• [2018/06/22]
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Characters Nerf XENOMORPH

I fight a node with Assassin Greed and Surgeon General with Valentine autoimmunity and wasn't able to doom them.
Yeah, but that was probably because after 30 seconds Surgeon General gives her teammates immunity. Autoimmune only gives immunity after a debuff has been put on. So it doesn't prevent Doom from being applied, as long as no other debuffs are applied before Doom.
 
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To illustrate my point about Xeno limiting design space, I don't think there's any node in Master Story mode you can't cheese with Xenomorph when she can be selected. Restrictions still do exist but anyone that owns a Xeno can breeze through the fights where she can be used.
I assume the devs probably had to keep Xenomorph in mind when designing Master difficulty and its restrictions though.

She is easily one of the least interactive variants in the game IMO.
 
Xenomorph doesn't invalidate too much stategies [...] Just use the catalyst autoimmune, problem solved.

My bad, the way I quoted @Fel I forgot to give enough context. It was referring to single player content, not rifts. But he just fixed that himself and expanded a bit (post above this one).

Like it or not, story nodes are about tailoring a team, sometimes from scratch, to take care of specific modifiers. Especially Master. If Xeno is allowed, AFAIK, it's always a no-brainer though. It's even worse than that since many modifiers literally don't matter, she does her thing and that's it, "you win". If Xeno is left as is, future master stories (Origin?) will be the same. Not much "space" to "design" challenging nodes. Myself, I like having challenges left. I'm still stuck on 2 nodes in Ascent for 100% and I'm enjoying getting closer and closer every passing day.

The issue is sort of similar in rift, ideally you'd want to pick to most fitting counter to the node you are facing, but when you default to Xeno you basically decide to ignore what your opponent crafted. And in many cases, it's easy. It doesn't bother me as much as for stories though. Especially if, as everyone seems to support, attacker and catalyst diversity becomes a thing.
 
You are fighting incorrectly if you are applying debuffs and not focusing doom to be the only debuff you land. Autoimmune does nothing to Xeno if you know how to set up safe throws and create distance with her dash attack to get 1-2 transmutes in before they dash back in.
I use Xenomorph for the raw power, doom is a nice debuffs but i beat my opponent before it expires or even without applying it 90% of the times.
Yeah, but that was probably because after 30 seconds Surgeon General gives her teammates immunity. Autoimmune only gives immunity after a debuff has been put on. So it doesn't prevent Doom from being applied, as long as no other debuffs are applied before Doom.
Nope, changed element way before the thirty seconds and Assassin's Greed got immunity, beat her, Surgeon general was the next fighter and also her got immunity instead of doom. I don't remember excactly who was the other fighter, maybe a Stand Out or a Love Crafted, anyway no one that was able to give immunity to the team.
 
Nope, changed element way before the thirty seconds and Assassin's Greed got immunity, beat her, Surgeon general was the next fighter and also her got immunity instead of doom. I don't remember excactly who was the other fighter, maybe a Stand Out or a Love Crafted, anyway no one that was able to give immunity to the team.

So you're saying that you transmuted to Dark element before 30s and instead of applying Doom, Assassin's Greed got immunity? And then the same thing happened to Surgeon General? You didn't apply another debuff to either of them prior to transmuting to Dark?

Autoimmune is: " % chance when suffering a DEBUFF to gain IMMUNITY for X seconds ". So Doom is the debuff, and immunity would come after the Doom. Immunity doesn't get rid of the debuffs the player has at that moment, just prevents them from getting any new ones. So I don't really see how what you are saying could have happened.
 
Look, I am not going to deal with people not giving a full story. I am one of the most avid players of Xenomorph, and I know you can Doom even against autoimmune. You are leaving out a crucial part of your fight @Starsmore and you're not convincing me that you didn't already debuff them before trying to go for doom.
 
@Starsmore you sure it’s not a Private Dick? I had totally forgotten about his SA and was like.. why isn’t Doom applying on him?

Otherwise, it’s like what everyone else is saying - autoimmune does not stop Doom.
 
Perhaps one way to modify Doom is that Xeno herself needs to stay in play. I abuse it myself ... She’d be less successful if she has to survive 30 seconds in boss node.

1) Agree with this idea. Removing doom when Xeno tags out will be a very minor nerf to Xeno and help stay true to her supposed glass cannon role (--withdrew my comment about Xeno being a get-out-of-jail-free-card--). Right now, she isn't a glass cannon because she can tag out immediately after inflicting doom and hide behind tanks. Doing fatal damage to all 3 tough defenders on a rift node from the safety of a benched position isn't that fair.

Furthermore, this makes it possible to swap out to a tanky Red Velvet to reliably inflict hex to counter the Xeno counters of Last Hope, Big Top, Bio-exorcist, Kill Joy etc. In the current meta, a Xeno, Red Velvet (also has chaos banish to remove lightweight, immune, laststand or other catalyst xeno counters), Surgeon General (to counter hexy time) team can kinda beat even counter-Xeno defenses easily without losing hp points. With the proposed changes of Xeno-tagging-out-cancels-doom, Xeno can still counter these counters by inflicting hex with bandwagon rushdown, but she'd have to gain meter and do it herself (and not simply tag-out and leave it to a tanky Red Velvet).

2) As others have noted, Xeno could become more balanced by limiting doom uses to once or twice. In general, Xeno should help break tough nodes, but should not be spammed for all 3 defenders on that node. One possibly easy way to effect this is to slightly increase the duration of doom from 30s to 40s. The effect of the slight duration makes it cost more rift score for each use of doom (10s delay = 20 points per use), and makes dangerous to try to doom for all 3 defenders as you could run out of time. Xeno players will have increased incentive to use her high damage stat and actively attack in tackling at least one of the defenders.

3) Gamma has noted that one unfair point is that Xeno-based attackers do not have to lose any hp points in tackling the hardest boss nodes while all other strategies need a lot more player skill to be active in attacking and completing the node while avoiding any mistakes / receiving any damage. An alternative to increasing duration of doom, is to have perhaps each application of doom will cost 25% hp from every team-mate. This will be similar to Bio-exorcist's SA and stay in line with the "dark power" theme, but inflict a rift points cost in terms of hp for usage of doom.
 
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Offensive diversity and catalyst diversity need to be a thing. I

I think this is the actual solution. Having a Xeno to crack open a hard armor node is ok since you still need RNGesus to smile on you. Using 3 with Sketchys to lol your way through an entire rift is not.
Besides, winning through triple Doom is not ideal: it not only takes forever resulting in less points, but Xeno is not a tank and getting a bb finish to coincide with the doom takes a bit of effort.

And while we're in the subject, I think the general defense nerf is a bigger problem in rifts.

Perhaps one way to modify Doom is that Xeno herself needs to stay in play. I abuse it myself but tagging out to tanks to wait out the doom is also problematic. She’d be less successful if she has to survive 30 seconds in boss node.

How about the debuff only ticking down when she's in play? that way you could tag her out if she's in danger but you won't get to cheese it out sitting behind Resonant Evil.
 
Xeno is a necessary evil. But Rift attacker diversity should be a thing, maybe.
Also to everyone who thinks Xeno is a "get out of jail free" card, I present to you Harlequin. And Jawbreaker. And Doublicious. And Summer Salt. And Silent Kill. And Surgeon General in the backline on all three major nodes, every time.
 
Besides, winning through triple Doom is not ideal: it not only takes forever resulting in less points, but Xeno is not a tank and getting a bb finish to coincide with the doom takes a bit of effort.

People usually do triple doom by dooming every defender in turn through using take-outs, then swapping to a tank or Red Velvet if hex is needed. This is relatively efficient because take-outs give a good 3-5 seconds of free transmuting from the delay of tagging in and the fact is that the AI coming in after a take-out does not play aggressively the first 2-3 seconds after coming in. Also, it seems like if u get to dark ele even before next defender enters the screen, doom is still applied. Just equipping two take-outs on Xeno could quickly doom all three defenders (of course assuming RNGesus is reasonable, giving dark ele every 5th transmute and not after 30 transmutes). Then it is just a turtle game with a tank with meter gain, and you can reliably get blockbuster bonus via a bb3 when doom expires on final defender.

How about the debuff only ticking down when she's in play? that way you could tag her out if she's in danger but you won't get to cheese it out sitting behind Resonant Evil.

Great idea.

Another thing I was wondering is why doom does not seem to do damage, but instead sets hp to zero. I say this because I think someone said doom goes through invincibility. If doom did the defenders max hp in damage upon expiry, then at least damage reflect options (i.e. dreadlocks) could possibly inflict some cost for using doom, but not counter it.
 
Everyone needs to keep in mind Doom got a sizeable nerf with the changes to stats. The Resistant stat can resist doom up to a 50% chance if you invest (100% now for PD). It also helps that there are increasing options which either punish you for playing too defensively or punish you for not choosing characters that can end the fight quicker.

Xeno needed a nerf and in my opinion she got it with the stat changes (You notice it a lot on Windstalker since her Doom SA gets negated randomly by the resistant stat).
 
just my humble opinion, but I still don't feel the introduction of resistance substat is a nerf to Xenomorph. I think Xenomorph users will definitely max out accuracy to nullify any resistance the defenders will get.

If the problem is that Xenomorph can triple doom her way through defense nodes, why would sacrificing 50 substat points into accuracy be a huge disadvantage to Xeno's moveset? you could go hp, def, accuracy. You already have SG support to semi-block hexy time. Granted, this is assuming Xeno does not do standard attack and thus does not really need that attk/piercing substat, but I think the premise of the original post is that the ability for Xeno to triple doom her way (of course RNG dependent) through nodes is the problem that could be a bit further *discouraged*.

I know top d1 players may not use Xeno due to the RNG aspect and the fact that there are many other stronger attackers who could finish a boss node in 1min 30s (even more so with piercing). But that solution to "is Xeno OP?" is then specifically not by nerfing Xeno per se but by making a lot of other attackers stronger (summer salt is pretty strong, harle/toad too, and even more so if their 30 to 40k special moves ignore armor and defense through piercing).

I think the original post was lamenting that his/her toughest boss node was almost always cleared in one try easily by Xeno (original post was before substat update). So in that aspect, I think this update didnt solve that specific complaint for Xeno, but just made it that other characters could also just be as strong as Xeno ...
 
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