Debuffs are almost irrelevant in the game now. Characters, heck entire factions, that are built around applying debuffs are severely gimped. Cleanses everywhere. On hits, on getting hit, just taking a turn cleanses. Not to mention the nifty group cleanses that come with fun bonuses like health gain, tm gain, and reversing your debuffs into buffs. That's considering that you can get past the built in 15% resist chance and Debuff Immunity (I refuse to call it tenacity up because it's not).
A huge mechanic in the game is being minimized and I don't think it can climb out of this hole. In fact, the hole just keeps getting deeper.
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Ability block. Probably the strongest debuff, when you can't stun their whole team.
Barriss and Savage. There you go.
Or r2z2
No they're definitely getting there. The direction the game is heading only effects that specifically can't be resisted will land
And even running a triple cleanse I nearly always have multiple debuffs (frequently upwards of a dozen) on my characters before I can cleanse again.
So theory craft a massive damage team that isn't debuff dependent to take out the triple cleanse. Or use zQGJ Jedi. They already hit me to avoid fighting Zaul.
well, okay.
I think you're completely wrong. Time will tell, in the meantime i'll keep enjoying my debuffers.
B2.
Regardless, I agree with @leef , Running R1, consistenly rely on debuffs and exposes for damage, consistently beating double and triple cleanse teams (at least on offense). Debuffs are far from irrelevant.
Agreed, but I also wish they didn't have to make things that can't be cleansed. I feel like they shouldn't have had to get that far into a creep with debuff vs buff vs debuff vs buff if you understand me? I think it's the right direction to head now, but I would've preferred that they had balanced them out a little before having to make debuffs like this.
Oh, new Ahsoka is immune to dots? Great.
problem is they made tenacity up too strong, which in turn is what makes arena so boring. you have all these great effects but can hardly every use them consistently. should have made tenacity up similar to offense up where its an addition to what you have but not overpowered (for example: tenacity up would add 50% tenacity to the current character), but not able to resist everything.
Exactly! Tenacity was so useless before that they had to make it resist something. But in order to do that they went much too far and made it resist everything. But now we need to work with it, and in order to balance it out we need make more irresistible debuffs and more things that can't be cleansed. Either that or do an entire overhaul of the Tenacity/Potency system, which is probably better, but also probably not very cost effective.
Agreed.
Leef, I love your comments that you have no issues and use debuffers, since your arena team is Rex (L, cleanser), GK (cleanser), R2 (cleanser), Zylo, and DN. Thanks, but no thanks.
you've got that backwards, debuffs are so effective that people use not only 1 cleanser, but even up to 4 cleansers.
I'd also like to note that my R2 doesn't have a zeta on his cleansing unique and that my characters are debuffed ALOT during arena matches.
Nailed it.
You bring up an interesting point -- that the cleansers are so prevalent because the debuffers are strong. I had to think about that a little while, but in the end I still stand by an initial point:
My problem with the current situation is that the cleansers are too powerful in other areas too. They are not narrowly useful for cleanse. Even if you took their cleanse away, they would still be heavily used characters. I don't think it would dramatically affect their level of play -- Rex, GK, and Chirrut still rock even without a cleanse. On the other side, with most teams (9 of my top 10 are rex leads, December 2015 shard) unable to apply buffs against these toons, they do not have any usefulness. TFP without debuffs is, well, not really that good. Nor is Zam. Nor is EP. So all the debuffers suck without debuffs, but all the cleansers are great even without cleanse. That is where the imbalance lies.
There are two good fixes for this: Fix Tenacity Up, making it just add a small % instead of making debuffing impossible, or start to introduce characters who can guarantee application of debuffs regardless of tenacity up, AND who can guarantee that buffs cannot be cleansed (like vader can now on dots).
You lost me when you implied Zam wasn't good because of cleansers.
That would be an interesting idea that I wish they had implemented with the Tarkin rework. Make there be a debuff that makes it so no already applied debuffs can be cleansed for the duration it is up. That would help to counter the triple cleanse teams that are overly dominant. Another issue that has been pointed out often is the disparity in how effective tenacity up (debuff immunity is the best way to describe it) vs tenacity down (false advertising because there is still a 15% chance to resist even with TD on the target). Equalize the impact of each of those and you come along way closer to balancing out the debuff/cleanse game some.
I hope you're not serious. I actually run Zam in arena, and cleansers crush her. Yay, lots of bombs! Ohh wait, not anymore. Yay! evasion down! Ohh wait, not anymore....
Either you're being sarcastic and I'm not getting it, or you don't run Zam in high-level arena.
Zam is terrible with or without a cleanser is all I'm saying. Squishy, low damage, and that hat!
I run a BH team in arena, typically finishing in the top 1/2 on my shard (December 2015). AoE ability block doesn't work. IG-88 and Boba have it. But when a team is running 3 or 4 cleansers, one miss and the whole thing fails. Plus, R2 if zeta'd (which my whole shard seems to have already done) causes the rest of a light side team to auto-cleanse themselves.
Bounty Hunters could use some love as a faction. One Rex can essentially neuter the squad. I hope in a future rework, one of them gets it so thermals can't be cleansed because that would certainly make them more viable.