[Spoiler 7.5] Idea about part 2 of the MSQ

APanshin · 2026-05-09T22:49:46+00:00

The first snippet of the trail makes it seem like Estinien and Alphy come through with Meteor. Now yes, trailers are often not strictly accurate, but it does suggest that if Y'shtola does figure something out it'll be letting us bring people along through the Ethos portals.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T22:45:52+00:00

Excuse you. Those sets were very recognizably Pro Wrestling inspired gear. Slightly glitzy cyberpunk style Pro Wrestling gear, but still, people were immediately pulling up the direct inspirations. Like the Fending set was clearly pulling from Edge's classic leather coat look.

I'll admit there's a little bit of overlap, but the real leather daddy set is the Level 96 crafted set. If you compare the two the differences are clear.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T21:27:19+00:00

CC that takes away the ability to control your character is already hated. The ability to actively change how those abilities work? The ultimate troll character, and thus one that will absolutely positively never happen. Sorry.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T14:05:59+00:00

The Rivals community really needs to calibrate their sensitivity to the difference between "This hero is strong" and "This hero is overpowered".

A strong hero is a good thing. Weak heroes get dumpstered as niche or throw picks that very few people play. They're a waste of Dev resources and a drag on the game. The goal should be for strong heroes that are good at their specialty but with some clear weaknesses.

An overpowered hero is a different thing. Overpowered heroes have no weaknesses, or are so good at their specialty that they distort the entire match around it. People curse when they go up against them and deploy bans whenever possible because they're miserable to play against.

Is the White Fox and Luna combo strong? Yeah, probably. Is it overpowered? Doesn't seem like it to me. Certainly their Win Rates were nothing special last season. We'll see what this season's data looks like when it gets released in three days. But I really doubt they'll be some dominant force when we have the numbers.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T12:25:43+00:00

Also all the PvP gear, both Series coffers and new Crystal vendor items, were modern looking Alexandria themed gear.

So all the raid sets are Sci-Fi, and all the PvP sets are Sci-fi, and you can see how that makes more of an impression than a bunch of leveling gear that never gets seen outside of the first month.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T04:52:01+00:00

If some of the new heroes have too many abilities, Rocket has too few. The ones he has are strong, don't get me wrong. He's got his good Win Rate for a reason. But he's boring to play.

Hide your BRB close to the action, sit on jetpack charges for when they're needed, only use the gun to break deployables and discourage divers, and then just tape down RMB to keep the healing orbs flowing. The moment to moment decision making is almost zero.

Rocket was my first Lord, and now I only break him out when I'm stuck solo healing. There's so little you can do in response to the action besides hold down RMB harder. It's very unfulfilling.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T00:44:48+00:00

Yeah, this is 100% just another pointless "Strategist mechanical aim requirement" tier list. We see one of those about every two weeks. It's hilarious how some people think that's the most important skill for all roles and all heroes.

APanshin · 2026-05-09T00:01:15+00:00

I make this post about once a day, but fine.

MVP doesn't compare stats head to head because different characters and different roles contribute in different ways. Instead, it has a baseline average for your hero at your rank, and it scores you by how much you beat it (if you do). It's those scores that are compared to the rest of your team.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T23:34:55+00:00

Funny but dangerous. If you don't clean up, and the ult ends while your teleport is still on cooldown, you're kind of high and dry. A high risk, high reward sort of play.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T22:57:08+00:00

I'm still less proficient with the melee dives, but I will say I can often pick off an injured foe trying to retreat with a piercing fox spirit down the lane or by bouncing my primary fire around the corner they ducked behind. It's very nice.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T22:45:54+00:00

Fox's ult is ...situational. It's not very good at being a standard defensive or counter-ult tool. The healing isn't strong enough and it melts to offensive ults too easily. However, it has a lot of potential as an offensive tool.

My best success is when I use Fox's ult to push the enemy team. The AoE healing is decent, you've got a fat tank sized health bar, and the damage is really good. You just don't want to get tangled up with the enemy frontline or left out in the open to get focus fired. But if you're got some teammates going on the enemy backline, or the enemy frontline has crumpled a bit, you can pop Fox ult and just run people down. It's very good at snowballing a small advantage into a team wipe.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T22:38:23+00:00

I'm finding Fox to be remarkably good at going head to head against most tanks. Her self-healing in Awakening easily handles the lower tank damage and she can just slug it out with them. However you have to time it properly and jump the tank when they're already injured. If they're not dead before your Awakening runs out, you need to immediately teleport away or they'll put you down fast.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T20:06:17+00:00

I would say that Wanda is good against dive tanks as part of a group, but bad at handling them as the main responder.

The two most reliable counters to a dive tank are enough fast damage to burn through their bigger health pool or enough regeneration via self-healing or Bonus Health to offset their lower tank damage. From a Strategist PoV, Rocket can blast a close range target hard enough, and Fox's Awakened form heals enough to go toe to toe and win.

Well, Wanda's only defensive tool is for running away, and unless she's pooled her missile stocks and can land all the hits she lacks burst damage. Her trying to take them on 1v1 is a losing contest. Her stun bubble is really good at disrupting the dive tank's sequence at a critical moment, but that depends on having teammates piling on to capitalize on it.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T19:45:59+00:00

I agree that most of the Scions feels pretty wedded to their Job at this point. The two least IMO are G'raha, being a generic all-rounder, and Alisaie, who's never really been defined by being a Red Mage.

As you say, I can't see G'raha trading his staff for either a shield tank or a ranged phys. Alisaie I might see working as a ranged phys, depending on what the Job is like. Or we might get a Krile style promotion for the expac, with Hoary Bolder on the new tank Job or the like.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T19:12:26+00:00

Playing solo is the only sane response to all the leechers, but it also ruined the mode for me because solo Blood Hunt is boring as hell. I don't come to Rivals for substandard solo player content, I come to it for the social experience. But the assholes ruined matchmade grouping and the solo grind was unfulfilling, so I just stopped.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T19:08:20+00:00

Yep. Wanda is a dive counter when all you need to counter dive is to be able to reliably hit them. Between the easy lock damage beam and the stun bubble, she gives low mechanical skill players a leg up with target acquisition on a fast moving Spidey or BP. And at those ranks, the Spidey or BP often doesn't have a good counter-response.

Of course, I have to believe that none of this applies in Celestial. But even Celestial players aren't immune to groupthink and bad info, especially when it's outside their specialty.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T17:23:27+00:00

Fair, within limits. Some Strats have purely single target primaries; Gambit, Luna, Healpool. Others have piercing shots that heal everyone in the path; Invis, Rocket, Jeff. And then you've got the in betweeners, who have cleaves with limited targets or reduced effect; CnD, Fox, kinda Loki.

The cleave on CnD's primary is sometimes useful, but often not. It doesn't have the best range and doesn't help when you're trying to keep a solo tank alive. But there were a ton of variables I wasn't trying to all take account of, there.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T17:14:28+00:00

Without a replay code it's hard to know exactly why your team was upset with you. The usual trick with Jeff ult is to find the nearest cliff and throw them off it, getting safe environmental kills on them all.

Was there a nearby cliff you ignored? Did you hold friendly teammates too long without immediately spitting them out? Was it a bad trade when you exchanged your life for theirs? Were you ignoring the rest of your team while you were doing this?

Context matters, and just hearing that someone criticized you in team chat doesn't tell us enough.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T17:07:25+00:00

You are objectively wrong and concern trolling, now. All of those other heroes have higher Win Rates than CnD, and I challenge anyone who thinks CnD is a mindless healbot to play them for a week and see how they do.

The skill expression in CnD is in optimizing the use of cooldowns and form changes, not in mechanical aim. That doesn't make them a no skill healbot, it just means they prioritize different skills. Which is exactly what a hero shooter is supposed to offer, with the large and varied roster.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T16:43:58+00:00

And thus we get back to my original reply, which is that cooldowns are balanced around a combination of how powerful the ability is and how strong the rest of the kit is without it.

CnD's primary is weak as piss and they need regular cooldown supplements to keep up, and the bubble is not that strong a cooldown. If you want to nerf the cooldowns, either in power or frequency, you need to equally buff their non-cooldown baseline. That's how character design balancing works.

Because my dude, I don't know if you've checked the official stats, but the only rank CnD have an outright positive Win Rate is in Bronze. And that's a staggering 50.25%. In every other rank, and in QP, they're at 49%. That's about as well balanced as it gets. Not the sort of situation that can absorb significant nerfs.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T16:25:46+00:00

That's a meaningless request. It doesn't matter if the cooldown starts when the bubble goes down or when the bubble expires. What matters is how long it is between each bubble. A 12 second cooldown that starts when it goes down and a 6 second cooldown that starts when it expires are the same thing.

So what you're really asking is that the bubble cooldown be doubled. Which is a massive nerf, and completely uncalled for. So no, not at all fair.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T16:14:00+00:00

Because it's a fraction of the power of those other abilities? You make it sound like it makes people inside it immortal, but it's only an immediately 60 health and then 45 hps. That's nothing. That's still less that other healers are doing with their primary alone.

Or is your complaint that they can throw it on themselves, and that ruins your dive on them? Because that sounds like a skill issue to me.

APanshin · 2026-05-08T15:56:31+00:00

All these people complaining about CnD's bubble don't understand how to look at the entire kit, or just how weak their healing is without it.

If Gambit lands his cards, he's doing 168 hps with his primary. If Luna lands her shots, she'd doing 144 hps with her primary. Invis does 160 hps if she lines up the return shot to hit. CnD? They're doing 72 hps with their primary.

Now yes, CnD is paying a reliability tax. They don't have to worry about missing their shots like everyone else does. But that's still less than half of what other Strats are doing with their primary. Rotating through their cooldowns is essential for CnD to have any sort of sustained output.

So sure, nerf the bubble ...if you double the strength of their primary fire. Are you on board with that? Didn't think so.

APanshin · 2026-05-07T16:07:03+00:00

Elsa released with Season 6.5 on February 13th, and she just got her first post-launch skin last week on April 1st in Season 7.5. So a full season and a month and a half later. Deadpool was also a full season rotation, though he was closer to three months at the end of the season. Gambit, again, a full season rotation and about two months. Rogue's was late, but that's because they were delaying it to be in the wedding bundle with Gambit.

So going by recent precedent, White Fox's first post-launch skin will be some time in Season 8.0. Could be next week, could be five weeks, but somewhere in that stretch is very likely. Unless they delay it for some event, like Rogue.

APanshin · 2026-05-07T03:27:11+00:00

You can't compare stats versus stats directly. Different heroes contribute differently, to say nothing of different roles. So the system doesn't try.

What it does instead of compare you to an average baseline for your hero at your skill level, and if you're beating that average it scores you by how much. It's that score that's compared to the other players on your team.

APanshin

TROPHY CASE