**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Game Balance: Champions Worth Rank 5
Ivanka
Posts: 236 ★
Why do I have to start the post this way? This is not a criticism of Kabam. Actually most of it is praise for a job well done. Please read the whole post before moderating it. :P I promise it's constructive.
So... way back when Kabam rolled out the much hated 12.0 update, they said something about their motivations behind the massive nerf to the most dominant champs in the game (and minor buff to some lesser champs); something that made a lot of sense to me even though it was an unpopular decision at the time. Their explanation was that they wanted a more level playing field, a game environment where any player could choose to rank up any character and not be significantly handicapped for doing so. Every character was supposed to be viable.
In my opinion that's an admirable, though difficult, goal to achieve that leads to a robust and healthy game environment and for the most part, with one *glaring* exception which I will get to later, I think they have succeeded. I have some evidence to back that up which I'll also get to a little later.
I agree with most of the decisions they've made since then, especially since they corrected the 12.0 overreach (the nerfs were too strong) with 12.1 and beyond.
Scarlet Witch is still awesome, she just doesn't totally dominate everything like she used to.
Black Widow is still great, she's just not broken.
Thor is still great, he's just not broken.
StarLord is perfect.
Doctor VooDoo.. meh... he wasn't so overpowered to begin with. This is the only nerf I really thought was uncalled for. He kinda stinks now. They ought to put him back to how he was.
Spider-Gwen isn't overpowered but she's not the worst character in the game anymore.
The buffs to Luke Cage and Red Hulk were great; these characters are very useful now but not overpowered. Just right. Looking forward to similar buffs for Colossus, Hulkbuster, and Carnage. (but please never buff Kamala Khan, someone needs to retain the title of worst)
So... this brings me to my main point: do any characters still dominate the way Scarlet Witch used to? Or is it the even playing field that Kabam was trying to create?
Well, by looking at the top 100 highest rated players in the game I did an informal survey of which champions these players saw fit to bring up to rank 5. Here are the results:
Of the top 100 MCOC players, this many took these characters to rank 5:
11% Doctor VooDoo
7% Morningstar
6% Iceman
6% Ghost Rider
6% GwenPool
4% Dormammu
4% Corvus Glaive
4% Magik
4% Thor Ragnarok
3% Spider-Man (Stark Enhanced)
3% Sentinel
3% Mephisto
2%: Hyperion, Killmonger, Medusa, Vision, and Quake
1%: Sentry, Sabertooth, Proxima Midnight, The Hood, Void, Cable, StarLord, Archangel
and... if that's where the list ended, I would say awesome job! Very balanced and varied field of champions with maybe the small exception of Dr VooDoo who might be a little overpowered and overrepresented but all in all 11/100 people choosing to rank up one character is not that big of an imbalance at all.
Except... I left one character out. Of course.
70% of the top 100 players in the game have taken Blade to rank 5. 70%!!!
If you were going for a balanced environment I think someone messed up here. The biggest problem might be the synergy with Ghost Rider which extends his danger sense (which is too strong) to way too many champions. It breaks the game. And I'm sure you know this already as we've seen some design choices already obviously meant to help correct it. But still. Blade is more dominant now than Scarlet Witch ever was, at least in terms of the choices players are making about which characters to rank up.
Just wanted to share the results of the survey, and maybe elicit some ideas about what to do about this. Do other players see this imbalance as a problem? What should Kabam do? Nerf Blade? Keep bringing out villains that aren't #villains? Make new characters that are just as strong or stronger? Rebalancing is going to be difficult. I posted a couple ideas for AWD in my character ideas thread already.
So... way back when Kabam rolled out the much hated 12.0 update, they said something about their motivations behind the massive nerf to the most dominant champs in the game (and minor buff to some lesser champs); something that made a lot of sense to me even though it was an unpopular decision at the time. Their explanation was that they wanted a more level playing field, a game environment where any player could choose to rank up any character and not be significantly handicapped for doing so. Every character was supposed to be viable.
In my opinion that's an admirable, though difficult, goal to achieve that leads to a robust and healthy game environment and for the most part, with one *glaring* exception which I will get to later, I think they have succeeded. I have some evidence to back that up which I'll also get to a little later.
I agree with most of the decisions they've made since then, especially since they corrected the 12.0 overreach (the nerfs were too strong) with 12.1 and beyond.
Scarlet Witch is still awesome, she just doesn't totally dominate everything like she used to.
Black Widow is still great, she's just not broken.
Thor is still great, he's just not broken.
StarLord is perfect.
Doctor VooDoo.. meh... he wasn't so overpowered to begin with. This is the only nerf I really thought was uncalled for. He kinda stinks now. They ought to put him back to how he was.
Spider-Gwen isn't overpowered but she's not the worst character in the game anymore.
The buffs to Luke Cage and Red Hulk were great; these characters are very useful now but not overpowered. Just right. Looking forward to similar buffs for Colossus, Hulkbuster, and Carnage. (but please never buff Kamala Khan, someone needs to retain the title of worst)
So... this brings me to my main point: do any characters still dominate the way Scarlet Witch used to? Or is it the even playing field that Kabam was trying to create?
Well, by looking at the top 100 highest rated players in the game I did an informal survey of which champions these players saw fit to bring up to rank 5. Here are the results:
Of the top 100 MCOC players, this many took these characters to rank 5:
11% Doctor VooDoo
7% Morningstar
6% Iceman
6% Ghost Rider
6% GwenPool
4% Dormammu
4% Corvus Glaive
4% Magik
4% Thor Ragnarok
3% Spider-Man (Stark Enhanced)
3% Sentinel
3% Mephisto
2%: Hyperion, Killmonger, Medusa, Vision, and Quake
1%: Sentry, Sabertooth, Proxima Midnight, The Hood, Void, Cable, StarLord, Archangel
and... if that's where the list ended, I would say awesome job! Very balanced and varied field of champions with maybe the small exception of Dr VooDoo who might be a little overpowered and overrepresented but all in all 11/100 people choosing to rank up one character is not that big of an imbalance at all.
Except... I left one character out. Of course.
70% of the top 100 players in the game have taken Blade to rank 5. 70%!!!
If you were going for a balanced environment I think someone messed up here. The biggest problem might be the synergy with Ghost Rider which extends his danger sense (which is too strong) to way too many champions. It breaks the game. And I'm sure you know this already as we've seen some design choices already obviously meant to help correct it. But still. Blade is more dominant now than Scarlet Witch ever was, at least in terms of the choices players are making about which characters to rank up.
Just wanted to share the results of the survey, and maybe elicit some ideas about what to do about this. Do other players see this imbalance as a problem? What should Kabam do? Nerf Blade? Keep bringing out villains that aren't #villains? Make new characters that are just as strong or stronger? Rebalancing is going to be difficult. I posted a couple ideas for AWD in my character ideas thread already.
11
Comments
I think I counted 8 matches in a row.
I would start getting nervous if they were my top champs and this arena is starting to get ridiculous for a resource that everyone needs and a noob can't rank past 3 without.
Your spelling game is weak son. Go hit those books instead of playing this game
wow... can you link that vid please? I'd love to see it (and share it around)
Out of all those, only Cable is hard for Blade. But even then, you can treat him like a stun immune and a good player can still kill a Cable with Blade and come out with 70% health lol
Iceman? He can just heal
Spidey? Blade has advantage, stun, do few hits, etc. Just how anyone fights an evader.
Medusa? Doesn't need a specific counter, sure he doesn't steamroll her, but can still take her down. People can oneshot Medusa bosses with Gwenpool, I don't see how Blade is any different.
BP:CW? Why is he in your list? lol. Dude's a joke
AV? Why?
Yondu? For real?
Blade has no counter, that's the joke
Agreed. It's nice that they gave him back some of his health steal potential if you have the Mephisto synergy. But he really needs to get his power gain back, too.
This is also an issue if the goal is a balanced game and level playing field. But trying to perfectly balance *every* champ in the game is a huge undertaking. And Kabam is addressing this. Slowly. Which is probably the best way.
We've seen it done very obviously with big buffs to characters like Red Hulk and Luke Cage.
But we've also seen it done more subtly through synergies, such as the synergy Killmonger has with Winter Soldier that turns WS into another StarLord, or the synergy Dr. Strange has with Mephisto that makes DS's regen more powerful.
And also we've seen it with small rules changes or the introduction of new characters that change the meta.
For example, when they made it so Astral Evade doesn't trigger when you are fatigued, suddenly OG Captain America and Ant-Man became more valuable. And when they made it so True Strike hits through an auto-block, Karnak overnight went from trash to treasure.
However, I think this is a separate and less glaring issue. I mean... yeah it would be nice if all 120 characters or whatever were as viable as Blade. But that's not going to happen realistically. If we have... 25 characters that are all viable options for rank 5, which my numbers above demonstrate that there are, I think that's pretty good. That's almost a quarter of the pool of available champions that someone out there likes well enough to use a t5b on.
The bigger issue is when one character is SO extremely overpowered that everybody wants him, and in effect those not lucky enough to have one are gimped. They will have a harder time clearing story mode. They will have a harder time in Alliance War. Significantly. And that's exactly what Kabam said that they wanted to avoid back around the 12.0 nerf.
Yes, I did. I opened and looked at every single profile. Nobody has more than 2 rank 5 champions so far. The only way I would have missed one is if somehow they weren't in their top 4 champs.
My only point is someone could have chosen a different champ other than blade for their first, but because of prestige, blade is higher.
My favorite one to bring up is when Loki was released. I think 90 out of the top 100 had him as their profile champ because his prestige was that good. With prestige being what it is in this game, it becomes a huge driving force for rank ups. Now you tell players the best choice for rank up has prestige and usefullness? sign me up. I think that is why we see the 70% of champs.
Balance should never come from nerfs in general IMO.
The newer characters are strong, complicated, have lots of utility, and require new skill sets to master their use and their defeat. There should be more of this and the pool of champs that have it will grow and be more diffused soon enough.
The argument that still remains is that the older champs are waning in the distance like puppies left outside looking in the window wondering when they'll be let in!
You know who's better then blade against every single champ you listed? Iceman.
You're right, it wouldn't be 70%. It would be 100%.
Iceman can't heal. And what if he is? Iceman still gets rekt by Magik, Dormammu, and all those bs champs lol.
I'd still rather use him for those fights. I have a 4/55 blade and have brought him to every war this season (till recently, don't bring him anymore). If i remember correctly, i have used him twice.
So since 70% r5'd Blade and all have 2 r5 champs in top 100 that means that 70/200 are blade which is only 35%. See you can double all the other champs since most likely everyone that didn't have blade already ranked would have to rank one of the other champs you listed. There for 70/200 is 35%.
DR V goes up to 22%
MS 14%
GR 12%
And you get the gist of it.
So yeah is blade the most ranked up....yes but when he came out was just around the time that we could actually r5 a champ for the first time. And many....many....many spent a lot of money to get Blade in crystals so probably why they ranked him up. Is blade the best in the game....maybe, best thing about him is he's an all around good champ but there are many matches I'd take someone else than Blade to fight.
Oh and I r5'd Blade, for the same reason as I mentioned up there!
I'm not sure if that is entirely statistically valid, but it is true looking at profiles does skew the results for the simple reason that you can only see four. If you look at my profile you would see Blade 4/55, Loki 1/25, Nebula 1/25, and Archangel 4/55. You wouldn't see the very first thing I ever took to 4/55 and the champion I've played the longest at 4/55 - Iceman. In any analysis of rank ups where profiles were the only source of information, my profile would under-represent Iceman. And I have enough resources to do another 4/55 rank up in theory, if I do then there would be two champions that would be under-represented.
Which champions are under-represented across all players is not random, because different champs have different PI. Blade always shows up in people's profiles when it is ranked up because he has very high PI. So while many champions don't show up in profiles, Blade almost always does for any players that has ranked him up, no matter what else they ranked up. Among the top players it is very likely that Blade is ranked up more often than any other champion, but the spread is almost certainly much more narrow than profiles would suggest.
Exactly. Thats why the "nerf Blade" threads are annoying. We all know the true root of the idea is AWD and wanting Mystic wars again. Pretty lazy excuse to nerf a character if you ask me. Use your roster. You'll be surprised how many great defenders are currently on it.
That's true. I wonder if there is another possible source of skew though. If you can only look at the top 100 players, is it more likely that players that have ranked up at least one Blade are more likely to appear in the top 100 than players that do not, because Blade has higher PI?
In other words, is the top 100 players representative of all players that have ranked up two 5/65 champs? I wonder how many such players there are.