Shark Tank Pitch: Peni Parker

The Pitch:

https://preview.redd.it/tb8hi97eeplg1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=d292a4b394b954076137affb6bef347d2e7c9b2b

Hero: Peni Parker

The Problem(s): Peni Parker has 6 main issues that plague her use in ranked play.

1. Peni is far too oppressive in low ELO. Less-skilled players have far more trouble taking angles to break the bionic spider-nest and playing around its area denial, thereby allowing the opposing Peni player to gain massive benefit with very little skill expression/requirement. She needs nerfs in a way that focuses on low ELO.
2. At both low and high ELO, Peni can be overly oppressive on specific maps during defense. Most notably, Klyntar Convergence & Central Park Convergence have extremely strong first point defensive holds that can be incredibly frustrating for the opposing team.
3. At high rank, Peni (if not Hulk) is widely considered to be the weakest tank following the removal of the previous rocket team-up. While this change was healthy for the game (two nests feel very over-tuned), it also left Peni at a bad spot because nearly all of her previous buffs focused on said nests, yet now she has one less nest to use. Peni needs compensational buffs in such a way that helps players at high ELO much more than low ELO.
4. During her ultimate ability, Peni's spider sweep attack knocks enemies up and out of drone-tracking, unintuitively working against other parts of her kit as a result. She is also left locked out of most of her kit during her ultimate, resulting in her being punished far too easily. Despite having one of the highest ult charge requirements out of the vanguards, Peni has by far the weakest ultimate ability.
5. Peni has a lot of inconsistency due to various bugs and jankiness in her kit. This makes her less fun to and often gets her killed.

• Spider-drone tracking is very poor and can often be avoided simply by jumping.
• Cyber-bond is very inconsistent and unintuitive. If hitbox collision happens within the LOS between Peni and the grapple location, the movement will be cancelled. If the cyber-bond is shot onto a place above the sky-box, the movement will be cancelled.
• There is also a long-lasting bug with cyber-bond where it will teleport to the location of a web snare if they land simultaneously.
• Wall-climb can be sort of janky depending on the vertical surface and will cancel very easily. Once it is cancelled, Peni cannot reattach to the wall until she retouches the ground because wall climb is not refreshed until then.

6. Peni has a lack of QoL in certain areas of her kit.

• Most high-ranking Peni players do not want their cyber-bond to lock onto existing webs, but there is no way to fully prevent this (you can turn the sensitivity down, but can't turn it off).
• Upon using cyber-bond and reaching the grapple location, rarely does a Peni need or want to stay attached to their web (especially because the cooldown timer on cyber-bond doesn't start until detaching from your cyber-web). Despite this, there is no feature to not attach to the web created by cyber-bond.

The Solution(s): There are 4 immediate solutions that can address all of the previous problems.

1. Spider-Nest Nerfs: Peni loses the buffs given to the bionic spider-nest (and cyber-webs) during previous patches. This includes the stacking 8% slow on spider-drone hit, the 15 hp/s healing for allies standing on cyber-webs, and the 25% movement speed bonus for allies standing on cyber-webs.
2. Ultimate Ability Buff: Peni will have her ult reworked in certain areas such that it is stronger and has greater skill expression.

• Peni will have complete access to her kit during the duration of her ultimate. Specifically, she can now use cyber-bond and place/replace her spider-nest.

• Peni's spider sweep will be reworked to act like an upgraded replacement to her cyber-snare during the duration of her ultimate.

  • Instead of being spammable, the attack will now have a 3 second cooldown similar to the cyber-snare.

  • Spider sweep also loses its knock-up effect. Now, spider sweep gains a new effect: the attack applies a snare stun to all enemies hit by the melee.

  • Spider-sweep is given a slightly wider attack radius to make it hit more consistently now that it has a cooldown.

  3. QoL Options: Peni will gain more options in the setting menu:

• Cyber-web locking sensitivity minimum is now 0 instead of 1. At 0, it will not lock ever onto existing webs.

• With cyber-bond, there is a new option to auto-detach from cyber-webs upon reaching grapple location

  4. Bugs/Jankiness Fixes:

• The teleporting cyber-bond bug will be fixed.

• Spider-drone tracking will now work even if the player is jumping. In order to do this, the AI tracking could extend slightly further above the webs. The drones will still only actually hit the player when they land.

• Cyber-bond jankiness can be addressed in one of two ways:

  • The hitbox sensitivity for interference with Peni grapple is reduced. If her grapple reaches slightly above the sky-box, let her be pulled in until she hits the skybox.
  • Peni grapple has velocity-retention similar to Dr. Strange's Cloak of Levitation. Now, if the grapple clips out, she still maintains her velocity after it snaps.

• Wall-climb jankiness can be addressed by allowing Peni to reattach to walls without retouching the ground.

The Valuation (Why This Works):

One of the main concerns with buffing Peni is the impact it will have in low ELO. By reverting previous nest buffs, it requires more character skill expression to get value and significantly weakens how oppressive her nest can be against less skilled players. It also makes her less oppressive on specific maps.

• The drone slow has a somewhat minimal effect against skilled players, but it can be very punishing against weaker players.
• Team regen and movement speed lets supports get away less punished from poor cooldown management, making it much stronger at low ELO where supports rely on this crutch more heavily.
• The previous nest buffs encourage lazy, defensive Peni gameplay that doesn't have much skill expression. It also makes her all the more oppressive at specific aforementioned map chokeholds, so reverting some of these changes will make her less frustrating to play against.

By making Peni weaker in low ELO, it is now more reasonable to give her buffs that benefit high ELO. With that, the biggest thing holding Peni back is her pathetic ultimate ability. It gets worse as you climb, and many Peni players simply use it as a "get overhealth" button instead of an actual offensive ultimate. Because Peni is one of the only vanguard ultimates that doesn't have a CC ability, many heroes can simply wait until Peni is forced to use ult before they use theirs, consequently making Peni's ult a hinderance in many cases.

• With the described buffs, Peni now has a CC ability to make her more viable. Because it is a melee, it can also bypass certain shields (e.g. Dr. Strange's Shield of the Seraphim) and hit multiple people.
  • Because the CC is tied to a melee, there is still reasonable counterplay. Peni can no longer CC from a distance when she goes into her ultimate, so people can still wait until Peni is mid ultimate to use their own, but they need to be strategic and keep distance.
• With a grapple, Peni can afford to make riskier plays because she has some sort of escape tool during ultimate.
• Spider sweep now helps the spider drones instead of hindering them.

QoL and bug fixes don't really need justification; these make the character more fun and less unfair to the user.

Bonus Suggestions: There are various other potential buffs/nerfs that could be negotiated about to make the character weaker/stronger as needed. Buffs should ideally benefit a skilled offensive playstyle, and nerfs force more thoughtful gameplay.

Other Potential Buff Ideas:

• Give Peni bi-directional wall-climbing similar to Spiderman or Venom. This would encourage her skillful dive playstyle more.
• Give arachno-mines somewhere around 1 second of invulnerability after first thrown. This would allow mines to not get instantly destroyed in the air by characters like Jeff who have a constant AOE stream of damage. It would also allow Peni to throw mines into her webs during a Cloak & Dagger ultimate because the arachno-mines wouldn't be destroyed before reaching the webs. This would mainly be a buff to mid-high ELO because lower rank Peni's don't use their mines enough or they throw them into spots where they will be destroyed after the invulnerability period ends.

Other Potential Nerf Ideas

• Reduce Peni's overhealth gained on ultimate activation from 450 to 300. This could help to balance out the buffs to her ultimate and to discourage people from using her ultimate as just a health button. It would also be more punishing to players who panic ult / don't use the ability thoughtfully, again targeting lower ELO more so than higher ELO.