MultiVersus nerfs Iron Giant because he’s ‘dominating with abnormally high win rates at every skill level’
Not bad for a pacifist.
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Warner Bros' free-to-play character brawlerMultiVersushas launched to enormous success, attracting over 20 million players so far, and looks set to become something of a cross-platform Smash Bros. It’s also created an amusing spectator sport, which is watching the traditional fighting game jargon being applied to a cast list that features characters as diverse as Tom & Jerry, Superman, Arya Stark, and Shaggy. There’s just something funny about Velma being called OP.
Pre-launch Multiversus attracted some grumbling for its inclusion of the Iron Giant, a character created for a children’s book called The Iron Man by the great author Ted Hughes. This is because the story ultimately shows the gigantic metal man setting an example of pacifism and understanding that leads to world peace.
Thus the Iron Giant may seem like an odd fit for a fighting game. Which is a fair enough perspective though, personally speaking, I don’t find that taking a bit of license with a well-known fictional character is a problem: particularly in a nonsensical cartoon brawler. I mean, we can all still read the book.
Anyway, the Iron Giant has, amusingly enough, turned out to be so powerful that developer Player First Games has been forced to apply some swingeing nerfs to the character. The game will be down today for a short maintenance period, after which it returns with a new patch that also introduces Morty from Rick & Morty.
“Iron Giant is currently dominating with abnormally high win rates at every skill level,” reads the notes on the character. “Iron Giant’s Neutral Special with stacked cooldown reduction and Velma are causing too few windows for opponents to counterplay. Updates to Iron Giant, global updates to perks, and Velma updates should help provide more windows of opportunity for opponents against Iron Giant.”
See what I mean about this stuff just being quite funny at times? The nerfs amount to increasing Iron Giant’s cooldown on certain attacks (the Velma reference above is because she can reduce cooldowns with her abilities), and reducing the rather large hitbox of his upwards air attack. His Air / Ground Up special has also had its damage slightly reduced, and the knockback from its final hit reduced.
We’ll see if that’s enough to flatten-out the big boy’s abnormally high win rate. In addition to the direct nerfs for the Iron Giant, Velma’s ‘Educated’ buff has also been nerfed: where it reduced cooldowns by 75% over 8 seconds, it now does 50% over the same time. There’s also been a reduction in how cooldown refunds are calculated for all characters.
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The wider picture is probably of most interest to assassin characters, which have seen a major buff across-the-board that means they’ll all take less damage. All assassin characters have a passive ability that increases damage taken by 14%, making them high-damage but lower health picks. This 14% is being reduced to 5%, and the developer’s notes say it’s considering whether to remove it entirely: “We want to take a step towards that while trying to not to go too far too fast. We don’t want to create an assassin dominated meta.”
The full patch notes follow:
General
General Perks
Characters
In ourrecent review, Mollie said “MultiVersus has done a bang-up job of laying the foundations for a fantastic platform fighter that has the potential to blossom into something amazing”. It’s certainly off to a strong start even if, in the case of the Iron Giant, it was maybe a little too strong.
Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as “[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike.”
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