Let’s call your metric usage ratio, or UR. An even better metric in my mind is,
UR_b / UR_u
where UR_b is the usage ratio when the character receives a weekly boost and UR_us is the usage ratio when that does not happen. Regardless of tier, giving a character a weekly boost should definitely increase their usage. If it does not it indicates design flaws to the point where even boosting the character doesn’t make people think they can use them.
I would think going by Season Simulator teams would be generally revealing. People seem to generally not waste time with sub-optimal teams when they make their climbs.
Yeah, I remember when IceIX said Sentrybombing was not a concern for the devs as only a small fraction of the player base used Sentry. That small fraction was pretty much everyone interested in competitive PvP…
But hey, Sentry did get fixed so he didn’t dominate PvP anymore! …I guess too many players started relying on him then…
The problem is that fixes usually mean nerf. You take the strongest ability of the game WR and convert it into one almost nobody uses anymore, I even respeced Sentry to 5/3/5 and never looked back.
We also get some buffs, some like xforce or IM, but most of the time they are like IW (three times buffed already and still no good) or Elektra.
I said it over and over again, Devs should do incremental changes, and should do them more often (this second part is important, like every season not every six months). All the games I know work like this, FOR A REASON. So Chulk black is never ever triggered, lets change “fewer than seven” to “fewer than eight” to see what happens, etc. Some chars need to be rethinked but most of them can be fixed just like this (Chulk need to be rethinked completely
)
Some characters are going to be better than others, that seems clear to me. Hard to balance everything.
In the first three tiers, I am completely fine with everything. No characters are too good, and I think even the worst characters have their uses. Especially for newer players, which is what the 1*, 2* and 3* tiers are mostly for.
In the 4* and 5* tier I think there may be a few things to fix/improve. Most notably
.