A little Balance needed

Ok people i know I’ve come to be extremely annoying to many in this forum because of constantly asking for nerf or buffs and for that i apologize i will try from now on to only post the things that i consider extremely necessary and i have prove of. The following issue might look like a nerf thread but is not is a balance petition and as i say above is extremely necessary and i have proof so that’s why I’m posting it.
For some time I’ve had the feeling Nova’s Timestrike(TS) does more damage than usual until early today when i was playing a friendly PvP match with a clanmate and his Nova’s TS did a 3300 damage on my Canis which only had 107 seconds. That big damage for mid TU seemed excessive to me so i decided to compare Nova’s TS to other monsters and i had the help of @DonT89 .
The method we used for this is simulating the situation i experienced in the friendly PvP so what i did was tu use canis as target skipping behind DonT’s monster so he skipped back leaving his monster 1 sec away from mine canis and then i used canis’s uncharged Bloodthirst (110 TU because is fully potted) leaving it at 109 sec away from DonT’s monster. The results were

  1. Canis vs. Nova 3300/3000 damage
  2. Canis vs. Deluga 2600/2300 damage (we choosed deluga because it has standard attack stats amd piercing to compare it to Nova’s TS which isn’t piercing and therefore should do much less damage)
  3. Canis vs. Icefang 1800 damage (we choosed icefang because is an standard attack attack legemdary with regular TS)

So as you all can see Nova’s TS does Almost twice the damage as regular TS and is even stronger than Deluga’s which is piercing and therefore ignores defense…

But why did we used canis as target example? Well the answer is canis is Standard Attack Statics the most common static type among legendary and that’s why it is a good example

So people how is this fair that a single monster that has already so many great things going on with it has a 2 times more powerful TS… (It already has high speed AoE at 42TU, it can stun the enemy team by 150 sec at only 42 TU cost and it can sweep without being redirected at 42 TU)

Does Nova really needs that buff damage on its TS? Is it fair for him to be the only one who has it? How that affects the balance of the game?..

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A few of us discussed this at length on Line and how it’s the design of the monster for stun wave to set up timestrike so the damage is scaled accordingly, like how the damage from assisted dusk is reduced on Novadrake so it’s not too OP. Each monster is designed to work in a certain way and it’s like how stun pulse from Icefang should set up its own timestrike on most monsters.

After moving on from this discussion and going on about low TU skills in general as well as inconsistency with damage between the same skill on different monsters we all came away with different issues overall:

  1. (Yours) That timestrike damage on Novadrake should be reduced.

  2. (DonT’s) The damage of timestrike on all monsters should be increased to be consistent with Novadrake.

  3. (General, we pretty much all agree) All damage from skills should be consistent across monsters (save maybe small changes like the -10% on Nova’s assisted hit all). Maybe in this case make a different variant for the higher damage?

  4. (Mine) We need more counters to low TU aggressive skills in general like maybe a passives on entry/revenge that swap the TU of the monster that last took a turn with your teammate’s highest TU monster or a move like bow out that targets an enemy that has taken X number of turns.

Personally, I don’t think Novadrake is much of a problem. MementoMori is well aware he has a little personal vendetta against the monster as many people do for their own certain monster. However, it’s one piece of what may be a growing problem. The trend towards aggression and specifically low TU aggression is something that’s been happening lately in PvP. I hope the Devs can do something about it because to be honest there isn’t much that punishes it in the game (low TU = simply better) and any control strategy pretty much enables a low TU sweeper or two to become a win condition because it’s hard to come back from. The more pieces we get for that then the more viable it is.

P.S. The damage of timestrike from those different monsters at ~110s is actually a slightly weird number to pick. Timestrike damage scaling basically starts increasing rapidly from 100s onwards. Go up a bit higher and timestrike from each of the monsters will be dealing very decent damage. So while Novadrake’s timestrike is definitely more powerful and maybe buffed a bit too far it doesn’t reduce the total seconds you need the target on to a ridiculous amount compared to what high attack monsters already do. The less you need them on obviously makes a difference but it’s not like +65% damage means the target only needs to be on less than 2/3 of the seconds.

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I think that monsters with timestrike should have the damage buffed to around novadrake level. This may not be necessary for delugazar bc it has piercing but it definitely should happen for the other ones like the shockers and kamishogun/rexotyrant. Timestrike is already a mediocre skill because it’s often better to leave high tu monsters alive so at least it should be able to kill the monsters more reliably.

I also wouldn’t mind novadrake having a slightly weaker timestrike but I would prefer it be a small damage reduction if at all.

We need a rework of Faststrike. Imagine if it was 100sec but had a narrower critical time window, for example only crits if the enemy’s seconds < 30 and dealt mediocre damage (1-kill Bloodshed) if the enemy’s seconds <50 && >30.

Alternatively, since the problem are fast sweepers, a remedy could be a move à la Frozen Touch which increased a monsters moves’ seconds by 25% for each kill it has.

I don’t see a problem with it; after all they applied a similar rework to Confident Strike.

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Yeah I desperately want some consistency in damage (and TUs).

If a Timestrike needs more damage to favor the monster’s design just call it Timestrike+.

I don’t think timestrike is the problem with Nova. His Raw Bt also does delug level damage when charged with one kill. It 1 shot my Nulltron. Forget about the element disadvantage, I don’t think that should happen with fully evolved legends. A normal bloodthirst wouldn’t have 1 shot.

Yes you’re completely true there but i have no prove of that so i didn’t mentioned

There’s simply no reason anymore for it to do such high damage as Raw bypasses protectors

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Truth be told I think it’s dumb that RAW ignores protectors.

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It really is, the more you think of it.

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I’m glad someone else sees raw buff as completely irrelevant change whatsoever

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that would be cool. They nerfed dusi when used with auto protectors and they added true hit so reverting the RAW buff makes sense.

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Controversial yet brave.

In my opinion RAW moves are crucial to ensure AP spam never makes a comeback in the meta. They even got their seconds reduction removed.

I see where your coming from with RAW, but considering that you can’t use protectors with RAW moves, there needs to be an incentive to use them. However, I will defend the fact that Sneak Attack bypasses protectors as that makes perfect sense.

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After years of the game where protectors were a mild problem (that eventually became massive) they FINALLY give us an effective counter and you want them to remove it?

Unless it’s just the bypassing concept you think is silly… to that I mostly agree. I would’ve preferred they get piercing against protectors rather than complete bypass. However, they’d probably need the TU reduction again if the change was reverted and to be honest I think too many low TU skills is a far bigger problem.

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Well they did buff true hit so maybe they could make RAW pierce protectors, deal damage, or have lower tu again

This I believe should have been a concept on very few number of limited monsters with a penalty or promoted through more number of accelerate skills or passives .

They took the easy route by slapping low tu to every new monster instead

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I think the reason why RAW was released in the first place was that the monsters with RAW moves would be too powerful when used with protectors. It was a way to restrict their power and prevent abuse of those monsters with protection.

(Obviously Captain Canine is an exception.)

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The trend was Raw generally appeared on stun converters n counters . So they don’t hide behind protectors. Now everything has raw

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