Tenacity Up (as it is now: debuff immunity, and how easily available it is) is shutting down about one third of the creative possibilities of this game.
What is this game about? Kill your opponents before they kill you. This is roughly based on 3 mechanics:
- Make damage, lots of it. Think Geo Soldier, Rey, Wiggs (all were considered OP in their day). Simple. Boring.
- Control/disrupt the enemy. Ability block, stun, daze,... Not that simple, may work or not. Interesting.
- Boost or repair my toons (moaaar damage!)
Tenacity Up was designed back in the days where debuffs were Luminara's single target Ability Block, the dreaded double-stuns of Dooku and Daka, and the GW-death-sentence Heal block of Sidious. Fair enough, counter those three.
About one year and a few dark-side passes later, the devs have demonstrated unequalled creativity and come up with a wide array of new debuff possibilities: daze, stagger, burning, expose,... which all end up as more flies on the windscreen of Tenacity Up.
Hence my point: Tenacity Up reduces the dimensions of possibilities from 3 to 2, and makes the game 33% poorer that it could be.
If only they had made it "Add 50% (or 100%)" tenacity!...
In the process, it also completely destroyed any hope of getting the thermal detonators and bounty hunters out of the oddities museum.
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... Or a one-time protection, like Foresight: avoid the next debuff, and that's it.
On the contrary, imagine a Foresight that lasts 2 or 3 turns?...
Sounds like ai controlled zaul!
Heyo! Rimshot...
I'll be here all night
Meta is ever shifting.
The funny part is that's not even a joke. Oh wait. I guess that's the joke.
I imagine a character that has the ability to dispel buffs off of a whole team. That would counter the current form of tenacity up. If only such a character existed.
(See B2, or Death Trooper)
Hi, I'm Lando Calrissian and I just don't gaf about Tenacity Up because I do a crazy amount of damage to everyone. I have a lot of buddies--some are Rebels, but a lot aren't--who also don't care about Tenacity Up because we just do buckets of damage and don't care about debuffs.
All dumb jokes aside, my point is that Tenacity Up is a hard counter to a specific, debuff-heavy playstyle. But the key to a healthy game is to have multiple viable playstyles, so as long as a hard counter is either very narrow in its scope or has counters of its own, the game--as a whole--is fine.
It really doesn't matter what you see on the leaderboard. Right now it's cleanses and tenacity up, but it could be Ugnaught and Ewoks for all it matters--those ranks are controlled by a cabal of players who determine which of them get the payout on which days.
and echo and Death Trooper
@ExarTheKun
Yes I know, but... why introduce new mechanics when there was one already? (Or why keep things simple when we can make them complicated)?
Since day 1, there is a Tenacity vs. Potency balance that players can use to tweak how much they think debuffs should be resisted or stick. That mechanics never quite worked for some reason, the result being tenacity is insignificant, debuffs just stick. The response was Tenacity Up as we know it (instead of like a Defense Up: +xx%, resists more often). Now debuffs don't stick, ever. Now that this is broken the other way around, again, the response is Debuffs that aren't categorized as such (Fracture) or can't be resisted. This again will be abused (or is already?), then the next response will be "Super Tenacity Up Also Works For Such And Such" etc. etc.
Each new mechanics brings its share of confusion and bugs too.
I guess my point is: instead of having a single-dimension progression along the lines of Potency & Tenacity (too many debuffs? Ok, let's boost Tenacity. Too much resist? Let's boost Potency etc.), they're piling up more and more incompatible mechanics to bypass each previous one. And the way I think this is harmful is this: Every new mechanics leaves its trail of road-kills on the side, casualties of a fight they were not even part of. E.g. Thermal detonators, Tenacity Leadership / Uniques and mods and worst of all...
Why the f**k do I have to purchase thousands of Holo Projectors Mk3 for the sake of adding 2.0% of completely useless tenacity-base to all of my toons and their mother?
I know there are a few counters, but it always feels like I'm making a music band with a singer, guitarist, drummer, bassist and a bodyguard because I need to ask permission before playing my game.
Also, with every newly introduced debuff, Tenacity Up keeps increasing in power because it counters that one too, unlike e.g. daze which prevents TM gains but not healing.
Tenacity up is an ability that we can say is constricting design space. Not only does it invalidated a huge part of the roster, or require a very specific answer, but it actively pushes the developers into designing characters that use unresistable debuffs or not use debuffs at all.
Debuffs are an essential part of the kit of many characters, or even entire factions. Having an easy way to completely invalidate not just entire teams, but entire strategies with a single character is going to be bad for the game in the long run, as it will dramatically increase power creep (as we already see happening).
Here is a few possible solutions:
1) We split up Tenacity Up in two buffs: Tenacity Up and Resist Aggression
Tenacity up now gives +30% tenacity and sets your minimum resist chance from 15 to 30%. That would still make it much harder to stick debuffs (if the code works properly).
Resist Aggression says: the next time an attack would land debuffs or dispel you, instead it doesn't, then remove Resist Aggression.
Then it would just be a matter of dividing these abilities.
2) (Less popular for sure) A buff like tenacity up should be distributed with great care, always be conditional, and never ever be a flat out AOE for everyone (like Rex). It is by far the most powerful buff in the game, and an ability that gives it to say, two characters, like First Order Officer, is already very powerful.
The problem here is that it would require a massive nerf on behalf of the offenders, which I think no one would support.
And if two guys can solo rancor all the way, is it WAI as Kylo was OP for doing one phase? Just wondering what is the direction this game is headed....
Soo many options to counter Tenacity Up.
Debuff-landers are countered by tenacity up. Tenacity up is countered by buff / status effect removers. Don't expect a squad to be able to destroy every other squad, that is not balance. However, if you are able to find a counter squad for every squad in the game, than it is balance.
And please let's not start talking about certain toons here
@AnnerDoon @RubAto I know, I don't personally have an issue facing Tenacity Up teams in Arena, GW or wherever (My own recipe is Vader/SA/DN... I know there are plenty other that work too). If you read my original post, I just say that this (debuff immunity, to call it for what it is) is impoverishing game design, instead of enriching it, as was demonstrated by the devs having to call Fracture "not-a-debuff", so it can't be trivially resisted/cleansed. It completely shuts down dozens of otherwise borderline-usable toons, and factions as a whole, and forces new toons to use over-the-top "non-resistible" debuffs such as Fracture.
Sure you prove me wrong with running Resistance successfully, but I'm sure it was an uphill battle (let me guess... you just outspeed them?), and it wouldn't take much to make it much harder and then, bye bye La Resistance...
Exactly my point. How many toons in the game rely on debuffs? Say 50? Tenacity Up (1 dude) counters all 50 of them.
What I think is balanced is say TM gain and daze: there are a few toons that gain outrageous TM under various conditions, and a few that offer a counter to that by applying daze. Few vs. few; daze doesn't do much outside of this context (well, including counter & assist of course).
Tenacity Up is a counter to:
Ability Block - Stun - Daze - Stagger - Burn - Buff Immunity - Heal Immunity - Slow - Offense down - Defense down - Heal down - Evasion down - Expose - Thermal Detonator, and more importantly: Any Other Debuff Yet To Be Designed.
There isn't an ability that comes even close to that impressive one-ring-to-rule-them-all one.
Be creative...use characters with ability block to prevent cleansing
Those are Rex, Chirrut and Yoda. There are a few (maybe 2-3) characters that can give it to 1 other hero.
You have 5 characters that can do AOE dispel. Those are Ventress, Echo, Baze, Death Trooper and B2.
Aside from that there are a few more(maybe about 4-5) that can dispel from a target enemy.
So you see, the game is imbalanced towards Tenacity Up. I suggest that we put some more characters that grant Tenacity Up to the entire team(2 more) so we can have exactly 5 just as the dispelers.
Ah, the infamous sentence. It's exactly what it means. Imbalanced is something that literally cannot be beaten. If you can beat it, it works perfectly fine.
The point we are debating is Tenacity Up, not teams or the meta, but the ability itself.
Statement 1: Tenacity Up is the most powerful buff in the game.
The only two other buffs that come close are, I think, Stealth and Foresight. The major difference is that Tenacity Up invalidates a very big portion of the characters in the game.
Statement 2: Tenacity Up warps the meta game
The buff completely invalidates a number of single characters and several entire squads from being viable, or at least puts them at an extreme disadvantage. In addition, it sidelines the entire mechanic of potency vs tenacity.
Not only does it do that right now, but it is conceivable that it will continue to do this for years to come.
Statement 3: The devs are aware of the problem, it constricts their design space and they started making workarounds
I think this is quite obvious. Whereas you could have had attacks that said "this attack has 20% extra potency", you now need things that automatically stick. When your design space is constricted, it means that you either have to up the power of your debuffs, or you have to make characters that don't really rely on them. Buffs and debuffs are one of the factors that make characters unique and interesting.
Statement 4: A nerf to Tenacity Up is not intended to make characters weaker, only the buff itself
Though it is the natural consequence, it's not the characters I have a problem with. Something hard to get like General Kenobi SHOULD be very powerful, and perhaps things like Yoda's zeta should still do what they do now.
For the health of the game, it is required that as many characters as possible are viable.
NOTE: it may be required that, in conjunction with this change, several debuffs or the base potency of certain characters with powerful debuffs, also would need to be nerfed. I would not be opposed to that at all.
Would every buff has a counter be solid reasoning in this discussion?
No mate, you don't get it, you can't use "counter" as an argument, because it doesn't suit their beliefs.
Couldn't agree more, the game has evolved, tome to tweak tenacity up. Create a separate special for a new toon that does debuff immunity, I'm good with that... but tenacity up isn't what it was intended to be and hurts PvP far more than it helps. It also makes most players lazy, most forget strategy like turn order and such... anyway, that's imo...
This is a very good question, and my answer would be that this depends on what you mean by "counter".
A real counter is something that turns said advantage into a liability. Let me give you an example from a card game:
1) Healthy metagame
A new set comes out and pretty soon people find "the best decks". Let us call these decks A, B and C
Deck A: is the most powerful deck
Deck B: is a counter to deck A
Deck C: is inherently weaker but good against deck B
In this scenario, Deck A would likely win against Deck C most of the time. Deck C might have a reasonable chance against Deck B. Deck B will likely win against Deck A. It's a rock-paper-scissors meta, the kind we mostly see as somewhat imbalanced but benign.
2) Unhealthy metagame
A new set comes out, and provides an extremely powerful card for Deck A. Deck B can solve that card if it compromises its own strategy. Deck C cannot solve the card and has to cripple itself to solve that card.
(This is the scenario we are in with Tenacity Up)
Now Deck A will likely win against Deck C. Deck B in its compromised state, can no longer consistently beat Deck A. Deck C is either compromised so far that it can no longer consistently beat B, or it foregoes its compromise, but flat out loses to Deck A all the time.
In Magic: the Gathering this happens every few years, and a deck emerges that dominates 60+% of the meta, much like we see here now.
My point with this story is the following: if you need a "counter" to allow you to do your regular thing, you must compromise on your strategy. To truly have a healthy metagame, you need something that punishes Tenacity Up as much as it punishes debuff-oriented teams. So no, having a counter does explicitly NOT mean that something else is not imbalanced. Requiring a counter is in fact a very good way to tell that something IS imbalanced.
Tenacity Down, Dispel are counters to Tenacity Up.
Those. Are. Facts.