consumes all but 4 armor up buffs (oldest 4 remain)

4. Blocking an unblockable attack consumes 5 fury buffs to provide a 20 second steadfast buff

5. “Electric defense” mechanic added only for defense

6. Additional piece of utility on 4th light attack:
- For example, 3 fury buffs consumed to provide a 15 second true strike buff

7. Signature ability change: Start the fight with 1-5 permanent armor up buffs

1. Substantial increase to critical rating

Civil Warrior’s damage is actually quite good right now, but that’s only if you invest in his critical rating quite heavily. I need the crit rating stat focus, as well as a 7* r2 prowler relic (crit rate+damage) to see an acceptable (still not ideal) amount of crits. For a champion that so heavily relies on his crits to deal significant damage, increasing his crit rating would immediately make his overall damage far more appealing to most players.

2. Duration of fury buffs extended by 5-7.5 seconds

One of the biggest drawbacks with civil warrior is his fury buff duration. Combined with the playstyle of dashing back and blocking, this problem becomes very apparent. Similar to crossbones, you can maintain his furies in most cases, but the playstyle itself can be extremely stressful at times. It is far too easy for most players who are unfamiliar with civil warrior to accidentally miss the refresh window, causing all furies to fall off. This change would drastically increase his ease of use. While some people still may not like the playstyle, a lot more wouldn’t be worried about messing up with it, and would actually be incentivized to play him.

3. Pre fight abilities:

This change probably didn’t make sense to most of you. However, implementing both of these abilities would drastically increase his matchup spread.

- Armor to fury conversion consumes all but 1 armor up buff (oldest remains)

When you dash back and convert armor buffs to fury, currently all armor buffs are consumed. In a matchup where armor is needed, such as Havok, this becomes an immediate problem. While getting armor up buffs back can happen quickly after this conversion, avoiding havok’s detonation throughout the entirety of a fight becomes extremely risky. That is because there are so many windows where you don’t have access to armor, leaving you vulnerable.

- Armor to fury conversion consumes all but 4 armor up buffs (oldest 4 remain)

For anyone who doesn’t know, Civil Warrior gains 25% resistance to bleed and poison debuff ability accuracy with each armor on him. This means that with 4 or more armors, he becomes immune to bleed and poison. However, this piece of utility is largely impractical and requires a lot of gameplay precision. Most times where I’ve attempted to use this mechanic to my advantage, the fight ends up out of my control one way or another. This would instead allow for Civil Warrior to easily remain bleed and poison immune for the entirety of the fight at high sig (explanation at #7).

4. Blocking an unblockable attack consumes 5 fury buffs to provide a 20 second steadfast buff

One of the biggest problems that I hear brought up with civil warrior is that his playstyle immediately becomes useless when unblockable is involved. While he can still be used, unblockable immediately makes him far more difficult to use. Steadfast in some degree is needed if he were to receive a buff. With this concept, 5 furies (not armors, that would destroy his rotation) are immediately consumed to provide a long steadfast buff.

This would mean that there is no need to activate a steadfast beforehand, and it instead acts as a safety net. For anyone wondering how hard it is to obtain 5 fury buffs for this safety net, they can easily be gained within the first 10 seconds of a fight.

5. “Electric defense” mechanic added only for defense

The truth of today’s game is that many people won’t rank up someone unless they have both offensive and defensive value. Right now, Civil Warrior has absolutely 0
defensive value on his kit. However, he has been a defender in the past, specifically during the “electric defense” meta of bgs.

Adding the same functionality of the node to his kit (on defense only) would immediately make him a prominent meta defender. The most recent comparison to how he could act on defense is Captain Britain. Many people have ranked her up only for defense, so it would drastically increase his value as well. He would require specific counters, such as Galan, or armor shatter champs (again giving more value to Vision Aarkus, who many will receive ascension materials for). This is also due to Civil Warrior’s nullify and stagger immunity, rendering many of what would be good mystic counters useless.

6. Additional piece of utility on 4th light attack

Civil Warrior needs one more piece of utility I believe to really be ranked up frequently. Also, his 4th light attack specifically doesn’t do anything, and it looks cool so I want to use it more.

- For example, 3 fury buffs consumed to provide a 15 second true strike buff

Evade and auto block matchups can stall Civil Warrior, so this would just increase his matchup spread even further. There are a ton of different utility options that could be added here though.

7. Signature ability change: Start the fight with 1-5 permanent armor up buffs

Currently, CW has 2 points in his signature ability. One changes with higher sig, allowing him to take 15-60% reduced damage from specials when blocking. The other, gives him 2 permanent armor up buffs at the start of the fight and is accessible from sig 1. While the 2 armor up buffs help, they don’t add much.

This would increase the value of putting sig stones into CW. For example, let’s say that he gains 1 armor at sig 1, and 1 more armor for every 50 sig levels. At sig 150 or above, he is able to immediately start every fight (with the 2nd pre-fight ability listed above) with full bleed and poison immunity. At sig 1, he is able to counter Havok. This is because the pre-fight abilities would leave the oldest armor up buffs after converting.

Civil Warrior has such a good kit, but it needs improvement to be accepted by the general player base. All I want is for more people to enjoy him as much as I do. Please like this if you’re in agreement, I really do want Kabam to see this post. My worry is that they would buff him but change his kit identity completely, when really all he needs is a few improvements. Civil Warrior doesn’t need the Majik treatment, he needs the Sandman treatment.

I’ve seen how he works or doesn’t in every area of the game currently, and as someone who has played him the most, I believe these are the best possible changes to make. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read through this, I know it was quite lengthy.

Comments

Wildone1

Great write up, well thought out. I hope he gets a buff because his last one just doesn't feel smooth and didn't upon release.

Magrailothos

Nice write up, well done.

Civil does have an underrated kit; and it's a shame that playing him is too stressful and easily disrupted.

A couple of thoughts: just making Fury buffs longer might be too effortless for the players. Why not a way to Pause them with something like MM or light-ending combos?

Secondly, I like the utility idea; but True Sense is very cosmic - Pursuit would be a more Tech approach…

T1M3_M4ST3R

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2937653#Comment_2937653

I like the direction you took with the thought process on this. Pursuit would function the same way as true strike in countering evade, so that works.

Making a pause mechanic though, based on doing a certain combo outside of the normal, would probably break CW’s gameplay loop. If you had to do specific shortened combos to keep them up, you would also ramp slower. Also, CW ramps easier when you can do varying combos, so I don’t think restricting players to specific ones would help. Maybe there’s another way to pause the furies but I don’t think combos are the right way to go.

While simply adding duration might be too simple, it wouldn’t break the playstyle and might actually get a lot more people to use CW, which ultimately I think is most important.

Addyos

I will always have a soft spot for CW, as I managed to pull him as a 4* from a monthly login crystal. This was way, way back when it was extremely rare to get a 4* from such a crystal (talking about ten years ago here). His Sp2 power burn was always clutch for me as a novice player, even if it wasn’t as comparable as OG Vision’s power burn at the time.

Luckily I’ve managed to pull and awaken him as a 7* from basic crystals, but resources are scarce to devote to fun rank ups, which he would be in his current form. Any additional beneficial buff to his kit will be greatly appreciated by this player as well.

Magrailothos

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2937665#Comment_2937665

Civil Warrior was the first champion I posted a suggestion for in my thread for 'Second Time Tune-Ups'.

The premise of the thread was making just 3-4 small adjustments to champs who've already received a buff.

I went with slightly different utility options, but like yours, too.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2929450#Comment_2929450

The Pause I intended doesn't actually require a combo much different than normal - just that the combo starts against a non-stunned opponent.

It's basically the mechanic Gentle uses to pause and maintain his Muscle Mass - the advantages of this kind of mechanic are that it's unlikely to benefit the champ when they're defending, and also, Pause is a mechanic that can allow you to get around effects like Atrophy.

Magrailothos

Oh, hey @T1M3_M4ST3R - I just remembered an old post of mine you might appreciate:

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/339832/impressive-civil-warrior-cosplay

Don't comment on it, or it'll get taken down as a Necropolis… 😉

T1M3_M4ST3R

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2937933#Comment_2937933

If the pause worked as you said in point 2, I think that it would work quite well. Having the pause trigger during the combo and for 2.5s after a combo ending attack wouldn’t disrupt his gameplay loop at all. In reality, it could actually be more effective for increasing fury duration than simply adding on 5s to the duration. Thanks for linking that idea in here.