Test Discussion Legends Shazam

Hello all!

Please use this place to discuss our newest Legend, Shazam!

Have fun out there,
Drenz

Alright, so I went in to look at him, I like him quite a bit. There are two things you need to look at though with him.

Survivability

His teleportation has a 8 second cool down, gives 100% damage mitigation for 3 seconds and can break you out of hard stuns. That coupled with him have 6224 health already means he is far better than Circe. I'd personally suggest removing the shielding effect or at the very least reducing it's effectiveness and increasing it's cool down to match Circe's.

Though personally due to the higher health he has (1k higher than Circe to be exact) I'm really going to have to push getting rid of the shielding effect entirely.

Damage

The second thing you need to look at is his Supercharge. It deals an easy 3k damage. I see you tried to balance it out by having him turn into a boy after using it and being unable to use any attacks and by making it take a long time to get, however it's going to be by far the most useful to KO an opponent with when they're on their last legs. And when you use this, that KO is nearly guaranteed to happen.

Even more so remember you can clip his finisher with this power to deal an absurd amount of damage after a counter, well over 4k damage.

On to the positives though:

As with most legends I really like the voice acting (though him saying Shazam as much as he does may get a tad bit annoying). Perhaps get rid of that on his first ability to place greater importance of it on his Supercharge.

He felt relatively nice to use as well and the animations were quite pretty also. Overall with the exception of those two things I think you did a fairly good job on him

Just a quick correction for you Enq.

His #1 has a 8 second cool down. Circe's use to be 8 seconds but they did the right thing and increased the cool down on it to 16 seconds. Shazam needs the same treatment.

Woops, good catch. Fat fingered the keyboard there

I second this. The first (and maybe second) time you hear him shout this, its cool and new. After that, its annoying and would be better suited for the rare chance you will get off that SC.
Agree with you on #1. Cool down is too short for what it does, make it 12 like Brice mentioned. The cool down for becoming Billy is actually only about 6 seconds, so not too terrible, and the second hit only hit for @ 400. But in most matches, you will be lucky if you get off one or even two 100% charges, so its damage and effect aren't so unbalanced.

Brice said 16. Even with the longer CD it's 3k completely safe damage that you don't need to expose yourself to counters at all.

If you have it available between that and his first power he can just tap melee for an entire round.

I don't think you should call #1 a teleport. It's really more of a fancy backflip that can't be @#$%ed with. Since he's a Brawling toon, I think the 8-ish second cooldown on it is MORE than enough. You always know he's gonna go away from you and a competent lunge will close the distance in short order, right?

That being said... I'm flipping the @#$% out over this Legends toon. He's always been my favorite. You are more than welcome to market him as "Shazam" but please don't mind me while I still call him by his original name: Captain Marvel.

The problem with his #1 isn't the distance or area he goes to it is the damage mitigation it offers (even though you don't see it it mitigates damage just like a shield), it does around 300-350 damage, and it breaks you out of Punishment. The only other toon that has a power similar to his is Circe and she has 5240 Health...Shazam chimes in at 6224. So now you have a Legends character that has roughly 1,000 more Health than a character with a similar ability (and her's doesn't even generate guarantee'd damage) and on top of that it has a cool down that is 8 seconds shorter (which is what Circe's was originally until the Developers realized it was far to spammable at that cool down time at which time they doubled it).

Shazam isn't hurting, at all...especially with that OP Supercharge. So a balancing #1 wouldn't be a bad thing.

Regarding the Supercharge...it needs an increased cast time from 1 second to 3 seconds. This will give players adequate time to get away from it. What it will also do is turn the Supercharge from a "I Kill You" button into a "I Should Punish You Before Using This" button .

You actually can cancel the movement of it by jumping at the start of the animation. So there's actually no need to move if you don't want to. Alternatively if you want to get the hell out of dodge you can actually jump during the back end of the animation to be rocketed slightly further. Though you are correct that it isn't actually teleportation. My bad

#1 is a breakout, does damage, has a short cooldown, and is a shield.. Like wth, you just created perhaps the best move in legends. Just make it a standard backflip-type ability now and save yourself the trouble of having to nerf it later.

Besides that, awesome job. His supercharge is absolutely hilarious and I seriously want his cape style.

Whats up everyone. Thanks for taking the time to Try out Shazam on PC Test - we appreciate it immensely.

On to the feedback:

Supercharge
-This ability costs 100% supercharge and is only going to be usable once or twice per map at best. With this in mind, the damage value was selected to be purposely high. When you have to spend multiple life cycles building up supercharge, the payoff should be worthwhile and we believe that it currently is. This is similar to the full heal of Saint Walker and should be used as something of a Game balancer.

Mercury's Escape (#1)
-The cooldown on this ability can certainly change and I'm open to making it longer, but I don't like drawing comparisons with Circe's blink for this ability because it functions slightly differently and doesn't spawn a fully functioning NPC pet each time. The distance you move away from the target is less, and you always move backwards from them which almost never breaks line of sight. This is a significant disadvantage when compared to blink which often forces your opponent to turn around or spin their camera. We found in playtesting that this ability was far less disorienting than spamming blink, so a shorter cooldown felt better both in play and style.

Health pool / Balance
-Shazam does have an incorrectly high base health currently due to the fact that he doesn't have any pets or power interactions. This has already changed internally from 6224 to 5897hp because of the defense on #1 and the high supercharge damage.

In respect to the audio cues, 3 fellow designers and I ran some Legends PVE as 4 Shazam's and were having a lot of fun saying ' SHAZAM ' anytime someone else in the group did.

It went something like this:
Enter Combat
Start Brawling Combo
"SHAZAM!"
..."SHAZAM" "SHAZAM" "SHAZAM"
Mobs fly in all directions

Thanks for the feedback everyone,
Drenz

This damage is not unavoidable by the way. The sphere that delivers the Damage and Lightning VFX on the supercharge is delayed 750ms, giving you almost a second to stop what you're doing and get out of the way. If by safe you mean it can't be countered - that's true. I think it would be pretty awful gameplay to build up a supercharge across multiple lives and get interrupted when I go to use it at the end of the map.

I know about the delay and short range, however in a 2v2 situation you can block break someone, pull off the finisher and the supercharge through clipping. Hit one person with the finisher and the other person with the supercharge and you're looking at close to 5k damage.

Personally I'd make the animation for it much longer to be about the length of counter immunity and add a vulnerability window. With counter immunity despite having a vulnerability window you still wouldn't be vulnerable. Between the block breaker and the supercharge you'll be dealing right around 3700 damage in 2.5 seconds. Even just once per match given the fact he already has massive survivability thanks to his first power that's pretty nuts to be honest and still a little too strong for my tastes. Or lowering the damage could be helpful.

Damage is based on animation time. Giving this a longer animation would make the final damage higher.

We'll take a look at it, thanks for your feedback.

In that case Deathstroke's staff attack should be hitting for way more damage Sorry, I had to say it.

Though I have to ask, could you lower the base damage and increase the animation time to achieve the effect I was referring to? To respond in full to this since I'm not on my phone any more:

Saint Walker's Supercharge doesn't deal any damage and in addition to that you will still need to utilize counters afterwards. With this you can just score one counter and that's about it for them once per match nearly regardless of the player's skill involved so long as they can get that one counter.

Someone actually shot me a PM about Circe's teleportation and how it compares to this power. Shazam's is actually far, far better. You are forced to move when using Circe's. With Shazam's you can jump at the start of the animation and cancel all movement, or jump later on into it and actually move further, comparable to Circe's blink, which is a feature I love by the way.

As per the pet, the pet is only good if it splits damage then dies. If it lives for more than a second or two it pretty much guarantees the enemy team gets free counter immunity from it because it uses ranged attacks the vast, vast majority of the time. In the event it does live long enough to hit a melee combo holy hell it hits hard, but due to it's low health and behavior, that almost never happens.

I'd might consider lowering it further if nothing is going to happen to the defense on the number one ability. Circe's caps out at 1500 damage and even though she has just about 1000 less health than Shazam she is still one of the best legends in the game solely because of that ability, you actually hardly ever need to use her regular shield because of that.

Shazam on the other hand has that 1000 more health as previously mentioned and this ability also provides 100% damage mitigation with no cap according to the in game description.

Thanks for the work you're doing on him Drenz! Greatly appreciated!

Supercharge - At least make it a 1250-1500 ms delay. That thing is stupid fast for the amount of damage it does even if takes a while to build it up. Saint Walker's SC is nothing compared to Shazam's. Saint gets his Health and Power back giving you a chance to fight back while you enjoy a 5 minute cool down afterwards (which for the record is very odd...the cool down that is). Shazam on the other hand will straight up kill 2 players in a 2v2 if both opposing players are 50% or less in Health. By the time they get back to their spawn point, and back out to the node you have easily left Billy Batson mode (as it only has a 6 second cool down) and healed up. Now imagine double Shazam in a 2v2.

Player 1: Go. Shazam.
Player 2: Go. Shazam.

You have effectively wiped the opposing team from full Health in 2 seconds. In the case of Batcave that is a 70 point sweep in 2 seconds. Not to mention you killed both players at the same time. God help them if they get 10 second spawn timers (which can we please get that adjusted finally to like a set 5 seconds every time ). I'm having a brain fart right now and can't remember if Batcave is 6 points per tick or 7 (lets go with the low end)...15 seconds just to respawn and get out of the spawn area...say another 5 seconds to get back to the node. The opposing team just lost 190 points because of two Supercharges being timed. That seems a bit wonky in Legends. I take that back...that seems a bit wonky period being able to do close to a 200 point sweep with two players timing the push of a single button. Of course this is best case scenario for the Shazam players and worst case scenario for the opposing players but it is still very possible.

Health and #1 - If he is going to have 5897 Health I guess that makes his #1 a bit more in line. However, I think 12 seconds would be a fair trade off. Middle ground of Circe and Shazam. Because it can not be overlooked that his #1 can be used when he is punished. That alone makes the 8 second cool down a little too good.

Arkham Joker is sitting there going, "Then take a look at my spectacular SC."

I realize it doesn't take anywhere near as long to build up but the pitiful damage that thing does AND it is vulnerable to interrupt. Easily the worst SC (possibly power) in Legends.

It's actually miles better than Circe's. Circe's has a damage cap and provides a pet that if it lives long enough is basically free counter immunity. Also as opposed to Circe's you can cancel the movement of Shazam's meaning you won't need to leave a node.

He is the most cool legends character! (still waitnig for Flash too)
but PLEASE.... dont listen ppl who want a nerf... really
he is good as he is

Ill only change second one of his power (2) into "throw thunderbolt"

PS, love his voice lines
we really need more of shazam in game

All we are trying to do is make sure we never ever have another Steel fiasco. Granted Shazam is nothing like what Steel was but still...we are just making sure he is balanced and not over powered before hitting Live is all.

And I'm with you on Flash. He is the main toon I am drooling for. Easily one the top characters in DCUO I love.