How I'd Fix Weak Yet Controversial Heroes (Part 1): Black Panther
One thing that has frustrated me for a while is how certain heroes are relegated to being bad when played at a higher level. This is often because just one or two aspects of their kit make them feel uniquely frustrating or unfair to play against, especially for the casual audience. Then, the hero is left with no room for proper buffs because doing so results in huge blowback by those who justifiably find the character annoying. For this reason, I wanted to challenge myself to tweak each of these problematic heroes, giving them a higher and more rewarding skill ceiling, yet making them less annoying to fight against for less experienced players. First, I want to discuss Black Panther.
What Makes him Problematic at a Lower Level?
Black Panther is one of the three "assassin" divers in Marvel Rivals: those being Spiderman, Black Panther, and Black Cat. I will avoid Black Cat as an example though because her balance being wack. Unlike brawlier divers (like Magik or DD), assassins trade higher sustainability for greater agility and faster TTKs.
Due to their high mobility and quick kill times, assassins are very difficult for a less experienced player to track or avoid, so a reasonably steep skill slope must be expected of the kit in order to ensure fair engagement between two equally skilled players. Despite this expectation, Black Panther is much less mechanically demanding compared to playing Spiderman at a lower skill level (less aim requirement, easier combos). With a comparatively shallow mechanical skill curve, his strength is thus disproportionately felt at lower ELO (especially by strategists).
Why is he Weak at a Higher level?
At a higher level, assassins can struggle with the low sustainability of their kit. Due to teams typically being more attentive and having better tracking, they can usually beat or at least trade with the assassin in an engagement. While trading isn't too problematic for Spiderman because he has a quick roll-out that enables him to get right back into the fight, it is a huge issue for Black Panther. BP may be fast during engagements, but he has a much slower roll-out and takes longer to reposition than his counterpart, so frequent trading makes him very inconsistent.
How Could we Fix his Kit?
While BP needs buffs, he would first require some sort of rework that makes him less problematic at lower ELO. To do this, I would suggest changing how damage is dealt with the spear throw. Currently, it deals 50 spell damage in a large, 5m radius from where the spear lands. This large radius makes BP not very mechanically challenging, contributing to his strength at low ELO.
To change this, the spear throw would now deal just 20 spell damage in the same 5m radius, but also 20 contact damage when hitting the enemy directly. Additionally, similar to Peni's web clusters, the contact damage of the projectile could crit, meaning a headshot with the spear toss would deal 60 damage (20 spell damage + 40 contact damage). Now, a body shot would deal just 40 damage and an indirect hit would deal a measly 20 damage, meaning the BP player would need to improve their flicks or slow down to properly aim their spear if they wish to deal greater damage. This would raise the skill slope for BP by adding an aiming requirement to achieve higher damage with combos, but it would still allow less experienced BP players to get dash resets off of indirect hits (so not overly punishing). At a low level, this a strong nerf to BP's damage. At a high level, this would be a nerf to BP's damage against many targets at once, yet a buff to his damage against single targets (now capable of combo-ing for 275 hp with spear, spear, dash, dash).
Now with room for buffs, to fix the weakness of BP's inconsistency, he will need an increase in his sustainability. While this was important before, it will be even more so now that Black Panther must take the time to aim for his targets. I would recommend increasing the amount of bonus health he gains by triggering vibranium marks (25->50) and increasing his maximum bonus health gained (75->150). This means he gains overhealth at *twice* the rate compared to before, giving him the boost he needs in longer engagements.
Together, these changes should make Panther weaker at low ELO and casual play because people who cannot flick will either do much less damage, or they will need to combo much more slowly to aim. At high ELO, he will be much stronger, now able to combo 275-hp targets and quickly generate bonus health by successfully hitting his dashes. This change manages to better reward aim and proc'ing dashes, making the loop more rewarding for the BP player, while also forcing him to play more slowly and reactably for his opponent.
