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A Better Way to Mitigate Willpower in EoP
Mofugger
Member Posts: 96 ★
So while I don't think the Havok EoP fight is particularly difficult, I do think it continues a trend of laziness. When an opponent puts non-damaging debuffs on you as part of their kit (like Havok or Knull or Overseer), or because of added nodes (like Crumbling Armor), then anyone with the Willpower mastery has nearly infinite sustainability. This obviously makes the fights way less than the intended challenge.
But please find a solution other than adding a passive heal block node. It eliminates useful parts of character kits, like Angela's stacking regen, or every Iron Man characters' arc overload regen, or Guilly 2099, etc.
An argument can be made that this is ok because it's about making things challenging. Fine. But in this week's fight I think it detracts from an actually skill-based matchup toward one of higher health pools. This week you need to take damage. The only way to maintain an armor up is to parry (block damage) or block specials instead of evading (damage). Because of Crumbling Armor and a passive AI, you're often parrying multiple times before you can start landing your own hits. No amount of skill avoids this chip damage. If you've got a 6*R4 Hulkbuster, you can outlast the chip damage. If you've got a 5*R5 Hulkbuster, it's nearly impossible to outlast the chip damage.
Why not add a node that just shuts off Willpower instead of shutting down all forms of regen? Name it something corny like "Where's there's a will..." and just address that specific problem without shutting down all forms of regen.
But please find a solution other than adding a passive heal block node. It eliminates useful parts of character kits, like Angela's stacking regen, or every Iron Man characters' arc overload regen, or Guilly 2099, etc.
An argument can be made that this is ok because it's about making things challenging. Fine. But in this week's fight I think it detracts from an actually skill-based matchup toward one of higher health pools. This week you need to take damage. The only way to maintain an armor up is to parry (block damage) or block specials instead of evading (damage). Because of Crumbling Armor and a passive AI, you're often parrying multiple times before you can start landing your own hits. No amount of skill avoids this chip damage. If you've got a 6*R4 Hulkbuster, you can outlast the chip damage. If you've got a 5*R5 Hulkbuster, it's nearly impossible to outlast the chip damage.
Why not add a node that just shuts off Willpower instead of shutting down all forms of regen? Name it something corny like "Where's there's a will..." and just address that specific problem without shutting down all forms of regen.
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Comments
Also the god + metal objective is unnecessarily restrictive.
Dr. Zola
Perhaps if there was a pay off it would be better, in this case such as parrying a projective special attack would deactivate the heal block for 10 seconds you’d get the reward for playing the node combination as intended and recover some of the lost health.
If kabam introduced one additional mastery load out at a cost of, for example, 4k units, I'd buy it. Even if it still cost units to change each of your two mastery load outs (ideally it would not cost to change between them).
Many paragons have full suicides, resonate, MD, deep wounds/assassin all unlocked, so would still need to occasionally change masteries even if they had two load outs unlocked.
EOP and roster check lanes in content, means it's time that kabam brought in one of, if not then most, requested quality of life changes.
I think the Superior Kang fight did a great job doing this exact thing. He has an ability that shuts down Willpower specifically, but you could still heal by other means. That was a great system.
Of course, this doesn't mean that Heal Block is removed from the game. It still has its place in various fights and is an obstacle like any other to overcome.
But if the intention is “oh, and we don’t want people to willpower their way through the fight”, then an anti willpower node works better.
Ive tried but i get blown into oblivion all the time while trying to bait specials that he never throws
Kabam got to limit healing without significantly punishing suicide users.
They gave us an Armor buff node, so you could use any champ against Havok.
The designers really went above and beyond to make this one good.
I do think it would’ve been nice to have a few more options for that objective. Kinda sketchy with a rank
1 Angela but not too bad.