paladinsbalance-blog

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Street Justice, and Not Just Maeve’s Talent

In Balancing Paladins: Maeve

The quality of the Paladins team’s balancing has been called into question recently, with the measly nerf to her oppressive Street Justice Talent and justly made adjustments to the Damage Reduction cards that made her unchallengeable. But these changes hardly fix the true issue in Maeve, and that issue is her kit. Today, we’re talking about how we can very much fix Maeve and bring her from much less of a Champion that requires zero brain-cells to a Champion deserving of such a title.

The niche Maeve originally filled was a highly mobile skirmisher: traits mixed from Evie and Androxus even though she’s more like Evie. She employed high-risk maneuvers to initiate and twist around an opponent but also had decent longevity in drawn out fights, with decent escape tools. Patch upon patch, the balancing team has run a literal wheelchair on Maeve’s legs. She was crippled, no longer able to sustain herself in or to leave from high-risk situations she initiated.

Her “Get Out of Jail” Card -- Except That It Doesn’t Get Her Out of Jail, It Just Gave Her The Keys

Maeve’s reoccuring problem is her inability to stay alive in drawn out fights, which is why in recent times she relies on Street Justice to quickly end fights. I propose that we revert Nine Lives to its former state: “Nine Lives heals for 500 Health and cleanses all Crowd Control over its Duration in addition to resetting the Cooldowns of Prowl and Pounce”. As for Artful Dodger: “Nine Lives grants 50% Damage Reduction upon activation, and its Healing ignores Cauterize”.

Reworking the Oppressive Street Justice

It’s unanimously agreed upon that Street Justice is a gigantic problem. It offers high reward for far lower effort, building Maeve to rely only on this crutch. My proposal in changing Street Justice is a fusion of Androxus’ Defiant Fist, Rogue’s Gambit and the current Street Justice: “Successful weapon shots boost the Damage of your next Pounce from 10% to 50%, and Killing Blows reset the Cooldown of Pounce”.

In Returning Mobility -- Prowl

The only issue in Prowl is that there are two other abilities that do the same thing but better, and for a vastly lower Cooldown. I’m talking about Viktor’s Hustle and Jenos’ Stellar Wind. One can argue that Maeve has a larger base Movement Speed, but unlike Viktor or Jenos, she’s meant to be able to run around and juke opponents and to be hard to hit. So, the only change I propose for Prowl, is to buff its base speed increase from 50% to 80%, adjusting her Chase Card accordingly.

A Gambit

Credits to a Discord friend, we can provide Maeve with another outlet for her mobility by reworking Rogue’s Gambit: “Pounce now passes through enemies and it both travels and knocks enemies back for 100% further, but it deals no Damage. Both Pounce and Prowl are also no longer affected by Cripple effects”.

To set a precedent for most of my other balancing suggestions, I won’t discuss a fourth Talent. In fact, I would remove the fourth Talent from each of all Champions. The reason being that a fourth Talent only complicates further balancing decisions.

Conclusion

Having discussed all these, we can divide Maeve into three different playstyles:

The Artful Dodger rework, alongside the Nine Lives buff, brings Maeve closer into a Damage-oriented Champion. She will become, I predict, a more stable skirmisher in the process.

The Street Justice rework grants Maeve the same level of risk while having less of an impact but more of a reward especially when aggregated over a period of time.

The Rogue’s Gambit rework provides Maeve with more mobility, even under the effects of Cripple.

With these I think I’ve refitted Maeve into her original niche and still have effectively granted her three different playstyles, which is what the Talent system originally intended to be. Thanks for reading -- I would appreciate some feedback and discussion over how these hypotheticals could affect the meta.

#paladins: champions of the realm #pcotr #paladins maeve #pcotr maeve #paladins balance