6.4 Predictions, Hopes, Suggestions?

[Goofball]

6.3 Dropped fairly recently and it’s definitely a bigger one than the previous.

My initial impression was a level of excitement, as many variants on paper were being improved and Big Band has finally (!!) been reworked.

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to play with it, I feel a bit more…underwhelmed, unfortunately. A lot of the variants that seemed like they were shaping up to be good on paper, are somewhere between meh and disappointing.

Take A Break Relics got taken away for seemingly no real reason? (Sidebar: they made it seem like we’d hold onto it until the “next update” just to take it away not even 3 days later through a bug fix/mini “update”. Crazy.) Throughout the last few years, it seems as if SGM is slowly taking after other games where it’s “grind-locking” previously freely/easier accessible rewards. (I.E. Locking PFs, Limiting Dailies through Tickets, etc.) and that’s a bit…suspicious.

Big Band rework is cool, but most big band attackers except maybe Wario aren’t that good, so who’s really taking advantage of his more consistent, improved combo-ability?

Heavy Handed somehow ended up unchanged.

Star Spangled isn’t really good on DEF or ATK.

Time Thief has to have gotten the worst “buff” ever.

Materia Girl isn’t super consistent unless you HARD invest into Accuracy, Haste seems redundant when she’s already gaining BB passively through SA (+ chances are if you’re investing into accuracy, you’d also invest in meter gain as your multi-hit BBs are gonna be what fuel her Star Power).

Tidal Traveler still isn’t really worth playing.


Big Top is still Big Top.

Tomb N Gloom is cool, but Wither (a stackable debuff btw) is really rough next to Curse and Hex.

Private Dick is a bit awkward. In a meta where you’re mostly fighting against reflect damage and buff gainers, his resistance to debuffs doesn’t find itself being too useful often.

At least Hellcat is better, Ultraviolent is finally good, Heart of Darkness got buffed and the demon child Death Wish got smacked with the nerf hammer.

Preamble Aside: Is there anything you’d like to see in the next patch? Any new buffs, nerfs, changes?

Doubt any reworks are happening anytime soon again, but I’ll throw some of my hopes for the next patch.

Buffs:

Heavy Handed
Brain Freeze
Criminal Mind
Time Thief…for real this time
Chameleon Twist
Dragon Brawler (pls actually give him a Yamcha quote)
Hack N’Splash
Parasitic Weave
Lapis Luxury
Terror Byte
Scare Giver (*)
Vintage Virtuoso
Meow & Furever
High Ruler (ATK stat boost, her SA is fine)
The Worse Jawbreaker Rainbow Blight
Rock Star
All Elemental Exclusives
Wildcard
Dead of Winter
Octoplasm (+arguably most Maries)
Last Hope
Feathered Edges
Wrestler X
Thrill Shrieker
Hype Man
Ms. Trial
Untouchable
Puddle Pirate
Triple Threat
Shadow Ops
Prism Plumage
Galactic Glamour
Number One
Dead Heat
Blue Bomber
Myst Match
Temple Tyrant
No Egrets
Nyanotech
Nearly Departed

Also silently but not so silently still gonna ask to change Inner Pieces’ wind SA to change from Regen into Miasma.

Changes:

Removal/Rework of “Hitting a Dashing Opponent” and “Well Timed Block”

Shard Exchanges not costing 5,000 Diamond Shards (5 Diamond Relics!!!)

Converting Diamonds giving better rewards

Better solutions to having multiple dupes

Having a better way to interact with Movesets. Coming across a team with all maxed Diamonds just for the team to have 0 moves shows that there’s a weird thing going on in which players have a concentrated group of maxed out moves (Gold moves INDIVIDUALLY cost nearly the same amount a gold character’s Skill Tree takes to max) is kinda lame even if I collect free points from the ez clap.

 

[MDude]

Did .... did you really ask for a buff on Thrill and Hype Man??

 

[Goofball]

Did .... did you really ask for a buff on Thrill and Hype Man??

Yessir.

Thrill Shrieker has a few things working against her.

1) Squigly seems to be falling out of favor in the current meta.

2) Outtakes are RNG, which could lead to weird scenarios where you’re trying to get to a specific character, but the game keeps looping between two non-factor characters, which hurts her consistency. (For example, Corrosive Agent, Maid of Honor and Death Wish. You wanna get to DW first so you don’t waste time on revive shenanigans, but you keep getting looped between Corrosive and Maid, do you see the problem?)

3) Her Outtake SA is only effective in 1v2 scenarios and even then, you’re better off picking other variants/characters for quicker results. Meaning in 1v1s, she literally has a brick for an SA.

4) Her ATK is on the lower end for golds (even for ones that gain enrage and dmg buffs through SAs and character kits) and 2 stacks of timeless enrage for a character whose best combos involve using 1-2 charges (depending on the combo, this can be somewhat mitigated with charging through certain parts of the combo, but you’re often gonna be dealing with some parts of your combo only having 1 stack of enrage, on an already not so high ATK variant.)

I find myself rarely ever using her and even in the times I do decide to use her, I find myself underwhelmed, disappointed and wishing I could go back into time and pick a better variant.

Hype Man outside of his niche, isn’t that great (that’s not to say that he’s bad). He doesn’t have to necessarily be “good” or even “meta”, but it’d be cool if he was more usable. Idk if he necessarily needs an SA change or if he could just use an ATK stat boost.

If anyone else has any questions regarding any of my criticisms/changes/buffs, feel free to leave them below.

 

[Dusty00]

Yes to better Diamond convert compensation. 40 diamond shards for a dupe is just too lame.

Don’t mind the 5,000 shards for a guaranteed but there should be a time limit and there should be more choices so players can have long term goals to aim for.

Something new for dupes after PA level 100.

Looking at the roadmap, it seems like we may get some improvements to move sets. Offensive and Defensive sets.

We probably will only see either guild or guest star in 6.4 and 6.5 at end of year, not both so they can stagger the big content update item.

 

[SvenZ]

Robocopy went from somewhat usable, to pretty forgettable. I hope they play around with his balance again, among many other characters.

Rock Star and Prism Plumage are more than fine. They both have niche, but very fun synergies with certain variants/builds. I'd hate to see those gone, and I'd probably uninstall the game if they took em out

 

[ZeoW]

It's helpful to let the devs know why these variants need a buff, rather than simply listing it off. I would argue that some of these variants don't necessarily need a buff; they have their own unique niche that works fine. Not top tier good but it's usable and easy to pick up by new players (and perhaps that's the intention). There's also the general sentiment that Diamond > Gold > Silver in terms of power level and simplicity in their abilities, so do keep that in mind too.

We've reached 245 variants now, with more coming at every update. There's only so much they could focus on with every given rework so this additional context would help in narrowing down the list.

With that in mind, if you could only choose 10 to buff, which would you like to see most and why?

 

[SvenZ]

It's helpful to let the devs know why these variants need a buff, rather than simply listing it off.

I agree. My personal reasoning for Robocopy is that he was changed from a support/attacker to a defender, making 3 out of 4 Silver bands, being defense based. And he's arguably the weakest among the bunch.

The problem with his previous version, was that it was relatively easy to remove the BB Disable. Given how we have variants with far stronger tag-in/out effects, removing that penalty would've been enough to make him more viable. There was still a redundancy factor with the Enrage, and maybe a different supplementary effect would've sufficed better. Focusing him on controlling enemy resources and gaining Barrier because of it

Latest update of Robocopy on offense is a weaker version of Beat Box. And on defense, he's weaker than Resonant and Treble. Even though Resonant is very proc based, imo his success rate in screwing the opponent up is far higher, compared to Robocopy's 10 seconds of armor and barrier


On the topic of variants that I think are fine, Nyanotech I honestly feel is quite underrated. Guaranteed conversion of debuffs to Enrage, so long as she has barrier up makes her pretty good on offense. One or two Rockstar as a support in the back, and you've got pretty reliable BB Battery as well

 

[ZeoW]

Latest update of Robocopy on offense is a weaker version of Beat Box. And on defense, he's weaker than Resonant and Treble.

Interesting. I definitely think he's full on offense. His 'defensive' SA is more like a safety net (similar to Shadow Puppet, for example). I can't say for sure which one is better (I think they're comparable), but his old ability was definitely inferior to Beat Box. At least now he can be a bit more active with his Enrages and have a nice safety net if he messed up. The only difficulty is getting that first opponent down, but once he gets his ability activated once, all his blockbusters should be maxed to be unleashed to the next opponent. And with a 30 second timer, he doesn't have to worry about long animations that is common with Big Band's blockbusters.

Also, his barrier is timeless so you could potentially proc his first SA on purpose and have some barrier support variants in the back to start getting mileage out of it.

 

[SvenZ]

Interesting. I definitely think he's full on offense. His 'defensive' SA is more like a safety net (similar to Shadow Puppet, for example). I can't say for sure which one is better (I think they're comparable), but his old ability was definitely inferior to Beat Box. At least now he can be a bit more active with his Enrages and have a nice safety net if he messed up. The only difficulty is getting that first opponent down, but once he gets his ability activated once, all his blockbusters should be maxed to be unleashed to the next opponent. And with a 30 second timer, he doesn't have to worry about long animations that is common with Big Band's blockbusters.

Also, his barrier is timeless so you could potentially proc his first SA on purpose and have some barrier support variants in the back to start getting mileage out of it.

You could do the same with old Robocopy. Again, you had to go with the Rockstar cheese, but if you start with Rockstar as point and Tag in Robocopy, you'd start with 3 Stacks of Barrier, and then keep on getting barrier because of SA2. You intentionally kept SA2 at rank 1, so it's only 5 sec, and you'd get quite big chunks of meter because of it. Allowing you just a few sec into the fight to immediately use a Tier 3 BB.

Have Tag In CD maxed on one of your Rockstars, tag-her in and back out asap so Robo can trigger his SA1, rinse and repeat. Was honestly pretty fun

 

[ZeoW]

You could do the same with old Robocopy. Again, you had to go with the Rockstar cheese, but if you start with Rockstar as point and Tag in Robocopy, you'd start with 3 Stacks of Barrier, and then keep on getting barrier because of SA2. You intentionally kept SA2 at rank 1, so it's only 5 sec, and you'd get quite big chunks of meter because of it. Allowing you just a few sec into the fight to immediately use a Tier 3 BB.

Have Tag In CD maxed on one of your Rockstars, tag-her in and back out asap so Robo can trigger his SA1, rinse and repeat. Was honestly pretty fun

Hahaha that reminds me of Buffer Zone. Exactly same set-up too.

 

[SvenZ]

Hahaha that reminds me of Buffer Zone. Exactly same set-up too.

The shenanigans you can do with Rockstar and Prism are always great!

 

[Goofball]

It's helpful to let the devs know why these variants need a buff, rather than simply listing it off. I would argue that some of these variants don't necessarily need a buff; they have their own unique niche that works fine. Not top tier good but it's usable and easy to pick up by new players (and perhaps that's the intention). There's also the general sentiment that Diamond > Gold > Silver in terms of power level and simplicity in their abilities, so do keep that in mind too.

I originally was going to give all the reasons, but given the post was getting fairly long, I just cut it down to requests for brevity.

While I agree that the general rule of thumb is Diamond > Gold > Silver and not every variant needs to be good or even meta, (given the pre-patch Unholy
Host fiasco, we know that they track the usability across game modes.) some (I’d argue most of these) of these variants are kinda rough and/or need a slight push to be SO much better.

On the topic of variants that I think are fine, Nyanotech I honestly feel is quite underrated. Guaranteed conversion of debuffs to Enrage, so long as she has barrier up makes her pretty good on offense.

It’s kind of the same issue as PD, most defense variants are self buffing, self cleansing or reflect DMG, not really inflicting debuffs as much. There are situations where that’s useful, but it’s a question of how often.

With that in mind, if you could only choose 10 to buff, which would you like to see most and why?

Sure, I’ll try to do two things: a) try not to regurgitate ideas/criticisms in other threads about their specific buff/rework and b) reiterate any Marie stuff (I have a previous thread on that)

Top 10ish + Reasons

Rainbow Blight - Jawbreaker does almost everything better except for semi-consistent access to Hex and has been hard powercrept.

Thrill Shrieker - reasons above.

Hack N’Splash + Chameleon Twist + Ms. Trial - They share a spot because I think in a game with instant Dash cancelling, these mechanics of “hitting a Dashing opponent” and a “Well Timed Block” go nearly unused on Offense, have very little use on Defense, they essentially spend the game with 0.5 of an SA. Precision on DEF doesn’t matter if you’re corner looping the AI and it doesn’t matter on Offense because the AI can run into and block 2mm away from your face making it very hard to actually utilize property (and not in the, ‘git gud scrub’ kind of way and more of the, “I have to play awkwardly to get a decent SA to work when I could be pressuring/comboing my opponent” sort of way). Chameleon Twist was decent when Fukua was new and literally only for the first few weeks that people didn’t understand Vaporwave Vixen, then she got replaced and for good reason. Dash Cut Block, Dash Cut BB, and Dash Cut DP could make utilizing her brick of an SA, even more difficult than it already is + in some cases get her punished for it. Changing her Miasma condition from “Hitting a Dashing opponent” to “Attacking” would improve her significantly.

Time Thief - This variant was bad off rip. The “buff” was embarrassingly out of touch with what her core issue is: her gimmick isn’t worth the effort. Why would anyone waste time detaching and reattaching head (especially considering how broken headless is) when you could be Om Nom Noming (on better variants) or playing a less time consuming, more efficient natural attacker healer variant???

High Ruler (ATK stat boost only) - It’d be cool to take advantage of consistent Hex without having to switch off her to CnO or super heavily invest into her ATK stats to get the ball rolling. Red Velvet’s ATK is super rough, Rainbow Blight/Bandwagon is decently consistent, but having a fully consistent Hexer with Good ATK stats would boost her (solo) viability. Probably lower priority than others, but it’s one I’d like to see.

Wrestler X - In this reflect meta, if his REGEN SA was tweaked just a bit and if his bleed was more consistent and lasted longer, he’d be a lot more useful.

Vintage Virtuoso + Epic Sax - Big Band recently got a kit rework that make his combos more consistent and yet his attacker variants aren’t super great.

Dragon Brawler - EZ access to precision is cool and for awhile was considered one of if not the best Beo, he seems to be decently powercrept out of the meta and while he doesn’t necessarily have to be meta to be somewhat enjoyable, he feels a bit underwhelming these days. (Also, maybe I’m too optimistic but it feels like he could get the merge SA treatment and be given an SA2 that maybe helps boost DMG, or get to Hype Mode Faster or maybe even reward Beo for using nongrab moves.)

Number One - His SA is actually really good, I think his main problem is his really bad ATK stat, if this was buffed, he’d probably be a top Beo variant.

Brain Freeze - Cobweb character. Why would you use a variant that gets worse the longer you play her in a meta where very few characters are prioritizing multi hit moves? She was good a few years ago but I seriously dk why you’d ever have her on a team other than Bella stats.

Criminal Mind - So she’s technically a hybrid, but you get more value out of her as an attacker but her SAs seem a bit…awkward. Her Bleed SA isn’t really doing much considering AI isn’t so stupid to stack beyond 1-2 stacks. Bella’s current optimal playstyle gets more mileage out of prioritizing grabs which means she often isn’t profiting off of Death Mark much.


Honorable Mentions - I don’t personally care if they get ignored but I’ll still present some cases forward.

Galactic Glamour - Brick on release. ATK stat isn’t great, HP stat isn’t great. SA is really, really bad. Guard Break is cool but if your ATK isn’t that good, what difference does it make? AutoBlock is cool, but why as an attacker are you being hit? And not just a hit, it has to crit. And if it’s on DEF, it gets auto clapped by Curse, Deadeye, Buff Cleanse and an HP stat that isn’t anything to write home about, she’s free eats.

Terror Byte - Inverse Polarity is becoming more common and way easier access than HeadDrones, why would I use her when I could use Blitz, Psykid or Grin Reaper.

Temple Tyrant/Myst Match/Puddle Pirate - I have 0 idea why you would ever play these variants unironically.

Shadow Ops - I’m a bit conflicted on placing her here, but I’ll try to make a semi case for her. Her ATK isn’t great. Timeless Curse is cool but Purrfect Dark Dark Horse do the same thing with way better results. and Thorns on Offense while having no way to Regen/Sustain (Final Stand/Blessing) means you only get mileage out of getting hit which you probably don’t want to do. Thorns on DEF can be decently annoying without Deadeye or Buff Cleanse, the issue is AI isn’t super good at Tear Based Parasoul.
I’m also curious to see what variants you guys would buff/nerf + why.

 

[SvenZ]

It’s kind of the same issue as PD, most defense variants are self buffing, self cleansing or reflect DMG, not really inflicting debuffs as much. There are situations where that’s useful, but it’s a question of how often.

Thing is, I don't consider her a defensive variant. Imo she's entirely offense focused. Immunity is often times way more important on offense than on defense. The barrier is mostly a safety net and a trigger for set immunity. Try her out with a Rockstar + Sketchy. BB3, Magnetic Trap, Outtake and the rest is up to you. It's pretty fun

 

[Goofball]

Thing is, I don't consider her a defensive variant. Imo she's entirely offense focused. Immunity is often times way more important on offense than on defense. The barrier is mostly a safety net and a trigger for set immunity. Try her out with a Rockstar + Sketchy. BB3, Magnetic Trap, Outtake and the rest is up to you. It's pretty fun

I think you misunderstood me. Both Private Dick and Nyanotech contain “offensive” SAs that provide convert debuffs into Enrage, the problem is if there’s no debuffs to convert, you have a brick. In a meta where most DEF variants aren’t debuff heavy and outside of certain modifiers (and to be clear, even if you maxed out your accuracy/resistance stats on you moves, it still wouldn’t be wholly consistent as there’s still a chance that it won’t be converted, at least for Private Dick.) Add that with the fact Private Dick’s ATK isn’t great even for a variant that gains enrage, and Nyanotech’s is even worse and you have variants that don’t get much viability outside of some niche scenarios due to the unfortunate circumstances of the modern game state aka the meta. (Also, niche doesn’t always equal bad, but depending on how niche the niche that a variant could cater to is, could determine viability. Of course, you’re always free to have fun with fun not-meta-focused team comps and such but we should be able to call a spade a spade at the same time, I’d hope.)

 

[SvenZ]

I think you misunderstood me. Both Private Dick and Nyanotech contain “offensive” SAs that provide convert debuffs into Enrage, the problem is if there’s no debuffs to convert, you have a brick. In a meta where most DEF variants aren’t debuff heavy and outside of certain modifiers (and to be clear, even if you maxed out your accuracy/resistance stats on you moves, it still wouldn’t be wholly consistent as there’s still a chance that it won’t be converted, at least for Private Dick.) Add that with the fact Private Dick’s ATK isn’t great even for a variant that gains enrage, and Nyanotech’s is even worse and you have variants that don’t get much viability outside of some niche scenarios due to the unfortunate circumstances of the modern game state aka the meta. (Also, niche doesn’t always equal bad, but depending on how niche the niche that a variant could cater to is, could determine viability. Of course, you’re always free to have fun with fun not-meta-focused team comps and such but we should be able to call a spade a spade at the same time, I’d hope.)

It appears I did. I agree with those points

 

[Goofball]

Also, forgot a huge variant I had in regards to who should be buffed: Polturgust.

I don’t know why her SA1 exists when her most optimal DMG dealing moveset involves moves that do Wither (Battle Opera and Inferno of Leviathan), it’s extremely counter intuitive.

Sure, she has 3 other BBs (DnD, Daisy Pusher, and RotD), but 2/3 of those are either combo enders or don’t combo into anything (other than BO and IoL). Also, DnD is typically used as a combo extender for using BO and IoL, I doubt it’d be good without those other BBs paired together. ALSO, there are moves that prevent buffs through curse (RotD and Dragun Punch. + Drag N Bite can cleanse buffs) even further limiting her available toolkit to utilize Polturgust properly.

 

[Goofball]

Was just thinking about an edit to the thread and I think Scare Giver has a great SA and great stats, the problem is moreso that Cerebella’s Moveset isn’t good for her specific SA since multi hit/combo heavy Bella is rough in today’s meta.

 

[88FingiesNez]

Hai dee ho, id like to share my own thoughts for 6.4 ^u^ Fighter variant changes aside, some economic changes could be useful too

There really should be a key converter. Like Bronze to silver, silver to gold, you get the idea. Long time players often have dupes of these keys and barely any dia keys to make it through. Since we have the shards exchange now, I don't see why not.

Please double the daily ops rewards. 50 theo and like...10K gold is hardly gonna help anyone who's strictly free to play. Especially since upgrades alone are costly. Give like 100 theo and 50K bare minimum. It's almost the equivalent of buying the medici kickback pass.

I think there needs to be a refine in regards to the pity system in Jackpot relics, especially to the monthly fighters. Like yeah we can snag a $10 BP for the guaranteed gold but where's the fun in that? I think it's kinda ludicrous that silver fighters have the highest probability. It's just an advanced Premier Relic. Come on man :c

I might write more, these are just my current thoughts