I want to open a formal discussion here about a topic regarding the entire player base. There is currently a sense of powercreep in this game, and i want to open a discussion about this, in order to show different perspectives on this matter, and afterwards provide a possible, realistic solution.
Title 1 - Power creep
I will explain what the term ‘powercreep’ is:
Powercreep is when, in our case, heroes have to be more powerful after each release to be successful.
Powercreep may be created for various reasons. But, for Hero Hunters the following case seems to be the reason.
When extreme was released there became a need for stronger teams. and now we have a constant meta for this. Back in the days meta shifted every few months because extreme did not require certain heroes to be that strong. It was pvp which needed constant balancing which kept it interesting and not so monotonous as it is now.
After every district the amount of bars, and especially levels in increased drastically. Extreme is the definite cause of when and why powercreep came.
Extreme is a necessity to grow in the later stages of the game, so naturally a solution has to be made in order for players to progress.
Now, they could have increased the level cap or added bars. But, extreme missions also grow in numbers of heroes. With that the overwhelming amount of skills activated in the field. So just raising the level cap doesn’t solve it as the biggest issue stays.
Another solution would be to nerf extreme, which happened, it was good, although it didn’t fix the scaling on the higher stages, meaning the same issue is still present in many missions. Many heroes have been replaced by fodder (aka small troops) But on some others nothing has changed. So even with how some higher missions are easier it simply just created different roadblocks. It is easier, yes, but it did not solve the entire issue.
The last solution, which was the go-to, was creating much more powerful, compact heroes.
Now, there are several factors to determine what hero is powerful. But in a majority of cases it is about how much control they have over the battlefield or how overwhelming a certain aspect is. I can explain this in depth, but the depth is not relative information in this topic. The more shallow explanation is.
A hero with a lot of control simply has a high, direct impact on the outcome of the mission. It can often be referred to as meta in our case. Think of Voltage’s instant team stun, Verrill team wiping with one ability, Fiber providing a partial invulnerability.
Now, ever since Serial and Fiber dropped we saw an increase in heroes with much higher base stats. Now, many do not see the consequence of this, but i will explain to you exactly how this is one of the biggest issues we have.
What i will show here is not accurate to numbers, but it is in truth. This is merely a semi accurate example based on what is in the game.
We have Artemis. Artemis was known since the creation of this game to be the highest damage per shot hero. She deals an estimate of 300K base damage against a mech hero. She has 714K HP at max level.
Artemis her bronze is basically a spread of her usual damage across 3 heroes. Her silver is a mark that increases damage slightly. Her gold is an occasional, minor buff on her base attack, and her platinum invisibility and a minor HP boost.
Her kit is straightforward, and simple, there is not much to it, she is entirely focused on her base weapon and a small amount of self sustain, her sole purpose, to deal a lot of damage with her arrows.
Now we have Quasary. This is what is so crazy.
Quasary’s bronze makes two heroes share damage, and can possibly even negate shields.
Her silver is a 12 second long duration where her basic attacks deal extra damage, stagger or stun. She will generate shields with that are equal with her base damage
Her gold gives a major buff to anyone who owns a shield. This is massive healing per second, fire rate, reload rate and a damage buff. She also will now heal allies when she shoots someone affected by that bronze.
She has a platinum that gives her passive shields that keep stacking, she also has a literal equal to a revive with how she gives a shield equal to two times her base health when an ally is taking too much damage.
All in all, there are two things to take from this.
One, she has WAY more utility, it is much more consistent. She has shields, healing, buffs, debuffs and a life saving ability. And well, she is a support
And here is where my point comes. I mentioned that Artemis has 714K base HP, and she deals 300K damage per arrow and her entire kit is mostly based on her arrows. Not to forget that she has a 2 second reload between them.
Quasary has 1.6 -1.7 million HP at max level. That is over twice
But, Quasary also has equal base damage to Artemis, along with no need to reload for 10 arrows, meaning she can shoot double the arrows per second Artemis can at the same damage.
There is a huge difference here in not just how much utility there is packed in their kits, but also a huge difference in their base stats. A support hero such as Quasary can perform nearly all roles incredibly well and overtake most old heroes their entire purpose into just a single ability. And this support hero deals more damage than a damage oriented hero that is rare with her 7 star status.
Now, as an extra to this, 1,6 million HP is nearly as much HP as an older tank has. Callidus, a hero designed specifically to soak up damage, has less max HP than Quasary
Now with this example of the issue i hope i have shown what exactly powercreep is. Not all heroes are as drastic in comparison, but this is merely an example. Reminder. The point of this topic is not to gravitate towards nerfing Quasary.
Now here is another overseen problem that is partially discussed here. Every new hero, every recently buffed hero gets a much larger damage stat than HP stat. This seems minor, who cares if one support has a bit more damage. I kid you not, you can run some full supportive team without an official DPS and still output more damage than one with two official old DPS.
On the grand scheme it makes tanks useless. Going up in the levels, especially at ruby, you’ll come to see that damage, overtuned abilities and CC is the only important matter, and base damage is so high that a tank is merely seen used for cover breaking, as quite frankly the tankiness is a very minor inconvenience at best, even for heroes oriented around this.
On ruby these examples are drastically worse, as ‘doing damage’ outright makes anyone with fast fire rate explode with damage output.
I can rant all day about this. I am open for a discussion regarding this, but I prefer to shift the attention to the solution i am proposing here.
Step 1 -Repurposing tanks.
I will provide a number, and the second number behind it is for heroes buffed and created ever since DECA’s ownership.
Increase the base health of all frontliners with ‘Tanked up’ to 140% (1,40 increase)
115% (1,15x increase)
Increase their base armor to 250% (2.5x increase)
175% (1,75x increase)
increase the armor buff from their ‘tanked up’ skills to 200% (Counts for all)
To explain the reasoning behind this.
Armor is an aspect in damage reducement, which is important for a tank. However, with how low armor is in general it is barely notable. Implementing the increase in armor also serves purpose to armor breakers as an actual tank destroyer. Tank generally do not excel at damage and have to make up for that in defensive stats or utility. Most tanks do not live up to this.
Not to forget that the minor 4K armor increase in the ruby does not balance it out for the DPS their immaculate increase in damage with ‘doing damage’.
The increase in HP will separate the tanks from the rest.
It seems crazy large. But you have to consider a DPS back in the day took more than 3 seconds to kill even a squishy healer. Now in these times i have seen buffed healers deal enough damage to obliterate tanks in less. I can name examples, but again, it is not the focus of this subject, i’d like to know your feedback on this change.
Step 2 - Balancing DPS
Every ‘doing damage’ hero will receive a 30% reducement on their base damage and a 20% reducement on their ‘doing damage’ skill.
In return, their abilities and passives will deal 20% damage in return. I think base damage just outright ruins the general purpose of abilities in DPS.
Every ‘supported’ hero receives a 35% reducement in their base damage, and receive 30% skill strength in return.
Step 3 - Hero class passives
I have a link to a document here since the size is large and i want as much space as i can.
To summarize, each category of hero gets a certain passive buff, giving more creativity and allowing more diversity among teams. It isn’t neccesary. But it might breathe life into team creation.
Step 4 - controversial rebalancing.
In my own opinion there are heroes right now that have to be taken out of those classes and changed individually.
I have played at every and each level. And i honestly think that the changes i suggested would fix platinum play, but it won’t fix ruby play. These changes are specifically meant for ruby play. And most of these are not even affected by the changes.
Voltage (unaffected by most) - Reduce base damage by 30%
Voltage now only stuns enemies with passive stacks applied to them. This still allows incredibly fast stuns but with this Voltage isn’t just a hero meant for the stun only. I think Voltage deserves better with how well she can be played by strategically applying stacks.
Quasary - (unaffected by most)
bronze skill now distributes 70% of damage.
Platinum skill duration decreased to 4 seconds.
Base damage decreased by 30%. This is because she is not affected by the changes as she is a ‘tactician’.
First of all, the platinum will not be weaker, just less obnoxious in pvp. Shorter cooldown means the cooldown between shields starts quicker. You still get saved as it is intended for.
The bronze just doesn’t delete two heroes for one. Let me remind you that she, as a support class should not be able to kill two enemies that easily along with all the CC, healing, Support and buffs she gives and has. Be real and ask yourself if everything she has is just too much. If all of her healing and support would be much less than i see no problem in her being a DPS buffer with this, but right now this just seems like a too overpowered ability.
Verrill - (affected)
Reduce base damage by 40%. But, increase gold and silver damage boost by the same In theory this changes nothing to the final damage output of this ability, but it fits the character more with the ramp up damage and it allows for counterplay at the least. Breaking the shield and staggering early prevents decimation.
Fix the platinum shield. Currently there is a bug where even when the shield is gone he cleanses himself. This is not intended as the ability clearly states the shield cleanses him.
Now, as a last reminder. Extreme has been nerfed. These characters will still be incredibly good and versatile, they are not mandatory to complete it and will still be relevant to extreme. There is no reason why these cannot be touched only for the sake of someone’s ego who can’t handle their character be nerfed. It is selfish if you cannot handle an overpowered character being nerfed as it a problem for the experience of other players. My favorite hero is Odachi and Pris at the moment. Odachi would also be majorly affected by these changes, and if he were to need a nerf because he is too good i would accept it like anyone should for the sake of other’s their fun.
I shouldn’t have to explain how this is selfish. As i said, they will still be relevant and good like every hero will be eventually.
Step 5 - extreme balancing?
What happened to the biggest roadblocks was good. But extreme is in no way an achievement to beat nowadays. That’s okay, as there will be such difficult missions again in the future.
I think extreme past district 6 should be for ruby players only. This is kind of a thing already, however, i think 3-10 is too high scaled for non rubies. I would plainly suggest replacing only a few heroes in 3-10 wave 1 and 2 with fodder and reducing the scaling in district 3 by a bit. That is all really.
I could argue to reduce scaling on every mission to make it more doable with older characters. But to be real, extreme cannot be perfect like this, it will either be too easy or impossible. It is either dying brutally or sweeping the floor with them.
I will soon be creating a post where i discuss some potential gamemodes, one which could be what extreme should have been. This will be the next issue i will discuss, which is the lack of diverse consistent gamemodes. This will be followed by a revamp of the daily objectives and more. Soon more on this.
Thank you for reading, i hope to see your (respectful and constructive) feedback/opinions in the comments.