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The Synthwave Feature Bot Op-Ed: Jazz is Sounding Pretty Flat

SynthwaveSynthwave Posts: 1,012
edited June 2018 in General Discussion
So I think I'm going to try and start a monthly bot review here to give my two cents on feature bots that drop. This month is obviously Jazz.

Despite all of the numerous (and mildly annoying) Jazz threads I've had the misfortune of reading over the course of the year, I must admit I was also one of the fans who wanted him to make his grand entrance to TFTF. So when the news finally dropped that he was coming to the game, I was pretty stoked about being able to play him and planned on getting him to rank 5 as fast as I could.

The first time I debuted him in the arena I was so ready to have him shimmy and shake his way around his opponents, much the same way G1 Bee does. So imagine my surprise when he finally dropped down into the arena and really didn't do much shimmying and shaking. In fact, he just felt kinda clunky, the way Prowl, Ratchet, or Iron Hide feels when playing them. The agility and grooviness that I love so much about Bee is disappointingly absent from Jazz. His combos, from that first jerky upper-cut feel stilted and give you the feeling that the next few hits won't connect somehow or make you feel like he won't be able to get out of the way in time to avoid a counterattack. Maybe it's just because he's new and he just requires more getting used to; I guess time will tell in that department. Regardless, still not impressed with how he moves.

His abilities, however, I am impressed with. They're what the dev team got right; they're both fun and challenging to employ and reward you with some pretty great results. Like Drift's Deep Focus sig, you have to creatively earn your critical and evasion buffs (and if using OG, your attack buffs; great synergy there). The part where it starts to get a little dicey though is managing your opponent's power meter. For Jazz to be really effective, he needs to be duped and in my opinion have a decent amount of sig points dumped into him (a maxed Stupefy mastery will also help).

This is because he relies on dealing big damage during stuns and there are 2 ways to get those stuns. One, by filling his opponent's special meter to just past the point of earning a green or yellow or red special and then hitting them with a heavy attack. This will cause power drain and once it drops below the bar, will stun them. The other method suffers from the same problems that Waspinator and Hound currently suffer from and that's small windows of opportunity. This method involves hitting the opponent with a heavy attack and then somehow getting a successful sp1 off before the 6 second timer expires. Even then, there's no guarantee you will even stun the opponent, as there is only a 20% chance per hit to do it.

Now this is where Jazz's flaws start to show up: in his sp1 and sp2. The chances of you using his sp1 the way they intend it to be used are just not reasonable, especially at higher levels of difficulty. There just won't be enough time to launch a heavy, move in for a combo and then trigger the sp1. At best, most times you can just get the heavy off and then when you try to move in to set up a combo to launch your sp1, you get the old sidestep+counterattack treatment for your efforts; something no HP-deprived Scout wants to happen to them.

The other special, his sp2 feels phoned in, as it does the EXACT same thing your heavy attack accomplishes, right down to the same stats and times. Even its additional ability of preventing sp3's from being used by the opponent is a tacked-on absurdity because with confusion automatically applied, they're draining power anyway and there's no chance of your opponent even hitting sp3 during a 6 second window (and good luck trying to keep that applied by landing repeated heavies; guys running high difficulty levels know what I mean). I think it's safe to say in the 60,000 fights I've fought that I've never once come across a scenario where I was in danger of redlining an opponent during a power drain within a 6 second window. So Jazz's sp2 is pretty pointless and indistinguishable from his heavy in that regard.

So what does this mean? It means that essentially the only real purpose of Jazz's sp1 and sp2 are just for dealing big damage while the opponent remains stunned; which I guess is OK, but to have two special abilities be...well...not special...kinda feels like the dev team rushed this bot to market. And as if that wasn't boring enough, you literally have to use those specials immediately after stunning them because the 3 second stun timer won't even allow you to initiate a Sequencer Mastery if you're using that. The timer will expire before Sequencer takes effect, so forget even having that most basic of masteries being useful for Jazz. Kinda lame and not fully thought out.

I will say that Jazz's sp3 is a great special though and will serve you well in those longer fights. His sp1 and sp2 though need serious revisions to them as their only current purpose is to deal big damage during a stun.

In the synergy department he almost gets full marks. His synergy as one of Optimus Prime's Lieutenants allows him to deal out even more damage, which is great, but the biggest flaw (one that almost stings as much as how he moves) is that he has zero synergies with his buddy, Blaster. This is an egregious oversight on the part of the dev team and I seriously hope they take the playerbase's suggestions to heart and give these two a unique synergy. Both of them could definitely use it.

So in conclusion, I think Jazz has the potential to be a great bot, provided he gets some revisions to his sp1 that don't require you to do something absurd in a 6 second window and also not making his sp2 do the exact same thing as his heavy attack does; in my opinion that's just flat out lazy development and was frankly surprising, given how carefully and creatively the dev team has handled other bots in the past. Combine that with his clunky, unimaginative movements that seem so un-Jazz-like and you have a bot that has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I was really looking forward to a more complete bot who moved and felt like the real Jazz and not some grandpa version of him, but I'm still holding out hope that some of the sour taste can be removed by making his specials actually feel special.

Anyway that's my two cents.

Comments

  • Gunz0Gunz0 Posts: 2,949
    I love this detailed review! Please, make more stuff like this, this is probably the best post I’ve read this month.
  • Y2KY2K Posts: 252
    Not even one word about how easily the enemies throw specials when confused? Whenever you find their power bar intimidating, employ an Ironhide-style until one heavy is landed, then dance a tiny bit to drain their power and even get an evasion buff.
  • KittenPrimeKittenPrime Posts: 1,144
    para-para, paragraphs! nice review bro
  • BumblebeeBumblebee Posts: 581
    Nice, love this! You seem to be one of the few people I know who has a fully-decked out Generations Bumblebee; who would you say is the better Scout here? Bumblebee or Jazz?
  • SynthwaveSynthwave Posts: 1,012
    edited June 2018
    Bumblebee wrote: »
    Nice, love this! You seem to be one of the few people I know who has a fully-decked out Generations Bumblebee; who would you say is the better Scout here? Bumblebee or Jazz?

    Thanks!

    Yeah if you had to choose between Bee and Jazz, I think I'd give Bee the edge here.

    While Jazz does have great ramp-up damage, you need to have OG along to give him that attack buff synergy, while Bee's synergy with OG is just amped up heavy attack damage. Bee also has that Espionage synergy with Mirage, which can also be useful in certain situations when ability suppression is needed.

    Bee's damage is also more immediate and doesn't require dodging 10 specials before you start seeing results. Bee also has that important shield-break ability which you will get much more utility out of than Jazz's backfire and special-forcing.

    Or, to put it more succinctly: by the time Jazz is done warming up, Bee is already done with the fight.

    Now, a scenario like Legend's of Cybertron, where you need that long-haul specialist to get you through the fight, bots like Jazz and Mirage will both really shine for sure.

    I'm definitely gonna finish max-forging Jazz though and see what they do with his sp1 and sp2. I easily one-shotted Mixmaster on RoK on my first try (someone said Inqosly also posted a video of it) so the potential is definitely there, but until they fix his sp1 and sp2, he's really gonna suffer in the more common, shorter fights found in Arena, Spotlight, Raiding, and AM.

    Hope that helps!
  • BOFADBOFAD Posts: 481
    Good stuff brother @Synthwave
  • BumblebeeBumblebee Posts: 581
    Synthwave wrote: »
    Bumblebee wrote: »
    Nice, love this! You seem to be one of the few people I know who has a fully-decked out Generations Bumblebee; who would you say is the better Scout here? Bumblebee or Jazz?

    Thanks!

    Yeah if you had to choose between Bee and Jazz, I think I'd give Bee the edge here.

    While Jazz does have great ramp-up damage, you need to have OG along to give him that attack buff synergy, while Bee's synergy with OG is just amped up heavy attack damage. Bee also has that Espionage synergy with Mirage, which can also be useful in certain situations when ability suppression is needed.

    Bee's damage is also more immediate and doesn't require dodging 10 specials before you start seeing results. Bee also has that important shield-break ability which you will get much more utility out of than Jazz's backfire and special-forcing.

    Or, to put it more succinctly: by the time Jazz is done warming up, Bee is already done with the fight.

    Now, a scenario like Legend's of Cybertron, where you need that long-haul specialist to get you through the fight, bots like Jazz and Mirage will both really shine for sure.

    I'm definitely gonna finish max-forging Jazz though and see what they do with his sp1 and sp2. I easily one-shotted Mixmaster on RoK on my first try (someone said Inqosly also posted a video of it) so the potential is definitely there, but until they fix his sp1 and sp2, he's really gonna suffer in the more common, shorter fights found in Arena, Spotlight, Raiding, and AM.

    Hope that helps!

    Cool, thank you so much!
  • Jay32Jay32 Posts: 169
    I consider him one of the top bots in the game. He's the perfect compliment for the OG & Rat users. I do agree that it takes time to build up his power but his abilities make up for it while you build it up. His confusion is a game changer & his power draining sig is nice also. He fits in well with the other Scouts. Scouts are just too good.
  • sabre_777sabre_777 Posts: 115
    Interesting read. I don't have the resources to r5 mine yet or the 60,000 fight experience you do so I appreciate the perspective. I don't find his moves clunky myself. He feels pretty smooth to me actually. I do agree that I expected him to be more 'evasive' out of the box with the way they described him in the Intel report 'Autobot JAZZ likes to evade..... a lot' or something to that affect.

    As others have pointed out, I think JAZZ's most intriguing ability is the special inducing factor of the confusion debuff. That makes a huge difference in being ready against some bots that have sneaky specials or that are hard to bait sp1 or 2. As you said JAZZ does seem to excel at being a longer fight specialist that allow his abilotoes shine.

    Keep doing these every month. I enjoyed it!!
  • Bntyhntr3232_Bntyhntr3232_ Posts: 3,088
    Intresting...that's a good idea @Synthwave I'll sometimes drop my thoughts where u put your review lol
  • Faithz17Faithz17 Posts: 842
    I’m loving Jazz so far. Build him to SP3 to put permanent backfire on opponents and just keep confusing them to throw their SPs and kill themselves. :D but most of the time he already hits so hard that they die before he SP3. For long fights, just throw in that synergy with OG OP. I like him, I like all the scouts (except Sideswipe) and he may easily be my fave scout yet.
  • MutantdocMutantdoc Posts: 470
    I just got my first T3c crystal and have to decide which scout to take to my first r5. I was planning on my awakened 4s Windblade however r5 Jazz would give rewards in Monthly goals. I just don't want to regret picking Jazz over windblade. Do you guys think he is worthy?
  • SynthwaveSynthwave Posts: 1,012
    Mutantdoc wrote: »
    I just got my first T3c crystal and have to decide which scout to take to my first r5. I was planning on my awakened 4s Windblade however r5 Jazz would give rewards in Monthly goals. I just don't want to regret picking Jazz over windblade. Do you guys think he is worthy?

    If you want a bot that you can play just off of pure ability then yeah, I'd go with Jazz.

    He has the skillset to be a permanent Legends of Cybertron bot for your squad just on his abilities and his synergy with OG alone. It's his schizophrenic specials that seem to be at odds with each other that you'll find frustrating and combined with his playstyle, inevitably unfulfilling. That and you'd better hope he doesn't have to go up against any bots on a reflect mod because then his confusion ability just flies straight out the window.

    If you think just building to sp3 and using that is good enough for you, then sure, you'll be fine, but I really like a bot that I can utilize all of their specials. And as Jazz's sp1 and sp2 stand now, they just don't work well together.

    Hopefully he'll get added to the bot balance/repair list right next to his buddy Blaster and Starscream and Waspinator. Like Blaster, he doesn't need much, just a few tweaks to either his specials and/or how his sig operates.

    WB is great for pure damage output and power gain control, but it seems like lately the dev team has been trying to curtail or limit the use of bleed bots. Swordmasters will always be a great synergy (especially with a 5 star Drift + the 4 other 4 star swordmasters), but you may just not get the mileage out of it that you maybe could've 6 months ago.
  • KillMasterCKillMasterC Posts: 3,105
    Mutantdoc wrote: »
    I just got my first T3c crystal and have to decide which scout to take to my first r5. I was planning on my awakened 4s Windblade however r5 Jazz would give rewards in Monthly goals. I just don't want to regret picking Jazz over windblade. Do you guys think he is worthy?

    Jazz first, there are 3000 t3scout essences and in my case, after finishing the final objective I walked away of another t3scout spark.
    (and you get to awaken Jazz)
  • NightgauntNightgaunt Posts: 178
    Synthwave wrote: »
    In the synergy department he almost gets full marks. His synergy as one of Optimus Prime's Lieutenants allows him to deal out even more damage, which is great, but the biggest flaw (one that almost stings as much as how he moves) is that he has zero synergies with his buddy, Blaster. This is an egregious oversight on the part of the dev team and I seriously hope they take the playerbase's suggestions to heart and give these two a unique synergy. Both of them could definitely use it.

    THIS! A thousand times this! It seemed inevitable that the two would have a decent synergy of some kind given the music/sonic connection, and especially after Blaster's synergies had received some pretty heavy criticism. I even thought to myself that Blaster's synergies looked trash because they'd planned ahead for Jazz (and possibly other bots). I had designs for putting them both on my AM team and starting to work on a decent AM synergy setup, after months of making do with whatever I had. Now, I'm playing the wait-and-see game as to whether Kabam will even acknowledge it as an issue, let alone make any changes. With all that in mind, it's a particularly nasty slap in the face that they decided to make this month's spotlight mission all about Blaster and Jazz being sonic bros.
  • seeker1321seeker1321 Posts: 83
    @Synthwave From your post above it sounds like you would recommend Jazz over Windblade. How do you think Jazz stacks up against Cheetor?
  • SynthwaveSynthwave Posts: 1,012
    It's an almost apples and oranges comparison because you need to factor in synergies and game modes with both of them.

    In my opinion, Jazz is really going to shine in the longer LoC-type fights (maybe some Master fights?), but Cheetor being used in a Beast Purification team has way more utility for running game modes like AM, raid, and of course Spotlight if you have all 5 current BW bots leveled up.

    I think a fantastic team to bring to AM would be 5 Star Primal, 5 Star Rhinox, and 4 Star Cheetor. Cheetor would really make the most of the 10% damage bonus from Primal and especially the 10% power gain bonus from Rhinox because if you finish Cheetor's combos with medium hits you also get a little bit more of a power gain bonus there as well. And since Cheetor's sp1 and sp2 are WAAAYYYY better than Jazz's, those power gains can't be underestimated. Plus he evades ranged attacks when dashing or heavy attacking and can purify any DoT effects. Cheetor's reach also makes Jazz feel like he has little stubby arms. I'd say his reach is as long as Motormaster's or Grimlock's.

    So yeah, while I do plan on finishing max forging Jazz in the hopes that they balance him a little more down the road, I would still pursue the aforementioned BW team because you'll just get a lot more mileage from it.

    I say this jokingly, but I'd be curious to know about the age demographic of the dev team because it seems like someone there grew up watching and loving BW and really loved Cheetor because he definitely got all the bells, whistles and good balancing that I feel like Jazz still lacks, lol.
  • seeker1321seeker1321 Posts: 83
    Thank for the information, I appreciate your feedback. I am currently running that AM team, only have a 4* Primal, it has worked really well for me the last two weeks.

  • Momo2008Momo2008 Posts: 92
    Yah My R5 Forge 50 Cheetos was nice! Lost him on a Forge frenzy into Ape.. Cheetos or Jazz are both good bots overall. I just personally like Jazz better
  • SteelbaneSteelbane Posts: 320
    Y2K wrote: »
    Not even one word about how easily the enemies throw specials when confused? Whenever you find their power bar intimidating, employ an Ironhide-style until one heavy is landed, then dance a tiny bit to drain their power and even get an evasion buff.

    Its kinda good thing the confusion exists because you could use it to bait the bot to use the sp so it doesnt hit you with a crazy sp
  • SynthwaveSynthwave Posts: 1,012
    Yeah I did neglect to discuss that part, but I think I also wrote it during a fit of insomnia at like 3 AM lol.

    One more schizophrenic aspect I'm not too crazy about (no pun intended) with him his is 1 second stun in his sig (which again is highlighted for some reason which always makes me think it's a dynamic stat that grows with sig ranking). Stop highlighting static stats; it's confusing!

    But a 1 second stun isn't enough to do anything because half the time you're not sure if the opponent is draining power to begin with to even know if a stun is about to occur. They designed him so that you're constantly worrying about trying to keep your crit buffs active that you're never going to notice whether or not your opponent is having power drained from them (especially at low sig levels when the % is tiny).

    If anything the stun has negative consequences for you because by the time you notice the opponent is stunned and you try to move in to attack, the 1 second stun ends and instead of being rewarded with a free combo, the opponent instead catches you on the dash in and punishes you with a combo that removes your hard-earned crits.

    I still want to reiterate that he's such a great bot on pure abilities alone, but his sp1, sp2 and sig don't flow well at all with the rest of him.

    Here's a possible solution to making all of Jazz's parts work together in concert as opposed to being at odds with each other the way they are now:

    SPECIALS

    1. Give his sp1 a higher chance to stun. That's it. 33% per hit as opposed to 20%.

    2. Redo his sp2 altogether. The 20% reduction in attack rating and the locked sp3 are where the dissonance in his specials are occurring. The locked sp3 scenario has a one in a million chance a player will ever use it since specials are so easily baited by confusion that they never get close to sp3. And then there's the attack reduction, which just felt like it was thrown in there on a Friday at 4:50 pm because the designers were trying to make happy hour. What's that even there for, lol? As a result, nobody is using his sp2 because there's zero reason to.

    Here's what I propose instead: "Jazz launches into a devastating dropkick that has a 100% chance to confuse his opponent for 12 seconds. This debuff cannot be removed by the use of opponent specials."

    That's it. No attack debuff, no sp3 lock. I suggest this because currently it's really hard to use Jazz's sp1 the way it was intended because the confusion debuff disappears after a special is triggered, which happens A LOT. This means he currently has two abilities that are really at odds with each other. You want to be able to use his sp1 to stun, but the confusion debuff is also making the other bot want to get rid of that debuff ASAP by firing a special.

    So I think the above solution should solve that problem while at the same time remain reasonable. And since Jazz has zero power gain abilities, the only real way to use this effectively would be to almost build to sp3 and then trigger the sp2, giving the player a chance to bait a special out of an opponent AND get enough power built up to use an sp1 for a chance to stun.

    SIGNATURE

    Either make the stun stat of 1 second a dynamic one that increases to 3 seconds once you hit level 100 or just make it a static 1.5 or 2 seconds that doesn't increase with sig level. 1 second seems like a tacked on throwaway bonus that wasn't very well thought out.

    Anyway, I think changes like these will make him a more complete bot who is fun to use because his specials make sense with what he's designed to do and players won't have to lean on only 50% of what he actually does.

    Thoughts? @Kabam Miike @Kabam Vydious
  • KillMasterCKillMasterC Posts: 3,105
    I think the only reasoning behind the current sp2 is to collaborate with his sig: even if you locked enemy's sp3, they're still building power bar during this time and can reach 3 bars. Now any missed attack is a stun and no more sp3.

    BUT what should we do seeing a stunned opponent who will, upon next hit, get to sp3 again? Yeah the only thing to do is confuse them again to lock sp3 (and this heavy still builds to their max bar). Dodge to stun. Repeat until your opponent fire an sp2.
  • Mr_WonderfulMr_Wonderful Posts: 760
    Going to have to disagree with you on one thing, one good reason to use his sp2. If the hit before the drop kick KO’s the opponent, the slowmo leading up to the dropkick makes for a beautiful knockout visual. Only if your opponent isn’t against the wall though, jazz flying backwards due to the distance between the bots after special ruins the look a bit
  • SynthwaveSynthwave Posts: 1,012
    Going to have to disagree with you on one thing, one good reason to use his sp2. If the hit before the drop kick KO’s the opponent, the slowmo leading up to the dropkick makes for a beautiful knockout visual. Only if your opponent isn’t against the wall though, jazz flying backwards due to the distance between the bots after special ruins the look a bit

    Well then it's a good thing the only thing that would change would be what his magnificent drop kick does lol.

    The drop-kick is cool, but I wish he didn't land so unceremoniously on his back lol. Maybe if after the kick he dropped into a hand-stand and recovered that way it would look a little more Jazzy.
  • NightgauntNightgaunt Posts: 178
    edited June 2018
    With regards the SP3 lock, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it just needs to be applied in the right place. If it was applied for, say, 15-20 seconds when using Jazz's SP3, then it could be used in conjunction with the permanent backfire to force enemies to injure themselves at least twice. It could create a kind of alternate meta where it's a race to SP3, and outpacing the enemy's power gain (which Jazz should manage to do) punishes their own power gain, locking them out of their SP3 and forcing them to fire off a couple of damaging specials instead that Jazz can block. This would create a situation where Jazz can benefit from both allowing or baiting power gain in certain situations, rather than focusing on power loss through confusion - adaptable combat is a very Jazz thing, after all.

    EDIT: Hit send too soon!
  • WarCatWarCat Posts: 171
    WarCat’s needless review of Synthwave’s review:
    *yack....
    Sorry, hairball. What was I saying?
  • LouCypherLouCypher Posts: 111
    WarCat wrote: »
    WarCat’s needless review of Synthwave’s review:
    *yack....
    Sorry, hairball. What was I saying?
    It’s probably the overwhelming odor of “Mother’s Basement” in here. *cracks open a window and grabs some Febreeze*
  • WarCatWarCat Posts: 171
    *sniff sniff sniff
    Humm... still smells like stale Cheetos and body odor, but with a hint of mountain air.
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