Since I've been doing these posts on how characters and balance can be improved, I figured I might as well do one on Sackboy. I felt like my previous posts were mainly just me whining about why a character sucked, so I tried to do a little more research with this.
Sackboy, as he is now, just doesn't mesh with descriptions of him before PSAS's release. In an
IGN intereview, Omar Kendall stated that "he really wants to be as far away from you as possible at all times, even more so than Radec." (1:11 in the video) However, consider his options when he is far away from you: he has Jam Session, which now gives you a tiny 10 AP, and he has Cakeinator, which gives him 20 AP. This is literally all he can do if he is far away. His Jetpack used to be a good crowd-clearing long range option when
his fan could send him flying across the stage (at 0:44), but the fan was nerfed before release and it now only meaningfully affects his projectiles. Compare this to Radec, who has a stage-spanning sniper rifle that gives him 30 AP on each hit - 5 shots with it will give him a Level 1 that can also hit opponents from across the map. Clearly Sackboy is no longer a threat as a long range character.
So what is he then? Though his shockpad and cake are good traps to use up close, and he has some good combos, against more than one person his limited melee skills and inability to fight off multiple opponents become apparent. Thus Sackboy has instead become a "hit-and-run" character, one that gets his licks in, dashes out to throw a few cakes, and then rushes in the fray again when things die down. This actually suits him well, and fits the character. However, as we've all learned from characters like Nariko, Sir Dan, and Spike, it's not the moveset that makes the (wo)man, but the supers.
Pre-patch, these were Sackboy's AP requirements:
Level 1 Super - 100 AP
Level 2 Super - 325 AP
Level 3 Super - 600 AP
This is fairly balanced - his Level 3 is able to get roughly 6 kills in FFA and 4-5 in 2v2, so the amount of AP used getting his Level 3 could also be used getting 6 well-placed Level 1's or 2 Level 2's. However, take a look at his AP gain after the patch:
Level 1 Super - 150 AP
Level 2 Super - 400 AP
Level 3 Super - 750 AP
Do you see how they messed him up? If so, you understand basic math! If not, take a look at this:
Possible Kills at 750 AP:
Level 1 - 5 Kills (This is assuming single kills only, since Sackboy's Level 1 will almost never hit more than one person)
Level 2 - 2-3 Kills
Level 3 - 4-6 Kills
Note that getting 6 kills at 750 AP requires either landing at least one double kill with his 5 Level 1's, or using his Level 3. According to my friend Juptile (the highest ranked Sackboy in 2v2) it takes a little over 2 minutes for Sackboy to get 750 AP under good conditions (aka not getting hit by repeated grabs, meter stealing items, hazards, etc.) so this means that to get the max amount kills in a 3 minute match he is pretty much forced to use Level 3 and a Level 1 or land multiple Level 1's - of which the former is far easier to do than the latter. His Level 2 is simply no longer an option since it uses too much AP.
So we now know that his supers are unbalanced thanks to the AP changes, but why were those changes required in the first place? Because for some reason, Superbot BUFFED Sackboy's Level 3 before release. As seen in his
official trailer (at 1:00), Sackboy's Level 3 used to get 3 kills max in FFA (and presumably 2 in 2v2) since opponents wouldn't respawn in bubbles. This was likely done because Sackboy was able to get some AP back from bubbles before killing his opponents, unlike every other Level 3. However, now he can kill opponents from 2-3 times depending on their distance from him when he activates the super. Why was this change made? Perhaps Superbot felt that only 2-3 max kills wasn't good enough for a Level 3 super, although why they would think this and leave Sir Dan's horrible Level 3 unchanged is beyond me.
So: because of all these changes, Sackboy has essentially become an "all-or-nothing" character who is required to use his Level 3 to win a match. This, to me, is a problem, as all of a character's supers should be viable tools to win a match, and as of now Sackboy's Level 2 is useless and his Level 1 takes an extreme amount of skill to win with. To fix Sackboy, it is really a very simple task. Give him back his old AP gain for projectiles and his old AP requirements, because they weren't the problem. His fan can stay nerfed, no one really needs it anyways, but his Level 3 needs to go back to its old prerelease state - getting 6 kills AND almost enough meter for a Level 1 is just too much power for one super.