Balance Update: Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Silver Sable
MCOC Team
Administrator, Admin [en] Administrator › Posts: 580
Hey all,
Balance Team here again with an update on the latest round of Champions up for review, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Silver Sable, as well as a small update on our reworked + Deathless Champions!
On the Defensive side, her main trick is her Precognition Evade reinforced by her non-contact basic attacks, making it tricky for incoming Attackers to trigger its cooldown. The goal here was to provide her with a powerful and potentially persistent threat that can be kept in check by most Tech opponents (just watch out for that sneaky Sig ability). We’re happy to see how this has played out so far, as we’re seeing a healthy pool of effective Attackers into Negasonic Teenage Warhead in both Battlegrounds and Alliance War, with a large portion being of the Tech class. No changes are incoming for Negasonic Teenage Warhead!
While we are glad to see this skill-intensive Skill Champion has provided opportunities for players to learn new fighting techniques around Traps, the complexities of her loop have shown to be too much for success in anything but the most basic of fights. Silver Sable will be rebalanced to empower her mine-focused playstyle. Specifically, we want to keep her mines and Shock applications as the major theme while giving her gameplay loop more freedom to skillfully navigate the types of complex fights her abilities are suited for.
So, with that being said…
You can expect communication about NORTHSTAR & ARCADE’s Balance Review toward the middle of November!
Balance Team here again with an update on the latest round of Champions up for review, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Silver Sable, as well as a small update on our reworked + Deathless Champions!
Negasonic Teenage Warhead
Negasonic Teenage Warhead was designed to be a versatile Attacker with a straightforward loop, targeting a wide range of Skill threats such as Korg and Attuma’s “Thorns,” Bullseye’s Counter-Evade, and any disruptive Purify and Cleanse abilities in her way. After review, we’re pleased to see healthy usage from season to season in competitive gameplay and her matchup spread across all game modes reflecting her targets. While her speed and damage mitigation aren’t her strong suits, we’re also seeing players effectively utilize her utility across a wide breadth of matchups, a balance that we are happy with.On the Defensive side, her main trick is her Precognition Evade reinforced by her non-contact basic attacks, making it tricky for incoming Attackers to trigger its cooldown. The goal here was to provide her with a powerful and potentially persistent threat that can be kept in check by most Tech opponents (just watch out for that sneaky Sig ability). We’re happy to see how this has played out so far, as we’re seeing a healthy pool of effective Attackers into Negasonic Teenage Warhead in both Battlegrounds and Alliance War, with a large portion being of the Tech class. No changes are incoming for Negasonic Teenage Warhead!
Silver Sable
Silver Sable is aimed at doing two things especially well: thriving around her Sable Mines and triggering a LOT of Shock effects. With a Disorient on her Heavy Attack, the ability to move those mines with each Special Attack 1, and a Shock Immunity damage substitute… she was also designed with durable loops and varied matchups in mind, especially against Science Defenders who specialize in on-hit Defensive abilities or Miss.While we are glad to see this skill-intensive Skill Champion has provided opportunities for players to learn new fighting techniques around Traps, the complexities of her loop have shown to be too much for success in anything but the most basic of fights. Silver Sable will be rebalanced to empower her mine-focused playstyle. Specifically, we want to keep her mines and Shock applications as the major theme while giving her gameplay loop more freedom to skillfully navigate the types of complex fights her abilities are suited for.
Reworked and Special Release Champions
Back during Vox and Photon’s Balance Update, we mentioned that we’d be keeping an eye on Champions who receive updates to their existing kits - such as Luke Cage, Nightcrawler, Mister Sinister, and more this year. In general, these Champions and Champions released through different-than-usual acquisition methods are ones that we monitor after release, and then perform a full review as time allows or if the current state of that Champion is found to have a bug or is clearly under/overperforming.So, with that being said…
Mister Sinister
We’re aware of a bug with Mister Sinister’s Regeneration Rate, and its interaction with the Science portion of his Signature Ability and the Recovery Mastery. Due to this bug being live since his rework release, his rework being tuned around his current implementation, and since Regeneration is a core piece of his Survivability and Defender threat… this is something we would like to address during his Balance Review. While we don’t have any details locked in, we’re interested in checking in on how his current Regeneration Rate is playing out in the Battlerealm and will look to make changes based on what we’re seeing. If we conclude that his Regeneration is already performing at target levels despite the Science portion of his sig providing no benefit, then swapping in a new functional ability is a potential course of action. We’re in the process of locking in a target build in Q1 2025 for his review and changes, and hope to have more details in our next balance update!What’s Next
Based on our usual timeline, SILVER SABLE’s rebalance would be released in December. However, to ensure our teams can deliver a high-quality update amidst the rest of our end-of-year content coming out, we’ll be pushing her rebalance’s release one month back to January 2025. We look forward to sharing more information about her changes in that month’s release notes!You can expect communication about NORTHSTAR & ARCADE’s Balance Review toward the middle of November!
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