Blockbusters with bonus damage per COMBO HIT

[Kheul]

So, the thing with these type of Blockbusters is they deal 2/5/8% bonus damage per COMBO HIT, yeah? That is not the case, they have an internal limit that immensely pulverize all the potential these type of blockbusters can do, they reach their limit with what, around 30-35 hits? (+15) Yeah sure it is aight for Fukua as all you do is use lobs for combo resets and just slam that bb1 to finish off anything with that bonus, fine. But what about Big Band? He already has incredibly low ATK for all of its variants and, limiting a combo machine with just 30-35 hit bonus is just humiliating. Big Band is not even meta by any means, not as an offense not even as a defender he does nothing better than other characters. And here I am trying to understand why my +15 Beat Extend doesn't do the damage it actually should after I try to come up with something niche for Big Band. I am just trying to utilize him in a way when he is in this state and I am literally being blocked by some kind of internal limit.

I don't think this is intentional, because if it was we would be told in the properties section of the blockbusters that there is an actual limit to that bonus. If it was intentional... Oh boy...

So no matter the case, I have seen a lot of people who want Big Band back in the action. An already naturally low ATK, incredibly wanky combo feeling due to weight classes... This problem with his BB1 should be fixed, I already +15'ed it (That's a lotta coin) and I am really sad to see his potentials are being locked by just an internal limit that we aren't even aware of.

To utilize BB1 you actually need to do a lot of combos, hits (more hits are considered bad due to how they activate many defender abilities and they fill up enemy blockbusters quickly) which can easily be interrupted by a burst and there is Filia who can just spam ringlet spikes without needing any real stats to be able defeat 80% of the characters easily.

Trying to utilize Big Band as an offensive variant is not easy for high streaks, I just wanted to have some fun with Big Band but seeing him being limited both by internal limits and incredibly low ATK is just sad. I do all my character investments after planning some stuff so I don't just throw my coins randomly, and realizing there is an invisible limiter just feels unfair for both who invested in and for a character that revolves around super high multi hit combos and naturally low ATK.

//Edit: Turns out range is lower than 30-35... it is something like 25... Which means you can only get to something like 200% bonus, which also means +9 BB1 (+%5) takes 40 hits to get max bonus and +15 (+%8) takes 25 hits to get 200% bonus. I genuinely don't get it. He can easily do 40 hit combos anyways. Why would I max it if all I am getting is just 15 level BB1 damage and nothing about the special feature of increased combo damage as my combo already exceeds 40 hits plus finisher (BB1).

 

[Bones]

Moved this to the feedback forum. We implemented damage caps a while back, including the examples you provided.

Bit out of my jurisdiction to explain why it was implemented. I do remember players juicing out Big Band to where he was doing game breaking levels of damage though.

 

[Kheul]

Yeah, I can imagine how you can do some juicy damage with that limiter gone. Guess it would be too much for my big guy to have an actual purpose in this game. Rant aside, let's take a look at vintage virtuoso, 13,068 atk and he also has 5 enrages, if you start the combo with bb1 (minimum synergy) he does 16,144 with the first hit and at max synergy (+50 hits, even though limiter kicks in way earlier) he does 32,479 with the first hit of bb1.

That I don't understand... Isn't this like just 100% more bonus damage? I did both tests with 5 enrages, I tried to let go bb1 with 5 enrages at like 22 hits it sure did less than 32k. But how come math here makes sense? Math has never been my strong area but something seems wrong here, I really would like an explanation why his damage works like that.

In my head "Deals 8% bonus damage per COMBO HIT" goes like this

X + 200% -> 100 + 200 = 300
(200% cuz it seems to be the limit no matter the level of bb1)

Oh, after some more testing it seems like Vintage Virtuoso is bugged after all or to be exact the combination of enrage and bonus damage per combo hit is bugged, because my guy Heavy Metal can get an actual 200% bonus with his bb1. (13,433 -> 40,298, 21,5k atk, 0 armor, 0 enrage). Well, luckily heavy metal has a signature abilty that gives 100% more bonus damage so this expands the testing potentials...

Heavy Metal +15 BB1 tests
atk is 18,9k
comparisons are made between first hit bb1s and max synergy bb1s
(11,882 -> 35,644 no armor)
(23,485 -> 47,247 with armor [armor alone is equivalent to 5 enrages on heavy metal])
(35,087 -> 58,850 with armor and 5 enrages // at total this bb1 does something like 285,116 damage within 16 hits with 25 hits pre-requisite)

This looks like a bug to me tbh.

As for the limitations, if pure damage solved everything I wouldn't use anything except risky ginger, tres chic and dream demon. A well-built dreamon can go over 500k damage per rotation without requiring any prior setup. Tres can abuse both critical damage and bleeds to do an absurd amount of damage. But they are not always the problem solvers we are looking for. SGM is more diverse than that, I know that for a fact. Best characters in-game are not just pure nukers, but the ones with good utility with some damage. And this is exactly the reason why I don't understand how come Big Band is in this situation where he is not good at anything. Fukua has one of the best offensive kits, and she has one of the nastiest defender variants on top of that. What Big Band has to offer is incredibly limited and outdated. Parries are getting more and more unusable now that grab special moves are increasing in usage (marie). People with no actual defenders have been using Beowulf with wulfshoot for quite a while now. Even a character built for offense has a better value than a big band with defensive stats. Because how little counterplay you have against those wulfshoots when facing against beowulf as the first fighter (I'm not saying it has no counterplay but it is definitely more tedious than any big band defender). There are many more things to talk about, like how stun is a big aspect of his kit and it is a critical debuff to land which encourages one to also invest in accuracy on top of his low base atk (You are not going to use all the big bands offensively I know but even if you want to some of them as an offensive character, you will see that stun is the most used debuff on his moves). But I know this post isn't really about Big Band I'm sure you guys know how outdated he is in various aspects.

So justifying the existence of a damage limiter can be healthy in general, but in big band's case it wouldn't be extreme at this point due to bursts, on-hit effects, modifiers etc. I wish at least we were told about the damage limiter in-game. Or I would advise it to have better numbers.

"Deals 8% bonus damage per COMBO HIT up to 200/250/300%"
or you could reduce the base damage a bit and make it more rewarding when used as a finisher by increasing the bonus damage limit even more.

Thank you for your time.