Ronin and Ebony Maw Buff / Balance Changes?

Hey Kabam

Coming from your Human Torch & Annihilus Buff post you state that:

"- 3 months after a Champion is released we’ll have reviewed and analyzed their data.
- If it needs a small balance, up or down, we will notify the player base before it enters into the Basic Crystal Pool of Champions.
- Approximately 3 months later any changes made will have been tested and then released to the Community."

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/153017/more-consistent-balance-changes-coming-your-way#latest

Ronin has just entered the basic crystal pool and Ebony Maw will be entering shortly.

I don't think there's much doubt in anyone's mind that Ebony Maw is in need of a rework in terms of the numbers. I think Ronin is overall a decent character, but it's quite obvious he's far behind the ranks of Nick Fury, Aegon & Blade as his utility is a fair bit lacking.

Will Ebony Maw & Ronin 'balance changes' be announced soon?

Cheers

Comments

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Jim0172

I hope the re-balance for Ebony includes a chain heavy after a combo. I think that could really help.

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GroundedWisdom

Not every Champ will be the best option in high-end content. Performance data looks at Champs overall. Not just in the toughest material.

Mysterio

Ronin is close to good and Maw is far from good. Both need buffs however one needs so much that you wonder why he ever got released in this state.

gp87

Ebony Maw is so bad that he cant defeat opponents in arena. He really need rebalance.. the leader of thanos army should be the stronger of all, and lets hope mystic will have a nice champ with some damage potential

Justin2524

So maybe Ebony Maw was made to be an Alliance War defender... but the problem is, with the new Alliance War format, the emphasis is on Diversity, i.e., you wouldn't want more than 1 of the same champ defending.

So let's say you have 10 people in your Alliance who owns Ebony Maw - what are the other 9 players supposed to use him for? He won't be good in Story or UC Quests. A 6* Maw would struggle in Act 5. I doubt he'll beat more than 1-2 players even in UC quests.

So why go through all the effort of designing a beautiful champ to have him be an Arena fodder?

GroundedWisdom

I think they sided with caution because when you have a Champ that literally can't get hit with Guaranteed Crits, overdoing it with Damage can potentially be detrimental.

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Colonaut123

Seeing how they deemed human torch to be lacking in damage, I'd definitely say that they should give a similar treatment to ronin.

I certainly disagree on him being meh, but increasing the potency of his bleeds would be a step in the right direction. He has a lot of potential as he is right now, but some minor tweaks could be enough to give him the relevance he deserves.

However, here's a little idea I had for a small rework to get him more in line with what it seems like he was intended to be/do:

Change his wraith stance to give him passive true accuracy (instead of or in addition to its 40% aar).
Change his sp1 to apply different debuffs depending on your current stance, for example:
- guard stance: place a taunt on your opponent
- wraith stance: either increase the duration and/or potency of his disorient-debuff or just scrap is and make it place a slow-debuff
- demon stance: give him a chance to inflict a critical bleed or make it place a (maybe 25%) petrify-debuff

These changes would compliment his already existing playstyle and would give more relevance to his stance mechanic. Also they'd increase his overall utility and help his damage output a little.

Seeing wraith gives 40% AAR and disorient another 40% AAR, that's 80%. That's better than slow, which has limited utility. Think about masochism, spiked armor, etc. Maybe it should be 50/50%. I think the disorient should be regardless of stances and wraith should armor break. TA can be added on top of wraith stance.

He should definitely be able to purify more debuffs in guard stance. Current meta stacks up debuffs really fast and Ronin can't keep up. A guaranteed purify upon entering and a certain chance with every sword hit, that should do it. Maybe with every purification gain a cruelty passive.

I agree increasing his bleed damage.

Colonaut123

Hey Kabam

Coming from your Human Torch & Annihilus Buff post you state that:

"- 3 months after a Champion is released we’ll have reviewed and analyzed their data.
- If it needs a small balance, up or down, we will notify the player base before it enters into the Basic Crystal Pool of Champions.
- Approximately 3 months later any changes made will have been tested and then released to the Community."

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/153017/more-consistent-balance-changes-coming-your-way#latest

Ronin has just entered the basic crystal pool and Ebony Maw will be entering shortly.

I don't think there's much doubt in anyone's mind that Ebony Maw is in need of a rework in terms of the numbers. I think Ronin is overall a decent character, but it's quite obvious he's far behind the ranks of Nick Fury, Aegon & Blade as his utility is a fair bit lacking.

Will Ebony Maw & Ronin 'balance changes' be announced soon?

Cheers
We missed the schedule on this one, but we will have an announcement coming for Ebony Maw soon.

Ronin has been doing alright, so we won't be touching him.

The goal with these rebalances is not to bring Champs to the Top of the pool, but to make tuning changes if they are underperforming. Ronin is not Aegon, but we're not looking to create another Aegon with every new Champion.

I don't think making some minor changes would make everything top tier. I do think Ronin is not equipped to handle current meta.

SantaGulk

Seeing wraith gives 40% AAR and disorient another 40% AAR, that's 80%. That's better than slow, which has limited utility.

80% AAR is good but his disorient debuff lasts too short

Aleor

I pulled ronin from basic like 2-3 days ago, and so far he looks meh. Honestly, I'd prefer maw
LOL .. prefer Maw for what? Beating up 3-4 stars?!?!

No, just having fun with him. He could also be a decent power control champ, wich I still don't have. Yes, his damage needs some buff, but I have a problem with ronin - all this dancing around him seems pointless. There is ghost, who can do all things he basically does, but better in every one of those. And yes, it's natural to compare characters to the best ones, otherwise how can you even say anything about balance or something about symsup being too op by having a guaranteed stagger in only one phase.
I don't expect every champ to be ghost, but I do expect, that one champ can be better, than another, if they have longer or more difficult ramp up or more exclusive match ups or some other limitations. That's why corvus is good imo - he needs to fight limited number of opponents to get his charges, and so won't be useful for anything. As for ronin, I don't see any real use for him. Even sparky, a 2017(?) champ, has some taunts and evade chance along his charges.

Aleor

Seeing wraith gives 40% AAR and disorient another 40% AAR, that's 80%. That's better than slow, which has limited utility.
80% AAR is good but his disorient debuff lasts too short

With kabam math, it might be not 80, but 40 + 0.4*60 = 64%. And yes, with how short it is and how unreliable it is, you probably won't use it in aw vs autoblock champ, you would prefer Fury, who is 100% reliable and has better damage and can also ignore debuffs when his decoy dies

Guytennis

The goal with these rebalances is not to bring Champs to the Top of the pool, but to make tuning changes if they are underperforming. Ronin is not Aegon, but we're not looking to create another Aegon with every new Champion.

@Kabam Miike would you elaborate on who you guys categorize as “top of the pool”; just to see if we’re all on the same page.

RagamugginGunner

No way Ronin performs better than HT. He should 100% get a buff.

Savio444

I feel like Ronin is quite risky to play, trying to stack the cruelty, intercepting. I think he would benefit for maybe a one time evade like stealth spiderman or something. But his damage is decent, fun to play when the AI is aggressive.

RoninMan

Hey Kabam

Coming from your Human Torch & Annihilus Buff post you state that:

"- 3 months after a Champion is released we’ll have reviewed and analyzed their data.
- If it needs a small balance, up or down, we will notify the player base before it enters into the Basic Crystal Pool of Champions.
- Approximately 3 months later any changes made will have been tested and then released to the Community."

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/153017/more-consistent-balance-changes-coming-your-way#latest

Ronin has just entered the basic crystal pool and Ebony Maw will be entering shortly.

I don't think there's much doubt in anyone's mind that Ebony Maw is in need of a rework in terms of the numbers. I think Ronin is overall a decent character, but it's quite obvious he's far behind the ranks of Nick Fury, Aegon & Blade as his utility is a fair bit lacking.

Will Ebony Maw & Ronin 'balance changes' be announced soon?

Cheers
We missed the schedule on this one, but we will have an announcement coming for Ebony Maw soon.

Ronin has been doing alright, so we won't be touching him.

The goal with these rebalances is not to bring Champs to the Top of the pool, but to make tuning changes if they are underperforming. Ronin is not Aegon, but we're not looking to create another Aegon with every new Champion.

As an avid player of Ronin, I really love this champ. He’s very smooth and fun to play with. He has a few tricks which are nice but to the majority he’s very underwhelming and it wouldn’t take a whole lot to make him appealing. A couple suggestions:

Increase Ronin’s bleed damage. He can get some impressive bleed damage with L2, especially with a fury active, but his basic bleeds are very weak. Bump up his basic bleed damage to be on par with champs like Wolverine or Drax. They don’t need to be devastating, but respectable bleeds would appeal to more players.

Bump up his defensive ability accuracy reduction. Right now it’s 40 in wraith and 40 with disorient, which is alright but as mentioned before, disorient expires so quickly you cannot really take advantage of it. This is what I propose. Bring wraith to 50 and disorient to 50 giving a full 100% reduction. If you don’t want to do that, keep wraith at 40 and if you use an L1 while in wraith mode, get 60% additional DAAR with a 50-100% duration on disorient. This would let you get the most out of his wraith mode. Any variation of increasing DAAR or disorient duration would go a long way to increasing appeal with this champ without making him OP.

Signature Ability: his fury don’t seem to stack even though it says they do (I could be wrong). Making sure this works and maybe increasing the evasion timer slightly (even .5 seconds) would make him so much better. Even at sig 200 his evasion timer seems just a tad bit short.

These are minor changes that can help increase the appeal of this champ to other players without making him top tier and overpowered.

Mobius360

I really like Ronin, however a few slight tweaks would really make him a more appealing character for more players. The comments above by @RoninMan are spot on.

Really a bummer that Kabam seems to disagree since Ronin isn't going to be looked at any further at this time.

Happy to hear Ebony Maw will get some sort of buff. Bummer to hear Cull getting the opposite.

Mr549

I have Maw, and he’s fun to play, albeit useless for clearing content.

If Kabam are serious about this rebalancing of the characters, and making them all somewhat relevant, they should start at the bottom of the pile, not with Human Torch!! He's great how he is...

At the moment there are tons of champions in the 5 and 6 star pools who are absolute garbage. I've pulled loads of them as fives, who I'll never touch until they get a buff. King Groot, Superior Iron Man, Howard, Miles Morales, Gambit, Taskmaster, Groot, Black Panther Classic, Thor Ragnorok. All those champions are far more in need of "rebalancing" than HT. And I also pulled a four star Ronin last month, who I haven't touched because he's not interesting enough to rank up as a four. My HT on the other hand is rank 4, and unduped! And Ebony Maw is a decent defender although, granted, he may need a buff for attack (I've not got him yet).

Who I do have is a mostly useless 6* Diablo, and I think that he's far more in need of a buff than either HT or The Maw. Diablo is fun to play, but he's one of the worst champions I could've pulled with my first 6* crystal in terms of clearing anything. The only way you can do meaningful damage is with an L2, and he is limited to 8 strong L2s per quest. He doesn't do anything really well either... He has a bit of regen, a bit of utility in terms of poison resistance and counterflow, but it's not brilliant, nothing that he can do really well... He should be buffed before most of the others! Give him 95% poison resistance instead of 30% so he heals from suicides with willpower, and a more useful arsenal in terms of utility, higher proc chances or something. Make him more reliable, and he becomes better.

I'm not a game dev, but I wonder where you guys get off saying HT needs a buff whilst there is so much trash in the game that people pull every day from their first six star crystal that they've been saving up for months after they spend a load of revives getting the Collector down. It's pretty unfair.

Colonaut123

Seeing wraith gives 40% AAR and disorient another 40% AAR, that's 80%. That's better than slow, which has limited utility.
80% AAR is good but his disorient debuff lasts too short

That I concur. He's a bit of everything but nothing really good.

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