Offensive vs. Defensive Abilities

Unknown

Ok, this thread is partially personal suggestions for improvement/future-dev, but I'm posting it here becuse I think it's a topic that warrants discussion... In particular:

Would you like to see more (useful) defensive abilities? If so, of what nature? Can the current abilities be tweaked?

My comments on this topic:

1. Defensive abilities should (with perhaps the exception of a high-return healing) not cost a ton of AP (*cough* IW yellow). High AP abilities should be reserved for huge damage offensive. No matter how great the defense, the fact is the match is usually over (or squishy team members who need the defense are already downed) by the time the AP is collected.

Consider a hypothetical defensive skill: invulnerability for 10 turns (25 AP). Great defense, right? ...but would anyone actually focus on collecting for it at the expense of other offensive skills? I wouldn't...
Whereas a hypothetical high AP offensive: Down all opponents (25 AP)... This might be worth shooting for...

2. Defensive skills that mitigation percentage of damage from attack skills.
I'd like to see a (low AP) defensive skill that mitigates either all or a percentage of damage from an opponent attack skill.
I think this may have been suggested in another thread, but it's a great idea:
Skill that places protect tiles. If there are more than X number on the board, any opponent abilitiy damage is reduced by Y% (or, if a powerful character (ProfX?), nullified completely).

This would lead to some interesting gameplay. The defensive player would seek to maintain the threshold number of defensive tiles on the board, whereas the offensive player must first get rid of the tiles before unleashing their attack (or, in a bind, settle for reduced effect)...

Unknown

I agree, this is something that is greatly missing imo. I think Spidey and Bullseye defensives are on the right track though.

Dayv

Another interesting defensive ability might be something that increases the cost of enemy powers, either passively or through creation of special tiles. This would be a neat ability to add to a playable character or to a Sentinel class of PvE opponents.

Unknown

I'd like to see some characters that provide damage protection for short amounts of time.
IW would have been a perfect character to provide a short-term 50%-75% protection from all damage. It adds another layer of strategy in trying to figure out when to lay down that damage protection to shield you from an incoming attack.


In fact, I wish (most) damage mitigation was percentage based and not a fixed number. It scales better and it's much easier to wrap your mind around just how effective it will be.

That goes for environmental tiles too. The healing/self-inflicted damage should be percentage based.

Unknown

This game needs tanks.

Some examples:

Active tank skill: 3 AP - Steps to the front and reduces damage of the next turn's attacks by 100 + 10...40%.

Passive tank skill: Whenever a teamate would take >10% damage, you take that damage instead and reduce damage by 30%. You are stunned for 5...1 turns.

Unknown

Definitely will be good - but i guess this will be taken note into new characters - so that the current characters will not be too overpowered with both attack / defensive being used.

I guess Dev will be taking notes for future characters installed.

Unknown

How about this. Whenever an opponent hits for more than 10% of remaining team health, the shot is deflected causing 33% damage to each teammate. Level 2-5 is -2% damage so at level 5, it is 25% damage to each teammate. Sounds like a telekinesis power.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

In fact, I wish (most) damage mitigation was percentage based and not a fixed number. It scales better and it's much easier to wrap your mind around just how effective it will be.

This is key I think. Presently, at higher levels, defensive tiles can be largely ignored. When Thor's laying down a Thunder Strike, it doesn't matter how many protect tiles Bullseye's layed down...he's done for.

If, on the other hand, the protect tiles did percent protection, the aggressor might think about dealing with the protect tiles first before unleashing their attack...

It would also ensure the protection is still useful in events with buffed characters. Presently, protect tiles are a joke in buffed events...

Unknown

This has been talked about in the past, but to be honest, in the current meta, defense doesn't seem to be that big of a problem at the higher end. Some of the stronger characters in the game, namely Ragnarok and arguably Iron Man Model 40, have high "defense" because they have tons of health at higher levels. In a tourney situation, it's often a good idea to avoid fighting these characters because it takes so dang long to whittle all that health down to zero.

If anything, what the meta is starting to need is the ability to counter high-health characters. At some point, D3P has to start adding characters that are as tanky, or tankier, than Rag or Model 40...otherwise, people will play 115 Rags and 141 Model 40s forever. And I doubt D3P wants that...

Also, some great suggestions in this post, but not to be "that guy" (too late)...this kind of thread should really go in Suggestions & Feedback. At least a couple of mine have been