LogFAQs > #972682622

Leon Kennedy: Ahh, Leon. One of the hottest topics as far as the Test Run was concerned. His ability was too good, his battle worth absolutely nil in spite of more feats than ever before, and he more than anyone else exposed the flaws with the AP system that led to this Low Tier readjustment. Oh, and RE4Make came out right as the TR finished, meaning he had new material to work with.

As such, we've done a nigh-on complete overhaul of Leon's battle writeup (he now has every RE4Make pistol, the Striker and the bolt-action rifle, plus Krauser's Fighting Knife, Body Armour and it's been clarified he has every type of grenade just to prevent pedantic arguments...EDIT: And as an emergency hotfix because Mercenaries Mode came out, we're giving Leon his Mayhem Mode ability. Finally, a nice thing to set him apart!), and we've replaced "Your Right Hand Comes Off?" with something a little more suited to the remake's tone. He can now challenge an enemy mercenary to a knife-fight, and on upgrade, make that literal by starting them off in the center of the terrain, ready to shank each other out. We hope this will fit Leon's new RE2Make and RE4Make characterization a little bit better, while still enabling him to be a powerful playmaker nonetheless. For more details, please see his wiki page.

Lastly, we've adjusted Leon to 2/week, making him our very first true 2/week gunner (sorry K. Rool, that dinky-ass musket doesn't earn you that privilege). The significant changes to the Broken Rule had major knock-on effects on mercenary respect, and Leon was one of the characters hit hardest by this. A solid 3/week in M4, he exposed an uncomfortable truth this go around: when everyone else has access to CC effects, buffs, heals and revivals, gunners end up looking kind of bad by default. Their games naturally incline them towards doing nothing more than pure DPS as a default, particularly those featuring mundane gunners, which naturally decreases their intrinsic value. Would you rather have a guy with an assault rifle, or Tidus who can Hastega, Slowga, draintank, blind, silence and also do sick anime flippydoos, for example? As such, we opted to take a moment to reassess our views on gunner respect, and adjusted Leon accordingly. Better that he be a star in his new upkeep tier than widely considered the worst 3/week, eh?

Meta Knight: We've added Recharge to Meta Knight's base ability, increased to Recharge 2 for manually selecting its target, so as to keep him at parity with other Low Tier mercenaries (particularly the aforementioned Leon, who now has a fairly similar ability). He can now reinforce for TP, also.

Lastly, we've radically redesigned Meta Knight's Meta Samurai ability, removing the need to be present at any specific point during Wartime beyond vaguely being around for declarations (and even that is moreso to keep options open rather than being required). We heard your complaints about having to F5 constantly loud and clear, and his new Meta Samurai should preserve the timing element of the ability while adding a new component of skilful predictiveness to it that should bring meta (haw) heavy leaders great joy.

...We're still not adjusting Zenos' Reflexes ability though. If you have the reflexes of a geriatric old grandma, you can just go get wrecked wwwwww

Pamela Ibis: As part of the Low Tier ability rebalance, we are hitting Pamela's Barrel ability with Recharge 1.

The RED Team: We are applying Recharge 1 to Scout, Demoman and Heavy's abilities, plus Engie's Nope ability. They're too strong to bring out on the daily, and this should encourage a bit more cycling than before.

Scorpion: Repositionings are good. Repositionings are VERY good. If everyone else gets to be less spammy, Scorpion can't remain equally as reposition-y as before. We're adding Recharge 1 to GET OVER HERE to keep him from becoming overpowered.

Slave Knight Gael: Gael went unbought for a very simple, very fair reason: too much time taken to build up blood counters and no active ability to speak of to start. So we're addressing this by shifting Gael's abilities around, turning his berserking ability into his default (and applying Recharge 1 to it to balance it out). This should allow Gael to see play early on without being a huge gamble. You'll have to buy his blood counter price reduction upgrade or the painted world to unlock his blood counters, though.

Tidus: We're applying Recharge 1 to Tidus' ability at baseline, turning his final upgrade an optional declaration, and hitting that version with Recharge 2. It's very strong, and we would like to not see it spammed day in and day out.

Addditionally, and most notably, we are applying Recharge 1 to Blitz Ace also. You may have noticed it was pretty much just baseline abilities that got hit elsewhere. This is by design and to increase the power of full-fledged Low Tier mercenaries vs lowbie Phantasmals, allowing them to have consistent abilities they can always deploy. The ability to upgrade into always-on abilities is something we wanted to be a potent draw that can justify a higher initial minbid, but with the new TP system implemented, we fear that any ways to reliably win terrain (here's an easy one: have Gael on your team alongside Tidus, paint the waterball, and receive 2 TP on the defensive for free) would make Tidus absolutely obnoxious to deal with. By applying Recharge to Blitz Ace, we want to encourage mixing things up so as to keep the Luca Sphere Pool from being abusive. With any luck, he won't need further nerfings going forwards.

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That is all for now. We will begin work on the 4/week mercenaries sometime soon, hopefully!