Making gls uncounterable by non gls is beyond ridiculous but I could deal with it if it wasn’t for the nerfs. Make gls better don’t make characters people have invested time and money into worse. The nerfs are what are going to cause people to quit. Especially ruining Vader, a character many people have and have spent a lot of money on. Ruining JKL is ridiculous. He might as well be a gl with his requirements. And now he’s now worth his requirements at all. Please cg I beg you guys to at least not nerf characters.
Speaking as someone who doesn't have a single character with even 1 relic yet there must surely be a rework on the gear grind soon. Increase the drops out lessen the requirements either way it needs to be seriously looked at as it feels almost impossible to build a good roster of well geared teams and then on top of that achieve relics. I've not been playing this game for anywhere near as long as some of you and don't really come up against any GLs in any of my matchmaking but this does just come across as a money grab. If you can't counter GLs then you are forced to go chasing one to remain somewhat competitive if you are meeting GLs in your matchmaking.
If gls are made uncounterable the matchmaking system has to be fixed for ga. Everyone should have to fight an equal amount of gls. Ie: 0 vs 0. 1 vs 1. 2 vs 2 etc. The best mode in the game is ga and making it impossible will cause many people to quit
The more I think about the changes the more I'm convinced that sorting the gear grind would go a very long way.
Also if GLs are the meta and have been promised to be power balanced will the next conquest characters do what CAT & Maul has done for the rest of the GLs to readdress the balance?
My prediction is that eventually you will be able to upgrade some of the iconic characters to GLs such as Vadar and JKL as there can't be that many iconic characters left...
So while this has been an ongoing thing they wanted to do, and has been making things difficult to design around, the reason for "right now", from my understanding, is that r9 brought this to a head.
This is in no way directed at you, Kyno. I know you're the messenger and I hope they review this and reconsider making a more detailed statement.
If this is indeed the case, they should have explained it as such. Yes, people would still be upset, but if there was a reasoning behind the changes put out there, it might have been a bit easier to swallow. Without this information, the whole thing seems very arbitrary, especially with a "drop bad news on a Friday and let things fester unabated for a weekend" tactic. I wish they'd take the tactic of more information is better with this type of unprecedented en masse alteration of kits. Again, the base would be upset, but there might be more sympathy with the "why" being clearly explained.
A sweeping set of changes like this is going to have a lot of unintended consequences. Those unintended consequences will likely require further re-tuning down the road. And each time CG has to step in and re-tune things like they're proposing to do here, it's going to destroy consumer confidence - people aren't going to be as willing to invest in things that may just get nerfed down the road, which I imagine is why CG has had such a long-standing policy of only doing nerfs in extreme cases and even then generally limiting the nerfs to being as minor as possible. This? This is not that.
But I'm not optimistic enough to think CG will abandon all these changes entirely, and I can see the necessity of doing something about the proliferation of Ignore Defense attacks. So rather than in addition to ranting about it, I thought I'd propose a more reasonable, less heavy-handed set of changes that would, ideally, better preserve players' investments in their rosters and have fewer (and/or better) unintended consequences and ripple effects.
Vader: Keep the proposed changes, and in fact increase the base damage reduction of Culling Blade from 40% to 50% and remove the bonus damage against Raid Bosses; but give Culling Blade's base damage a 5% increase per Relic level on Vader (so an R8 Vader gets +40% of the base damage back and is only looking at a 10% base damage reduction).
Reasoning: Darth Vader is probably THE most iconic character in Star Wars, and really ought to be a Galactic Legend if any one is; but since the introduction of GLs, Vader was reworked with Merciless Massacre, making him a powerhouse and a capable Galactic-Legend-killer. It was a compromise solution that worked for the playerbase; since MM was added to his kit I have seen literally zero players, anywhere, from the lowliest F2P to the biggest kraken, ever express any dissatisfaction with Vader's power level. My proposed change preserves that compromise, while preventing low-relic Vaders from defeating high-relic GLs; ideally this change would result in Vader being a threat to equivalent or lower-relic GLs but struggling to defeat GLs that are higher relic than Vader; the damage adjustments could be tweaked if necessary to accomplish that.
GAS: It's hard to evaluate the changes to GAS without testing them, and frankly the most significant thing I'd like to ask CG to do is to playtest the heck out of any proposed changes to GAS, especially in LS Geo TB. In particular with GAS, these are my concerns:
Telekinesis may need a buff. There are *already* some situations in Conquest and Galactic Challenges where having the zeta on GAS's basic is detrimental, because Telekinesis is considered a "special ability" rather than a basic attack. Giving his basic a big boost to armor penetration which is *not* shared by Telekinesis adds another category of situations where the zeta on his basic could be detrimental: against high-armor targets. It's been part of CG's design philosophy that "upgrades should always be a good thing" so testing should be done to ensure that players won't regret putting a zeta on his basic.
Buffs to Cover/General of the 501st: This may make P4 of Clash on Kamino much more difficult than intended. May also have effects on the non-GL squads generally used to counter GAS (which is still a challenge for a lot of rosters), particularly in Conquest. Please test it, a lot.
Lack of Cooldown increases/max health reductions vs. GLs: The loss of cooldown increases isn't crippling; however the max health reduction, which seems like it was originally added to his kit as a Malak-killer, has served a very important function in the GL meta: it prevents timeouts. Given the incredible defensive capabilities of all three Light Side GLs, any Light-Side-GL vs. Light-Side-GL matchup stands a decent chance of timing out due to being able to simply grant more healing/bonus protection/damage immunity than the other side can get through in 5 minutes. GAS's max health reduction served as a useful backstop against those kinds of time-out situations, and removing it is going to increase timeouts and increase player frustration, even among GL owners, particularly folks trying to get the most out of JML. I would propose two possible solutions: Either make the max health reduction function at half-strength vs. GLs (10% rather than 20%), OR make the max health reduction start at say, 2% but increase each time it's applied to the same target (capping at 20% per application). Either one should prevent GAS from simply being able to blitz down a GL before the GL gets a chance to do anything cool, while preserving GAS's ability to eventually bring a decisive end to long, drawn-out healing-heavy matches.
JKL: I'm willing to see how the changes to his kit play out before evaluating them, but I suspect the changes to JKL (and SEE, to a lesser extent) mean the death of the "Jericho" setup and makes JML significantly weaker against SEE, even if relative parity is preserved in other matchups. Once again: test, a lot. Please also test his performance in LS Geo TB, and even in the Challenge Tiers of Ground War Assault Battle, as both of those locations have some extremely high-defense opponents.
Wat: Give Weapon Tech "+25% Offense and +25% Damage Penetration (doubled for Separatists)" in place of "Ignore Defense". Reasoning: Removing "Ignore Defense" from Weapon Tech without offering any kind of Offense increase to compensate not only makes "Weapon Tech" feel misnamed, when after the proposed nerf it ought to be called "Speed Tech" - it also seriously impairs the use of that piece of Tech, which again, is going to have all sorts of unintended consequences and ripple effects, particularly in the effectiveness of Grievous+Wat as a GAC defensive team and on DS Geo TB, particularly the Phase 4 mission where Wat is required, which has some potentially very-high-defense enemies.
As a side note, I would encourage the devs, while they're looking at Wat, to take a look at the Bastilla-led, JML-with-tank-tech timeout team. Tank tech being able to restore bonus protection feels like a bug, and timeouts are, as noted above, pretty frustrating and un-fun for players.
Changes to Make GLs more like Raid Bosses: As a whole I think most of these changes are unnecessary, but if the dev team feels they are too strong, I would encourage them to make sure these effects at least do something to a GL, even if the effect doesn't function at full strength; simply negating the effect entirely is frustrating and disappointing for players, and removes options for strategy and theorycrafting. So:
Fallen Bastila: Raid bosses and GLs affected by Corrupted Battle Meditation have -50% potency, instead of Force Bond simply having no effect.
Darth Malak: His anti-Sith-turn-meter-gain was a way of deliberately nerfing Palpatine teams so they couldn't counter Darth Revan, back when Darth Revan and Malak were the new hotness. I honestly would rather see this removed entirely than only prevented from affecting GLs (doing so would also function as a backdoor buff to Sith Assassin, who could probably use it). Don't feel strongly about it in any case, though I am amused that what was originally put there to enforce a P2P meta is now being nerfed, probably to enforce the P2P meta of Lord Vader.
General Grievous: Scrap this change entirely. Making this max health reduction not apply to GLs just seems wholly unnecessary. Given the skill's cooldown, if Grievous somehow survives long enough to apply this to a GL multiple times, that suggests that Grievous's player is strongly controlling the battle, in which case the max health reduction is probably serving the same anti-timeout purpose as GAS's max health reduction serves.
GAS: Described in detail above.
Thrawn: Using the raid boss effect on Galactic Legends is a terrible design decision. Fracture was designed when the Tank and the Rancor were the only raids, and speed reductions and turn meter removal were THE dominant strategies for getting high raid scores; in that environment, -50% speed reduction to a raid boss was still pretty good. Galactic Legends, on the other hand, have speeds which dramatically surpass any other characters (not to mention any raid boss), and a well-modded GL suffering -50% speed can still comfortably outspeed most characters, meaning over the relatively short duration of one Fracture, the results are going to be very disappointing - especially considering Rey, JMK and SLKR all have ways to prevent or punish TM removal. This is the worst-thought-out, most-poorly-implemented nerf in this entire list, and it's to one of the best kits that you've ever designed. My advice: Just don't. If you absolutely must nerf Fracture's effect on GLs, increase the speed reduction to something like -75%. Please consider that for new players, Thrawn is likely to be one of the first Legendary characters they acquire, and he and Vader are likely to be a new player's main options for even attempting to counter a Galactic Legend for a long time.
JKL: As I said above, I'm willing to wait to see how your proposed changes play out here before calling for changes. Repulse is definitely improved by this change; it remains to be seen if it's enough of a change to keep JKL (and by proxy, JML) where he ought to be relative to the GLs.
Moff Gideon: Changing Demoralize feels completely unnecessary, especially given that he was designed and implemented after GLs already existed. If it's necessary, I'd rather see Lord Vader made immune to Demoralized, tbh, even though I generally agree with CG that specific carve-outs like that aren't great design and lead to overly-long-and-wordy kits.
Baffling Trick: I don't see why this change is necessary. It's typically not that easy to get 3 stacks of Confusion to stick to a Galactic Legend, and then you still need to wait for them to Basic for it to do anything. But I don't feel terribly strongly about this one; with the loss of Ignore Defense, the -50% defense will hopefully be more valuable, and like I said: getting 3 stacks of Confusion on a GL is already not that easy, so the impact of this change on matches is likely to be pretty limited.
Lastly I will note that a lot of player anger about these proposed changes is that they seem more about "Making GLs unbeatable" and less about principles of better game design. That perception isn't helped by the fact that the only characters slated for nerfs here are ones which can currently threaten GLs' dominance; there's no mention made of Nihilus or Deathtrooper's cooldown increasing abilities, Traya's Isolate, Jango Fett's Conflagration, and probably others that have escaped me. I'm definitely not suggesting those need to be nerfed too - rather, I'm suggesting the opposite: that if there's room for those characters to stay as they are, these nerfs probably aren't as necessary as you seem convinced they are.
If you are coming down to 1v1 you're doing it wrong.
But that is exactly what you’re going to get post GAS/JKL nerf.
You can beat SLKR without GAS in a JML team and the extra damage from repulse should also help.
Another thing to consider (which may or may not happen): if Relic 9 is designed for tanks and for example is designed to increase protection in tanks by a significant amount, the amount of true damage the JML team will be doing might compensate for the nerf in damage his supporting cast does. If CG states they want to make GLs better, I don't see how/why they would also nerf one of them... Patience is warranted....
If you are coming down to 1v1 you're doing it wrong.
But that is exactly what you’re going to get post GAS/JKL nerf.
You can beat SLKR without GAS in a JML team and the extra damage from repulse should also help.
Another thing to consider (which may or may not happen): if Relic 9 is designed for tanks and for example is designed to increase protection in tanks by a significant amount, the amount of true damage the JML team will be doing might compensate for the nerf in damage his supporting cast does. If CG states they want to make GLs better, I don't see how/why they would also nerf one of them... Patience is warranted....
Yes, this could be true…but you have to acquire R9 to do so…at who knows the cost. Now I have to make an additional investment to make things whole? if this is the path all JML owners should get the all the materials needed for R9 to compensate.
So while this has been an ongoing thing they wanted to do, and has been making things difficult to design around, the reason for "right now", from my understanding, is that r9 brought this to a head.
This is in no way directed at you, Kyno. I know you're the messenger and I hope they review this and reconsider making a more detailed statement.
If this is indeed the case, they should have explained it as such. Yes, people would still be upset, but if there was a reasoning behind the changes put out there, it might have been a bit easier to swallow. Without this information, the whole thing seems very arbitrary, especially with a "drop bad news on a Friday and let things fester unabated for a weekend" tactic. I wish they'd take the tactic of more information is better with this type of unprecedented en masse alteration of kits. Again, the base would be upset, but there might be more sympathy with the "why" being clearly explained.
I agree that it would be nice if they shared more, but I don't think it would have had any effect on the response, it's just different words to say "for the future of the game"(which they said), but we will never know.
Making gls uncounterable by non gls is beyond ridiculous but I could deal with it if it wasn’t for the nerfs. Make gls better don’t make characters people have invested time and money into worse. The nerfs are what are going to cause people to quit. Especially ruining Vader, a character many people have and have spent a lot of money on. Ruining JKL is ridiculous. He might as well be a gl with his requirements. And now he’s now worth his requirements at all. Please cg I beg you guys to at least not nerf characters.
This is spot on. Why nerf characters when you could make the best ones stronger? CG could rebalance without **** off basically everyone. Just by releasing relic 9 they could create that effect. But instead, they have to take the low road. It doesn’t make sense.
As a communications professional, I feel they need to work on their presentation and strategy more. This was far too much information for most people to make sense of and has caused a ton of confusion. This could have easily been avoided with a more measured strategy. Also, get feedback from your users, act on it in a reasonable amount of time, and you’ll keep a lot of happy customers. Some basic PR would go a long way!
I hope you can learn from these mistakes and improve on your community relations. If not, you are risking the long term health of your product.
Wampa Wampa!
Stats at: swgoh.gg
Zeta: Have Zader, on deck: QGJ & R2
Anyone who thinks they won't be able to beat a GL with JML is using him wrong. Or didn't actually read the changes.
JML + JKL and new repulse can’t kill GLs? LOL he will wipe the floor with SLKR.
Read this thread, there's a ton of people that seem to think JML is now worthless lol.
He’s now the worst GL of them all. Here’s why:
Rey is getting a boost to her kit to do insane damage and now has much better defensive viability. JML beating Rey relied on max health reduction, cool down reduction and the ability to eat through her defense. Both GAS and JKL got nerfed against GL’s. JML relies solely on supporting cast to do damage. Now that damage has been reduced so if Rey is able to get to her ultimate twice, it’s over.
SEE vs JML? 98% win rate for SEE.
JMK vs JML? You’re taking away damage and other viability so now that already shaky fight gets even more tuned to JMK.
SLKR vs JML? SLKR is going to be tougher to beat now. GAS can no longer increase cool downs on crits to keep his AOE under control or reduce max health anymore, nor ignore defense.
Luke is losing defense ignoring as well. It’s going to be much harder to take out SLKR before his ultimate now. So if that’s the case and it’s just JML vs SLKR, JML loses that 1v1 every time.
Will he be worthless overall? No, he will still crush anyone non GL. He is now the worst GL and needs to be buffed for better GL 1v1 viability or at least make his ultimate charge a bit faster
I agree with all of this except SLKR. You don't even need GAS in that fight; he is auto-targeted and stunned by SLKR right away and usually gets taken out anyway. Could swap him for anyone and it wouldn't matter.
Second, what does it matter if he gets to his ultimate? Both Lukes live through his ultimate anyway. I'm not sure what you're doing to end up with just JML vs SLKR. I've never seen that happen. In any case, just JKL vs SLKR is a win for Luke, and with JML with him it's no problem taking Kylo down. While they're nerfing Jedi's Will and that could be an issue, now that his special is doing 3x damage to GLs, it might be an argument for using that ability in this fight now and might help take him out pretty easily.
Has anyone considered turning the GL tag into an upgrade tier? As in, iconic characters like Vader, Luke, palpatine, etc can eventually be upgraded to a GL (but generic toons like Ugnaught and CUP can't). This could bridge the gap, maintain the value of non GL characters, and still be profitable for CG.
Second, what does it matter if he gets to his ultimate? Both Lukes live through his ultimate anyway. I'm not sure what you're doing to end up with just JML vs SLKR. I've never seen that happen. In any case, just JKL vs SLKR is a win for Luke, and with JML with him it's no problem taking Kylo down. While they're nerfing Jedi's Will and that could be an issue, now that his special is doing 3x damage to GLs, it might be an argument for using that ability in this fight now and might help take him out pretty easily.
The only way for SLKR to target GAS is when JML doesn’t have taunt which means you’re talking about JKR lead without Wat - every other JML squad has taunt up.
I admit I looked at this Road Ahead and wanted to die a little bit.
Pretty much everything I thought has been said elsewhere, extensively and far more eloquently than I could manage.
So to reiterate the two biggest things (for me)… PLEASE look at how these changes (especially to GAS and JKL) will effect LSTB. I chose that route to go for GAS/JKL/JML for LSTB specifically and to have all that work suddenly for nothing would be heartrending. But accepting that you ARE making those changes to these characters, PLEASE don’t make LSTB even more impossible.
And R9? I would love to be excited for this. But I look at all the gear needed to G12 then relic a character and THEN all the gear needed to even R7 a character? It’s enough to bring a person to tears. Please, every other change you made would be so much easier to accept if the gear crunch wasn’t a constant attempt to climb up what’s essentially an avalanche.
Anyone who thinks they won't be able to beat a GL with JML is using him wrong. Or didn't actually read the changes.
JML + JKL and new repulse can’t kill GLs? LOL he will wipe the floor with SLKR.
Read this thread, there's a ton of people that seem to think JML is now worthless lol.
He’s now the worst GL of them all. Here’s why:
Rey is getting a boost to her kit to do insane damage and now has much better defensive viability. JML beating Rey relied on max health reduction, cool down reduction and the ability to eat through her defense. Both GAS and JKL got nerfed against GL’s. JML relies solely on supporting cast to do damage. Now that damage has been reduced so if Rey is able to get to her ultimate twice, it’s over.
SEE vs JML? 98% win rate for SEE.
JMK vs JML? You’re taking away damage and other viability so now that already shaky fight gets even more tuned to JMK.
SLKR vs JML? SLKR is going to be tougher to beat now. GAS can no longer increase cool downs on crits to keep his AOE under control or reduce max health anymore, nor ignore defense.
Luke is losing defense ignoring as well. It’s going to be much harder to take out SLKR before his ultimate now. So if that’s the case and it’s just JML vs SLKR, JML loses that 1v1 every time.
Will he be worthless overall? No, he will still crush anyone non GL. He is now the worst GL and needs to be buffed for better GL 1v1 viability or at least make his ultimate charge a bit faster
I agree with all of this except SLKR. You don't even need GAS in that fight; he is auto-targeted and stunned by SLKR right away and usually gets taken out anyway. Could swap him for anyone and it wouldn't matter.
Second, what does it matter if he gets to his ultimate? Both Lukes live through his ultimate anyway. I'm not sure what you're doing to end up with just JML vs SLKR. I've never seen that happen. In any case, just JKL vs SLKR is a win for Luke, and with JML with him it's no problem taking Kylo down. While they're nerfing Jedi's Will and that could be an issue, now that his special is doing 3x damage to GLs, it might be an argument for using that ability in this fight now and might help take him out pretty easily.
I have actually had some especially stunningly terrible RNG in arena just the other day (no debuffs landed, lobster went a ton of times, SLK ulted, Inyak was sad) with JML losing to SLK one on one. my r8 JML vs the r7 SLK, both well modded, JML even had tank tech from Wat. I had started with JKR lead and everyone was killed after SLK's ult except JML. JML couldn't build up enough protection or do enough damage and eventually SLK killed him. JML could not on his own kill SLK.
Oh and if you run JML under JKR lead, with Wat, or even JML as the lead, bc of JML's taunt SLK can't touch Gen Sky so your Gen Sky is free to attack all he wants.
First glance I was pretty annoyed that Rey was getting “another” buff…cause sudden whirlwind is a really weak and infrequent atk….sigh. SEE really needed help as he can only beat everything bar JMK…poor SEE. But it felt like JML was taking it in the proverbial because he is crap as a lead and crap as an individual toon. Compared to every GL he hits like a wet noodle, but relies on GAS and JKL to deal dmg…..who are getting nerfed.
BUT, they are only getting nerfed against GLs, who still have four other non-GLs with them….which they are getting buffed against. So I’ve decided to hold out a little hope that JML won’t become as useless 😁
Also condolences to everyone without GLs and to the poor sods who occasionally have none but get match with GL owners in GAC.
IF CG wants GLs to be like a "mini raid boss"! then shouldn't Vaders culling blade do something like 50-75% MORE DAMAGE to them if he will do 100% more to a "raid boss"??? only fair he dose more damage to a character they wish to treat like a "mini raid boss".....
Read some of the posts and agree w/those posting about this taking all the fun out of the game since there will LITERALLY be no way to beat a team with more GLs. What about all those who spent REAL $$$ on Vader, Thrawn, etc.: flushed down the toilet as all non-GL toons become worthless vs. a GL. GAS, GG, Revans, Padme, CLS: can't ever win against a GL. Not smart CG.
Well, CG? You said you wanted feedback, and you got it! The majority of your players, those who spend money and those who don't, are not happy. Are you going to actually listen to us, or are you going to just pretend that we just don't exist?
@CG_SBCrumb_MINI I understand that you're not the one responsible for all of this, so this isn't directed at you, but it's just so frustrating to see that time and time again, the people in charge of this game has just ignored what we had to say just to make more money. Maybe that's not the case, I don't know what's going on on the other side of the mirror, but it definitely feels that way.
Further, we have the usual pattern:
Devs drop bad news, players write thousands of posts… meanwhile Devs are on holiday for weeks, and give zero answer.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but the more I think a out it the biggest problem I have with this nerf is how retro active it is.
I'll try to explain. I get their point with the defense. But that is only a small part of the nerf.
The buff if see to stop the troopers as example. The community begged for changes to see to make him better for months after his release. If they were going to change him, it should have been back then. Not several months later after they said they weren't going to.
Basically they told the players the counter would be allowed and some of those players spent money to get the counter. Now they effectively nerf the counter a d only offer a refund back to r5. Seems kinda shady. If it was a problem, it should have been addressed swiftly.
The other thing is what does fracture have to do with the defense? Supposedly, the point was to make tanks viable. Well fracture doesn't affect that at all. I'm perfectly fine with any new GLs being immune to fracture or being treated as raid bosses. After all I don't expect thrawn to counter everything until the end of time. However, the GLs that have been out for months or years shouldn't be immune. Players built counters and potentially spent money on them. They should still work on the older GLs.
I propose the following changes
1. Replace the ignore defense with some added offense. Even for wat's weapon tech. Maybe 10% more offense or 20% (I haven't run the math). This should solve the defense problem while still letting the teams work the same. Same for gas and jkl. For the max health reduction. Just leave it and have future GLs immune to it but the current ones not immune.
2. See should have been buffed six months ago. Waiting for players to buy a counter and then buffing him is just wrong. At this point he should just be left alone. As a see owner, I don't mind the buff but it just isn't right.
3. Any changes of a GL acting as a raid boss should only apply to future GLs. This would keep counters to existing GLs intact but allow the new ones to not be vulnerable to the same counters. I'm ok with jmk getting this since he's still new. Now is the time to change him if they choose to. It may be slightly harder to confide it that way but not that much and it would be better for the game.
I think with these modifications, CG still accomplishes what they are trying to do without nerfing all th eff current counters.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but the more I think a out it the biggest problem I have with this nerf is how retro active it is.
I'll try to explain. I get their point with the defense. But that is only a small part of the nerf.
The buff if see to stop the troopers as example. The community begged for changes to see to make him better for months after his release. If they were going to change him, it should have been back then. Not several months later after they said they weren't going to.
Basically they told the players the counter would be allowed and some of those players spent money to get the counter. Now they effectively nerf the counter a d only offer a refund back to r5. Seems kinda shady. If it was a problem, it should have been addressed swiftly.
The other thing is what does fracture have to do with the defense? Supposedly, the point was to make tanks viable. Well fracture doesn't affect that at all. I'm perfectly fine with any new GLs being immune to fracture or being treated as raid bosses. After all I don't expect thrawn to counter everything until the end of time. However, the GLs that have been out for months or years shouldn't be immune. Players built counters and potentially spent money on them. They should still work on the older GLs.
I propose the following changes
1. Replace the ignore defense with some added offense. Even for wat's weapon tech. Maybe 10% more offense or 20% (I haven't run the math). This should solve the defense problem while still letting the teams work the same. Same for gas and jkl. For the max health reduction. Just leave it and have future GLs immune to it but the current ones not immune.
2. See should have been buffed six months ago. Waiting for players to buy a counter and then buffing him is just wrong. At this point he should just be left alone. As a see owner, I don't mind the buff but it just isn't right.
3. Any changes of a GL acting as a raid boss should only apply to future GLs. This would keep counters to existing GLs intact but allow the new ones to not be vulnerable to the same counters. I'm ok with jmk getting this since he's still new. Now is the time to change him if they choose to. It may be slightly harder to confide it that way but not that much and it would be better for the game.
I think with these modifications, CG still accomplishes what they are trying to do without nerfing all th eff current counters.
GL are supposed to be on the same power level. At least very close to each other. So it’s either all of them or none with regards to the announced plans.
Two R8s for a BH capital ship people have been wanting for a long time. So only the special snowflakes icing CRancor and enough GP for the top two hard conquest crates will ever see it. I can get impulse detectors, but how am I supposed to get 40x aeromagnifiers? Guess I'll have to stick to Tarkin/Thrawn as that's just not realistic.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but the more I think a out it the biggest problem I have with this nerf is how retro active it is.
I'll try to explain. I get their point with the defense. But that is only a small part of the nerf.
The buff if see to stop the troopers as example. The community begged for changes to see to make him better for months after his release. If they were going to change him, it should have been back then. Not several months later after they said they weren't going to.
Basically they told the players the counter would be allowed and some of those players spent money to get the counter. Now they effectively nerf the counter a d only offer a refund back to r5. Seems kinda shady. If it was a problem, it should have been addressed swiftly.
The other thing is what does fracture have to do with the defense? Supposedly, the point was to make tanks viable. Well fracture doesn't affect that at all. I'm perfectly fine with any new GLs being immune to fracture or being treated as raid bosses. After all I don't expect thrawn to counter everything until the end of time. However, the GLs that have been out for months or years shouldn't be immune. Players built counters and potentially spent money on them. They should still work on the older GLs.
I propose the following changes
1. Replace the ignore defense with some added offense. Even for wat's weapon tech. Maybe 10% more offense or 20% (I haven't run the math). This should solve the defense problem while still letting the teams work the same. Same for gas and jkl. For the max health reduction. Just leave it and have future GLs immune to it but the current ones not immune.
2. See should have been buffed six months ago. Waiting for players to buy a counter and then buffing him is just wrong. At this point he should just be left alone. As a see owner, I don't mind the buff but it just isn't right.
3. Any changes of a GL acting as a raid boss should only apply to future GLs. This would keep counters to existing GLs intact but allow the new ones to not be vulnerable to the same counters. I'm ok with jmk getting this since he's still new. Now is the time to change him if they choose to. It may be slightly harder to confide it that way but not that much and it would be better for the game.
I think with these modifications, CG still accomplishes what they are trying to do without nerfing all th eff current counters.
What’s funny is that they indirectly say that they’ve also intended to make GL’s beaten only by other GL’s. This whole mirage of defense and other nonsense was a very poor facade to mask their true intentions. They even said as much in their video. Nerfing specific toons and their specific abilities to make them able to counter GL’s is a red flag. Adding GL’a to raid boss exceptions for specific counter toons is another.
This RA overall was just a huge let down and a massive step back. I want to be excited about Maul. I want to be hyped for Lord Vader. I want to be hyped for a capital ship for BH’s. I want to look forward to these changes to conquest. However the massive nerfs to several characters, the insane and unreal requirements for new ships and characters, as well as the introduction of R9 to the game with zero alleviation of the gear crunch or changes to gear economy just makes me insanely glad I waited to whale out on JMK/Lord Vader.
Replies
that ain't happening XD
Also if GLs are the meta and have been promised to be power balanced will the next conquest characters do what CAT & Maul has done for the rest of the GLs to readdress the balance?
My prediction is that eventually you will be able to upgrade some of the iconic characters to GLs such as Vadar and JKL as there can't be that many iconic characters left...
But that is exactly what you’re going to get post GAS/JKL nerf.
This is in no way directed at you, Kyno. I know you're the messenger and I hope they review this and reconsider making a more detailed statement.
If this is indeed the case, they should have explained it as such. Yes, people would still be upset, but if there was a reasoning behind the changes put out there, it might have been a bit easier to swallow. Without this information, the whole thing seems very arbitrary, especially with a "drop bad news on a Friday and let things fester unabated for a weekend" tactic. I wish they'd take the tactic of more information is better with this type of unprecedented en masse alteration of kits. Again, the base would be upset, but there might be more sympathy with the "why" being clearly explained.
But I'm not optimistic enough to think CG will abandon all these changes entirely, and I can see the necessity of doing something about the proliferation of Ignore Defense attacks. So rather than in addition to ranting about it, I thought I'd propose a more reasonable, less heavy-handed set of changes that would, ideally, better preserve players' investments in their rosters and have fewer (and/or better) unintended consequences and ripple effects.
Vader: Keep the proposed changes, and in fact increase the base damage reduction of Culling Blade from 40% to 50% and remove the bonus damage against Raid Bosses; but give Culling Blade's base damage a 5% increase per Relic level on Vader (so an R8 Vader gets +40% of the base damage back and is only looking at a 10% base damage reduction).
Reasoning: Darth Vader is probably THE most iconic character in Star Wars, and really ought to be a Galactic Legend if any one is; but since the introduction of GLs, Vader was reworked with Merciless Massacre, making him a powerhouse and a capable Galactic-Legend-killer. It was a compromise solution that worked for the playerbase; since MM was added to his kit I have seen literally zero players, anywhere, from the lowliest F2P to the biggest kraken, ever express any dissatisfaction with Vader's power level. My proposed change preserves that compromise, while preventing low-relic Vaders from defeating high-relic GLs; ideally this change would result in Vader being a threat to equivalent or lower-relic GLs but struggling to defeat GLs that are higher relic than Vader; the damage adjustments could be tweaked if necessary to accomplish that.
GAS: It's hard to evaluate the changes to GAS without testing them, and frankly the most significant thing I'd like to ask CG to do is to playtest the heck out of any proposed changes to GAS, especially in LS Geo TB. In particular with GAS, these are my concerns:
JKL: I'm willing to see how the changes to his kit play out before evaluating them, but I suspect the changes to JKL (and SEE, to a lesser extent) mean the death of the "Jericho" setup and makes JML significantly weaker against SEE, even if relative parity is preserved in other matchups. Once again: test, a lot. Please also test his performance in LS Geo TB, and even in the Challenge Tiers of Ground War Assault Battle, as both of those locations have some extremely high-defense opponents.
Wat: Give Weapon Tech "+25% Offense and +25% Damage Penetration (doubled for Separatists)" in place of "Ignore Defense".
Reasoning: Removing "Ignore Defense" from Weapon Tech without offering any kind of Offense increase to compensate not only makes "Weapon Tech" feel misnamed, when after the proposed nerf it ought to be called "Speed Tech" - it also seriously impairs the use of that piece of Tech, which again, is going to have all sorts of unintended consequences and ripple effects, particularly in the effectiveness of Grievous+Wat as a GAC defensive team and on DS Geo TB, particularly the Phase 4 mission where Wat is required, which has some potentially very-high-defense enemies.
As a side note, I would encourage the devs, while they're looking at Wat, to take a look at the Bastilla-led, JML-with-tank-tech timeout team. Tank tech being able to restore bonus protection feels like a bug, and timeouts are, as noted above, pretty frustrating and un-fun for players.
Changes to Make GLs more like Raid Bosses: As a whole I think most of these changes are unnecessary, but if the dev team feels they are too strong, I would encourage them to make sure these effects at least do something to a GL, even if the effect doesn't function at full strength; simply negating the effect entirely is frustrating and disappointing for players, and removes options for strategy and theorycrafting. So:
Fallen Bastila: Raid bosses and GLs affected by Corrupted Battle Meditation have -50% potency, instead of Force Bond simply having no effect.
Darth Malak: His anti-Sith-turn-meter-gain was a way of deliberately nerfing Palpatine teams so they couldn't counter Darth Revan, back when Darth Revan and Malak were the new hotness. I honestly would rather see this removed entirely than only prevented from affecting GLs (doing so would also function as a backdoor buff to Sith Assassin, who could probably use it). Don't feel strongly about it in any case, though I am amused that what was originally put there to enforce a P2P meta is now being nerfed, probably to enforce the P2P meta of Lord Vader.
General Grievous: Scrap this change entirely. Making this max health reduction not apply to GLs just seems wholly unnecessary. Given the skill's cooldown, if Grievous somehow survives long enough to apply this to a GL multiple times, that suggests that Grievous's player is strongly controlling the battle, in which case the max health reduction is probably serving the same anti-timeout purpose as GAS's max health reduction serves.
GAS: Described in detail above.
Thrawn: Using the raid boss effect on Galactic Legends is a terrible design decision. Fracture was designed when the Tank and the Rancor were the only raids, and speed reductions and turn meter removal were THE dominant strategies for getting high raid scores; in that environment, -50% speed reduction to a raid boss was still pretty good. Galactic Legends, on the other hand, have speeds which dramatically surpass any other characters (not to mention any raid boss), and a well-modded GL suffering -50% speed can still comfortably outspeed most characters, meaning over the relatively short duration of one Fracture, the results are going to be very disappointing - especially considering Rey, JMK and SLKR all have ways to prevent or punish TM removal. This is the worst-thought-out, most-poorly-implemented nerf in this entire list, and it's to one of the best kits that you've ever designed. My advice: Just don't. If you absolutely must nerf Fracture's effect on GLs, increase the speed reduction to something like -75%. Please consider that for new players, Thrawn is likely to be one of the first Legendary characters they acquire, and he and Vader are likely to be a new player's main options for even attempting to counter a Galactic Legend for a long time.
JKL: As I said above, I'm willing to wait to see how your proposed changes play out here before calling for changes. Repulse is definitely improved by this change; it remains to be seen if it's enough of a change to keep JKL (and by proxy, JML) where he ought to be relative to the GLs.
Moff Gideon: Changing Demoralize feels completely unnecessary, especially given that he was designed and implemented after GLs already existed. If it's necessary, I'd rather see Lord Vader made immune to Demoralized, tbh, even though I generally agree with CG that specific carve-outs like that aren't great design and lead to overly-long-and-wordy kits.
Baffling Trick: I don't see why this change is necessary. It's typically not that easy to get 3 stacks of Confusion to stick to a Galactic Legend, and then you still need to wait for them to Basic for it to do anything. But I don't feel terribly strongly about this one; with the loss of Ignore Defense, the -50% defense will hopefully be more valuable, and like I said: getting 3 stacks of Confusion on a GL is already not that easy, so the impact of this change on matches is likely to be pretty limited.
Lastly I will note that a lot of player anger about these proposed changes is that they seem more about "Making GLs unbeatable" and less about principles of better game design. That perception isn't helped by the fact that the only characters slated for nerfs here are ones which can currently threaten GLs' dominance; there's no mention made of Nihilus or Deathtrooper's cooldown increasing abilities, Traya's Isolate, Jango Fett's Conflagration, and probably others that have escaped me. I'm definitely not suggesting those need to be nerfed too - rather, I'm suggesting the opposite: that if there's room for those characters to stay as they are, these nerfs probably aren't as necessary as you seem convinced they are.
You can beat SLKR without GAS in a JML team and the extra damage from repulse should also help.
Another thing to consider (which may or may not happen): if Relic 9 is designed for tanks and for example is designed to increase protection in tanks by a significant amount, the amount of true damage the JML team will be doing might compensate for the nerf in damage his supporting cast does. If CG states they want to make GLs better, I don't see how/why they would also nerf one of them... Patience is warranted....
Yes, this could be true…but you have to acquire R9 to do so…at who knows the cost. Now I have to make an additional investment to make things whole? if this is the path all JML owners should get the all the materials needed for R9 to compensate.
Sometime in August
I agree that it would be nice if they shared more, but I don't think it would have had any effect on the response, it's just different words to say "for the future of the game"(which they said), but we will never know.
This is spot on. Why nerf characters when you could make the best ones stronger? CG could rebalance without **** off basically everyone. Just by releasing relic 9 they could create that effect. But instead, they have to take the low road. It doesn’t make sense.
As a communications professional, I feel they need to work on their presentation and strategy more. This was far too much information for most people to make sense of and has caused a ton of confusion. This could have easily been avoided with a more measured strategy. Also, get feedback from your users, act on it in a reasonable amount of time, and you’ll keep a lot of happy customers. Some basic PR would go a long way!
I hope you can learn from these mistakes and improve on your community relations. If not, you are risking the long term health of your product.
Stats at: swgoh.gg
Zeta: Have Zader, on deck: QGJ & R2
I agree with all of this except SLKR. You don't even need GAS in that fight; he is auto-targeted and stunned by SLKR right away and usually gets taken out anyway. Could swap him for anyone and it wouldn't matter.
Second, what does it matter if he gets to his ultimate? Both Lukes live through his ultimate anyway. I'm not sure what you're doing to end up with just JML vs SLKR. I've never seen that happen. In any case, just JKL vs SLKR is a win for Luke, and with JML with him it's no problem taking Kylo down. While they're nerfing Jedi's Will and that could be an issue, now that his special is doing 3x damage to GLs, it might be an argument for using that ability in this fight now and might help take him out pretty easily.
The only way for SLKR to target GAS is when JML doesn’t have taunt which means you’re talking about JKR lead without Wat - every other JML squad has taunt up.
Pretty much everything I thought has been said elsewhere, extensively and far more eloquently than I could manage.
So to reiterate the two biggest things (for me)… PLEASE look at how these changes (especially to GAS and JKL) will effect LSTB. I chose that route to go for GAS/JKL/JML for LSTB specifically and to have all that work suddenly for nothing would be heartrending. But accepting that you ARE making those changes to these characters, PLEASE don’t make LSTB even more impossible.
And R9? I would love to be excited for this. But I look at all the gear needed to G12 then relic a character and THEN all the gear needed to even R7 a character? It’s enough to bring a person to tears. Please, every other change you made would be so much easier to accept if the gear crunch wasn’t a constant attempt to climb up what’s essentially an avalanche.
I have actually had some especially stunningly terrible RNG in arena just the other day (no debuffs landed, lobster went a ton of times, SLK ulted, Inyak was sad) with JML losing to SLK one on one. my r8 JML vs the r7 SLK, both well modded, JML even had tank tech from Wat. I had started with JKR lead and everyone was killed after SLK's ult except JML. JML couldn't build up enough protection or do enough damage and eventually SLK killed him. JML could not on his own kill SLK.
Oh and if you run JML under JKR lead, with Wat, or even JML as the lead, bc of JML's taunt SLK can't touch Gen Sky so your Gen Sky is free to attack all he wants.
BUT, they are only getting nerfed against GLs, who still have four other non-GLs with them….which they are getting buffed against. So I’ve decided to hold out a little hope that JML won’t become as useless 😁
Also condolences to everyone without GLs and to the poor sods who occasionally have none but get match with GL owners in GAC.
@CG_SBCrumb_MINI I understand that you're not the one responsible for all of this, so this isn't directed at you, but it's just so frustrating to see that time and time again, the people in charge of this game has just ignored what we had to say just to make more money. Maybe that's not the case, I don't know what's going on on the other side of the mirror, but it definitely feels that way.
Devs drop bad news, players write thousands of posts… meanwhile Devs are on holiday for weeks, and give zero answer.
I'll try to explain. I get their point with the defense. But that is only a small part of the nerf.
The buff if see to stop the troopers as example. The community begged for changes to see to make him better for months after his release. If they were going to change him, it should have been back then. Not several months later after they said they weren't going to.
Basically they told the players the counter would be allowed and some of those players spent money to get the counter. Now they effectively nerf the counter a d only offer a refund back to r5. Seems kinda shady. If it was a problem, it should have been addressed swiftly.
The other thing is what does fracture have to do with the defense? Supposedly, the point was to make tanks viable. Well fracture doesn't affect that at all. I'm perfectly fine with any new GLs being immune to fracture or being treated as raid bosses. After all I don't expect thrawn to counter everything until the end of time. However, the GLs that have been out for months or years shouldn't be immune. Players built counters and potentially spent money on them. They should still work on the older GLs.
I propose the following changes
1. Replace the ignore defense with some added offense. Even for wat's weapon tech. Maybe 10% more offense or 20% (I haven't run the math). This should solve the defense problem while still letting the teams work the same. Same for gas and jkl. For the max health reduction. Just leave it and have future GLs immune to it but the current ones not immune.
2. See should have been buffed six months ago. Waiting for players to buy a counter and then buffing him is just wrong. At this point he should just be left alone. As a see owner, I don't mind the buff but it just isn't right.
3. Any changes of a GL acting as a raid boss should only apply to future GLs. This would keep counters to existing GLs intact but allow the new ones to not be vulnerable to the same counters. I'm ok with jmk getting this since he's still new. Now is the time to change him if they choose to. It may be slightly harder to confide it that way but not that much and it would be better for the game.
I think with these modifications, CG still accomplishes what they are trying to do without nerfing all th eff current counters.
GL are supposed to be on the same power level. At least very close to each other. So it’s either all of them or none with regards to the announced plans.
What’s funny is that they indirectly say that they’ve also intended to make GL’s beaten only by other GL’s. This whole mirage of defense and other nonsense was a very poor facade to mask their true intentions. They even said as much in their video. Nerfing specific toons and their specific abilities to make them able to counter GL’s is a red flag. Adding GL’a to raid boss exceptions for specific counter toons is another.
This RA overall was just a huge let down and a massive step back. I want to be excited about Maul. I want to be hyped for Lord Vader. I want to be hyped for a capital ship for BH’s. I want to look forward to these changes to conquest. However the massive nerfs to several characters, the insane and unreal requirements for new ships and characters, as well as the introduction of R9 to the game with zero alleviation of the gear crunch or changes to gear economy just makes me insanely glad I waited to whale out on JMK/Lord Vader.