So here are some of the changes that has been implemented last week to fix the special damage bug on the following characters:
- Count Dooku's "Force Lightning"
- Dathcha's "Scout Instincts"
- Eeth Koth's "Force Push"
- General Veer's "Ruthless Assault"
- Grand Moff Tarkin's "Ultimate Firepower"
- Jawa's "Stun Suprise"
- IG-100 MagnaGuard's "Disruption"
- Mace Windu's "Smite"
- Night Sister Acolyte's "Sacrificial Magicks"
- Plo Koon's "Force Judgment"
- Quigon Jinn's "Humbling Blow" and "Harmonious Assault"
Here are some of the characters that I've been testing with:
6 Stars General Veer, Plo Koon, Mace Windu, and 5 Star Count Dooku and Qui-Gon Jinn.
All at level 60, with same gear level and level 3 skills, tested with leader that does not affect damage/crit damage.
Let's start with AOE damage:
Plo Koon's AOE special and General Veer's provide utility: Veer's AOE has 25% to cause ability block and Plo Koon's has 25% chance to cause offense down with his AOE.
The difference between these 2 skills is that Plo Koon's special does about 25% less damage than Veer's. Now Plo Koon does have 227 less Special Damage than Veer, but many characters with lower special damage are doing higher damage as we will see in later section of this post.
Comparing characters with single target special attack, Mace Windu, Dooku and QGJ, Dooku is the obvious winner. His special, Force lightning, has 65% chance to stun a target (40% on primary target and 25% on random target), chance of stun is increased to 90% if the target is a Jedi. You would think with all these bonuses his damage would be lower to prevent him from being OP, but that's not the case. With only 1292 special damage, Dooku's lightning is dealing roughly 3500k damage non crit. He is doing the highest amount of damage among the 3 characters yet he has the lowest stats. (See how stats is not really the issue here?) If you want to argue that Force lightning should be stronger due to lore accuracy, let's take a look at the other character, Mace Windu.
Mace Windu, the greatest swordsman of his time. He's a lot better after the damage fix, but I would argue that he still belongs in low-mid tier instead of a top tier character that he should be. Starting with his special attack, Smite, it deals special damage and remove all positive status effects. On paper it is already a lot less powerful than Dooku's Force Lightning, and it's worse in an actual PVP match. Smite's damage is at least a 1000 lower than Dooku's Force Lightning despite Mace has over 276 higher special damage than Dooku. Shouldn't an ability that provides less contribution to team fight, used by a stronger character by all counts, with stats, deal higher damage instead?
A bit more on Mace Windu. His normal attack gives 45% chance for defense up and gains 50% damage if Mace is affected by Defense up. In current meta, where entire team gets wipe in 2 turns from AOE and defensive stats being obsolete, it would be an miracle if Mace gets to attack once with defense up. (I used him in my pvp team for days and he did terribly even with defense up)
Lastly, Qui-Gon Jinn. He's got the stats of a glass canon. At 5 stars, level 60 with max gears, he has 1739 Special damage, 1032 Physical damage, 137 speed, 30 armor penetration, 22 resistance penetration, 6956 HP, and 82 health. I am ignoring the damage of his first special, Harmonious Assault for now since it provides an guaranteed assist from an ally and I need to work on my Fives to get a fair comparison. But base on these stats, his second special, the single target Humbling Blow, should be doing enormous amount of damage. But what I got was a low 2k non-crit hit when Dooku was doing 3500ish damage with his lightning. Looking a little deeper, Humbling Blow provides the same utility as Mace Windu's Smite: Remove all positive status effects. Is this the reason why they are doing lower damage?
It's been a little over a week since the balance patch came out. And as I test out more characters and combinations, the worse place LS characters (Jedi specifically) seem to be in. I hope the devs take a deeper look into these stats imbalances and make appropriate adjustments for defensive stats and damage for the Jedis.
