Faction purists are not common in arena. And it's easy to see why. Teams that simply stack the flavor of the month are very difficult to overcome if you're working within the confines of a single faction. And yes, faction loyalty is a little silly in arena for this very reason. However, because many of the largest factions now have so much depth, it IS possible to change comps and mods to adapt to the enemy.
Still, it takes a lot of work to gear up the majority of a faction (as opposed to simply gearing the 5-8 best characters in the game). So why not make it a little rewarding?
Idea:
Full-faction teams (five of the same faction) are awarded a small buff:
Bounty Hunters – Cold Hearted (+10% potency)
Clone Troopers – Brotherly Bond (+10% defense)
Droid – Machine Efficiency (+10% offense)
Empire – Strength in Order (+10% defense)
Ewok – Forest Tribe (+20% health)
First Order – Overzealous (+5% crit damage)
Galactic Republic – None
Genosian – For the Queen (+20% health)
Imperial Trooper – Under Orders (+10% offense)
Jawa – Shifting Sands (+10% evasion)
Jedi – Guiding Principles (+10% tenacity)
Nightsisters – Covenant (+20% health)
Phoenix – Reckless (+5% crit chance)
Rebels – Committed (+5% crit chance)
Resistance – Draw the Line (+10% tenacity)
Scoundrels – Grit (+10% tenacity)
Separatists – Warmongers (+10% offense)
Sith – Sadists (+5% crit damage)
Tusken (obviously need more!) – Brother Suns (+10% defense / 10% offense)
You probably note how some of these factions overlap while others get more flat buff. I did this in an attempt to balance things. "Why run full troopers when you can simply run stronger Empire?" Well, here's a reason. Will the stacking buffs make troopers stronger or even comparable to a top-tier empire team? No. But it will make it stand a better chance. Others –like in the case of Rebels – you'll barely notice. The buff simply serves as a nice little bump in reliability for an already strong faction. Lastly, in some cases, the overlap is necessary. Who in their right mind would EVER run full Genosians? Well, now they're not only tankier, but they also have a nice bump in damage, thanks to the fact that they're also separatists.
If you have alternative suggestions for buffs, I'm open to hear them. This is obviously one of those over-thought "what if" ideas. It was born from frustration with seeing the same mix-matched teams in my Shard's top 10, but I wound up having a lot of fun thinking about it.
I hope you do too.
Thanks for reading.
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Replies
Nope. Some leadership abilities don't require any one faction. Others are "soft," applying a weaker version of the buff to non-faction as well. NONE require commitment to a team of five of the same faction.
Which one trumps the other?
If I have all troopers do I get Empire or troopers?
Does my Empire bonus get ruined if I have a trooper?
Since some factions only have 5 or fewer members, they can't possibly have access to all the tools necessary to make a good arena team. There is a faction imbalance since this game is designed to use whoever.
If the bonuses for using a full faction don't outway the loss of the hero who could slot in, then there is no real game-play incentive to use a full Empire squad. 10% extra defense for empire (just an example), is not worth pushing dn out of the team. So I'd totally skip the bonus in favor of a much stronger hero.
Without faction balance within the game and without bonuses that can overcome plug-and-play heroes, I don't think this will change anything.
This doesn't mean I wouldn't want it (I also think there should be bonuses for playing all ds or all ls heroes) the game just wasn't designed that way.
You're right. The proposed bonuses right now would simply reward purists and probably unlikely to sway people away from a meta comp (unless you REALLY wanted ANY excuse to become a purist). Still, I was super hesitant to propose more drastic buffs (IE: for bounty hunters, thermal detonators can't be cleansed), lest the community lose their collective minds at an idea that would disrupt their meta lol.
So if you read the first post, I explain this. They would stack. The rational being that it's silly to run full trooper when there are better empire, but now at least full trooper get SOME kind of reward (2 buffs).
Oh nice point. But since he's just one character, I don't think so. He'd simply plug into a purist team of 4. What an adaptable droid!
I tried a pure empire team once, i haven't dropped that far in arena in over 9 months. I'll stick to my cheese teams in arena and use full faction in gw
The AI control will favor one composition over another, leading to a better defence, which is really what drives the meta.
This would probably require a rework around this idea for each faction to gear them towards their full team bonus too. Otherwise some of the teams are just not effective enough.
My suggestion to mix arena up a little bit has long been to have X days a week where there are random bonuses and penalties applied. On these days, a random class gets a random bonus and another random class gets a random penalty. By class I mean anything from light side to Sith to attacker and so forth. So for example, it could look like this: Jedi get +25% offense, tanks get -50% defense. Not knowing what will come on any given day will reward those with a deep roster who can adapt to the change in environment. It also keeps Arena from getting so stale.
Why does the Galactic Republic not get any bonuses?
As a fellow purist (sort of)
-1
That said, it's still not going to be fair since Z2Z2 is going to be even more powerful than his current iteration due to additional stats stacking.