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Painwheel as a character has significantly more coverage by herself In a typical rift setting then any other character would assuming you stacked them in addition to having one of the most volatile, unpredictable AIs in the game, as well as several variants with abilities that while fine by themselves, stack stop her existing issues, again adding to her coverage.
I will go into detail, but first, proceed with the context that I'm a high level player, playing for the last 4 and a half years or so, but haven't grinded rift and prize fights as hard as most due to how dull and time consuming it's become.
First, keeping in mind her archetype is that of a more offensive one, to be specific, a glass cannon, let's breakdown all a basic painwheel has to offer in terms of a defensive threat.
Marquee ability
Every fighter tends to have a marquee ability (henceforth refered to as "MA") suited for defense, and one suited for offense, baring some exceptions like big band. painwheel is very much no different with her offensive MA, Grudge, giving her a chance to survive being hit, and return more damage, much like her 2nd encore counterpart. However Tainted blood, her other MA, is a much more versatile threat, reflecting up to 100% of all the damage caused by a critical hit. This can hurt a lot, especially with the damage rate being up to your crit chance.
the first issue comes from just this however, critical chance is built into the skill tree meaning no matter who you use, you're at risk of losing a chunk of health at any moment. Though crit rate itself being In the skill tree isn't an inherit issue, the punishment for an unavoidable stat addition is so drastic, that it's pushed people to avoid completing their characters, not getting the crit nodes or some attack nodes on the skill tree, All for the purpose of countering this one, MA.
Even with other strong defensive MAs like Valentine's trauma center, Double's Entropy, or Annie's blueshift, none of them are so punishing that you have to intentionally leave a fighter unfinished for the best odds to counter it.
This by itself only becomes worse when combined with her next point of issue.
Signature Catalyst
Don't poke the buer is an extremely threatening catalyst exclusive to painwheel where she can only take 10% of her total health as damage at any single hit, excess damage is turned into, again, reflect damage, which can absolutely tear away at your life.
Due to painwheel's glass cannon status, she tends to have a lower health pool then other fighters, even her neighboring offensive fighters. This only works in her favor making it far too easy to deal over 10% of her total health with weak hits, resulting in addtional reflect damage, ontop of the threat of tainted blood if said hit happened to be a crit. This resulted, again, in people bringing weaker or barely built fighters, or in some cases, having to build completely and entirely new movesets, dealing with limited coins and stat rng (points of contention you've already confirmed to be looking into) just to deal with one single character, that being painwheel.
While it may be standard to look into building a new move or character to deal with a certain thing you struggle on, no variant or character forces it as hard as painwheel does by herself.
And despite all this, painwheel still has one other trick up her nonexistent sleeves.
Her A.I
Ai in skullgirls mobile is notoriously annoying to a vast majority of players, as well as the inconsistency in it's preformance, with some characters such as Eliza or Parasoul, being made completely unviable on defense due to their poor AI, while other characters like Squigly or Beowulf, benefit greatly from their extremely passive and extremely aggressive AIs respectively.
However, no aggression matches painwheel's Ai, (except perhaps double, but this is not about her) which is fittingly, very sparatic and unpredictable
Painwheel benefits from a fast dash with lots of hit stun, meaning even if you're late and trade with the dash, you'll be minus and have to take whatever she does next. In addition, her glass cannon side peaks out here, as much like Beowulf, being more offensively leaning means any one hit can completely level your fighter's health bar, even more so if you brought a weaker fighter to deal with her reflect damage, and if they were the only one you brought that could deal with painwheel's tainted and don't poke the buer, then you've in most cases, already lost. This adds another layer of stress as in addition to combating her unruly ai, making sure not to hit her with anything too strong, one mistake can spell the end of your run.
Most notably of all is her projectile which allows her to activate bb3 from Fullscreen if you're not someone with an evade, or have incredible timing with an invincible move, and her pinion dash, a super fast move that hits absurd damage, almost guaranteed to oneshot your fighter if you hadn't been able to bring a safety net. And worst yet, she can combo after it if she spaces it correctly, meaning sometimes your safety net may not matter if it's not final stand.
Variants
Let's not forget that in addition to all mentioned above, painwheel has variants same as anyone else. So in addition to dealing with all that, you have to prepare for whichever SA the wheel Infront of you has, let's go over the most annoying of the bunch
Neruomancer
Neruo is an easy one to bring up first, as due to the unpredictability in her AI, it's entirely likely for neruo to kill you before you even get a chance to play, by doing multiple Light attacks without ever finishing the full L5/G5 string, or using her projectile to give her meter a huge boost as well.
You can attempt to attack her during one of these unfinished strings, but it's extremely likely you'll be punished for it by a fast move like pinion, or a blockbuster she's already charged, such as hatred install.
The only way to completely and safely avoid round star trickery is with a character that can steal and keep offensive momentum from the start, unfortunately most like that such as beo and parasoul, tend to hit too hard, or crit too much for most wheels, this resulted in weekend warrior, a character originally built for defense, now becoming a staple offense as he's one of the safest ways to deal with wheel, even though it may take him a while to finally defeat her.
Twisted mettle
Twisted suffers from being a bronze, with her low stats, you can actually take some hits from her, however it makes suffering her reflect damage even easier, and thanks to her SA, she can bleed you as well, resulting in you needing to account for that, as the bleed makes you even more susceptible to reflect damage killing you, and as the cherry on top, she can utilize frost armor for not only now making you have to consider some form of consistent armor break, debuff removal, and curse, with your healing and/or bleed denial, but it adds an ADDTIONAL type of reflect damage to deal with, meaning you can suffer from three reflect damages and bleed at the same time.
Honorable mention to biting cold, who can achieve a similar thing, but is made less annoying by the fact that if you outtake her to the front, she has no SA to speak of, just the typical painwheel and frost armor issues, HOWEVER she does force you to bring an outtake, which may conflict with your moveset and forcing you to make one if you don't already have one as well, and if you do have one, it may have crit stats or too much attack in general, resulting in you needing to build another. All this ontop of bringing a team that can deal with three types of reflect damage, and also being able to take out whomever is paired with the biting cold, model leader and plot twisted for example, could require much more attack making the team composition all the more particular.
The other wheels with minor issues include
Flytrap, who if placed at the end of a team, can chip you out, as well as the game being basically over if you die and can't remove her regens. (This is really just a, bring a counter situation, but it's another stack ontop of things you have to counter)
Grim fan, is a light so she can be comboed with light catalyst, meaning you need more buff removal in addition to not healing/survival as well, if you choose to ignore her SA, she not only gets unflinching midway through her life, but will revive her team if it's not removed, she's not the worst thing in the world, but again, she just adds tons more layers by herself.
And a simple reminder, this is painwheel, by herself with her one catalyst, when you begin to add on other threating defensive fighters, who unlike painwheel, you actually need high move stats (or some form of dot like bleed or miasma) to efficiently deal with, and their own catalysts such as frost armor, it becomes apparent just how many layers one single painwheel can add to a node.
Not one single character can do that much by herself, and then still have variants to lean one.
Evergreen evil forces you to bring either a fire character or hex, with a form of buff removal to deal with entropy, which is a lot, but it's from that one variant, and the restrictions on how you can pull it off aren't so bad that you'd need to build a weaker character or an entire spare moveset for it.
Meanwhile the simple addition of a tainted neruo with dptb to a boss node introduces.
1. Worrying about having low enough stats to not get reflected, but high enough to fight the other two people
2. Worrying about not having crits
3. Having a safety net in case neruo plays unfair, or risking going without a safety net and instead bringing someone to deal with the other fighters
And this is when you realize, unlike evergreen who can only be on one node, it's common to see multiple painwheel's spread across a base, meaning you'll need low stat, low crit, or good healing answers MULTIPLE TIMES throughout single rifts, giving your stronger characters barely any other usage time as you must build weaker ones to basically get by.
I hope with this post that hvs can take a look at painwheel's overall effectiveness as a defense fighter, and tone it down in an appropriate way.
I'm not a game designer, nor do I have the exact stats for any level of play, so I'm not going to suggest an actual change here, as I'm not informed enough in the inner workings of the game as to how effective it would be. But I do hope someone can take these points into serious consideration and deal with the issue that the glass cannon character is the best defender in the game overall.
I will go into detail, but first, proceed with the context that I'm a high level player, playing for the last 4 and a half years or so, but haven't grinded rift and prize fights as hard as most due to how dull and time consuming it's become.
First, keeping in mind her archetype is that of a more offensive one, to be specific, a glass cannon, let's breakdown all a basic painwheel has to offer in terms of a defensive threat.
Marquee ability
Every fighter tends to have a marquee ability (henceforth refered to as "MA") suited for defense, and one suited for offense, baring some exceptions like big band. painwheel is very much no different with her offensive MA, Grudge, giving her a chance to survive being hit, and return more damage, much like her 2nd encore counterpart. However Tainted blood, her other MA, is a much more versatile threat, reflecting up to 100% of all the damage caused by a critical hit. This can hurt a lot, especially with the damage rate being up to your crit chance.
the first issue comes from just this however, critical chance is built into the skill tree meaning no matter who you use, you're at risk of losing a chunk of health at any moment. Though crit rate itself being In the skill tree isn't an inherit issue, the punishment for an unavoidable stat addition is so drastic, that it's pushed people to avoid completing their characters, not getting the crit nodes or some attack nodes on the skill tree, All for the purpose of countering this one, MA.
Even with other strong defensive MAs like Valentine's trauma center, Double's Entropy, or Annie's blueshift, none of them are so punishing that you have to intentionally leave a fighter unfinished for the best odds to counter it.
This by itself only becomes worse when combined with her next point of issue.
Signature Catalyst
Don't poke the buer is an extremely threatening catalyst exclusive to painwheel where she can only take 10% of her total health as damage at any single hit, excess damage is turned into, again, reflect damage, which can absolutely tear away at your life.
Due to painwheel's glass cannon status, she tends to have a lower health pool then other fighters, even her neighboring offensive fighters. This only works in her favor making it far too easy to deal over 10% of her total health with weak hits, resulting in addtional reflect damage, ontop of the threat of tainted blood if said hit happened to be a crit. This resulted, again, in people bringing weaker or barely built fighters, or in some cases, having to build completely and entirely new movesets, dealing with limited coins and stat rng (points of contention you've already confirmed to be looking into) just to deal with one single character, that being painwheel.
While it may be standard to look into building a new move or character to deal with a certain thing you struggle on, no variant or character forces it as hard as painwheel does by herself.
And despite all this, painwheel still has one other trick up her nonexistent sleeves.
Her A.I
Ai in skullgirls mobile is notoriously annoying to a vast majority of players, as well as the inconsistency in it's preformance, with some characters such as Eliza or Parasoul, being made completely unviable on defense due to their poor AI, while other characters like Squigly or Beowulf, benefit greatly from their extremely passive and extremely aggressive AIs respectively.
However, no aggression matches painwheel's Ai, (except perhaps double, but this is not about her) which is fittingly, very sparatic and unpredictable
Painwheel benefits from a fast dash with lots of hit stun, meaning even if you're late and trade with the dash, you'll be minus and have to take whatever she does next. In addition, her glass cannon side peaks out here, as much like Beowulf, being more offensively leaning means any one hit can completely level your fighter's health bar, even more so if you brought a weaker fighter to deal with her reflect damage, and if they were the only one you brought that could deal with painwheel's tainted and don't poke the buer, then you've in most cases, already lost. This adds another layer of stress as in addition to combating her unruly ai, making sure not to hit her with anything too strong, one mistake can spell the end of your run.
Most notably of all is her projectile which allows her to activate bb3 from Fullscreen if you're not someone with an evade, or have incredible timing with an invincible move, and her pinion dash, a super fast move that hits absurd damage, almost guaranteed to oneshot your fighter if you hadn't been able to bring a safety net. And worst yet, she can combo after it if she spaces it correctly, meaning sometimes your safety net may not matter if it's not final stand.
Variants
Let's not forget that in addition to all mentioned above, painwheel has variants same as anyone else. So in addition to dealing with all that, you have to prepare for whichever SA the wheel Infront of you has, let's go over the most annoying of the bunch
Neruomancer
Neruo is an easy one to bring up first, as due to the unpredictability in her AI, it's entirely likely for neruo to kill you before you even get a chance to play, by doing multiple Light attacks without ever finishing the full L5/G5 string, or using her projectile to give her meter a huge boost as well.
You can attempt to attack her during one of these unfinished strings, but it's extremely likely you'll be punished for it by a fast move like pinion, or a blockbuster she's already charged, such as hatred install.
The only way to completely and safely avoid round star trickery is with a character that can steal and keep offensive momentum from the start, unfortunately most like that such as beo and parasoul, tend to hit too hard, or crit too much for most wheels, this resulted in weekend warrior, a character originally built for defense, now becoming a staple offense as he's one of the safest ways to deal with wheel, even though it may take him a while to finally defeat her.
Twisted mettle
Twisted suffers from being a bronze, with her low stats, you can actually take some hits from her, however it makes suffering her reflect damage even easier, and thanks to her SA, she can bleed you as well, resulting in you needing to account for that, as the bleed makes you even more susceptible to reflect damage killing you, and as the cherry on top, she can utilize frost armor for not only now making you have to consider some form of consistent armor break, debuff removal, and curse, with your healing and/or bleed denial, but it adds an ADDTIONAL type of reflect damage to deal with, meaning you can suffer from three reflect damages and bleed at the same time.
Honorable mention to biting cold, who can achieve a similar thing, but is made less annoying by the fact that if you outtake her to the front, she has no SA to speak of, just the typical painwheel and frost armor issues, HOWEVER she does force you to bring an outtake, which may conflict with your moveset and forcing you to make one if you don't already have one as well, and if you do have one, it may have crit stats or too much attack in general, resulting in you needing to build another. All this ontop of bringing a team that can deal with three types of reflect damage, and also being able to take out whomever is paired with the biting cold, model leader and plot twisted for example, could require much more attack making the team composition all the more particular.
The other wheels with minor issues include
Flytrap, who if placed at the end of a team, can chip you out, as well as the game being basically over if you die and can't remove her regens. (This is really just a, bring a counter situation, but it's another stack ontop of things you have to counter)
Grim fan, is a light so she can be comboed with light catalyst, meaning you need more buff removal in addition to not healing/survival as well, if you choose to ignore her SA, she not only gets unflinching midway through her life, but will revive her team if it's not removed, she's not the worst thing in the world, but again, she just adds tons more layers by herself.
And a simple reminder, this is painwheel, by herself with her one catalyst, when you begin to add on other threating defensive fighters, who unlike painwheel, you actually need high move stats (or some form of dot like bleed or miasma) to efficiently deal with, and their own catalysts such as frost armor, it becomes apparent just how many layers one single painwheel can add to a node.
Not one single character can do that much by herself, and then still have variants to lean one.
Evergreen evil forces you to bring either a fire character or hex, with a form of buff removal to deal with entropy, which is a lot, but it's from that one variant, and the restrictions on how you can pull it off aren't so bad that you'd need to build a weaker character or an entire spare moveset for it.
Meanwhile the simple addition of a tainted neruo with dptb to a boss node introduces.
1. Worrying about having low enough stats to not get reflected, but high enough to fight the other two people
2. Worrying about not having crits
3. Having a safety net in case neruo plays unfair, or risking going without a safety net and instead bringing someone to deal with the other fighters
And this is when you realize, unlike evergreen who can only be on one node, it's common to see multiple painwheel's spread across a base, meaning you'll need low stat, low crit, or good healing answers MULTIPLE TIMES throughout single rifts, giving your stronger characters barely any other usage time as you must build weaker ones to basically get by.
I hope with this post that hvs can take a look at painwheel's overall effectiveness as a defense fighter, and tone it down in an appropriate way.
I'm not a game designer, nor do I have the exact stats for any level of play, so I'm not going to suggest an actual change here, as I'm not informed enough in the inner workings of the game as to how effective it would be. But I do hope someone can take these points into serious consideration and deal with the issue that the glass cannon character is the best defender in the game overall.
