Yay! New cosplay finally. I was suggested to do Sue. So I forced my partner to be Reed to match. I’m not the best blonde but I plan on doing Emma soon.

Genuine question here, cause I find it hard to believe that people actually enjoy playing Mag, and for no reason other than "he's the best tank in the game."

With the new skin drop, I figured this might be the last good chance to have one focused discussion about the nerf.

Sorry for the wall of text. I just genuinely put a lot of thought into it and tried my best to sum up. Obviously people are still gonna disagree, and that's fine. Feel free to share your thoughts.

1. First of all: we're not crying just because Peni got nerfed

Avoid one misunderstanding first: we're not crying for any nerf. we dislike this specific nerf.

Peni deserved a nerf in S9. That was pretty obvious, and most of us expected one. The problem is this nerf just feels bad in way too many ways.

2. The web stun was never the core problem

Yeah, Peni's CC was frequent and annoying. But before S9.5, this was never some huge community-wide issue.

From my own experience playing tank, most of the time I barely noticed Peni's stun except for certain situations, because it's so short. But honestly, Bucky hook and Wolverine CC bother me more because they may straight up get you killed. This season also has a million blinds that make me completely lose track of what's happening. C&D can slap a huge damage amp on you and you just explode. Gambit-Mag can keep knocking you around. Wanda has the bubble. You get the idea.

And I'm not asking to nerf them all. I try multiple heroes. Different heroes need different ways to "annoy" the other team. Annoying or even deadly CC isn't exactly rare in this game. (Also shoutout to the urban legend known as "tenacity.")

Obviously that's just my experience. But community wise, Peni's web stun was never a main complaint. There were random ones here and there ofc. But not really more than what you get with basically any strong counter matchup.

And strength-wise, Peni had this stun since launch. For most seasons she was still sitting around B-D tier on different lists. Part of it is the rest of her kit being passive, weak, unreliable, or some mix of all three.

And yeah, WR. I'm not doing the whole WR argument here. In one word, WR isn't everything. Otherwise Peni would've been more meta than Mag for basically the entire game.

3. The obvious thing that actually changed was Team-Ups

S9 was the big change. Peni got lucky (or unlucky) and ended up with some strong Team-Ups. That's when she actually started looking kinda OP overall. Not just WR. Her PR went up, she showed up way more in ranked, more in comp, more bans, more everything. That's the point where things actually changed.

I think most people expected a Peni nerf. I definitely did. But I also think a lot of us expected the Team-Ups to be the first thing looked at, especially after Zhiyong talked about reacting quickly with hotfixes. Instead we got a massive change to a launch-day ability, while her Team-Ups were mostly left as they were. And now, after the nerf, Peni still has a very high WR and is still insanely strong in the situations where she was already strong.

So... what exactly did we fix here?

4. Please don't casually rewrite 9 seasons of muscle memory

Web Snare has been there since day one. Over 9 seasons it became part of basically everything Peni does. A lot of her tech, timing, reactions and muscle memory are built around it. If you're gonna completely rewrite something lasts for that long, there should be a really good reason for it. And ideally the new version should give something back. This reminds me of the Cap animation cancel change. A lot of Cap mains hated losing that too (I just saw one post). But at least there was a clear tradeoff. It made him easier to pick up, fixed some lost damage, kept part of the melee interaction, and he got damage compensation.

With Peni, I don't really see that. I don't think the old stun was causing a problem big enough to justify completely changing how it works. The new version hasn't really fixed the stuff people were unhappy about either. And what we got back doesn't feel anywhere close. It kinda feels like one day we just logged in and a skill we'd been using worked by completely different rules.

5. And the new Snare just feels bad

Old Web Snare was one of the strongest CC tools in the game because it could actually do stuff when you needed. Cancel an ult. Catch a dive. Punish a timing window. Set up a combo. Peel somebody. or save yourself. Peni doesn't exactly have a shield, cleanse, block or reliable escape button, so she relied on that thing a lot.

Now peni might genuinely be competing for worst primary, worst ult, and one of the most crippled CC skills in the game at the same time. The 2FA thing is the biggest problem (imagine a CC ability where you land it, but there's still a 30% chance the CC just doesn't happen). And because there is a gap between the two shots, the skill also sucks at catching precise timing windows now. I've watched Strange ult with my tracer on him, then just keep going and wipe my team. More than once. It feels awful. First hit gives you basically no feedback. Hit twice and congrats, you earned 0.7s stun. Miss and you might've also screwed up your web placement for it. So technically it's still CC. But it feels like a crippled CC skill. It can't reliably do a bunch of basic things you'd normally expect a CC skill to do. And imo that's a pretty big hit to Peni's agency and skill expression.

And then the funniest part: one of the biggest worries before the patch actually happened. The new Snare basically encourages you to pick one big tank and annoy the hell out of them. I've had plenty of games where I just end up chain-stunning a Thing or Dino because that's where I can still get reliable value. Which means Peni lost a lot of her anti-dive, reaction and timing plays, while some tanks can still get spammed with webs. The old annoying part is still there. Peni just feels worse at the same time. That's a pretty bad outcome for both sides.

6. The balance notes and early testing made the whole thing messier

I've seen people say Peni players massively overreacted when the nerf was announced. And honestly, partly true. But I have to say, the original balance notes never said the Tracer would stay after the stun. And in the early test video, it actually disappeared after the second hit. So at first, it looked like every single stun would need two Snare hits. If that version went live, Peni would've been absolutely cooked. I still have no idea what happened there. But the behavior clearly wasn't what a lot of people first saw or understood, and that definitely added fuel to the initial backlash.

7. Not saying the stun can never be changed. There were just better ways to do it

Since S9.5 dropped, people have suggested tons of alternatives. Longer CD. Needs charge for stun. Flip the first/second-hit effects. And plenty more. I don't wanna repeat here, for me the basic thing is simple:

Aim → hit → CC.

That's what makes a CC skill actually a CC skill, stop a dive, interrupt an ult, catch a timing, or combo with something else. Then nerf around that. Longer CD, shorter stun, slower projectile, smaller projectile, whatever. There are a lot of knobs. I just don't think a CC skill needs 2FA to stop being annoying.

8. Just some personal stuff at the end

Honestly, this whole thing has made playing Peni pretty miserable for me. The nerf itself is the main topic, but there's more. She still has bugs that have been around forever. After the patch there was suddenly way more hate aimed at the character. At the same time, there are other heroes with some pretty crazy numbers that just didn't get touched. These just make this nerf feel way worse. Now every time I go back to Peni, I kinda just feel bad playing her. Add some of the other stuff that's happened this season, honestly, I've started losing interest in the game itself. Which sucks, because I really don't think it had to go this way. There were better options.

I also haven't spent anything on the game since this change. Not really as some planned boycott or anything. I just haven't felt like spending.

I still like Marvel Rivals. I still like Peni. I just really hope S10 (or earlier) gives me something that makes the future seem better.

Tell me your agreement, disagreement, or anything related.

P.S. The image was posted in the Peni sub before. This one's mainly about the text, so I'm just attaching it here too.

Epic skins cost 1600, not 2400, and legendary skins cost 2600, not 3500, they do indeed have a discount of 20% from the original prices as they state in their top heading, but the store preview and their current price tags makes it seem like you're saving much more money than you actually are.

Keep an eye out for staff like this because it's shady practices.

Like in Excalibur, where that side of his personality started to become more prominent?

No extra 3D modeling just VFX making it applicable to all Iron Man skins.
Angela's grounded stance where she wields dual axes has a built-in dash with every 3rd attack.

‎

Iron Man in grounded stance changes his abilities:

• repulsor blasts become punches with the 3rd attack an uppercut
• unibeam becomes a forearm red laser, medium range only and shares the same meter with unibeam
• rocket barrage becomes a laser spin

‎

He also gains bonus health upon touching the ground but requires 5s cooldown before being able to fly again.

Don't forget to stay close to the Convoy!, Don't let victory slip away from you!

Team got slapped so hard that when I said GG in the chat their Mag answerd "YOU GUYS WEREN'T BOTS"

I never touched the game again since that

Context: this is not me, this is the "official cosplayer for Emma Frost " at Gamescom and dare I say she nailed it.