Fights Armor and Enrage should increase in increments of 20%

[TonyPartridge30]

Armor and Enrage are useful buffs. However, I noticed something that seems weird, and though it's relatively minor, I also think minor adjustments would make both abilities a little less crutchy.

So both buffs can stack up to 5. When you read the description of the buff, each stack offers a 25% increase to damage output (for Enrage) or decrease to damage received (for Armor). This means that each buff caps at a total of 125% benefit. In the case of Enrage, this means at a full stack you are dealing over double damage. For armor, this means at stack 4 you've already reached 100% damage reduction, so 4 stack and 5 stack for Armor are exactly the same thing (which feels redundant). I feel like both of these abilities should have each stack reduced to 20% buffing. This would make it so that achieving a full stack of those buffs would correlate with a 100% benefit, which makes more sense to me than going over 100%. This would especially be useful for balancing armor, because it would mean you'd need a 5 stacks to completely nullify all damage instead of 4. I think this would balance both of these buffs in a beneficial way, especially Armor, as getting a stack of 4 Armor yields the same result as the Invincible buff.

Or, alternatively, just change Armor's buff to a 25% increase to defense (per stack). This would allow it to keep it's damage-reducing qualities without overlapping qualities with Invincible, and I would be fine with getting a 125% bonus to defense. That would be more in-line with Enrage's 25% increase to damage per stack, and would make Armor more unique compared to Invincible when at full stacks.

 

[TonyPartridge30]

Enrage is fine as is. Why do you want to nerf the damage increase from enrage? Just to make it into a pretty rounded number? Most fighters can't even stack enrage that high anyway, and with the way defense and armor mechanics work even with the 100% damage boost from 4 stacks of enrage against a 50% defense opponent you're only doing the regular amount of damage you'd do if they had no defense.

I feel like armor is fine at 25%. I wouldn't mind dropping it to 20% either though. The way armor works now, the 25% damage reduction per stack is additive with your defense stat, so 50% defense and 2 stacks is already basically invincibility.



I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you're saying here. Armor already is an increase to defense. The two stack additively. Or were you suggesting it should work like armor break being capped at 1 stack maximum so you can't stack it to full on invincibility? I personally think the two should be calculated separately, but I'm too lazy to make a big writeup explaining why. Maybe in the future, but I just don't have time to do it right now. Especially since a certain very vocal individual refuses to actually discuss the topic and instead just harps on about how "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" while completely ignoring the many reasons I and many others have given as to why the way it is poorly designed the way it is right now.

I misunderstood how Defense stat works. I thought it was a numerical value like attack, not a pure percent of total damage reduction. That actually makes defense seem very OP to me. I feel like any case where you have the chance to completely nullify damage in a game like this is overpowered. Now I want even more to see each stack reduced to 20%, especially for Armor, but also Enrage. And yes, part of it is because I like nice round numbers.

 

[TonyPartridge30]

There's a reason defense is the best stat in the game. 50% defense is 2x HP. 50% defense and an armor taunt is 4x HP. If armor and defense worked separately fighting the 50% def Armed Forces and Resonant Evils wouldn't be half as annoying as it is.

I like round numbers too ;-; but I also like doing stupid amounts of damage.

Yeah, this makes me like Defense alot less. It makes the game so much more about dumb luck (or how much money you spend). Which I get, because it's a free mobile game, but it's disappointing none-the-less. I wish the full 2nd Encore version of Skullgirls was available for Xbone or Switch; I'd gladly pay money for an actually balanced Skullgirls.

 

[Psyche]

I support reducing both stat boosts by 5% each. For me it's also a bit about the niceness of the numbers, but also about the coincidence it has with element bonuses and penalties. With the new stats, a character at an element disadvantage has the power to perfectly neutralise their penalty and the enemy's bonus, albeit temporarily, which for me is incredibly more satisfying than them being left with a discrepant 5% pip of a buff.

Alternatively, there's always the option to make the buffs compounded rather than additive, though that might reduce the pace of the game a tad too much.